Two engineers’ recent opposing pieces of writing, HERE and HERE, related to the skyscraper collapses at the World Trade Center 20 years go last month might open the possibility of a colloquium on the subject.

The engineers are Roland Angle, new CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and Leland Teschler, an executive editor at the trade publication Design World aimed at mechanical and electrical engineers.* They would make good participants on a panel to discuss whether the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down because of jet fuel and office fires, or because of pre-planted explosives timed to collapse them into their own footprints.

As noted HERE last weekend, Teschler, wrote an article in DW regarded as a “hit piece” by some at AE911Truth. It was headlined “The WTC collapse after 20 years.” He begins by noting “introspection the [9/11] tragedy has brought about in construction engineering.”

He cites the views of Arizona State University Professor Bargin Mobasher, who uses “the World Trade Center collapse” “to illustrate principles of failure mechanics” in a senior-level course in structural design, and to “show why engineers must adopt conservative design practices.”

Teschler writes that Mobasher disparages “spurious claims from 9/11 truthers who believe conspiracy theories about demolition of the WTC buildings.”

Mobasher: “When you look at the amount of misinformation out there, engineers and people skilled in the discipline have a responsibility to argue on behalf of science. I tell my students they are obligated to speak the truth about the WTC if they find themselves in a discussion. They know the charts and graphs that explain steel’s behavior, so they have a responsibility as an engineer to not just be silent when somebody throws mud at scientific ideas.”

Not long after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the professor says, “four or five people … wanted me to comment or support their theories. In those cases I would try to find out if they understood mechanics or materials. If they really didn’t understand, I would tell them they need to communicate in mathematical terms in ways people understand. There is nothing emotional about it. It is all about how the numbers work out.”

Mobasher continues: “There is a lot of data cherry picking. Science doesn’t work that way. The idea that demolition was involved is total nonsense. The studies of WTC5 give a clear explanation of why that building collapsed.”

(Building 5 is usually not mentioned by critics of the U.S. government’s Executive Branch accounts of the building collapses at the World Trade Center, who focus on the collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7. Building 5, according to Wikipedia, “was heavily damaged as a result of the collapse of the North Tower during the September 11 attacks and was later demolished.”)

Writing in Design World, Teschler notes that the architects and engineers who signed the AE911Truth petition because they “feel” pre-planted explosives could have brought about the collapses of WTC Buildings 1, 2 and 7 constitute a tiny percentage of those in the United States, and that the civil engineers who signed (like Angle) were only a fraction of the total number of engineers signing.

When Teschler was an undergraduate (at the University of Michigan), he recalls, one could get a bachelor’s degree in engineering “with an exposure to static analysis that was limited to freshman and sophomore physics.” Some of the signers, he concludes, might learn “from auditing a structural steel design course of the type taught by Prof. Mobasher.”

In a colloquium on the destruction of WTC Buildings 1, 2 and 7,  Professor Mobasher, or someone he recommends, could explain why the idea that controlled demolition brought down Buildings 1, 2 and 7 is unscientific and nonsensical.

And Angle, or someone he recommends, possibly J. Leroy Hulsey,** professor emeritus of structural engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, could defend the hypothesis that planned controlled demolition brought them down on Sept. 11, 2001.

— Mark Channing Miller

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* Design World is a network of websites, online services and print publications aimed at mechanical and electrical engineers, with a monthly print circulation of more than 40,000 copies and online versions that reach an additional 100,000 readers.

** Hulsey is featured in the film “SEVEN,” about the four-year study he and two graduate students at the UAF conducted on the Building 7 collapse on the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001. A five-minute summary of “SEVEN” appeared on a number of PBS stations. An abstract of the final report, linked to the report itself, is available HERE.

A thought-provoking conversation on detecting and educating about propaganda follows at https://www.bitchute.com/video/DKt98gJbkKIa/ .

Mark Crispin Miller, NYU professor of communications and publisher of the online News From Underground, is James Corbett’s guest on CorbettReport.com and #solutionswatch. Their talk is titled “How to Disarm Propaganda.”

