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| James H. Fetzer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | James Henry Fetzer (1940-12-06) December 6, 1940 (age 84) Pasadena, California, USA |
| Nationality | American |
James Henry Fetzer (born December 6, 1940) is Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emeritus at University of Minnesota Duluth. After serving in the United States Marine Corps, Fetzer became an historian and philosopher of science, becoming a notable contributor to the discipline and to the theoretical foundations of computer science.
He is also among the most prominent investigators of alleged government conspiracies, having focused especially on the 1963 Kennedy assassination, the 2002 death of Senator Paul Wellstone, the 9/11 attacks, George W Bush's administration, Israeli government, and the Obama administration's foreign policy on Iran.
Childhood and family
Fetzer was born in Pasadena, California, on December 6, 1940, to a father who worked as an accountant in a welfare office in Los Angeles County, yet grew up in a neighboring city, Altadena.
After his parents' divorce, Fetzer moved to La Habra Heights, California, with his brother, mother, and stepfather. Once she passed away when he was age 11, he lived with his father and stepmother.
During military service in the 1960s, Fetzer married yet divorced four years later, meanwhile having a son. He married a different woman in the 1970s while teaching at the University of Kentucky.
Education and career
Having graduated from South Pasadena High School, he studied philosophy at Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude in 1962. His undergraduate thesis on Carl G Hempel won The Dickinson Prize. He then joined the United States Marine Corps, and was second lieutenant in an artillery unit. In the early 1960s, he was stationed on Okinawa, Japan.
In 1966, soon after promotion to Captain, he resigned to enter graduate school. Having attained a master's degree from Indiana University, he studied at Columbia University a year, then returned to Indiana University and in 1970 attained PhD in history and philosophy of science.
As assistant professor at University of Kentucky since 1970, he received the UK Student Government's first Distinguished Teaching Award. Having left Kentucky in 1977, he taught at University of Virginia, University of Cincinnati, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and University of South Florida. In 1987, he became full professor at University of Minnesota Duluth, was appointed Distinguished McKnight University Professor in 1996, and remained until retirement in June 2006. In 1990, he received the Medal of the University of Helsinki.
Fetzer has published over 100 articles and 20 books on philosophy of science, computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science. He is an authority on Carl G Hempel's contributions to philosophy of science. Fetzer founded the international journal Minds and Machines, which for eleven years he edited, and founded the academic journal Studies in Cognitive Systems, which he was series editor of. He founded the Society for Machines & Mentality. Two of his most recent books are on the evolution of intelligence and on philosophical aspects of "the Christian Right's crusade against science".
Conspiracy claims
Interested in alleged government conspiracies since the 1963 assassination of United States President John F Kennedy, Fetzer has edited three collections of expert assessments of it. Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs and Fetzer investigated the 2002 airplane crash that killed US Senator Paul Wellstone and alleged it an assassination. Fetzer edited the first book from Scholars for 9/11 Truth, an organization co-founded by Fetzer in 2005. With fellow 9/11 dissenters, he is an editor of Veterans Today.
In America, he has frequently lectured and appeared on radio and television, including Jesse Ventura's America and Hannity & Colmes, but claimed American press to be under "massive control". As a critic of the United States foreign policy, he is highly esteemed in Iranian news media, where he has claimed "that the US Constitution has been tattered, torn and shredded", while "the United States has become the laughing stock for every serious student of international affairs".
Alleging treason and oath violations, he called for military overthrow of the Bush administration, a position that hurt his mainstream credibility, as did his apparent fixation on Jews in United States government. Atop backing allegations that the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 were acts of governments' covert terrorism, he initially suggested Israeli involvement at Sandy Hook, but later claimed that no children even died there. Fetzer has claimed evidence that all six lunar landings were faked.
