We are moving back to West Hollywood so Lavinia can walk to work. I will also be brushing up on some calculus courses at SMC so I can finally get the graduate degree in Applied Math that I’ve had my eye on for so long. We found a really unique space with a nice yard for Mooshoo and we still have a Trader Joe’s around the corner. See you later, Hollywood!
Well, things are wrapping up for me this month – I am basically done moving all of my blog posts onto the new site, and my plan to finally get away from the horrible service of Dreamhost is almost done. TheAxelVault.com was a Drupal site that I built almost 3 years ago, and I am sort of sad to see it go.
My wife always loved the look of it, and I did too. The problem was that it didn’t run very well on Dreamhost, despite my paying for a ‘private’ server – they really use the term loosely. And it was largely something that had seen its time come and go. I don’t really know what is going on with Drupal these days – but I am now using WordPress which seems to fit my needs much better.
I had a lot of hits on that web site for a while from 2008 through 2010, but then I moved my music onto BandCamp and TheAxelVault lost its purpose. Soon enough it will only be a screenshot.
Let us take a moment to honor this relic from my past.
UPDATE: I tweeted a link to this story to both of these journalists that were once people I looked up to, and was roundly ignored. For so-called progressives they were decidedly closed-minded. This, to me, is the main part of why our country is so sick. Despite the ‘myth of the liberal media’ perpetuated by Fox and others, the truth is that what passes as liberal journalism is barely centrist from a historical perspective. The fact that our government got away with the greatest feat of public deception of perhaps all time is a great source of shame for me and the discussion about 9/11 is non-existent. The only thing we know for sure is that were lied to about everything.
Here is the original post:
Dear Matt and Adam (two journalists that I respect very much) -
Both of you have shown me this week that you find it all right to ridicule ‘truthers’ on the basis of what could be called blood-in-the-water syndrome. I don’t defend all or even most of what has been lumped together under this umbrella of the ‘truther’ movement, but I would expect the two of you to keep your critical thinking juices flowing for a little longer than you have. The fact is, although there is a real confluence of tinfoil-hat thinking within this group of ‘truthers’, there remains a core of people just like me who do not really pay much attention to people like Alex Jones, but who do have a problem with being lied to.
Now Matt, you of all people should know how disingenuous it can be for someone in a position like yours to make it seem like all that is similar is the same – in your blog piece for Rolling Stone, you refer to ’9/11 Truthers’ in a very insulting way:
Okay, so, predictably, the 9/11 Truthers came out of the woodwork kicking and screaming, after I compared them to my friend’s brain-damaged dog. I know I said I would leave this stuff alone, but… I can’t! It’s just too maddening!
First of all, in referring to all ‘truthers’ collectively, you might as well call all Christians Catholics. I know for a satirist like you, a big part of your stylistic approach to writing is precisely this sort of aggression, and frankly, when it is applied to Wall Street or the Tea Party I find it endearing. What bothers me about this is that these are your people, at least in some sense – there is some truth here, whether or not you want to see it. Again, there are some real fringe views that have unfortunately come under the ‘truther’ umbrella that I can’t and will not vouch for – but the fact remains, we have clearly been lied to, and that should interest you. By your callous cheap-shot at an underappreciated quest by the few for political closure, you are undermining the causes that you purport to hold dear – namely the protection of the few against the many and the debunking of propaganda at all costs.
Adam – I saw this tweet of yours:
Will I unfollow you for RTing some Alex Jones 9/11 truther bullshit? Why yes, yes I will. #EveryTime
and I would make very much the same contention – that Alex Jones does not by any stretch of the imagination speak for the large group of people in this country that know that there is a story within the events of 9/11 that has not been told. You and Matt are by no means the only people that have made this mistake – but I single you out because you should know better. You have both been duped in some way into thinking negatively about something that should interest you – that’s the only explanation I can come up with. That’s what I mean by blood in the water – this meme that ‘all truthers are crazy and have no salient point to make’ is so prevalent that you have allowed yourselves to stop thinking critically. Please allow me to make a simple argument.
1 – Tower 7.
FEMA, in the World Trade Center Building Performance Study, Chapter 5, Section 6.2, referring to the “Probable Collapse Sequence” discussed in NPH 22 says that it’s own explanation for how WTC7 fell has only a “low probability of occurrence”.
There is still no credible official explanation for why Tower 7 fell.
2 – Nano-thermite
Traces of nano-thermite have been found in 100% of the dust samples taken from ground zero. This is a smoking gun in terms of evidence of demolition at the site. These are not conspiracy-theory armchair historians muddying the water, this a respectable coalition of academics and scientists who have come this conclusion, and it deserves to be taken seriously. I copied the report pdf from www.benthamscience.com – link
The simplest explanation is that we are being lied to. I make no claims about anything else – I don’t know why they wanted Tower 7 to fall. I only know that we didn’t get a credible explanation for how it happened.
I only ask that the two of you ask yourselves this question – do you ridicule ‘truthers’ because you have actually looked at this evidence and have deemed it baseless, or is there another explanation?
respectfully
Krister Axel