Although both are longtime 9/11 truthers, they don’t touch specifically on propagandizing about the September 2001 terror attacks. Here they look askance at, among other things, the worldwide Covid-19 vaccination drive and at by-now commonly accepted views of global warming and climate change.

— Mark Channing Miller

The relatively low-key civil engineer Roland Angle has succeeded architect Richard Gage as president of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth following Gage’s removal by the organization’s board of directors shortly before the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

(Some of Gage’s views expressed in the final segment of Spike Lee’s documentary minseries for HBO, “NYC Epicenters: 9/11 – 2021½,” and subsequent predictable news-media outrage [see HERE] had resulted in Lee’s shortening the segment, embarrassing AE911Truth, and lessening its hoped-for anniversary bump.)

As noted over the weekend (HERE), Angle spoke with 9/11 Free Fall* host Andy Steele for half an hour last week. Headlined “Engineer Roland Angle: The official 9/11 narrative cannot be allowed to stand,” the interview was intended in part to refute what Steele termed a “hit piece” in a publication called Design World, and in part to give Angle some more exposure as AE911Truth’s new leader. He previously appeared in the organization’s documentary “Experts Speak Out” (HERE) and has headed its ongoing Project Due Diligence effort to attract support from engineers.

Once introduced by Steele, Angle gave this account of his background:

”I graduated from Cal in ’64, and I had majored in civil engineering, very excellent school, excellent instructors at that time. I was in the honor society, Chi Epsilon Engineering Society, and after I graduated, I joined the army and was trained in special forces. I joined the 19the Special Forces Group. And during that training, one of the things that I was trained in was the use of explosives. We were using C4 plastic explosives, teaching us how to disable vehicles and structures using the explosives at strategic points in their structure.

”After I got out of the army, I went to work for the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, and I was working on their flood control structures, large canals, worked on the Carson Canal and also with their concrete inverts and structures that they were placing at that time to ensure that the Los Angeles Basin was not inundated with floods as they had been in the past. They have quite an extensive flood control system there.

”So, after I left the Flood Control District, I went to work for the Ralph and Parsons Company, and they were the contractors that designed the launch control facilities for the Minuteman missile system. So I was a field engineer at first, went to the air bases where the missile silos and launch control facilities were being constructed in North and South Dakota and Montana.

”And after that, I came back home. My son was born, and I decided to go into teaching, and I left engineering, for the time being, went into teaching high school students the subjects of mathematics, physics, drafting, and the trades that were involved in construction. And after I finished that stint, I went back to engineering, worked for an engineering firm in Marin County, and we did a lot of development works, laying out development, subdivisions, all the infrastructure that was associated with that, roads retaining walls, train systems, and so on.

“And then I went to work for Jordan Woodman Dobson, which was an architectural engineering firm. And Mike Jordan has designed about half of the cargo cranes in the world. And so I got a good education there with the facilities for loading and unloading cargo ships, terminal facilities.

”And then I left that firm and formed my own construction company with a partner. And we did mostly light commercial and construction remodels. And after five years, he went into business with his daughter. I continued on, formed a corporation, small corporation and operated in Southern and Northern California and Nevada.

”Then when the crash hit in 2008 and pretty much all work stopped in my area. And I closed the corporation down, went to work for myself as a sole proprietor and ran that business until 2015, when I closed it and retired.

“And at that time, I came on board with the Board at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, sat on the board and have since then until Richard left earlier this year. And the board asked me to assume the position of CEO, which I have agreed to do.”

— Mark Channing Miller

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* 9/11 Free Fall is a division of AE911Truth itself.

Weeks have passed since changes began in two allied organizations that have worked together seeking transparency and accountability regarding the September 2001 terror attacks. In roughly chronological order . . .

* The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth board of directors removed founder Richard Gage as president. Roland Angle, a civil engineer, is AE911Truth’s new CEO. (See below for his first interview with Andy Steele on 9/11 Free Fall. To listen to it and/or read the transcript, click HERE.) 

