-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RE: 911 Website updated: 911 Truth Movement Musings (Watching the Watchers)
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 01:05:01 -0500
From: Angie angie.joy@verizon.net
To:
The website has just been updated with this addition:
"WHY THE FAMILIES ARE WRONG, DEAD WRONG"
Thanks for your interest!
Angie
911 Truth Movement Musings (Watching the Watchers)
http://Angieon911.com or http://www.Angieon911.com
======================================================
David Ray Griffin Responds & So Do I, (With Links on "Sustainable Development" Scam)
October 3, 2004
After reading my article “The Creepy Sides of the 911 Truth Movement” (at http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id24.html ), author of the New Pearl Harbor – Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 book, David Ray Griffin, sent a response to me which he copied to several others. Below, I’ve copied his response in full. Also copied below is my reply to David Ray Griffin, along with a Postscript to the 911 Truth Community.
Angie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
September 13, 2004
Dear Angie,
A couple of people recently sent me your piece, “The Creepy Sides of the 911 Truth Movement” ( http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id24.html )
Being short on time, I will respond only to your theory and your paragraph about me and my associates.
I gather that you do not put me in the category of those who do not “really want the 911 truth exposed.” I am thankful for that. You put me merely in the category of those who do want it exposed but NOT “for ‘good’ reasons.” That is, I evidently “want it exposed” but am still “a bad guy.”
I must confess that, in the eyes of God, I am probably indeed a pretty bad guy. But I was somewhat surprised by the reasons you gave for warning really pure 9/11 truth-seekers to be wary of me.
One of your reasons appears to be that both I and Richard Falk, the author of the Foreword to my book, are “one world government aficionados.” It is certainly true that I am in favor of global democracy and have been working on a rather big book on this topic for many years. But I was surprised that you would assume that there is something “creepy” to what I have in mind without looking at my arguments and the particular form of “world government” that I advocate. Since you and I had corresponded some time back, if I correctly recall, I am puzzled why you, given your obvious concern for truth, did not write to find out exactly what my views are before suggesting, in a public document, that they are somehow involved in a massive conspiracy.
I might add here that I too have wondered why US officials would have apparently made it so evident that they did it. I have my own thoughts about this, but am not certain enough about them to go public with them. With regard to your own view, it is certainly possible. But it seems to me very improbable. However, even if you yourself consider your own theory highly probable, I think you should be cautious about simply assuming that there is some close correlation between it and The Truth. And you should, I would suggest, be especially careful about then quickly concluding that anything that possibly might be part of this Big Picture of What Is Really Going On, which you have constructed, is indeed part of it. I would suggest that you should be more cautions still about next, without even checking the truth of various things you have read or heard, suggesting these connections to the world. This is exactly the kind of approach that has given “conspiracy theorists” a bad name.
In any case, to look at the issues you raise: In finding the idea of global government of any sort dangerous, you are certainly endorsing the conventional view. But if you are interested, I would be happy to send you some writings in which I try to show why this conventional view needs to be rethought. Of course, I don’t know exactly why you find the very idea of global government creepy. (I have a list of 10 reasons that have commonly been given for opposing it.) But what I have in mind is a system in which the main decisions about the future of the planet would not be made by a tiny elite group in a nation with around 4 percent of the world’s population. On my own creep-o-meter, this present system of global governance gets extremely high marks. I believe that if we are in favor of democracy as the best way to govern a country, we should be in favor of democracy for human civilization as a whole.
Indeed, if I were so inclined, I could weave a conspiracy theory in which, because you oppose my solution, you are covertly working for those who want to keep the US government in control of the planet. You can see how easy and seductive this logic can be:
(1) X (the present system of global governance) is the real problem.
(2) Angie is denying that X is the real problem.
(3) In fact, Angie is criticizing people who see that X is the real problem.
(4) Therefore, Angie must be an infiltrator in our movement, working on behalf of those who are promoting X.
I myself would like to see a decline of this kind of thinking in the 9/11 Truth Movement and an increase in work that focuses on exposing the perpetrators. For one thing, if we each insist that we will not work with others if we know or even suspect that their motives, their convictions about 9/11, and their worldviews are not the same as our own, we will not have a movement.
