Truth Jihad
My epic struggle against the 9/11 big lie
by Kevin Barrett, PhD.
2007, Progressive Press, 211 pages
This is a book I picked up (purchased) from the 2007 Porcupine Festival courtesy of the peripatetic communicator of 9/11 truth and ruling-class treachery, Mr. Steve Goodale. He also provided some DVDs that I aim to get around to eventually.
The still diffuse 9/11 Truth Movement has been making quite an impact on public awareness over the past two or three years, with many significant works emerging. Dr. Barrett, as a writer and an organizer of seminars, ranks right up there in the pantheon of intellectually and physically courageous leaders devoting their "lives, fortunes, and sacred honor" to bringing the lies down and bringing the liars to justice.
I've covered a few 9/11 exposés in my columns and reviews; I have a particular affinity for Dave McGowan's iconoclastic/ everyman hard-headed analysis proffered from the very next day after the crime via his cleverly named Website, Center for an Informed America. In fact, Davesweb analysis is what started my serious questioning of the official story. Fabulously incisive, entertaining writing.
Post Davesweb, I discovered the 911truth.org site, where most of the major players in the movement have paused at one time or another to stick a fondue fork. Approximately a year ago I watched the widely Web-disseminated Loose Change DVD (which for some reason seems to be absent on 911truth) and became even more convinced that 9/11 had been blackest of black ops.
In 2005, Professor Steven Jones at a seminar at Brigham Young University presented a paper, "Why, Indeed, Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" which argued that controlled explosive demolition was the only conceivable mechanism. More recently, in the DVD Improbable Collapse Dr. Jones and others are featured making the same argument.
Against the above backdrop of serious intellectuals and others who are enlightening Americans on the most likely causes of what happened that fateful day, Dr. Barrett is a relative latecomer. Not later in believing the official story was hogwash, but later in committing himself to the truth as literally a Jihad, meaning "to struggle in the way of God," to the end. Truth Jihad is his deeply personal story.
Kevin Barrett is unique among the leading 9/11 truth advocates in having converted from backslid Unitarian to Islam in 1992. He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. His book is not only passionate, with mountains of intellectual ammunition for the truth movement, it's a humane and moving account of what motivates him to fight on.
"When I realized that 9/11 had almost certainly been an inside job, and that clear, obvious, overwhelming, in-your-face evidence made this obvious to anyone willing to take an honest look at the matter, I knew that this was not like the other issues."—Page 22
His writing is poetic. Here's one of my favorite newfound rousing paragraphs in all literature, and I trust Kevin will not mind my quoting it in its entirety:
"If the German people had figured out that Hitler was behind the Reichstag Fire, they might have risen up in rebellion—even though nobody died in that blaze. If the American people understood that top officials in their own government had orchestrated the destruction of the World Trade Center and the murder of thousands of Americans in pursuit of a criminal agenda, they would certainly rise up in rebellion, and turn their nation's policies 180 degrees away from that criminal agenda. They would cut the military budget to a tiny fraction of what it had been before the 9/11 Reichstag Fire. They would withdraw not just from the imperial wars 9/11 had incited, but from empire itself, reclaiming the great American anti-imperialist tradition of 1776. They would arrest the super-rich criminals who were complicit in 9/11, and institute the mother of all trust-busting eras to shatter the monopolies, especially the media monopolies, into thousands of tiny, locally controlled pieces and redistribute the criminals' wealth to the people. They would put their money into roads, schools, housing, and other life-supporting activities, instead of death-dealing ones. They would concentrate their energies on developing technologies to cope with the coming economic-energy-environmental crisis, and build railroads and alternative power stations rather than new kinds of bunker busting nuclear weapons. They would embrace international cooperation and demilitarize first outer space, and then, gradually, the planet itself, leaving locally based militias, and maybe a couple of nuclear subs per nation for insurance against invasion, as the only form of military power. And they would reclaim their freedom of speech and expression and dismantle the police state that has been riding America's back like an evil spirit since the National Security State replaced constitutional democracy back in 1947. — Page 23.
Kevin is also combative and funny, having appeared on Sean Hannity and his drivel-generating twin Bill O'Reilly, among others. He's given these two blowhards much better than they gave, and is a thorn in the side of all those who receive exorbitant salaries for writing or speaking power to truth.
Another valuable characteristic of the book is its scattering of many "false-flag" facts. (A false flag is an intelligence term for creating the appearance of truth where the truth is instead contrary to the appearance.) You will learn a lot you did not know, for example, the photo of a woman looking out the gash in the North Tower and the fact that the alleged nearby fire was not hot enough to crack window glass (or to melt her) means the fire could not have been hot enough to weaken structural steel, much less weaken insulated structural steel (which the internal columns all were).
As a rational libertarian humanist I have some caveats on the value of Kevin's Islam, but I do appreciate getting a realistic personal view of what that religion is and means, contrary to the hysterical stereotyping that serves the interests of the Western powerists... and which I've been guilty of myself. Truth Jihad is a work of high art contributing to the imminent tipping point for taking back our Bill of Rights and our country.
