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Lifting the Fog on 9/11: Experts Present Scientific Evidence at UC Berkeley

by Robert B. Livingston (gruaudemais [at] yahoo.com)
An all day symposium, titled "Lifting the Fog", took place Saturday at the Valley Life Science Building at UC Berkeley. To an auditorium full of attentive listeners, a number of experts (most notably Dr. Steven Jones, a renowned physicist) gathered to present their findings about the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001.
lifting_the_fog_symposium.jpg
Symposium examines the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster with focus on using the Scientific Method

November 11, 2006
University of California at Berkeley

The panelists described how they used the Scientific Method (investigation involving observation and theory to systematically test scientific hypotheses) to reach conclusions that the official government explanations about the 9/11 Disaster were outrageously flawed.

For each, the "devil was in the details." Each described how they had arrived at a personal epiphany regarding the government's reluctance to tell the truth about 9/11 after realizing that official documentation was riddled with misleading and obscured assumptions and conclusions that could neither bear scrutiny nor be duplicated by experimental testing.

Rather than focus on laying blame on the government, however, the panelists largely argued that the public unite to demand wider investigation of the 9/11 disaster. They also expressed the hope that their own findings would be published and be examined-- to stand or fall on their own merit.

It is hoped that this presentation will soon be made available for broadcast. On the internet, look for it in the future at KPFA http://www.gunsandbutter.net/index.php or TUC Radio http://www.tucradio.org/

Here are some other useful links to learn more about the event, its panelists and their discoveries:

Lifting the Fog
The Scientific Method Applaied to the World Trade Center Disaster
http://liftingthefog.org/press.html

Steven Jones, PhD
http://www.journalof911studies.com
Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse? [PDF]
http://worldtradecentertruth.com/volume/200609/WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf

Jim Hoffman, M.F.A.
9-11 Research
http://911research.wtc7.net/

Mickey S. Huff, M.A.
RetroPoll.org
http://retropoll.org/

Janette MacKinlay
Fortunate, a Personal Diary of 9/11
http://www.theneedtoremember.com/gallery_books.html

Nate Mudd, J.D.
SimmonsCooper, LLC (The office of the attorney who specializes in asbestos litigation for victims' compensation and rights)
http://www.simmonscooper.com/

Jenna Orkin, M.A., J.D.
World Trade Center Environmental Organization
http://wtceo.org/

Peter Phillips, Ph.D.
Project Censored
http://www.projectcensored.org/

Paul W. Rea, Ph.D.
Still Seeking the Truth about 9/11
http://www.peaceproject.com/books/BK22.htm

