Loosers Get Another Mention in Time
Cited here; unfortunately the article isn't available online except to subscribers.
“The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are riveted by a documentary called Loose Change unspooling on a small TV screen at the BaccalaureateSchool for Global Education, in Astoria, N.Y. The film uses 9/11 footage and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling if paranoid case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Afterward, the students--an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories--dive into a discussion about the elusive nature of truth.
Raya Harris finds the video more convincing than the official version of the facts. Marisa Reichel objects. "Because of a movie, you are going to change your beliefs?" she demands. "Just because people heard explosions doesn't mean there were explosions. You can say you feel the room spinning, but it isn't." This kind of discussion about what we know and how we know it is typical of a theory of knowledge class, a required element for an international-baccalaureate diploma. Stroud has posed this question to his class on the blackboard: "If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"
Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is founder and principal of the four-year-old public school.”
Let's hope that the discerning part comes in picking apart the idiocy of LC.
posted by Pat @ 1:43 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
"If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"
Wow this teacher sucks.
First, truth isn't all that difficult to prove in history (but it gets harder the farther back we go, as you have less documentary evidence). And the answer to his question is "of course not". He starts with a false premise, so whatever follows cannot be true. Besides, you can't have multiple "truths", truth is a singular idea.
There can be only one.
Ooh, extra points for the Highlander reference.
Like hey man, I mean Korey and I haven't been to college. Korey has a GED!
Man, Jason, maybe they know what other country Hitler invaded!
remdem wrote: "Hey, don't be so harsh. The teacher is just asking questions, after all."
I think his question is legitimate given the context. He's not leading. He's inciting discussion.
No, I haven't turned to the dark side. The Truthers™ are deceptive about their "just asking questions" talking point. It's literally true, but there's an agenda behind it.
Obviously I can't know for sure, but I'm willing to bet the teacher knows full-well that the answer to his question is, "No." Such a simple answer, though, doesn't seem to be the point.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'm a little less forgiving of the teacher. When I was in high school we didn't contrast the Holocaust versus Holocaust Denial, we learned about the Holocaust because that was only credible version of events. Why bend over backwards to placate fruitcakes?
I think there is a difference between examining holocaust denial theories and examining the holocaust denier movement. It is important to know that the holocaust happened, and it is important to know that people still deny it - why not study how they organise, how they spread their message, and their ties to other ideological groups, such as the 911 denial movement.
First, truth isn't all that difficult to prove in history
Shawn,
but it gets harder the farther back we go, as you have less documentary evidence
Didn't you just contradict yourself with this statement???
Truth is very difficult to prove in history. Lets take for example the origins of the Vietnam War. It was very hard to prove the historical fact for the origins of that war. And then years later classified information becomes declassified, proving without a shadow of a doubt, that the United States began that war based upon a covert operation.
By nature, classified information makes truth in history difficult if not impossible to prove.
Second, winners write the history books, which of course prevents the loosers side of history from being examined. Personal and political agendas also have a similiar impact as well. So the truth of history becomes difficult to prove.
Off Topic here but---
Disgrunteled employee or Truther?Interview with former Boston Center Air Traffic Controller and pilotsfor911truth.org member Robin Hordon. Visit http://pilotsfor911truth.org for latest analysis into the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
A former Boston Center air traffic controller has gone public on his assertion that 9/11 was an inside job and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets. In an astounding telephone interview, Robin Hordon claims air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced to protect the true perpetrators of 9/11.
A recording of the phone conversation was posted on Google video late yesterday by the Pilots For 9/11 Truth organization.
After having acquired a background in aviation, Hordon underwent rigorous FAA training to become an air traffic controller and was posted to Boston Center where he worked for eleven years. He did not work at Boston Center when 9/11 occurred but still knows people that did who concur with his conclusions. In comparing the stand down of air defense on 9/11 and what should have occurred according to standard operating procedure, he quickly concluded on the very afternoon of the attacks that they could represent nothing other than an inside job.
"On September 11th I'm one of the few people who really within quite a few hours of the whole event taking place just simply knew that it was an inside job, and it wasn't because of the visuals, the collapses, whatever....I knew that it was an inside job I think within about four or five o'clock that afternoon and the reason that I knew is because when those aircraft did collide and then we got the news and information on where the aircraft were and where they went....if they knew where the aircraft were and were talking to them at a certain time then normal protocol is to get fighter jet aircraft up assist," said Hordon.
Hordon said that from personal experience he knew the system was always ready to immediately scramble intercepting fighters and that any reversal of that procedure would have been unprecedented and abnormal. He had also personally handled both real hijacking situations in his airspace and other emergency procedures.
"I know people who work there who confirmed to me that the FAA was not asleep and the controllers could do the job, they followed their own protocols," he stated.