JFK assassination
Supposedly, Fetzer took interest in the Kennedy assassination after watching Oliver Stone's film JFK in 1991. He has published dozens of articles against the Warren Commission's report, and became "a familiar and controversial figure in the JFK research community". Having claimed that about six gunmen fired, Fetzer has asserted that after the first gunshot, driver William Greer aided assassination by halting Kennedy's limousine, "such an obvious indication of Secret Service complicity in the assassination" that it "had to be edited out" the Zapruder film, which Fetzer alleged to be "massively edited", while radiographs and forensic evidence were severely tampered with or withheld.
Although putatively debunking Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, Vincent Bugliosi found Fetzer "good and sincere", "the editor of the only exclusively scientific books (three) on the assassination". Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas, found that Fetzer has posed claims thought "off the wall" by other assassination researchers. According to Fetzer, the CIA, the American Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans, Texas oil industry, the military–industrial complex, as well as Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover, may have been involved in the assassination plot. Within the 9/11-dissent movement, Fetzer has been praised for reinforcing Peter Dale Scott's view that understanding either the Kennedy assassination or 9/11 is enhanced by examining both.
9/11 attacks on WTC
On December 15, 2005, James Fetzer along with Steven Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth, rejecting the public conclusions of the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Over divergent approaches, Jones left in December 2006 and the next month founded Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. Jones sought more presumably scientific grounding, whereas Fetzer's speculations were more extreme. Scholars for 9/11 Truth, under Fetzer's leadership, is more radical. The groups allege that United States government's political agenda aided or abetted the attacks, and most members of both groups maintain that World Trade Center's buildings fell by controlled demolitions.
Fetzer alleged a role by President George W Bush's administration, and claimed that only the American military–industrial complex, possibly colluding with Israeli government, had such demolition competence. It has been claimed that Scholars for 9/11 Truth lacked any relevant experts, such as engineers, whereas all who have investigated have concluded that collapses of all three buildings—1, 2, and 7—were due to the jet crashes into buildings 1 and 2. Yet for being "just one of many Americans who have questioned the teeming inconsistencies surrounding 9/11", Fetzer was praised in Islamic Post as an "American patriot". Scholars for 9/11 Truth, and related, have been criticized by some Westerners for dangerously distracting from more crucial issues, such as American neoconservative preparedness to hegomonize the 9/11 events, long foreseen even without such conspiracy.
Senator Wellstone
After the airplane crash where Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, his wife, and their child died, Fetzer wrote a series of articles in Duluth newspaper Reader Weekly proposing that he was assassinated to help the Republican political party regain command of United States Senate. In 2004, Fetzer co-authored with Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs a book on the thesis, which some have found strong, or there at least noteworthy evidence of an intra-government role. They incriminated principally Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld, failed to merit legal prosecution, yet claimed that not their aim—identifying causes. They claim that an electromagnetic pulse may have mediated the plane crash.
Alleged anti-Semitism
In 2007, Fetzer asserted that "if it turns out that only unconventional methods" explain such devastation of the World Trade Center, the likely culprit is the American military–industrial complex as the only entity besides Israeli government with such means. Later, however, Fetzer identified the two entities as effectively inseparable. Although not as crude and racist as the rhetoric of David Duke, Fetzer's assertions have been likened to those made by Duke in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks. Fetzer has complained that alleging anti-Semitism is a handy ploy to neutralize 9/11 dissent, rather.
Anti-Defamation League has suggested that Fetzer is indeed anti-Semitic in focusing on "American government officials of Jewish background". As to Israel's role in Palestine, Fetzer asserted, "It is not anti-Semitic to object to the expansion of illegal settlements, the starvation and killing of the Palestinian people, or the butchering of a peace activist with a bulldozer!". Yet largely for suggesting that Jews in United States government have dual loyalty, Fetzer became marginalized as an oddity even within the 9/11 Truth movement. In 2012, Fetzer interviewed neo-Nazi activist and Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel, posed by Fetzer as "persecuted & imprisoned for research on WWII".
