We as spiritual beings or souls come to earth in order to experience the human condition. This includes the good and the bad scenarios of this world. Our world is a duality planet and no amount of love or grace will eliminate evil or nastiness. We will return again and again until we have pierced the illusions of this density. The purpose of human life is to awaken to universal truth. This also means that we must awaken to the lies and deceit mankind is subjected to. To pierce the third density illusion is a must in order to remove ourselves from the wheel of human existences. Love is important but knowledge is the key!

And Now... Will the Real Skeptic Please Stand Up?

The scenery of post-9/11 America has begun shifting dramatically. The nation 
is awakening from the stunned, deluded, and mind-controlled stupor that 
followed the trauma of the "terrorist" attacks. The puzzling questions and 
dark allegations that started to arise shortly after the attack amongst the 
maverick information underground have survived pompous dismissal and snide, 
hyped up accusations of "conspiracy theory," only to become stronger with 
time. Almost half a year has passed, and the official story of who 
perpetrated 9/11, and how they slipped past the US security apparatus, has 
never even come close to being proved, let alone credible. Alternative 
internet news sources have reported a huge surge in readership in recent 
weeks — could it be that the great majority of the American people who 
believe that the White House leadership are lying through their teeth about 
Enron are now ready to rise above the atmosphere of groupthink and 
intimidation and dare to consider that fundamental lies are also being told 
about 9/11? 

Michael Moore is riding high on the incredible wave of popularity crossing 
political and ideological lines for his bestselling new book, Stupid White 
Men, which is refreshinly uncowed in its criticism of President Bush and his 
astonishingly corrupt administration. How can this be, with the President 
still supposedly at 80% approval ratings, according to the polls? Meanwhile, 
a respected, experienced investigator and whistleblower on the CIA has been 
touring the nation speaking to overflowing audiences about the solid 
evidence he and other investigators have uncovered pointing to the 
disturbing likelihood that the 9/11 attack was the result of a secret covert 
operation from somewhere within the US government. These rapt audiences have 
stayed for hours-long question and answer sessions. 
Where has all the flag-waving gone? 

The criminally corrupt actions of the Administration are becoming more 
transparent and offensive by the day, especially as holes in its 9/11 
propaganda campaign multiply and expand. In this sense the government has 
gone out of control, making it, like a wounded animal, all the more 
dangerous to civil liberties and the welfare of the rest of the world. On 
the other hand, the American people, and citizens of Canada, the UK and much 
of Europe, are beginning to stir in their opposition to the lies of the 
American government. In that sense, large segments of the population are 
beginning to release themselves from control by the mass media and 
government manipulated conditioning. —Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness 
Newsletter, March 1, 2002 

Amongst these remarkable developments, however, I have noticed something 
else that is also remarkable. There seems to be a quite large number of 
people who refuse to acknowledge that some of the alternate theories about 
9/11 have developed to a point of being at least as credible than the 
official story. In fact, an order of magnitude more credible. These people, 
whether or not they agree with the government's policies, whether or not 
they are pro-war or anti- war, nonethless choose to form their perceptions 
and opinions of the "War on Terrorism" around the fundamental assumption 
that the official version of events is correct. They insist on sidelining 
the upstart alternative ideas, which they label as "conspiracy theories," 
and adhere either actively or tacitly to the official version. They do this, 
they say, because they are "skeptical".

Really? Skeptical? 

In what sense of the word? 

I have always held the ideal of skepticism in the highest esteem. In my 
mind, this is a term of honor that reflects a high standard of critical 
analysis that a thinking person never abandons. 

>From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary:

skeptic

\Skep"tic\, n. [Gr. skeptiko`s thoughtful, reflective, fr. 
ske`ptesqai to look carefully or about, to view, consider: cf. L. 
scepticus, F. sceptique. See Scope] [Written also sceptic.] 1. One who is 
yet undecided as to what is true; one who is looking or inquiring for what 
is true; an inquirer after facts or reasons. 