Hordon said that the only way the airliners could have avoided being intercepted was if a massive electrical and communications failure had occurred which it didn't on that day, adding that there was "no way" the hijacked airliners could have reached their targets otherwise.
He highlighted the fact that only an emergency handling of aircraft protocol change on that day could have interrupted standard operating procedure and hijacking protocol. Hordon said it was unbelievable how far American Airlines Flight 11 was allowed to go off course without the appropriate action being taken on behalf of flight controllers.
G
"What you do is you don't wait for the judge, jury and executioner to prove it's an emergency, if things start to go wrong you have the authority to simply say I am going to treat this craft as if it is an emergency, because if everybody's wrong then fifteen minutes later no big thing."
Hordon emphasized that the debate has deliberately been channeled by NORAD and the government to focus on reactions to hijackings, when the real issue is the emergency condition of the aircraft well before a hijacking is even confirmed.
He went on to explain how as soon as the hijacking of Flight 11 was confirmed at around 8:24am, the entire system, from every FAA center coast to coast, to the Pentagon, to the President were informed and knew of the hijacking.
"The system now had to make some phone calls and call up Rummy's Pentagon and Rummy's Pentagon is the one that would then make the decision."
"Well, Rummy's Pentagon on American 11 didn't answer the phone, neither 175, didn't answer the phone and they didn't answer the phone until they were absolutely embarrassed into answering the phone somewhere along the flight of United 93 and American 77 - first formal contact was at this particular time," said Hordon.
"That is all distractionary, that is all designed to keep people off the focus - the real focus is what the air traffic controller did immediately upon seeing that American 11 was in trouble and what we do as air traffic controllers is we get eyes and ears on this flight."
Hordon underscored the fact that after the confirmed hijacking of Flight 11, the entire FAA system would have been on full alert and obsessively watching the skies for any unusual activity, and that such activity as the hijacking of Flight 77 would have been immediately reported to supervisors instantaneously, as well as being continually tracked.
"If the air traffic controller were going by emergency procedures which he is trained to do, he would have reached out directly to ADC (NORAD) and say what do you see?" said Hordon.
(SD-which to highlight that point above, happens routinely when pilots encouter UFO's. Source-documentary on Discovery Channel or Sci-Fi. Easy to find. They actually played the recordings on the docu.)
This highlights the absurdity of Dulles controllers mistaking Flight 77 for a fighter jet as it approached Washington as was reported, and the plane's over 40 minute uninterrupted journey to the Pentagon after a hijack was confirmed.
Hordon debunked the recent Vanity Fair piece that whitewashed NORAD's response as a consequence of confusion and the supposition that NORAD needs exact flight coordinates to enact any kind of response, and that the planes were supposedly invisible to radar and couldn't be tracked properly.
"It's very clear now through testimony and documents given to us by the federal government that indeed....the Boston Center actually tracked American 11 as a primary target after it lost its radar, after it lost its transponder, all the way to World Trade Center," he said.
"Further information indicates later the NORAD radars had it tracked....the bottom line of the story is that all of those aircraft were always tracked all the time by the FAA air traffic control centers," said Hordon, pointing out that information showing air traffic controllers tried insistently to alert military command structures is being locked down because it points to finger of responsibility to Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon, who were also tracking all the aircraft from the point of hijacking to the impact on their targets.
This is the reason why, as Hordon stated, that we don't have complete access to flight data recorders and FAA tapes, which in the case of a conversation between six New York Air Route Traffic Control Center controllers was ordered to be shredded , because if studies of that evidence were undertaken it would become very clear as to who was really behind the attack.
"What they did is they cherry picked transmissions, communications and statements made all on these four flights that were able to paint and write a story that the public would look at and so ooh wow, this really happened - but it wasn't factual, it was a story and it tell not tell anything other than what the high perps wanted the public to hear - they cherry picked this information," said Hordon.
Hordon ended by saying that only with the testimony from the dozens of flight controllers who have been silenced or ignored would the true story about who carried out 9/11 begin to emerge.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9147890225218338952&hl=en
14 December, 2006 11:28
This is the reason why, as Hordon stated, that we don't have complete access to flight data recorders and FAA tapes, which in the case of a conversation between six New York Air Route Traffic Control Center controllers was ordered to be shredded , because if studies of that evidence were undertaken it would become very clear as to who was really behind the attack.
Well, gee, yeah, that makes perfect sense. OF COURSE the hijackers would have been transmitting their true identities over the airwaves. It's right there in the CIA book of protocols, page 53, paragraph 4:
"Upon hijacking civilian airliners, you must immediately identify yourself and your organizations to the nearest traffic control tower. Failure to do so will result in a severe reprimand of your smoking corpse after you crash the airliner into a building."
See, it's right there in black and white. It explains everything!
I find young Marisa's comments insightful and, frankly, brilliant. Maybe we should ask this exceptional 16 year old how we should wrap up this obscene war.
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