Middle Eastern affairs
Although Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been demonized by the White House and America news media, Fetzer has espoused the stance in Ahmadinejad's UN General Assembly speech calling for a "U.N. fact finding group to investigate 9/11". For Iran's third International Conference on Hollywoodism, held in 2013 in Tehran, Fetzer was listed as a partner. Visiting Iran, Fetzer was sought by local news media.
Interviewed by Iran Review, Fetzer called United States' policy toward Iran "a form of collective punishment that was ruled to be a violation of international law by the Nuremberg Tribunals after World War II". Fetzner claimed confusion at how the Obama "administration can disregard the findings of its own intelligence agencies in dealing with a foreign power", for "the fact is that in 2007, 16 American intelligence agencies concluded that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The findings were reaffirmed in 2011".
Even back in America, Fetzer has been interviewed remotely by Press TV, a news agency sponsored by Iran's government. On it, he alleged that the Bush administration helped Israel destabilize the Middle East, while United States foreign policy hypocritically stockpiles nuclear weapons, permits Israel to as well but secretly, and yet threatens Iran by alleging a secret nuclear weapons program that Iran lacks but, if it had, would help stabilize the Middle East.
He also alleged that Al-Qaeda was contrived by United States government, similarly waging false flag tactics to overthrow Syria's government, whose "troops are routing the rebels" and had "no reason to use" the gas employed the day before a United Nations inspection team arrived, "a preposterous time for Assad to use chemical weapons, which he doesn't need", whereas the "rebels on the other hand appear to have been supplied with the gas by Saudi Arabia in promotion of an Israeli agenda".
Publications
Philosophy of Science:
- James H. Fetzer. (December 31, 1981). Scientific Knowledge: Causation, Explanation, and Corroboration. Springer. ISBN 90-277-1335-9.
- Principles of Philosophical Reasoning. Rowman & Littlefield. 1984. ISBN 0-8476-7341-3.
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- edited by James H. Fetzer. (1985). Sociobiology and Epistemology. Springer. ISBN 90-277-2005-3.
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- Definitions and Definability: Philosophical Perspectives. 1991. ASIN B000IBICGK.
- James H. Fetzer (1992). Philosophy of Science (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon. ISBN 1-55778-481-7.
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- ed. by James H. Fetzer (1993). Foundations of Philosophy of Science: Recent Developments (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon. ISBN 1-55778-480-9.
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- Charles E. M. Dunlop; James H. Fetzer. (1993). Glossary of Cognitive Science (A Paragon House Glossary for Research, Reading, and Writing). Paragon. ISBN 1-55778-567-8.
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- James H. Fetzer. (1997). Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Paragon Issues in Philosophy). Paragon. ISBN 1-55778-739-5.
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- Minds and Machines: Journal for Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science, Vol. 7, No. 4. Kluwer. 1997. ASIN B000KEV460.
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- edited by James H. Fetzer. (2000). Science, Explanation, and Rationality: The Philosophy of Carl G. Hempel. Oxford. ISBN 0-19-512137-6.
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- James H. Fetzer. (2001). Artificial Intelligence: Its Scope and Limits. Springer. ISBN 0-7923-0548-5.
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- Computers and Cognition: Why Minds are Not Machines. Springer. January 8, 2002. ISBN 1-4020-0243-2.
- ed. by James H. Fetzer (2002). Consciousness Evolving (Advances in Consciousness Research). John Benjamins. ISBN 1-58811-108-3.
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- James H. Fetzer (2005). The Evolution of Intelligence: Are Humans the Only Animals With Minds?. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9459-7.
- James H. Fetzer (December 28, 2006). Render Unto Darwin: Philosophical Aspects of the Christian Right's Crusade Against Science. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9605-0.
Conspiracy Theories:
- edited by James H. Fetzer. (1997). Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9366-3.
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- ed. by James H. Fetzer. (2000). Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn't Know Then. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9422-8.
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- ed. by James H. Fetzer (2003). The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK. Catfeet Press. ISBN 0-8126-9547-X.