* David Meiswinkle, a cofounder of the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, left the organization in mid- to late September. He said that the board of directors did not renew his contract as president, and he declined to accept the offer of a lesser post.

* Gage was replaced by an AE911Truth staffer as a participant in an afternoon and evening conference on Sept. 11 co-sponsored by the LC and the 9/11 Truth Advocacy Project.

* Gage joined the LC.

The LC today announced a number of internal changes, including the election of Attorney Jane Clark as board chairman; Clark was an LC cofounder and its first president. Attorney Mick Harrison will be executive director for the second time; in recent years he has functioned as litigation director. Gage’s title at the LC is technical advisor. Click HERE for the announcement.

Over at AE911Truth, retired structural engineer Fred Schaebge on Tuesday responded on behalf of the organization to an article critical of it in Design World by one of that publication’s executive directors, Lee Teschler. Schaejbe’s letter, which includes a link to Teschler’s article, is HERE.

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Calling All Engineers!

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelors in civil engineering. He served in the U.S. Army special forces, where he was trained in the use of explosives, and became a licensed civil engineer in California.

His 50 years of engineering experience has included designing and testing of blast hardened missile launch facilities and designing U.S. Naval explosive containers, harbor terminal facilities, earth foundation systems, and hydraulic systems. In addition, Roland has owned three construction companies and has taught engineering subjects to high school students.

Roland Angle, new CEO at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, was introduced by Andy Steele of 9/11 Free Fall (a program of AE911Truth) as follows:

“He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelors in civil engineering. He served in the U.S. Army special forces, where he was trained in the use of explosives and became a licensed civil engineer in California.

“His 50 years of engineering experience has included designing and testing of blast hardened missile launch facilities and designing U.S. Naval explosive containers, harbor terminal facilities, earth foundation systems, and hydraulic systems. In addition, Roland has owned three construction companies and has taught engineering subjects to high school students.”

In the half-hour conversation, Angle, an AE911Truth board member since 2015, lays out part of the organization’s new strategy, which is to focus on engineers, on the basis that architects seem to be waiting for engineers to sign on to the call for a new investigation of the collapse of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers — the Twin Towers and Building 7 — before doing so themselves. More on their talk another day.

— Mark Channing Miller

There’s probably still time to get tickets for the discussion led by author/painter Betsy Dovydenas about her book In Case You Want to Know How I Got Brainwashed, tomorrow afternoon at 4:30 at Shakespeare & Company’s 500-seat outdoor New Spruce Theater in Lenox, Massachusetts. (Click HERE for previous coverage.) Weather is forecast to be on the cool side but clear.

It was a minor-league deception and swindle, to be sure — a mere $6.5 million, and the only victim got a lot of it back — compared to the world-class multi-trillion dollar (and counting) hoodwinking perpetrated against billions of people worldwide during the George W. Bush administration. That one resulted in millions of combatants and civilians killed in a string of wars, whole countries (albeit ones with “bad guys” in charge of their governments) turned upside down, and losses of Americans’ constitutional rights to safeguard against terrorism. U.S. taxpayers and those of other countries won’t get any of their money back.

Even so, the local deception and subjugation and the world one have the following description in common. According to a newspaper article describing Dovydenas’s new book of more than 200 monographs accompanied by her own text, it “tells the story of being tricked, sweet-talked, coaxed, manipulated, conned, coerced and exploited. ‘I was brainwashed. This book shows how it happened,’ she wrote.”

It is appropriate that she will describe her experience at a theater on the Shakespeare & Company campus, where the bard’s tragedies and histories (and comedies) have been enacted since the beginning of this century. The campus was previously the center of The Bible Speaks, a religious cult that briefly benefitted from Dovydenas’s largesse and vulnerability.

A player in the international tragedy of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks designed to terrorize Americans and the rest of the world, died on Monday. Colin Powell was an enabler in that tragedy, however reluctantly, and also a victim in that, forced to choose between being a George W. Bush administration team player and a tool of its deception, he chose the latter.