The ancient classical definition of a skeptic is someone who believes that 
absolute certainty in knowledge is unattainable. However, this is a rather 
extreme philosophy when taken literally; in common usage a skeptic is 
generally seen as someone who approaches an unresolved question or problem 
without presumptions, who leaves bias and emotional reaction formations at 
the door, and who proceeds to seek an answer utilizing purely empirical 
evidence and logical deduction. 
A good forensic investigator might be an example of skepticism embodied in a 
very concrete form — their singular raison d'etre is just to follow the 
evidence, regarless of where it might lead. Since 9/11 was obviously a 
deliberate, premeditated criminal act, any explanation of it must satisfy 
the rigorous standards of a forensic investigation. 

One of these standards is a positive identification of the suspects. Do we 
have this in the case of 9/11? Hardly. All we have are a couple sketchy, 
mis-translated videotapes offered as "proof" of a confession, and a list of 
hijackers amongst whom as many as seven have been found to be still alive — 
and yet the names are still being dutifully reported by the media! It's a 
farce! 

Another standard is a motive — or more specifically, if the crime is clearly 
planned and premeditated, who benefits the most from the result? In this 
case, not bin Laden and al Qaeda. The winners are the oil industry, the Bush 
Administration, and the National Security establishment which has been able 
to ram through Congress a long coveted shopping list of Constitution-busting 
expanded powers. 

Yet another standard — were the suspects actually capable of carrying out 
the crime? Aviation experts have described the flying of the hijacked 
airliners as displaying skills approaching that of military pilots 
(particularly in the case of Flight 77 which hit the Pentagon). None of the 
alleged pilots had anything close to this level of skill from their meager 
simulator training. And concerning their ability to organize such a 
sophisticated paramilitary operation and evade the vast $30-billion per year 
US intelligence establishment? Divergent views on this point have been 
thoroughly squelched in the US, but a number of experts in Europe have 
spoken out. For instance, Eckehardt Werthebach, former head of Germany's 
FBI, the Verfassungschutz, has stated that "the deathly precision" and 
"magnitude" of the attacks would have required "years of planning" and "the 
fixed frame" of a state intelligence organization. 

A good forensic investigation would also involve piecing together an exact 
timeline of the crime. Ruppert, among others, has created such a timeline, 
and it implicates the US government far more than al Qaeda. Not only does it 
show that US air defences fail to make even a minimal timely response to the 
unprecedented quadruple hijacking, against all known regulations and 
practices, but looking back it also shows that the invasion of Afghanistan 
was planned months in advance. 
How can this be? (hint: one cannot launch an invasion and occupation of a 
foreign country without a provocation sufficient to justify it according to 
norms of international law and diplomacy, not to mention gaining necessary 
support at home. What was this stunning casus belli expected to be, if not 
an already-anticipated terrorist attack? The "wacko conspiracy nuts" have a 
logical explanation for this. The government does not). 

So, how are our "skeptics" faring? Not very well. The points noted above are 
only the tip of the iceberg of contradictions and implications in a steadily 
increasing body of evidence, as any informed person knows by now. At this 
point in time, the only ones who truly deserve the honor of being called 
"skeptics" are those who are at least prepared to acknowledge that the US 
government's explanation of 9/11 is — pardon my French — a steaming pile of 
horse shit.
 
Those who think it is acceptable to continue to base their views around this 
official story are not skeptics, but instead merely true believers.

Does this then prove by default that the alternate theories are true? 
Of course not. One might argue that a purist skeptic would maintain an 
absolutely agnostic stance right now, since neither side has a conclusive 
case. But what exactly does that mean, when bombs are falling on Afghan 
villages, the Middle East is threatening to explode into war, and the US is 
step by step turning into a police state? Will all of this stop and wait for 
us while we settle into our armchairs, stroke our chins in contemplation, 
and wait for Perry Mason to stride in and provide us with a thrilling 
courtroom finale? 

It has been half a year, and the important questions haven't been answered. 
The core evidence for the alternative covert / black ops inside job theory 
of 9/11 has not been refuted, and although it is not yet proven with a 
smoking gun and strikes many people as far- fetched, this theory is actually 
more cohesive, more credible, and more logically and empirically supported 
than the official story. It has only grown in strength with time, not 
lessened. Unless there is a major turnaround, and US government comes clean 
with believable and factually supported answers to the questions that have 
been raised, what is a true skeptic to do? 