In any case, to turn to the more particular issues you raise in relation to me and my associates, by way of suggesting that we are playing roles in your own version of What Is Really Going On:
Richard’s work helped get me started thinking about global democracy, but he has, in spite of my prodding, not been advocating the idea of global democracy in what I call the strong sense (the sense in which Einstein advocated it). You say that you find “one world gov’t. advocates creepy.” I am surprised that you would move from the perception that certain people hold ideas you disagree with to the conclusion that the people themselves are creepy. But since Richard is not advocating one world government, you need to restrict your conclusion to me alone. More generally, in any case, Richard is about the last person to whom I would apply the adjective “creepy.”
With regard to your specific statements. As to the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard became a member in about 1969, he says, and has “remained a member despite a variety of misgivings.” Although he was between trips when I caught up with him to ask him about this, I can imagine he has remained a member with the thought of perhaps having some positive influence. His field is International Law, and he is well known for trying to introduce normative concerns into international politics. He has thereby opposed “political science” insofar as it seeks to leave out all normative (i.e. moral) considerations. He has also been an opponent of “political realism,” at least the sort that maintains that power is all that counts and should count in international relations. One example of his trying to have an influence on CFR was what he describes as “a huge fight with David Rockefeller over the appointment of William Bundy as editor of Foreign Affairs.” With regard to your statement that Richard “has worked on new world order projects for the CFR, like the World Order Models Project,” he reports: “I did have a marginal relationship to the 1980s Project, which was trying to project a set of future conditions in world affairs, and was headed by Princeton colleague, Richard Ullman. It was a rather benign undertaking, and had nothing to do with the world order models project.”
You ask: “What the hell is one to make of a CFR member wanting to expose 9-11?” You seem to have a very simple view of human motivations and belongings, as if you could draw some inference from Richard’s membership in CFR--which is one of literally dozens of organizations to which he belongs and probably one of the least important in his life--and his motivation for exposing the truth about 9/11. He wants to do the latter because he has always worked to expose the truth about important things, and because, through reading my manuscript, he came to believe that the official story about 9/11 was false. To come out publicly with his support for the alternative view took courage on his part, because he had previously argued that the US government’s response in Afghanistan was correct--that it could be considered a “just response” (or could have been if the principles of just-war theory had been followed). This is the issue that he and I most disagreed about. But my point now is that Richard had the courage to say, by writing the Foreword to my book, that he had been wrong.
It would be hard, furthermore, to find many people who have worked longer and harder on behalf of good causes around the world. Because of this, I found your slurs against him the most offensive part of your essay. To suggest that Richard does not really want the truth exposed, or that he is doing this for some nefarious reason, is simply inexcusable. Perhaps John Gray will forgive you, but I confess that I will have difficulty.
I am, furthermore, puzzled as to what research you did for your information about John Cobb. He was formerly my professor and then my colleague at the Claremont School of Theology and in the Department of Religious Studies at Claremont Graduate University, where he taught from the late 1950s until he retired 15 years ago. His wife will surely be somewhat amused to find that he had been moonlighting as the “senior economist for the World Bank.”
I first thought you must have gotten him confused with Herman Daly, but then I see that you mention Herman as well. Herman actually did work for the World Bank, but he--as long the leading advocate of green, sustainable, steady-state economics--could never have been the senior economist at the World Bank. I frankly don’t know what connection he has had with the Club of Rome, but he obviously shares at least some of the concerns of what is probably the most well-known book associated with the Club, The Limits to Growth. But if you would read Herman’s writings, you could disabuse yourself of the suspicion that he would knowingly be involved with any of the nefarious schemes that you suggest are promoted by the Club. I can also tell you that I have thus far been unable to interest Herman in my ideas about global democracy.
Incidentally, you seem to think that “global governance” is simply a synonym for “global government.” But they may be very different. Those who use the language of “global governance” often speak of “governance without government.” I suspect that this is the Club of Rome position. Whether that position is coherent is another question, but if you want to speak accurately about these matters, you need to understand the difference.