Copious coverage of Dovydenas’s victimization appeared locally and in such national newspapers as the Washington Post and the New York Times. Hers is the first book.

Virtually nothing “connecting the dots” of the deception and subjugation involved in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, designed by the perpetrators to terrorize, has appeared in U.S. media except to finger Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda as sole culprits and to legitimize the resulting wars — although in recent years there have been moves by Congress to declassify mountains of documents, even if the news media waited until this year to mention them. As for the federal judiciary and U.S. attorneys, they have regarded challengers* to the official 9/11 mythology as lacking standing.

So far, Dovydenas’s new book is the first (known to this blog) to deal with her deflating experience. By comparison, shelves of compelling books have been published regarding the world-class deceptions and coverups of the full 9/11 phenomenon. With extremely few exceptions they have been willfully ignored by the entire U.S. media complex, meaning that every daily newspaper, every radio and TV company is part and parcel of the brainwashing.

To do justice to all of these books would require a book in itself — and with luck someone is working on one. Three notable 9/11 books that have been mostly overlooked in this blog are:

* 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fifth Edition, by Webster Griffin Tarpley (Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2011).

* Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects, by Kevin Robert Ryan, First Edition (Microbloom, 2013), and

* Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored, by Ray McGinnis, (NorthernStar Publications, 2021).

If a book is published about all of the worthwhile but unreviewed books about 9/11, it could be titled In Case You Want to Know How We Got Brainwashed.

— Mark Channing Miller

Colin Powell (1937 – 2021)

Colin Powell died yesterday. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Statf better known as the U.S. Secretary of State who gave credence in a 2003 United Nations address to false claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, leading to the second major war resulting from the September 2001 attacks designed to terrorize the United States and the world, was 84. An Associated Press obituary by Robert Burns, Eric Tucker and Eileen Putman, headlined “Colin Powell dies, trailblazing general was stained by Iraq,” is HERE.

Powell was the first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the first black U.S. Secretary of State, serving in those positions during the administrations of presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, respectively.

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Betsy Dovydenas to Speak on Deception by Cult Leader

“LENOX — Painter and author Betsy Dovydenas will discuss her just-published book, ‘In Case You Want to Know How I Got Brainwashed,’ this Saturday at Shakespeare & Company’s New Spruce Theatre,” begins a story in today’s Berkshire Eagle under the headline “Author to describe subjugation by a cult leader.” The entire Eagle account is HERE for subscribers.

In the mid-1980s, under the influence of the Rev. Carl Stevens Jr., Dovydenas donated $6.5 million to The Bible Speaks. A federal bankruptcy judge ordered the pastor to repay her the entire sum, but the award was reduced on appeal to $5.5 million. The Shakespeare & Company theater festival now occupies the former Bible Speaks campus, which was once that of a boys’ boarding school.

A Wikipedia entry of the legal case “In re The Bible Speaks,” is HERE. An amazon.com description of the book, If You Want to Know How I Got Brainwashed: Story and Paintings, is HERE.

“In more than 200 monoprints with narrative text, she tells the story of being tricked, sweet-talked, coaxed, manipulated, conned, coerced and exploited,” the Amazon text reads in part. “In short, she was brainwashed.”

— Mark Channing Miller

This Weekender is longer than usual, begun after a walk. Several items I’d meant to include will have to wait until tomorrow or Tuesday. — MCM

Brain Shutdown: The banner headline high on page 1 of the Sunday Republican newsprint editions reads

‘It’s like their brain shuts down’

The story out of Worcester by masslive reporter Michael Bonner is not about how millions of Americans (although probably no longer a majority) still accept the Executive Branch accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks designed to terrorize the American people — even though those accounts are completely unsupportable scientifically — because mountains of relevant evidence is being suppressed  by the Executive Branch, and the mainstream media is apparently OK with it.