Here are some photographs of the event (taken from the 2 - 5 Sessions in the afternoon and evening). Quotations are taken from the website for Lifting the Fog.
§University of California Berkeley Campus
by Robert B. Livingston
berkeley_campus.jpg
This is outside of the Valley Life Science Building where the academic presentation was held in the large Chan Shun Auditorium.
§Carol Brouillet
by Robert B. Livingston
carol_brouillet.jpg
Carol recently ran for Congress against Congresswoman Anna Eshoo primarily because Eshoo showed little interest about inquiring about the facts regarding 9/11.
§Bonnie Faulkner
by Robert B. Livingston
bonnie_faulkner_kpfa_host_guns_and_butter.jpg
With Yarrow Mahko, Bonnie produces the KPFA radio program called Guns and Butter. The program is most notable for breaking a media silence about unanswered questions about the 9/11 disasters.
§Steven Jones, PhD
by Robert B. Livingston
steven_jones_and_scientific_method.jpg
Dr. Jones is a preeminent specialist in the study of muons and the law of momentum conservation. Here he describes the merit of using the Scientific Method to explain his basis for believing that the World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 were most likely destroyed by controlled demolition using Thermite.
§Steven Jones, PhD
by Robert B. Livingston
steven_jones_answering_questions.jpg
During an intermission between presentations, Dr. Jones continued to answer questions informally.
§Jim Hoffman, M.F.A.
by Robert B. Livingston
jim_hoffman.jpg
Hoffman is a "former research scientist, published in Science and Macromolecules for research in polymer physics, and Communications of the ACM for visualization software, and creator of 9-11 Research, the highest-ranking website challenging the core tenets of the official story of 9/11."
§Hoffman describes how a building fell
by Robert B. Livingston
jim_hoffman_describes_fall.jpg
Hoffman is describing how a building that appeared to initially topple at an angle returned to falling into its footprint-- one of many anomalies that suggest controlled demolition was responsible.
§Maria Gilardin and Dr. Peter Phillips
by Robert B. Livingston
tuc_radio_host_maria_gilardin_and_project_censored_peter_phillips.jpg
Maria Gilardin is the popular host of TUC Radio which is broadcast on KALW Radio and available on the internet. Dr. Peter Phillips is the Director of Project Censored at Sonoma State University. Project Censored is a media research organization which creates annual compilations of the most important censored stories. With Dennis Loo, he edited the book, Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney.
§Janette MacKinlay
by Robert B. Livingston
janette_mackinlay.jpg
Jannette is a "visual artist living across from the World Trade Center who witnessed and survived the South Tower's destruction, which blew out the windows of her apartment. Traumatized by the event, she found expression in art and writing, publishing the book Fortunate, a Personal Diary of 9/11." Dr. Steven Jones found curiously high levels of Zinc and Barium in dust she collected from World Trade Center "fallout". Janette described herself as becoming politicized after becoming frustrated with officials who were uninterested in answering her questions about 9/11. Unlike others on the panel who drew their conclusions from scientific evidence, Janette said (referring to the idea that Neocon insiders in the Bush administration either planned 9/11 or profited from secret knowledge about it), "It was the Commissioners themselves that made me think it was an inside job."
§Paul W. Rea, Ph.D.
by Robert B. Livingston
paul_rea.jpg
"Researcher/writer, author of Still Seeking the Truth about 9/11. He has taught "The Politics of Age" and "Science, Technology, and Human Values" at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. Paul is now completing an updated, much-expanded overview of the issues surrounding 9/11." Dr. Rea (pronounced "Ray") described how he learned from George Lakoff the importance of framing issues and using carefully defined language to help gain acceptance from the public for new ideas.
§Dr. Steven Jones with some of the panelists
by Robert B. Livingston
steven_jones_with_panelists.jpg
Dr. Jones is summarizing some of his earlier presentation for the evening symposium attendees. After his 9/11 studies raised much controversy, Jones recently retired from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, after reaching an agreement with the school. He was "Professor of Physics and is the author of numerous peer-reviewed research papers, including Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse?"
§Jenna Orkin, M.A., J.D.
by Robert B. Livingston
jenna_orkin.jpg
Jenna is the founder of the World Trade Center Environmental Organization and one of twelve original plaintiffs in class-action lawsuit against the EPA. Orkin contributes to FromTheWilderness.com, and her work was recently featured in CounterPunch.org." Jenna, here, is speaking about how the media will not explain the consequences of "Peak Oil" even while it may observe that it exists.
§The Evening Panelists
by Robert B. Livingston
evening_panelists.jpg
Right to Left: Peter Phillips, Jenna Orkin, Jim Hoffman, Steven Jones, Janette MacKinlay, Paul Rea.
§Thanks Robert
by Vic
640_ltf_chan_shun_jones_talk.jpg
The event went very well, with the auditorium packed for Steven Jones' talk. I was glad to see a number of students there and we had one firefighter who came and spoke to the crowd for a moment.

I think the environmental panel was a good and unique viewpoint with 2 panelists who had been in NYC at the time of the events and who had special knowledge of the details. Jenna Orkin, especially had a lot of interesting details about the efforts made by residents and parents of children going to school in New York who were trying to expose the environmental catastrophe of the toxicity of the dust, the hurdles they faced, the cover-ups, the absurd responses they were given. Janette MacKinlay described the experience of being in her apartment across from the WTC towers when they collapsed, how the dust blew out the windows, how she and her partner barely managed to miss being killed at that time, and what it was like trying to breathe with the dust, how, she said, you didn't want to take another breath because it was so awful, but you had to. She thought she wasn't going to be able to make it out of the building, but they did. Nate Mudd also presented some very interesting details about the aesbestos in the towers, a lot of quantitative facts and the history of how they knew it was put into the towers.

Steven Jones and Jim Hoffman gave excellent talks which had both familiar and new parts and their Q & A's were very interesting. Jones' talk was webcast live.

I wished that Peter Phillips could have spoken more because he has important inside information about the media and their role in events like 9/11 – next time. We were just so glad he could be there.

