In 2006 I used to be compelled out of the College of Wisconsin for researching 9/11 and drawing politically-incorrect conclusions.* Mockingly, the College’s unofficial motto is “fearless sifting and winnowing.” That expression is drawn from a well-known plaque on Bascom Hill:
“No matter would be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we imagine that the good state College of Wisconsin ought to ever encourage that continuous and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the reality will be discovered.”
Let’s break down that motto.
“Fearless” means overcoming worry of discovering truths that you just aren’t going to love, and that will even injury your profession and popularity. It’s all the time higher to set partisan feelings apart and dispassionately search the reality, then let that fact kind the idea of your emotional response, quite than let your emotional response dictate what you suppose is the reality. As scripture says, all the time “confirm the reality.”
“Sifting and winnowing” implies trying by all of the proof and context in the hunt for probably the most related objects, discarding those that turn into weak, and highlighting what’s necessary. It’s an archaic “wheat from the chaff” metaphor from an age through which most individuals had been accustomed to agricultural work. Immediately, an trustworthy and dispassionate seek for fact could also be as out of date as sifting and winnowing grain by hand. However since I’m an epistemological Luddite, I’m nonetheless doing it that method. Your paid subscriptions to this Substack make that attainable.
The July thirteenth “Trump taking pictures” is clearly the type of occasion that requires fearless sifting and winnowing. The official story is brilliantly summarized by the inimitable James “9/11 in 5 minutes” Corbett:
On July 13, 2024, former US President Donald Trump was giving a speech at a (s)election marketing campaign rally close to Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old who was kicked out of his highschool rifle membership for being a dangerously unhealthy shot climbed up on the utterly unsecured roof of a constructing getting used as a police staging space inside 150 metres of the previous president. Earlier than taking pictures, that you just man spent minutes fumbling round on the roof whereas involved onlookers desperately tried to warn legislation enforcement officers of a person with a gun. The counter-snipers on the rally, perched on a sloped roof behind the president, scoped out the person (who had already been noticed by police and even confronted by one police officer) on the roof (a roof that couldn’t be secured as a result of it was sloped) and waited till he efficiently fired on Trump earlier than they fired again at him. The would-be murderer died, as did a 50-year-old fireplace chief within the crowd. Trump, solely grazed within the ear, boldly climbed to his ft simply in time for a picture-perfect publicity stunt. Then he shouted “Combat! Combat! Combat!” earlier than being led off stage by his valiant Secret Service element.That’s the official story of the tried Trump assassination, and in the event you query any a part of it then . . . congratulations. You’re a conspiracy realist whose head is screwed on straight and who is aware of even somewhat bit about precise historical past.
Because the official story clearly lies someplace between wildly unbelievable and an entire joke, we have to begin fearlessly sifting and winnowing, starting by asking the million greenback query: cui bono? Who good points? Since we all know the American oligarchy consists of each pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions, the apparent potentialities are (1) a botched assassination try by the anti-Trump faction, or (2) a pretend assassination try by the pro-Trump faction. As my common readers know, I feel the preponderance of proof favors different #2.
However that doesn’t imply that all the proof for that speculation is what it appears. Two objects of proof I had cited in earlier articles have turned out to be weak.
First, and most significantly, the declare by an nameless “Secret Service ballistics skilled” reported by the AP—that an precise 5.56 spherical would have seemingly ripped Trump’s ear off and brought about an enormous concussion—has turned out to be false or not less than exaggerated. How exaggerated? Can gun skilled readers assist me clear this up? The AP skilled steered that even a smaller, much less highly effective handgun bullet that nicked an ear would seemingly trigger a severe concussion, as a consequence of its shockwave, and {that a} a lot higher-energy assault rifle bullet just like the 5.556 one which supposedly hit Trump’s ear would presumably trigger a good worse one. But there is no such thing as a proof that Trump suffered a concussion.
I’m wondering if my gun-savvy skilled readers can persuade me that the “Secret Service ballistics skilled” was completely fallacious, and that bullets can graze an individual’s head with out their shockwave doing any injury in any way. Would you, expensive reader, volunteer to have a handgun bullet whiz lower than an inch by the aspect of your head, and anticipate to undergo no concussion? If that’s the case, would you additionally volunteer for a similar experiment with an 5.56 spherical from an AR-15 at 400 ft? (Assuming, in fact, that you could possibly be assured that the bullet would move inside an inch of your cranium, however not hit it.) These are actual, trustworthy questions. I don’t know the reply, nor am I assuming something. The bullet that after whizzed by my head didn’t come shut sufficient to settle the difficulty from private expertise.**
One other seemingly damning however misleading merchandise of proof is the video that seems to indicate a Secret Service sniper firing the primary three photographs, the second of which allegedly struck Trump’s ear. I’ve been satisfied by a number of astute commenters that the Secret Service sniper might be reacting to photographs, not taking them. If I’m fallacious, drop a remark explaining why.
And talking of astute feedback, right here is one that provides a seemingly believable situation explaining what actually occurred in Butler. It hinges on a facet of the occasion that I haven’t but written about: the proof for a second shooter on the water tower. Is that this situation believable? Why or why not? If you will discover convincing proof for or in opposition to it, please drop the hyperlinks within the feedback part.***
One other challenge I didn’t deal with in earlier articles is Trump’s obvious lie that “my hand was lined with blood.” Is that this related? Why or why not?