No, the story is Covid-related, as are many of the top stories in newspapers and on radio and TV every day throughout the country. Covid, Covid, Covid. The subhead: “Researchers study how COVID causes some to experience dementia-like symptoms.” (Even for subscribers, that story was not on the masslive website by 11:15 this morning. The story that topped the list is headed ”COVID vaccine mandates: Massachusetts hospitals see upwards of 90% of caregivers immunized as threats of job loss loom.”

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How ’Bout Them Sox!: The big teaser headline in white against a blue background in the Republican today is

‘A GRAND WIN FOR SOX’

The subhead is “The Red Sox had 2 grand slams last night for a 9-5 win over the Astros in Houston, tying the series at 1-1, Page B1. The headline and subhead over the story there by Kristie Ripken is “Grand win ties series: Martinez, Denver’s drive in 8 runs for Boston.”

In other news . . .

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Russ Kick Is Gone . . . Who?: The relatively unknown Russ Kick died on Sept. 12 at his home in Tucson, Arizona. Below are links to bylines and headlines of obituaries in the Washington Post and the New York Times, published on Sept. 24 and Oct. 15, respectively.

By Harrison Smith, “Russ Kick, writer, editor and ‘rogue transparency activist,’ dies at 52.”

By Katharine Q. Seelye, “Russ Kick, 52, Author and Star in the World of Activist Researchers.”

For a brief autobiographical sketch of Kirk from one of his websites, http://russkick.com,  click HERE. The Wikipedia entry for him is HERE. For a brief obituary and some tributes at http://insideeko.com, click HERE.

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Former Columnist, Future Governor?: Nicholas Kristoff, who took a leave of absence from the New York Times last June, is exploring a candidacy for governor of his home state, Oregon. The story as reported by Marc Tracy is headed “Times Veteran Leaves to Ponder Political Run. Kristoff, 62, was employed by the newspaper for 37 years as a reporter, editor and columnist. A Fox News report quoted him, HERE, as saying, “I’ve reluctantly concluded that I should try not only to expose problems but also see if I can fix them directly.” The Seattle Times used THIS STORY from the Washington Post by Felicia Sonmez and Amy B. Wang.

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Two by Whitehead: John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute is not pleased with everything either, or at least he wasn’t when he wrote two essays in 2019 and 2020. Find them HERE and HERE.

— Mark Channing Miller

The following is reprinted with permission from the new book Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored, by Ray McGinnis. It appears as the book’s Forward, on pages v through viii, just before the author’s Introduction. — MCM

FORWARD

By John B. Cobb, Jr.

September Eleventh, for many people, is history. But not so for those who lost loved ones on that fateful day. Each September Eleventh, 9/11 family members stand at podiums and read the names of loved ones who died in the attacks. Yet few of us are aware that 9/11 families pressed for an independent investigations into the attacks against the objections of the Bush White House. Few are aware 9/11 families presented hundreds of questions to the 9/11 Commission to aid the investigation.

Like many people recovering from tragedy, they want closure. That closure would require at least a credible account of what happened. Sadly, their questions have largely not been answered. With all its resources for research and investigation, the American government designated $3 million, and eventually spent only $14 million, to, as President Bush stated, “uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the Eleventh.” In comparison, over $80 million was spent in the 1990s investigating Bill and Hillary Clinton regarding the death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, the Whitewater scandal, and the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. Principally, the 9/11 Commission blamed the attacks on “a failure of imagination.” Either the government does not know much about what happened, or it declines to tell.

Some people will object to this characterization, saying that the government has provided an account: The 9/11 Commission Report. Granted. But it contains so many inconsistencies and is often so vague that those with serious questions remain frustrated and upset. Indeed, what they are told only raises new questions. Too often, 9/11 families are told that the information they seek is classified, even when it is hard to believe that there are good reasons for withholding it.

Ray McGinnis has written a book that takes the concerns of those whose loved ones died in that awful atrocity with utmost seriousness. He does what he can, starting with some of the questions the 9/11 families asked the Commission to investigate, and searches for answers. Since the 9/11 families are not the only people who are curious about these matters, the answers he offers in this book are of much broader interest.

