Friday, November 25, 2011

Lynn Margulis, RIP

       I just read of the recent death of Lynn Margulis, a world-class biologist who was well-known in her field of study, but certainly not as well-known to the larger world as she deserved.

       Kevin Barrett has posted a brief eulogy, in which he properly notes:

"Lynn was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Her work in the life sciences, which she did not like to call 'evolutionary biology,' set the stage for a paradigm shift away from neo-Darwinian reductionism, and towards an appreciation of the irreducible complexity of the life processes, the importance of microbial life in those processes, and the power and ubiquity of gene-swapping and symbiosis as evolutionary forces.

"Lynn was herself nearly drummed out of orthodox science as a heretic when she began propounding these views circa the early 1960s. Today, they are increasingly accepted by the scientific mainstream."

       At the age of nineteen, she had married the brilliant Carl Sagan, who would eventually become an astronomer and cosmologist of the first rank.  She earned her Ph.D from Berkeley in 1963.  But as a young faculty member at Boston University, she had to fight the biology-academic establishment to get her seminal work published.  Her landmark paper, titled "The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells," was rejected by a dozen prestigious scientific journals before its acceptance by the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

       From such frictions come paradigm shifts.  As the decades passed, she could have the satisfaction of seeing that her theoretical insights led to a new and fruitful understanding of biology, from the smallest bacteria to the entire planetary ecosystem.

       She also, like the rest of us, saw the political paradigm-shifting event of 9/11.  And she, along with hundreds of other scientists, professionals, and skeptics, had objections to the official story, and went public with those objections.


       "The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations,"  she declared, calling it "the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization."


       After a careful explanation (you can read it here*) of how she came to this bold conclusion, she finishes her remarks thus:


       "I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."


       Lynn Margulis died on Tuesday, November 22, 2011.  We may be grateful for her bright, inquisitive, and perceptive mind.


*       *       *


*This statement, along with those from many other people, can be found at the website, Patriots Question 911.  You can also read it in my first comment, below.  Your comments are always welcome.

1 comment:

  1. Here are her words, from the site 'Patriots Question 911' --


    "The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations.  I arrive at this conclusion largely as the result of the research and clear writing by David Ray Griffin in his fabulous books about 9/11.  I first met him when he was a speaker at a scholarly conference unrelated to 9/11.  He immediately impressed me as a brilliant, outstanding philosopher - theologian - author, a Whiteheadian scholar motivated by an intense curiosity to know everything possible about the world.

    "On the plane home and for the next two days I did little else but read Griffin’s first book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor.  From there I went on to read his even more disturbing account of the bogus 9/11 Commission Report, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which provides overwhelming evidence that the official story is contradictory, incomplete, and unbelievable.

    "It is clear to me that David Ray Griffin and his fellow critics are correct: the 9/11 "new Pearl Harbor" was planned in astonishing detail and carried out through the efforts of a sophisticated and large network of operatives.  It was more complex and far more successful than the Allende assassination, the US bombing of our own ship the "Maine" that began the Spanish-American war (and brought us Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines), the Reichstag fire that was used to justify the suspension of most civil liberties in Germany in the 1930's, and even Operation Himmler, which was used by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland, which started World War II.

    "Whoever is responsible for bringing to grisly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork.  Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.

    "I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."

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