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- Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) & James H. Fetzer. (2004). American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone. Vox Pop. ISBN 0-9752763-0-1.
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- ed. by James H. Fetzer. (March 28, 2007). The 9/11 Conspiracy. Open Court. ISBN 0-8126-9612-3.
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References
- ^ Sarah Lederer (February 2009). "James Fetzer's home page". James H Fetzer at University of Minnesota Duluth. Retrieved February 2, 2009.
- ^ Stephen E Atkins, "Fetzer, James H (1940–)" pp 181–83, in S E Atkins, ed, The 9/11 Encyclopedia, 2 edn (Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011).
- Jaya Narain (February 16, 2007). "We're all conspiracy theorists at heart". BBC News. Retrieved May 5, 2010.
- ^ Justin Pope (August 7, 2006). "Scholars join ranks of Sept 11 conspiracy theorists". Bangor Daily News. Bangor ME. Associated Press. p. A3. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
- ^ Mike Mosedale (June 28, 2006). "The man who thought he knew too much". City Pages. Minneapolis. p. 1. Retrieved July 29, 2012.
{{cite news}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Kourosh Ziabari, "Anti-Iran sanctions (no 5) James H Fetzer: Anti-Iran sanctions violate international law" (exclusive interview with James H Fetzer), Iran Review, 6 Mar 2013.
- ^ Mike Mosedale 2006, p. 2.
- ^ Mike Mosedale 2006, p. 3.
- ^ James H Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G Hempel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p xi.
- ^ Vincent Bugliosi (2007). Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 506, 508, 974, 986, 1498. ISBN 9780393045253. Retrieved July 15, 2012.
{{cite book}}: Invalid|ref=harv(help) - ^ Four Arrows & James H Fetzer, American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone (Brooklyn NY: Vox Pop, 2004), p 148 "Book description", AssassinationScience.com, 2013.
- ^ "Jess Ventura's America for November 22, 2003". MSNBC. November 22, 2003.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - "Scholars for 9/11 Truth—past events"
- ^ According to SC/HGH, "US attack on Syria violation of international law: James Fetzer", Press TV (Iran), 2 Sep 2013, Fetzer alleged that Syrian rebels were supplied with gas weaponry by Saudi Arabia via American/Israeli false flag activity to attribute the chemical warfare to Syrian government; Fetzer speculated that the Obama administration might combine this with blackmail of US Congresspersons, via secrets culled by National Security Administration's illegal buggings of French Foreign Ministry's New York offices, to override National Security Council's refusal to authorize a US war with France against Syria; Fetzer expressed "hope that the French are going to display enough awareness and intelligence to not be taken in by this obvious gambit even though the American people may still succumb because of their gullibility and the massive control of the American press".
- ^ SC/PR, "Overwhelming hypocrisy coming from US on nuclear weapons: James H Fetzer", Press TV (Iran), 14 Aug 2013; SC/HGH, "US losing world respect due to hypocrisy in ME: Fetzer", Press TV (Iran), 14 Oct 2013.
- John Gravois, "Professors of paranoia?: Academics give a scholarly stamp to 9/11 conspiracy theories", The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2006 June 23;52(42).
- ^ Jovan Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp 109–110, notes on p 162.
- Nick Kollerstrom w/Jim Fetzer, "Sandy Hook: Analogies with the London 7/7 bombings", Veterans Today, 6 Jan 2013.
- Jim Fetzer, "Some 'hard lessons' from the Boston bombing", James Fetzer blog, 20 Apr 2013.
- Michael C Moynihan (December 12, 2012). "Newtown conspiracy theories: Obama, Iran, and other culprits". The Daily Beast. Retrieved January 9, 2013.
The Sandy Hook massacre appears to have been a psy op intended to strike fear in the hearts of Americans by the sheer brutality of the massacre, where the killing of children is a signature of terror ops conducted by agents of Israel.
- Radio Fetzer, (Where???)