Although John is not an economist by training or profession, he did, with Herman’s help, teach himself a lot about economics, and the two of them co-authored a book--For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future--which I would commend to your attention. I don’t think you will find it one bit creepy. (Indeed, they explicitly wrote against World Government, evidently having in mind the scary version of it that you share. In the meantime, John’s position has moved closer to mine, but Herman’s, as far as I know, has not.)
John also wrote a book called The Earthist Challenge to Economism: A Theological Critique of the World Bank. But, alas, even that did not get him invited to become the Bank’s senior economist.
He has, however, long been considered one of the best progressive theologians in the world, and he has been passionately concerned about the future of the earth since he awoke to the ecological crisis in the late 1960s. He is, in fact, known as the first philosopher as well as the first theologian to write a book reflecting this concern. His little book, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, is still considered sufficiently relevant to be reissued. He has in the meantime written many books and article and given countless speeches on the need to change course before we destroy ourselves and much of the rest of the life of the planet. I can assure you that the purity of his motives probably rivals that of your own.
Besides my association with these individuals, the next mark against me in your book is evidently the fact that after Cobb and I founded the Center for Process Studies, it “received support from the Rockefeller Foundation.” Had you written to ask about this, I would have gladly given you more specific information: Our first conference, held in the summer of 1974, brought together a number of distinguished scientists and philosophers to discuss problems in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and to consider an alternative to it. It took place at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy. The arrangement is that if they accept your application and you can pay the way for all the conferees to get there, they give you room, board, and a meeting place for 3 or 4 days. That has been the extent of our center’s support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Cobb and I acknowledge this support in the Preface of the resulting book, Mind in Nature: Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy.
Incidentally, I personally, as an individual scholar, went back to Bellagio in 1992, where my wife and I stayed for about 5 weeks. It was there, in fact, that I first developed the conviction that if the world’s global problems are to be solved, we need to move from the present global structure--technically known as global anarchy--to global democracy. This past year I applied to return, with the hope of finishing a book that I started the day after 9/11. But this time my application was denied. Perhaps I was foolish to reveal my topic: global democracy as the only, or at least the best, way to overcome US imperialism (certainly better than the standard approach, which would be for the other nations to combine forces against us, which would probably be a route to global nuclear war).
You also say that I have “some unusual ideas about how humanity should think about God.” Should I infer from this that you think the usual ideas--those of traditional theism--have been good enough? Compared to traditional theism, in any case, my ideas are indeed “unusual.” But I am a member of the movement known as “process theology,” and one of the complaints leveled against it by some of its opponents is that it has become “the establishment view.” That is, to be sure, a great exaggeration. But it suggests that among informed people, the kind of ideas I advocate are no longer considered unusual. They have in particular been endorsed by many feminist theologians. You could get a brief overview in a book entitled Process Theology, which Cobb and I co-authored in 1977. Some of my reasons for preferring this view to traditional theism are explained in my 1976 book, God, Power, and Evil, and my 1991 book, Evil Revisited. For a feminist process theologian, see the writings of Catherine Keller.
You also seem to think that there is something perverse about the fact that I advocate “some type of mysticism.” You evidently are not much concerned with exactly which type. But you apparently assume that it is some reactionary type, since you say that I apparently want us “to revert” to it. But there are, of course, many different types of mysticism--or, to be more precise, types of positions that are sometimes labelled “mysticism,” whether by their advocates or their detractors.
But since you appear to be interested in this part of my position, let me say that I do indeed endorse “mysticism,” if that term is used in the descriptive sense to mean that there is a Holy Reality with which we are directly connected. According to my epistemology, it is through this direct (nonsensory) connection that we are aware of the normative status of Truth and Justice and sometimes even become
Subject: RE: 911 Website updated: 911 Truth Movement Musings (Watching the Watchers)
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 01:05:01 -0500
From: Angie angie.joy@verizon.net
To:
The website has just been updated with this addition:
"WHY THE FAMILIES ARE WRONG, DEAD WRONG"
Thanks for your interest!
