The 9/11/2001 attacks ushered in an era of endless wars, fear of terrorism, antipathy to immigrants, and domestic surveillance. Arguably the most important issue regarding 9/11 is the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to the attacks. Yet both the media and the 9/11 Commission report have refused to discuss it. This refusal must raise the suspicion that there was indeed wrongdoing.
American history contains two outstanding wrongs committed against groups of us: the killing, displacement, and mistreatment of Native Americans and the subjection of African Americans to slavery and ongoing discrimination. Various thinkers have suggested kinds of reparations for these acts; but views differ sharply on whether reparations are justified, who should pay them, who should receive them, and what amount is fair and feasible. Instead of serving to heal our country, reparations have become one more divisive issue.
Yet reparations offer an alluring vision: via a concrete but also symbolic national gesture, we could take a major step toward healing wounds, overcoming the past, and moving together into the future. They could counteract the negativity of partisan politics and lead to a happier multiethnic and multiracial society. So we need to think through how to bring Americans to comprehend and support a plan for reparations that will help us flourish as a united people.
Fortunately, a related issue affords us an excellent opportunity
Among the deepest mysteries of ancient Egypt 
is the Great Sphinx of Giza. Researchers, both professional and amateur, have painstakingly investigated its every aspect.1 Yet key puzzles remain, above all the question of why this colossal structure, the ancient world’s largest monument, was built in the first place.
It’s not that serious researchers and free-ranging speculators have not proposed explanations. But every theory put forward falls well short of true persuasiveness or stumbles over inconvenient facts. Here are three anomalies a correct theory should explain.
The civilizations of Mesoamerica were full of mysteries. What explains their fixation on Venus? What led them to develop their intricate, highly precise calendars? What can explain the little pecked-cross circles embedded in the landscape? Why were these peoples so keenly bent on human sacrifice? What were the Aztecs referring to when they said that this was the age of the Fifth Sun?
Fortunately, there is a skeleton key that can unlock these old secrets.
Humankind needs a low-cost, low-side effects therapy for disseminated infections like HIV and multidrug-resistant TB. In fact, circumstantial evidence and logic suggest that such a therapy exists. But, for perverse reasons, it has never been properly tested. That therapy is Biophotonic Therapy, which can be administered to the blood extracorporeally with various kinds of light or intravenously with a low-intensity laser. BT has an excellent track record as a treatment of viral disorders ranging from bulbar spinal poliomyelitis to chronic hepatitis. Invented in the United States in the 1920s, BT has been used extensively in Germany and Russia, but not in any clinical trial against HIV or MDR-TB.
Biophotonic Therapy, however, is not the only approach that calls out for testing against HIV, MDR-TB, and other disseminated infections. Another candidate is Magnetized Water Therapy.
Identifying the best ways to stimulate the immune system to fight infectious diseases and cancer makes eminent sense and could provide highly attractive benefits. But it is not easy to do. Here is a list of category-leading immunostimulants, followed by a discussion of the issues involved.
Cytokines: IL-2 has shown itself to be an effective general immunostimulant in scores of clinical trials against different indications and appears promising against HIV (Cohen and Powderly, 2004). Used in high doses, IL-2 has significant side effects, so it is best used as a low-dose adjuvant. Other cytokines of proven general merit include G-CSF and GM-CSF, both for hematopoiesis. Interferons may work in specific cases, but their side effects make them less suitable as broad-spectrum adjuvants.
Microbial fragments/toxins: Of the large number of candidates, beta-glucans (also found in plants) are the most frequently investigated as an approach to provoking a general immune response (Wagner, 1999).
Negative thoughts have a way of inserting themselves unbidden into our minds. They reflect the unhappiness, perversity, and tragedy in our past and in the world about us. Only a Pollyanna would be ashamed to acknowledge them.
Negative thinking does little harm as a long as it simply passes like a shadow across the otherwise sunny landscape of the mind. But negative thoughts bear a burden of emotion. They tend to plant themselves squarely in our path and grow roots. We dwell on them, sometimes for hours at a time. In certain cases this can lead to genuine depression. More often, habitual negative thinking tends to make people unhappy, pessimistic, cynical, suspicious, and morose. It also wastes precious resources of time and emotional energy.
The Afghan Herbal Medicines for Addiction and Depression project aims to conduct clinical trials of promising herbal medicines drawn from Afghanistan’s high-potential medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP) sector, in keeping with traditional Unani medicine. Addiction (overwhelmingly from opiates) and depression (some from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the horrors of Afghanistan’s wars, and some from mistreatment of women) represent especially salient targets, and they possess worldwide importance. Unani herbal medicines have been reported in preliminary Iranian clinical studies to be effective and safe in these indications, and they possess certain advantages over synthetic drugs. However, thorough, scientific, multicenter trials need to be done.
Here are the judge’s March 16, 2020 Order and Memorandum opinion giving his final ruling. For a general explanation of the anthrax mailings case, see Was Abderraouf Jdey the Anthrax Mailer? The judge does not appear to have read it.
Of the documents, the first set was released by FBI in the course of the litigation. The second set includes selected lawsuit documents from Dillon v. U.S. Department of Justice. Following this is a discussion of possible destruction of evidence.
The first set includes 102 pages of emails to and from accused Mailer Bruce Ivins, released by FBI on court order on March 20, 2019, plus Laboratory Notebook 4282. FOIA request #1327397 sought Ivins’s emails and other documents for September and October, 2001. FOIA request #1329530 sought the Table of Contents and the 16 pages on Ivins from the 2000-page Interim Major Case Summary of 2006. After repeated failures to find emails, FBI experts located them as 1A attachments in the Amerithrax file.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to master techniques that can lead to breakthroughs in your research? No doubt you already have your own arsenal of qualitative methods, but we all can benefit from learning more. For your consideration, here are five approaches to the various techniques used to arrive at the findings in the articles and books on this Website:
People occupy corners and have jurisdiction. Truth, conversely, is sovereign, making contact with all. The necessary, universal, and eternal impose on the contingent, particular, and finite. So truth, once seen, seeks a mandate, demanding to override.
Many try to align themselves with the truth in source of their own. They may claim privileged access to it, fashion themselves as sources of it, or even create personas that present them as embodiments of it. Per Yuval-Harari, you must link yourself to a transcendental thing in any battle of the wills. This will allow you to efficiently co-opt its authority for yourself.
A contrarian can be defined as someone who
Kenneth J. Dillon has a Ph.D in history from Cornell University and has taught at several universities.