I sense a passion bubbling to the surface now; I think there are many people 
like myself who feel that there is enough of a case to come to a conclusion 
and start dealing with the next step — what action can we take to stop this 
madness? I fully respect those who are not ready to choose one side or the 
other, and want to see more information or proof emerge, but what I do not 
respect and in fact deeply disdain are those who cannot let go of their 
conditioning and preconceptions, who refuse to allow there to be two fair 
sides to this debate, who have also sensed the change in the air and are 
lashing out bitterly to try and silence what they do not want to hear. 

Recently, David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, released an debunking 
piece which lambasted what he called the "X-files of 9/11," and specifically 
attacked Mike Ruppert. Corn is of course entitled to his opinion about who 
has the most credible explanation of 9/11, but outrageously, he grossly 
misrepresented several elements of a story Ruppert published about the case 
of Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, a US Naval Intelligence Officer who apparently 
had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack and attempted to get the information 
out while he was jailed in Canada. Corn's article is here: 

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12536 

and Ruppert's rebuttal is here: 
http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/030402_cornreply.html 

Alternet, a left-leaning Internet news source, headlined Corn's "story." I 
started a discussion thread on their online forum concerning Ruppert's 
reply. I was encouraged to find that most respondents, even if they were not 
convinced by the alternative 9/11 theories, felt that Corn indeed had 
crossed the line and gone too far (by the way, Alternet has also posted 
Ruppert's rebuttal). However, several posts highlighted a couple of facts 
that I find troublesome. 
First, that a great deal of the "skeptical" rebuttals to "conspiracy theory" 
are based more on abstract assumptions and pompous emotionalism than real 
factual debate. Secondly, that there is an entrenched, recalcitrant, 
near-pathological antipathy towards anything perceived as "conspiracy 
theory" amongst many on the Left. 

Why?? This is of great concern to me, not because I strongly identify with 
the Left (I used to, however now I might classify myself as an agnostic 
libertarian with a few progressive leanings), but because the Left forms the 
core of the anti-war movement, and I feel passionately that the anti-war 
cause must succeed. So far, it has hardly made a dent, and I strongly doubt 
that a broad-based anti-war platform can succeed without confronting the 
questions of what really happened on 9/11, and in a larger sense, who is 
really controlling world affairs. 

A letter from one Stan Goff which circulated not long after 9/11 parallels 
my own conviction, that the Left has actually inadvertently supported the 
invasion of Afghanistan by expressing dissident views which obsessively 
avoided any mention of 9/11 anomalies and gaps in the official story, 
thereby supporting the government's position by tacit default and giving the 
impression that there was nothing there worth any attention from dissenters. 

. . .I have to say that the story we hear on the news and read in the 
newspapers is simply not believable. The most cursory glance at the 
verifiable facts, before, during, and after September 11th, does not support 
the official line or conform to the current actions of the United States 
government. 

But the official line only works if they can get everyone to accept its 
underlying premises. I'm not at all surprised about the Republican and 
Democratic Parties repeating these premises. They are simply two factions 
within a single dominant political class, and both are financed by the same 
economic powerhouses. My biggest disappointment, as someone who identifies 
himself with the left, has been the tacit acceptance of those premises by 
others on the left, sometimes naively, and sometimes to score some morality 
points. Those premises are twofold. One, there is the premise that what this 
de facto administration is doing now is a "response" to September 11th. 
Two, there is the premise that this attack on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon was done by people based in Afghanistan. In my opinion, neither of 
these is sound. 

. . .I say the left has missed the boat on this one, by allowing them to get 
away with rushing past the question of who did what on September 11th. If 
the official story is a lie, and I think the circumstantial case is strong 
enough to stay with this question, then we really do need to know what 
happened. And we need to understand concretely what the motives of this 
administration are. 