Angie
911 Truth Movement Musings (Watching the Watchers)
http://Angieon911.com or http://www.Angieon911.com
======================================================
David Ray Griffin Responds & So Do I, (With Links on "Sustainable Development" Scam)
October 3, 2004
After reading my article “The Creepy Sides of the 911 Truth Movement” (at http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id24.html ), author of the New Pearl Harbor – Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 book, David Ray Griffin, sent a response to me which he copied to several others. Below, I’ve copied his response in full. Also copied below is my reply to David Ray Griffin, along with a Postscript to the 911 Truth Community.
Angie
-------------------------------------------------------------------
September 13, 2004
Dear Angie,
A couple of people recently sent me your piece, “The Creepy Sides of the 911 Truth Movement” ( http://mysite.verizon.net/vze25x9n/id24.html )
Being short on time, I will respond only to your theory and your paragraph about me and my associates.
I gather that you do not put me in the category of those who do not “really want the 911 truth exposed.” I am thankful for that. You put me merely in the category of those who do want it exposed but NOT “for ‘good’ reasons.” That is, I evidently “want it exposed” but am still “a bad guy.”
I must confess that, in the eyes of God, I am probably indeed a pretty bad guy. But I was somewhat surprised by the reasons you gave for warning really pure 9/11 truth-seekers to be wary of me.
One of your reasons appears to be that both I and Richard Falk, the author of the Foreword to my book, are “one world government aficionados.” It is certainly true that I am in favor of global democracy and have been working on a rather big book on this topic for many years. But I was surprised that you would assume that there is something “creepy” to what I have in mind without looking at my arguments and the particular form of “world government” that I advocate. Since you and I had corresponded some time back, if I correctly recall, I am puzzled why you, given your obvious concern for truth, did not write to find out exactly what my views are before suggesting, in a public document, that they are somehow involved in a massive conspiracy.
I might add here that I too have wondered why US officials would have apparently made it so evident that they did it. I have my own thoughts about this, but am not certain enough about them to go public with them. With regard to your own view, it is certainly possible. But it seems to me very improbable. However, even if you yourself consider your own theory highly probable, I think you should be cautious about simply assuming that there is some close correlation between it and The Truth. And you should, I would suggest, be especially careful about then quickly concluding that anything that possibly might be part of this Big Picture of What Is Really Going On, which you have constructed, is indeed part of it. I would suggest that you should be more cautions still about next, without even checking the truth of various things you have read or heard, suggesting these connections to the world. This is exactly the kind of approach that has given “conspiracy theorists” a bad name.
In any case, to look at the issues you raise: In finding the idea of global government of any sort dangerous, you are certainly endorsing the conventional view. But if you are interested, I would be happy to send you some writings in which I try to show why this conventional view needs to be rethought. Of course, I don’t know exactly why you find the very idea of global government creepy. (I have a list of 10 reasons that have commonly been given for opposing it.) But what I have in mind is a system in which the main decisions about the future of the planet would not be made by a tiny elite group in a nation with around 4 percent of the world’s population. On my own creep-o-meter, this present system of global governance gets extremely high marks. I believe that if we are in favor of democracy as the best way to govern a country, we should be in favor of democracy for human civilization as a whole.
Indeed, if I were so inclined, I could weave a conspiracy theory in which, because you oppose my solution, you are covertly working for those who want to keep the US government in control of the planet. You can see how easy and seductive this logic can be:
(1) X (the present system of global governance) is the real problem.
(2) Angie is denying that X is the real problem.
(3) In fact, Angie is criticizing people who see that X is the real problem.
(4) Therefore, Angie must be an infiltrator in our movement, working on behalf of those who are promoting X.
I myself would like to see a decline of this kind of thinking in the 9/11 Truth Movement and an increase in work that focuses on exposing the perpetrators. For one thing, if we each insist that we will not work with others if we know or even suspect that their motives, their convictions about 9/11, and their worldviews are not the same as our own, we will not have a movement.