If you have questions about the event please email the website – liftingthefog [- at -] gmail.com.
640_ltf_crowd_chanshun_vlsb.jpg
More images of the crowd. I think it's so important to bring this information to university campuses. It would be best to do the events during the week, when students are in session, but as it was we did get some students, new to 9/11 truth.
§Steve and Jim
by Vic
640_steven_jones___jim_hoffman.jpg
Steve and Jim did some Q & A on the destructions of the WTC towers together. Both have influenced eachother's research.
§Thanks for additional photos and positive comments
by Robert B. Livingston (gruaudemais [at] yahoo.com)
devil_in_the_details.jpg
I was pleased to attend this historic presentation. Once when I began to suspect the government was hiding important facts about 9/11 I wrote: "How can we not sift through the wreckage of 9/11, and sift it again, and again-- until we can be completely satisfied that we actually know enough to be factually fluent about it?"

I too would like to have heard more from Dr. Peter Phillips.

During an intermission I told Carol Brouillet that I initially distrusted Project Censored because I did not think it had done enough to discuss censorship of news about 9/11. She admitted that she also had been initially disappointed with Project Censored's coverage, but then regretted that she had been unaware of Phillip's valiant behind-the-scenes efforts to bring more information about 9/11 to light. Brouillet, more than anyone I've met, understands the supreme difficulties of being heard in a media environment that either largely ignores or misdirects information about the terror incidents. She knows also how important it is for citizens to share their concerns and questions in the light of day.

Excellent recordings of Peter Phillips titled " THE GLOBAL DOMINANCE GROUP AND 9/11" can be accessed at TUC Radio at http://www.tucradio.org/new.html
Phillips is also anticipated to be a guest on a future program of Media Matters. Look for it at: http://www.will.uiuc.edu/am/mediamatters/

At yesterday's event, I was most intrigued by the patience, dedication and courage of the people who made presentations. Steven Jones clearly was as much excited by applying Scientific Method to questions about 9/11 than about pursuing any political agenda. His findings suggesting that Thermite was used in controlled demolition were carefully explained by describing his common-sense experiments. He took careful pains to explain that more information and review is needed even though a conclusive understanding of what really caused the 3 buildings to fall at the World Trade Center will undoubtedly raise disturbing implications about who orchestrated what David Ray Griffin calls America's New Pearl Harbor.

Jim Hoffman's discussion was especially riveting (and often funny, in a bitter tongue-in-cheek way)-- particularly his identification of shoddy science and canny misdirection in FEMA and NIST reports. For example, he showed how officials illustrated their reports with excessively detailed schematic diagrams of airplanes that hit the trade towers (almost down to the belt buckles in the passenger seats)-- but then presented schematic diagrams of the buildings themselves with an almost cartoonish lack of detail. He also pointed out how the official reports and the media curiously anthropomorphized the trade tower buildings describing the "death" of the buildings. Other panelists echoed his concerns about how our emotions were manipulated by describing the twin tower destruction zone as "Ground Zero"-- an obvious analogy to a nuclear strike.

Among other benefits of attending the event in Berkeley yesterday was the opportunity to learn first hand about the challenges serious researchers are having to promote their findings when some seemingly 9/11 Truth advocates elsewhere are hurting the movement by advocating wacky (or even dangerous) political agendas.

In some cases, the panelists expressed growing (if somewhat mixed) admiration for popularizers like Alex Jones (sometimes thought by some to be a bit wacky) for promoting the movement-- saying that voices like his have a positive place in the movement. All, however, were clearly disturbed by others on the fringe who appear to be linked to extremist, racist or anti-Semitic political agendas.

For the most part, the panelists appeared to have come to the 9/11 Truth Movement from the political mainstream. Steven Jones described himself as having once been a conservative Republican, and Paul Rea seemed to reflect centrist Democratic Party values. Janette MacKinlay described how she had never called her political representatives before 9/11 like she does now (on almost a daily basis). She encouraged the audience to stay in close contact with their political representatives.

Another benefit of attending the event in Berkeley was the opportunity to learn about others doing interesting research about 9/11-- and the value of DVDs and future books to be published.

In particular, Gregg Robert's "Where Are the 9/11 Whistleblowers?" appears to be a valuable resource: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/roberts/index.html

Also: Congressperson Cynthia McKinney's "Omissions Hearings of The 9/11 Citizens' Commission":
http://www.justicefor911.org/Appendix7_911OmissionsHearings_111904.php

Ultimately, the Lifting the Fog Program was very inspiring-- Jenna Orkin and Paul Rea, especially, encouraged listeners to look for opportunities to ask more questions about 9/11.

Is the government's conspiracy explanation, that a small group of hijackers directed by the elusive Muslim radical Osama bin Laden, adequate? Janette MacKinlay, probably asked the most pertinent question: "Where is he?"
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Robert B. Livingston
Tue, May 1, 2012 10:12PM
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