Obviously, there are many questions that he cannot answer, but what is surprising is how much reliable information he has found. The government and the press have not done a good job of keeping the mourners informed—or the general public. Simply to learn what can be known may help toward at least a partial closure.

For others, the primary focus of concern is less a matter of closure and more to prevent a repeat. No one can question that our vaunted security system failed utterly to protect us on that infamous day. Surprisingly, none of those who were actors in this debacle have been reprimanded. They have kept their jobs, and even been promoted. Why is this? Does it mean that human beings had no responsibility for the failure? Does the fault lie entirely in the system?

In that case, all the more, we citizens need to be assured that the system has been radically improved. All of us want this assurance. But when we inquire, we are told that nothing is to be gained by blaming people.

Citizen inquiry into the government’s account is characterized as speculation, even as our government instructs us: “If you see something, say something.” Or we are confronted with silence, sometimes justified as the protection of secrets.

Perhaps the many branches of government involved in this failure have engaged in a thorough self-examination and have adjusted their practices and policies to ensure that they will not fail again. Perhaps the failure of interdepartmental communications has also been fully examined. But if so, we need more than casual assurance that we have no need to worry. We received that verbal assurance before the 9/11 event.

If they would tell us where the system broke down, we would be assured that they knew what to fix. Surely, they could tell us a bit about this without risking the nation’s security. Vague assurances of the kind we have received—basically just asking us to trust them—provide no closure for those who most deeply care.

The live proceedings of the Watergate conspiracy and the Iran-Contra Affair were broadcast daily, In contrast, the 9/11 Commission proceedings only received mainstream coverage with the appearances of Richard A. Clarke and Condoleezza Rice. Otherwise, the proceedings of the 9/11 Commission were mostly a footenote buried beneath the headlines.

After the 9/11 Commission concluded, the chairman, Thomas Kean, and vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, said it was “set up to fail.” The Los Angeles Times called Kean and Hamilton’s book, Without Precedent, “a devastating account of how the Bush administration blocked the 9/11 Commission at virtually every step.”

McGinnis’ book is inherently critical of our government. He agrees that the needs of whose whose questions he is writing about have not been taken seriously. He tells the story of their repeated frustrations and disappointments

Speaking simply for myself, I say that people who go to great lengths to keep others ignorant appear to have something to hide. I feel certain that those who have experienced refusal to real information for so long must sometimes share this suspicion.

But McGinnis notes that the questioners are a varied group. There is no consensus among them. He leaves the question of why things have happened as they have for readers to decide for themselves. He just tells us what happened.

May that information bring some closure to those who need it! In any case, all who read Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored will be reliably and richly informed. As a bonus they will find it quite wonderfully readable.

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John B. Cobb, Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist who has authored more than 50 books. Three months after the release of The 9/11 Commission Report in July 2004, he was one of 147 original signers of a petition asking for a deeper investigation into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.The October 2004 statement, along with the names of the signers, is HERE.

Below are 25 quotes from the writings and talks of the German-American political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), whose birthday is tomorrow, Oct. 14. I decided to take a break from reading the remarkable new book Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored, by Ray McGinnis, to add them to the blog because they’re particularly appropriate in this day and age. — MCM)

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The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

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I’m more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

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The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world – and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end – is being destroyed.

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Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.

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Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

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The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

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When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

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Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by ‘a world of enemies’ – ‘one against all’ – and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.

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We are free to change the world and start something new in it.

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The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.

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This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

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The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

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This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

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One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

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There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

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The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.

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Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.

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To think and to be fully alive are the same.

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Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.

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Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.

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One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all.

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I’m more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.

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The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

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I’m completely against [feminism]. I have no desire to give up my privileges.

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Violence is an expression of impotence.

The official U.S. government Executive Branch story about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks designed to terrorize the American people and those in other lands was referred to as hogwash (HERE) elsewhere in this blog. Hogwash is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition, as follows. — MCM

hog.wash \-,hog-wosh, -,wash \ n (15c)   1 : SWILL  2A, SLOP  2 : NONSENSE, BALDERDASH