In any case, to turn to the more particular issues you raise in relation to me and my associates, by way of suggesting that we are playing roles in your own version of What Is Really Going On:
Richard’s work helped get me started thinking about global democracy, but he has, in spite of my prodding, not been advocating the idea of global democracy in what I call the strong sense (the sense in which Einstein advocated it). You say that you find “one world gov’t. advocates creepy.” I am surprised that you would move from the perception that certain people hold ideas you disagree with to the conclusion that the people themselves are creepy. But since Richard is not advocating one world government, you need to restrict your conclusion to me alone. More generally, in any case, Richard is about the last person to whom I would apply the adjective “creepy.”
With regard to your specific statements. As to the Council of Foreign Relations, Richard became a member in about 1969, he says, and has “remained a member despite a variety of misgivings.” Although he was between trips when I caught up with him to ask him about this, I can imagine he has remained a member with the thought of perhaps having some positive influence. His field is International Law, and he is well known for trying to introduce normative concerns into international politics. He has thereby opposed “political science” insofar as it seeks to leave out all normative (i.e. moral) considerations. He has also been an opponent of “political realism,” at least the sort that maintains that power is all that counts and should count in international relations. One example of his trying to have an influence on CFR was what he describes as “a huge fight with David Rockefeller over the appointment of William Bundy as editor of Foreign Affairs.” With regard to your statement that Richard “has worked on new world order projects for the CFR, like the World Order Models Project,” he reports: “I did have a marginal relationship to the 1980s Project, which was trying to project a set of future conditions in world affairs, and was headed by Princeton colleague, Richard Ullman. It was a rather benign undertaking, and had nothing to do with the world order models project.”
You ask: “What the hell is one to make of a CFR member wanting to expose 9-11?” You seem to have a very simple view of human motivations and belongings, as if you could draw some inference from Richard’s membership in CFR--which is one of literally dozens of organizations to which he belongs and probably one of the least important in his life--and his motivation for exposing the truth about 9/11. He wants to do the latter because he has always worked to expose the truth about important things, and because, through reading my manuscript, he came to believe that the official story about 9/11 was false. To come out publicly with his support for the alternative view took courage on his part, because he had previously argued that the US government’s response in Afghanistan was correct--that it could be considered a “just response” (or could have been if the principles of just-war theory had been followed). This is the issue that he and I most disagreed about. But my point now is that Richard had the courage to say, by writing the Foreword to my book, that he had been wrong.
It would be hard, furthermore, to find many people who have worked longer and harder on behalf of good causes around the world. Because of this, I found your slurs against him the most offensive part of your essay. To suggest that Richard does not really want the truth exposed, or that he is doing this for some nefarious reason, is simply inexcusable. Perhaps John Gray will forgive you, but I confess that I will have difficulty.
I am, furthermore, puzzled as to what research you did for your information about John Cobb. He was formerly my professor and then my colleague at the Claremont School of Theology and in the Department of Religious Studies at Claremont Graduate University, where he taught from the late 1950s until he retired 15 years ago. His wife will surely be somewhat amused to find that he had been moonlighting as the “senior economist for the World Bank.”
I first thought you must have gotten him confused with Herman Daly, but then I see that you mention Herman as well. Herman actually did work for the World Bank, but he--as long the leading advocate of green, sustainable, steady-state economics--could never have been the senior economist at the World Bank. I frankly don’t know what connection he has had with the Club of Rome, but he obviously shares at least some of the concerns of what is probably the most well-known book associated with the Club, The Limits to Growth. But if you would read Herman’s writings, you could disabuse yourself of the suspicion that he would knowingly be involved with any of the nefarious schemes that you suggest are promoted by the Club. I can also tell you that I have thus far been unable to interest Herman in my ideas about global democracy.
Incidentally, you seem to think that “global governance” is simply a synonym for “global government.” But they may be very different. Those who use the language of “global governance” often speak of “governance without government.” I suspect that this is the Club of Rome position. Whether that position is coherent is another question, but if you want to speak accurately about these matters, you need to understand the difference.