And the way concerning the Secret Service “canine that didn’t bark”? Letting a bumbling, autistic 20 12 months previous novice scope out the location with a drone, convey a gun and a ladder, and spend not less than a couple of minutes moving into firing place in full view of witnesses who fruitlessly stored pointing and screaming on the Secret Service “there’s a man with a gun on that roof” appears a tad odd. Even odder is the Secret Service’s willingness to let Trump get his fist-pump photograph op, which uncovered the previous president to extra potential photographs. So who’s loopy: individuals who clarify it away as incompetence, or those that doubt that Trump or some other Secret Service protectee would nonetheless be alive if the world’s premier protecting element had been actually the Keystone Cops?
After which there’s the difficulty of the “magic bullet” allegedly photographed by Doug Mills. Have been the chances in opposition to Mills getting this iconic photograph, price tens of millions in publicity and much more as “proof” of the official story, actually one in one million? If not, what had been the precise approximate odds? And does the bullet path within the photograph fail to line up with Trump’s ear?
There are undoubtedly extra questions concerning the spectacular and spectacularly doubtful 7/13 “magic ear shot” occasion that need to be sifted and winnowed. What, in your opinion, are crucial ones?
I’ll conclude with the phrases of Barrie Zwicker, a mainstream Canadian journalist who was marginalized after 9/11 as a consequence of his glorious work exposing the absurdity of that official story. I sought Barrie’s opinion thanks to a different of my many astute commenters. Barrie replied to my electronic mail:
“Like Kevin, it took my skeptically-inclined thoughts actually simply minutes to identify the indicators of a false flag op within the alleged assassination try on Trump. In addition to a number of one-in-a-million odds concerning Trump being “nicked within the ear” by a bullet from an AR15, how concerning the timing? A lot too handy. Main purple flag there. Alleged shooter promptly dispatched. So can’t testify, no kidding. The raised fist. The American flag as backdrop, Iwo Jima type. “God saved me,” declares some of the God-forsaken sinners historical past has ever produced. Trump even sounded scripted, and we all know he hates teleprompters. He hates anybody telling him to do something. However he grudgingly goes together with the plotters and carried out his function within the theatrical particulars. He is a performer, in spite of everything. A nasty actor, in each method. Then there’s the important thing and central query: cui bono–who advantages? And the apparent reply: Trump and his deceitful far proper wing motion are the beneficiaries. It was a psyop alright. Though, as Kevin factors out, so many individuals have misplaced their minds already that additionally constitutes piling-on. I maintain the faint hope that this specific deception will likely be uncovered, and fainter nonetheless that whether it is, that it will likely be in time to reveal the plotters. My hopes are up in opposition to the report: false flag ops all the time go investigation-free.”
Is Barrie’s distaste for Trump deceptive him? Or is it, on this occasion, serving him properly—like his distaste for Bush and Cheney helped him shortly get 9/11 principally proper? Let me know what you suppose.
*Previous to being blacklisted for my 9/11 scholarship I used to be by no means turned down for any of the numerous non permanent instructing positions I had utilized for at UW-Madison. My late good friend and “Islam and literary research” mentor Muhammad Umar Memon was a member of the primary UW-Madison hiring committee that ever turned me down. That place was the spring 2007 “Islam: Faith and Tradition” class. Dr. Memon privately mentioned he and different members of the hiring committee had been instructed by the college administration that I have to not be employed as a consequence of my 9/11 notoriety. In the meantime one other insider, College of Wisconsin-Whitewater Humanities Dean Howard Ross, turned a whistleblower by publicly stating that I had already been chosen for a heavily-federally-funded tenure-track Islam and Humanities place on the College of Wisconsin Whitewater when a member of the hiring committee with administration connections compelled the committee to withdraw the ready provide “as a result of Barrett has screwy views on 9/11.” Ross alerted me to the state of affairs with an electronic mail headed: “You had been discriminated in opposition to.” (Sadly, discrimination on the idea of political opinions is authorized in Wisconsin.) Relatively than rent me, the college returned the cash to the feds and closed the place. It was re-opened just a few years after that, and a less-controversial good friend of mine ended up getting the job.
**In February 2021 I used to be cross nation snowboarding within the forest between Lengthy Lake and the Wisconsin River once I felt the buzzing shockwave of a bullet on the precise immediate a thick tree department 5 ft from my head splintered with an amazing bang, adopted by a distinct, thunderously loud bang of a gunshot from off within the distance. Hoping it was a mistake by some lunatic searching out of season, I yelled a number of occasions on the prime of my lungs: “Don’t shoot!” Then I skied dwelling and known as the police. They spent a number of hours doing an investigation that consisted of knocking on neighbors’ doorways and chatting. Late that evening they returned to my home saying that they’d recognized the seemingly shooter as certainly one of my neighbors. They mentioned the taking pictures was a reckless mistake, that they’d put the worry of God into the man, and that he nearly actually wouldn’t do it once more, however that if I wished to press costs they might return the subsequent day to seek for the bullet and construct a case. Since I knew the seemingly identification of the shooter—an ex-military neighbor with PTSD who often aggravated different neighbors by firing heavy weapons in his yard—and since I had heard from my spouse and son who knew him and his household that he was a superb man and even a supporter of my “conspiracy theories”—I declined to press costs. Later I befriended Okay-, who turned out to be an alright man who will, I belief, have realized sufficient from the expertise to cease taking careless potshots at shadows within the woods.
***Audio forensics proof must make clear the difficulty of what number of photographs got here from the place and when.