The Story we Hear on the News and Read in the Newspapers is Simply Not 
Believable 
by Stan Goff
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/GOF110A.html 

(incidentally, www.globalresearch.ca is an excellent source of intelligent 
analysis from members of the anti-globalist Left who buck the trend of 
knee-jerk anti-conspiricism) 

Another recent essay analyzing the dysfunctional response of the Left in the 
wake of 9/11: 
Four months after September 11, it appears that most of the Left is asleep 
at the switch. Just about the only response has been the "anti- war 
movement", which has been weak, especially in the U.S., where the propaganda 
barrage has successfully marshalled the bulk of the population, including 
many leftists, into lockstep with their masters' plans. In any case the 
movement hasn't stopped the "war" in Afghanistan (really a one-sided attack 
against an essentially defenseless target, not a war). Nor is there any 
reason to imagine that it has frightened the Bush cabal from implementing 
plans to unleash its death machine on any number of additional targets in 
the future. 

Most of the endless stream of "analysis" from the Left or "progressive" side 
has centered on "terrorism", posing and answering questions such as "what is 
terrorism?" or "why do they hate us?" For example, the "Marxist" Tariq Ali's 
critique of events amounts to pointing out the ineffectiveness of the US 
military assault as a method of eliminating terrorism. His main conclusion 
seems to be that the US rulers are really dumb; anybody with half a brain 
can see that the attack in Afghanistan will only breed more terrorists! It 
never occurs to him that maybe they're not dumb, but have a different 
purpose in mind; he takes their propaganda at face value. And so do most 
other "critics" of the war. This is the wrong way to stamp out terrorism! 
Wage peace instead! Dispense justice! Be nice! Then "they" won't hate "us" 
anymore (and "we" can carry on with our relentless pursuit of money and 
goodies like SUVs). 

Evidently the Left, like everybody else, spends too much of its time 
watching TV and reading the newspapers, i.e., absorbing propaganda. How else 
to comprehend why almost everyone from "liberal" Democrats and 
"progressives" to Marxists and anarchists has accepted the propaganda line 
of the corporate media and psyops specialists in the US government: the 
attacks on September 11 were planned and carried out by Islamic 
Fundamentalist Terrorists, namely Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, and caught 
the US national security apparatus completely offguard. The fact that no 
proof has ever been produced doesn't seem to bother anyone. And when this 
lack of proof is pointed out, and all the innumerable facts and 
circumstances that cast very serious doubt on this story are brought up, 
even "critics" of the war dismiss these persistent questions as lunatic 
"conspiracy" mongering.
. . .
The failure to look hard facts in the face could be fatal, especially to the 
Left, which, judging by its response to this point, doesn't seem to realize 
that it is one of the principal targets of the coming global war. . . A huge 
mass of evidence suggests that the events of September were planned and 
carried out by the same team of "rogue" secret government planners and 
operatives who have wrought so much murder and destruction worldwide for the 
last 40+ years: the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and 
their contractees.

The article then goes on to provide a well written summary of evidence 
related to 9/11, and some of the possible impending dangers of a police state. 

The full text: 
9/11 : A Desperate Provocation by US Capitalism by Max Kolskegg 

It is difficult to deal with people who are stubbornly close-minded, but 
almost insufferable when on top of that they insist that they represent the 
"rational" and "reasonable" view while simultaneously subscribing to an 
ingrained belief system of their own. It is worth noting that Corn's 
supposed refutation of 9/11 conspiracy theory is largely based on two points 
that are totally subjective, yet are presented as if they are solid facts. 
These are: 

1. The government couldn't have been involved because they simply aren't 
evil enough to do something like that. 

2. The terrorists got away with it because as everybody knows, the CIA and 
FBI, like everyone in government, are just too bumbling and incompetent to 
do their job. 

A true skeptic would never accept an argument that hangs on assumptions like 
this, but sadly, many people think that such facile, offhand 
"rules-of-thumb" are the cat's meow of level-headed common sense. More 
dilligent and canny researchers know that there are abundant precedents 
refuting both of these assumptions, and that they are in fact two deeply 
ingrained memes that have been heavily incorporated into mass-media thought 
conditioning propaganda. The second in particular is a tried-and-true, 
classic technique of disinformation; if these techniques are written down 
somewhere in a government handbook, "claim incompetence and bungling" 
certainly must be up near the top of the list, right after "deny, deny, 
deny." It is laughably naive to accept government "admissions" of 
incompetence without subjecting them to severe skepticism (and even a little 
cynicism).