Although John is not an economist by training or profession, he did, with Herman’s help, teach himself a lot about economics, and the two of them co-authored a book--For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future--which I would commend to your attention. I don’t think you will find it one bit creepy. (Indeed, they explicitly wrote against World Government, evidently having in mind the scary version of it that you share. In the meantime, John’s position has moved closer to mine, but Herman’s, as far as I know, has not.)
John also wrote a book called The Earthist Challenge to Economism: A Theological Critique of the World Bank. But, alas, even that did not get him invited to become the Bank’s senior economist.
He has, however, long been considered one of the best progressive theologians in the world, and he has been passionately concerned about the future of the earth since he awoke to the ecological crisis in the late 1960s. He is, in fact, known as the first philosopher as well as the first theologian to write a book reflecting this concern. His little book, Is It Too Late? A Theology of Ecology, is still considered sufficiently relevant to be reissued. He has in the meantime written many books and article and given countless speeches on the need to change course before we destroy ourselves and much of the rest of the life of the planet. I can assure you that the purity of his motives probably rivals that of your own.
Besides my association with these individuals, the next mark against me in your book is evidently the fact that after Cobb and I founded the Center for Process Studies, it “received support from the Rockefeller Foundation.” Had you written to ask about this, I would have gladly given you more specific information: Our first conference, held in the summer of 1974, brought together a number of distinguished scientists and philosophers to discuss problems in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and to consider an alternative to it. It took place at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Study and Conference Center at Bellagio, Italy. The arrangement is that if they accept your application and you can pay the way for all the conferees to get there, they give you room, board, and a meeting place for 3 or 4 days. That has been the extent of our center’s support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Cobb and I acknowledge this support in the Preface of the resulting book, Mind in Nature: Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy.
Incidentally, I personally, as an individual scholar, went back to Bellagio in 1992, where my wife and I stayed for about 5 weeks. It was there, in fact, that I first developed the conviction that if the world’s global problems are to be solved, we need to move from the present global structure--technically known as global anarchy--to global democracy. This past year I applied to return, with the hope of finishing a book that I started the day after 9/11. But this time my application was denied. Perhaps I was foolish to reveal my topic: global democracy as the only, or at least the best, way to overcome US imperialism (certainly better than the standard approach, which would be for the other nations to combine forces against us, which would probably be a route to global nuclear war).
You also say that I have “some unusual ideas about how humanity should think about God.” Should I infer from this that you think the usual ideas--those of traditional theism--have been good enough? Compared to traditional theism, in any case, my ideas are indeed “unusual.” But I am a member of the movement known as “process theology,” and one of the complaints leveled against it by some of its opponents is that it has become “the establishment view.” That is, to be sure, a great exaggeration. But it suggests that among informed people, the kind of ideas I advocate are no longer considered unusual. They have in particular been endorsed by many feminist theologians. You could get a brief overview in a book entitled Process Theology, which Cobb and I co-authored in 1977. Some of my reasons for preferring this view to traditional theism are explained in my 1976 book, God, Power, and Evil, and my 1991 book, Evil Revisited. For a feminist process theologian, see the writings of Catherine Keller.
You also seem to think that there is something perverse about the fact that I advocate “some type of mysticism.” You evidently are not much concerned with exactly which type. But you apparently assume that it is some reactionary type, since you say that I apparently want us “to revert” to it. But there are, of course, many different types of mysticism--or, to be more precise, types of positions that are sometimes labelled “mysticism,” whether by their advocates or their detractors.
But since you appear to be interested in this part of my position, let me say that I do indeed endorse “mysticism,” if that term is used in the descriptive sense to mean that there is a Holy Reality with which we are directly connected. According to my epistemology, it is through this direct (nonsensory) connection that we are aware of the normative status of Truth and Justice and sometimes even become
- Brief Filed Today in Appeal by Former FBI Translator Sibel E — Anonymous, Thu Jan 13 09:24
- 9/11 - David Ray Griffin 59 min tape — David Ray Griffin, Wed Jan 12 02:58
Main Page - Thursday, 01/13/05
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]
