written 24 Oct 2021
published 31 Oct 2021
Two weeks ago, John Arteaga commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attack. I spent the day watching the news, feeling an ominous shift in the world. Years later, details surfaced that were contrary to the official version, some mentioned in Arteaga's article.
In the history of steel framed skyscrapers, only three buildings have completely failed due to fires, and they all happened in New York on 9-11. The wide spread news coverage shows that all three buildings started to collapse at the top, and then fell into their own footprint at free fall velocity. Only two of the buildings were struck by planes. Despite this rare failure, no detailed structural investigation was conducted. The owner made a 40:1 return on his investment.
Even questioning the official story is treated as pushing conspiracy theories, lumped in with flat Earthers and those who doubt the moon landing really happened. When I have tried to discuss this with people, a common response is "who would do such a thing?" Obviously, someone with no regard for the "other", in a quest for exclusive gain of power and money.
History is rife with examples of killing for political gain, going back to the beginning. It is the last escalation in the domination game and the foundation of war. After the 9-11 attack, President Bush the younger, who squeaked into power by a Republican Supreme Court power play (dramatic foreshadowing?), was suddenly popular, and even won the popular vote in 2004, the only Republican to manage that in 32 years. The country lurched to the right, civil rights were curtailed, and we poured $7 trillion into the military industrial complex, destroying stability in Afghanistan and the middle east. While not proof of government involvement, the attack did advance key Republican goals.
There is also a long history of individuals and corporations killing people for profit. In the 50's, the tobacco industry aggressively denied the hazard of smoking, despite copious in-house research. Smoking still kills almost 500,000 Americans per year.
In the late 70's, Ford had a design problem with the Pinto gas tank, and fifty-nine people died. The company decided it was "cost effective" to pay the resulting law suits, valuing a human life to be worth $200,000, rather than recall the Pintos and make the $11 repair.
In the 80's, the fossil fuel industry used not only the same play book as big tobacco, but even the same public relations firm, to sell climate denial in the face of in-house research showing fossil fuel combustion damaged the environment. Current estimates are that at least 250,000 die each year from the degrading climate, with an increasing risk of near-term human extinction.
In late 2020, after more than 500,000 died from opioid overdose in the previous two decades, Perdue Pharma admitted "knowingly conspiring to dispense medication without legitimate medical purpose".
A very recent example is Fox News. In mid-June, new COVID cases in America had declined to 10,000 people a day, with about 300 people dying each day. The vaccine had become widely available, and it looked like the economy could begin to recover. Businesses were opening to customers, and masking restrictions were eased.
Fox News decided to demonize the vaccine in order to enrage their conservative base. They not only popularized false information about the vaccine and urged viewers to NOT get vaccinated, but also railed against vaccine mandates by governments and businesses. The result was a slowing of vaccination rates at a time when the delta variant was sweeping the country. Daily cases and deaths peaked again in mid-September and are slowly drifting lower.
Since the beginning of the Fox tirade in June, another 135,000 Americans have died, and our daily death rate is still 1,700, which is a 9-11 death toll every 42 hours. Most of those dying are unvaccinated, and a large percentage are Fox viewers. Fox contributed to killing their own viewers in order to energize their political base and maximize their right-wing viewer share, which is the point of their business. The irony is that Fox News instituted a vaccine mandate early on, and all the on-air hosts shouting against vaccination were already vaccinated themselves.
Who would do such a thing? Now we know. It is baked into the economic system which believes the fiction of exclusive gain.