Corn also uses a familiar old propagandistic saw that is often seen on the 
Left — claiming that giving any attention to "conspiracy theories" will 
distract from the "real" crimes committed by the government. This argument 
is fine — if you accept the irrational, unthinking assumption that 
"conspiracy theories" can be automatically considered erroneous in the first 
place. But what if they happen to have substance? Ruppert notes in his 
rebuttal that Corn mentions the CIA's associations with drug smugglers, 
while strangely omitting mention that CIA operatives have been actively 
involved in the smuggling itself — on a vast scale! This is well-documented 
and has in fact been admitted by the government in the case of the Iran- 
Contra affair (Ruppert's site archives and recommended reading list contain 
more than enough solid references to satisfy any responsible and thorough 
inquiry on this subject). 

So, using this as an example, why do so many on the Left persist in hastily 
dismissing the charges of CIA drug smuggling as "conspiracy theory"?  Is the 
Left so whipped by years of marginalization, so eager in their current 
pursuit of being accepted and welcomed back into the fold as the "loyal 
opposition" that they are willing to leave these kinds of inconvenient 
truths on the wayside, lest they be further punished and excluded as 
"extremists"? And what about the hypocrisy of it — the Liberal/Left elite 
proudly claim to be the guardians of all the best interests of minority 
communities, but how are they fulfilling this by denying the strong evidence 
that the 80s crack "epidemic" was to a substantial extent the result of a 
deliberate covert operation? Does not this knee-jerk rejection of 
"conspiracy" perhapse serve in a backhanded way to reinforce middle 
America's unspoken racist assumption that the bizarre extremes of 
devastation and gang wars of that era were in some part brought by these 
minoritiy communities upon themselves?

And who exactly are these pseudo-skeptics helping by building further upon 
this foundation of denial, making the purely emotional, historically 
untenable claim that the government is simply incapable of murdering its own 
citizens?

Of course, there's no need to worry about the substance of conspiracy 
theories if you can get away with bluster and evasiveness. I've been 
astonished to meet a couple Leftist doubters of Ruppert who seem almost 
proud of the fact that they have only given his work a glance- over or have 
not studied his website at all. What can I say? I don't know whether to 
laugh or to cry. Obviously, it's the old unfortunate achilles heel of the 
Left — ideology before reality. That said, there are plenty of 
better-informed types on the Left who greatly appreciate and understand 
Ruppert's work (by the way, Ruppert himself is very non-partisan in his 
approach). So, where does the ideological response come from? 

There must be some negative reaction formations on the Left towards 
conspiracy theory because of history — after all, there is a strong 
reputation of conspiracy theory being the domain of the far right- wing, 
harking back to the Communist conspiracy scares of the Cold War. This is an 
outdated and unfortunate perception, given how far we are beyond the Cold 
War. In recent years many on the Left have associated conspiracy theory with 
unsavory types of right-wing extremist groups, without making the effort to 
discover that these people sometimes subscribe to heavily distorted and 
bigoted renditions of ideas that have been developed elsewhere on more 
reasonable and rational terms. Extremists are, of course, perenially 
convenient to hold up as "straw men" to discredit ideas that they may have 
borrowed and claimed as their own. 

The intellectually elitist leanings of the old school Left certainly must 
play a factor as well, since in academic circles there is a prevailing 
dominant orthodoxy against fully accepting the role of conspiracy in 
history. Instead, the messy human factor is often ruled out in favor of a 
comically abstract reductionist model which prefers to recognize only 
general "objective forces" (are history and political science the last great 
bastions of modernism?) Views which acknowledge conspiracy to an 
unpermissible extent — even if they are well-documented and well-argued — 
have often been dismissed and suppressed with sneering accusations of being 
"reactionary" and "populist". 