- "Did America land men on the moon?: The moon landing hoax" (MP3) (Interview). Interviewed by Sterling Harwood. May 2, 2013. Retrieved May 3, 2013.
{{cite interview}}: Unknown parameter|callsign=ignored (help); Unknown parameter|city=ignored (|location=suggested) (help); Unknown parameter|name=ignored (help); Unknown parameter|program=ignored (help) - Penny Cockerell (November 22, 2003). "JFK 40 years later: America still has questions; assassination theories don't fade away". Spartanburg Herald. Spartanburg SC. Associated Press. p. A6. Retrieved July 15, 2012.
- Mike Mosedale 2006, p. 4.
- "The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America", Open Court Publishing Co website, 2013.
James Fetzer, ch 2 "Thinking about 'conspiracy theories': 9/11 and JFK" pp 43–74 & Peter Dale Scott, ch 8 "JFK and 9/11: Insights gained from understanding both" pp 195–220, in J H Fetzer, ed, The 9/11 Conspiracy: The Scamming of America (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co, 2007).
Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1996).
Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008). - ^ Stephen E Atkins, "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice" pp 385–87, in S E Atkins, ed, The 9/11 Encyclopedia, 2 edn (Santa Barbara CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011).
- David Dunbar & Brad Reagan, eds, Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), p 28.
- IP, "Dr Jasser betrays American muslims, promotes Islamophobia", Islamic Post, 4 Apr 2012.
- Philip E Wegner, " 'The dead are our redeemers': Culture, belief, and United 93" pp 81–92, in Derek Rubin & Jaap Verheul, eds, American Multiculturalism After 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), note 7, p 90: "I'd like to take this opportunity to offer a brief aside on the real dangers of conspiracy theorists such as those making up the movement Scholars for 9/11 Truth. It wasn't as if neoconservatives needed to stage the events of 9/11—its inevitability was widely recognized by political analysts and popular cultural texts.... Rather, the real lesson of these events was that the neoconservatives were prepared for its occurrence, and ready to hegemonize it in particular directions, in a way that any left opposition was not".
- Mike Mosedale 2006, p. 5.
- ^ Kevin Diaz (June 3, 2003). "Conspiracy theories thrive after Wellstone plane crash". Star Tribune. Minneapolis. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
- Eva Dameron (October 31, 2005). "Author makes case for murder". New Mexico Daily Lobo.
- Four Arrows, aka Don T Jacobs, "The military drills on 9-11: 'Bizarre coincience' or something else?" pp 119–143, in Paul Zarembka, ed, The Hidden History of 9/11, 2 edn (New York, Toronto, London, Melbourne: Seven Stories Press, 2008), p 134.
- Lance deHaven-Smith, Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin TX: University of Texas Press, 2013), pp 138, 237.
- David Duke, the onetime Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has been a neo-Nazi activist.
- ^ Unsigned, "Decade of deceit: Anti-semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories 10 years later", § "Jim Fetzer", ADL Archive, 30 Aug 2011.
- Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (New York: Henry Holt and Co, 2002), pp 199–200, briefly summarizes Zündel's public stances.
- "Ernst Zündel: Persecuted & imprisoned for research on WWII", Radio Fetzer, Aug 2012.
- Jerry Mazza, "Even your best friends won't tell you: Ahmadinejad's UN General Assembly speech", James Fetzer blog, 25 Sep 2010.
- Others included Kevin Barrett as well as former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel.
Unsigned, "Iran 'Hollywoodism' conference partners with U.S. & international anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists", Official Blogs from the Anti-Defamation League, 5 Feb 2013.
Joshua Keating, "Mike Gravel on movies, sanctions, and what we can learn from Iran", Foreign Policy blog, 22 Feb 2013. - SC/HGH, "Bush aided Israel in destabilizing ME: James Fetzer", Press TV (Iran), 6 Oct 2013.
- ^ MSK/HJL, "West unsuccessful in toppling Syria's Assad: James Fetzer", Press TV (Iran), 14 Mar 2013.
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