On more concrete terms, the more centrist, liberal members of the Left have 
an intense mental block against considering conspiracy claims logically 
because it offends their everlasting faith in centralized, big government 
solutions to the world's problems. From Richard K. Moore of cyberjournal.org 
: Liberals have a knee-jerk way of dismissing certain ideas, or evidence... 
"That sounds like a conspiracy theory". With that, they consider the matter 
settled, the ideas or evidence obviously refuted. 

I've tried on more than one occasion to delve into this kind of non- 
reasoning. One fellow articulated it rather well: "If such and such were 
true, then it would eventually come out, we'd hear about it". I think what 
he meant was that we'd hear about it in the mainstream media. The same kind 
of non-reasoning which a kid might use: "I don't care what the evidence is, 
if there were no Santa my mommy would tell me."

I call such thinking 'non-reasoning', not because there isn't a logic to it, 
but because at the core we're talking about faith rather than reason. A 
child was once asked by his pastor, "What is faith?". His answer: "Believing 
what you know isn't true". The pastor chuckled at the innocence, but the kid 
had hit the nail on the head. Just like the kid who pointed out that the 
Emperor had no clothes.

Liberals have a faith that the system is fundamentally legitimate. 
There may be corrupt officials, and irresponsible corporations, and 
misleading media, but these are anomalies. With a bit more reform, 
intelligent voting, public education, etc., such rough edges can be rounded 
off and everything will be OK. They have a hard time getting their head 
around the idea that the whole system was designed in the first place as a 
deception - to enable rule by wealthy elites - and that the 'anomalies' 
reflect precisely how the system is ~intended~ to function.

Do you still believe in the tooth fairy? by Richard K. Moore 

This underscores what is really going on — the stonewalling dismissal of 
9/11 "conspiracy theory" is not really centered in logic and facts, because 
purely on those terms the underdog is, at least at this point in time, 
winning by a mile. It is instead about the collision of facts and belief, 
and the reactions of many on the Left are in my opinion a prime example of 
this dynamic. Coming to awareness about the fundamentally deceptive nature 
of the system, and the conspiratorial nature of the wealthy elites who 
administer the rapidly coalescing global serfdom under which we live, may be 
a tough pill to swallow for those who pride themselves on being the 
conscientious watchdogs of the system, and yet have been in denial of some 
of the most heinous ways that it actually functions. 

Staging the 9/11 attack was not a bizarre or unexplainable act on the part 
of the ruling elites. Quite the contrary, it might be the perfect solution 
to the two greatest crises that they face: first, the beginning of the 
worldwide decline in petroleum production, which has made it necessary to 
launch an all-out effort to seize control of the Central Asian reserves. 
Second, the end of the growth potential of the current economic system which 
augurs the arrival in the not too distant future of a worldwide depression, 
accompanied by inevitable widespread social unrest. 

The only way the elites can maintain control over this situation is by 
instituting increasingly totalitarian rule and dismantling democratic 
freedoms. So, taking a step back, why should the possibility of wider 
conspiracy in 9/11 be considered unusual in the first place? If not 9/11, 
"they" would have had to come up with something else like it.

We are at a crossroads, at a window of opportunity where the plans and 
machinations of the elites have matured to the point that they are now 
clearly revealing themselves. We can resist and change the system, but there 
is an obstacle to overcome. An old cliché in the intelligence world holds 
"if you want to keep something a secret, hide it in plain sight." Clever 
tyrants have always understood this, and Hitler knew this explicitly when he 
spelled out his theory of the Big Lie in Mein Kampf — that the general 
public would never be willing to believe that their government had committed 
a crime if it was sufficiently audacious and horrifying. 

Denial, fear, pride, ideology, or ego may prevent people from considering in 
an open- minded way that the evidence sitting before us truly does point 
where it is pointing. To be certain, there will to be an increasing level of 
deception, disinformation, deliberately placed rumors, and acts by agent 
provocateurs in attempts to discredit those who are questioning the official 
story. There will also be people who will try and take the evidence and run 
with it in a way that is counterproductive or unwise. The road ahead will be 
messy, and caution will be important for all sides, but I believe the truth 
will come out — if the real skeptics take the lead.

Brian Salter
9 March 2002