Left Gatekeepers
the "stand down" of the
foundation-funded liberal / left "alternative" media
Progressive Censorship about the reasons
for the "War on Terror"
non-profits usually depend on someone else's
profits
see also www.oilempire.us/denial.html
- Not See's and Nazis
Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who doe not conform with nonconformity
-- Eric Hoffer
www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/01/goodbye_terry_g.html
Joe Bageant | January 19, 2006 | Category: Essays
Goodbye Terry Gross, We Niver Knew Ye
On liberal media denial
Having come to understand that mainstream media are in the business of selling fried chicken and cars, giving Wall Street head, and stealing bandwidth from the public's airwaves, none of us expect them to question anything afoot in the empire. We quite understand they cannot be wasting profitable air time on a nation whose collective memory is 30 seconds long. So we watch them pull their punches and wait for the commercials, which are their whole point anyway. If, god forbid, you are the pointy headed type interested in details, turn on NPR. And if you consider yourself hipper than the couch taters out here in Budland, go onto the net and visit Salon. Or if you are so worldly and hip you are a downright commie, then subscribe to Mother Jones. That's the way it used to be.
But now we are seeing what were once considered the more intelligent and in some cases more principled media such as NPR, Salon and Mother Jones distance themselves from meaningful controversy -- pulling the few wimpy punches they have. (Bullshit controversy, however, is still in fashion.) We are talking about Mark Crispin Miller's new book, Fooled Again -- How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has become a known and respected progressive figure, one of the few in-your-face bespectacled lefty author types with any credibility. But when it comes to promoting Fooled Again, the guy can't even get arrested. No interviews, nothing. ....
At some deep national level we all know, George W. Bush has no right to be farting into the Oval Office desk chair. Even the few genuinely moderate Republicans not driven into hiding by the Brownshirts look sheepish when you bring up Florida and Ohio. Yet Americans go on pretending that everything is OK. The people pretend along with the media that George W. Bush belongs in that chair. Pretend that his is the face of a man capable of deep and serious thought, that the smirk is not really a smirk and that he really gives a rat's ass about those coffins at Dover or those black people in New Orleans. They pretend that it was not farcical when he told the nation this week that despite the city being soaked in petro-toxins and defined mainly by bulldozed piles of rotting timbers, clothing and sewerage, overturned cars and botulism filled refrigerators, "New Orleans is still a great place to bring the family and have fun." They pretend that strange nationwide spider web of bitter GOP operatives could not possibly have worked together in Ohio and Florida and heaven only knows where else. Everything is OK.
As Helen Caldicott recently put it: "What's to become of us? Ask any experienced mental health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove's disobedient arm that was always popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a pretense be maintained, even when the pretender is surrounded by the best handlers money can buy?"
Apparently, Helen, a damned long time. At least eight years.
| How
"the Left" helped Bush cover-up 9/11 |
It is not a surprise that the corporate, mainstream
media have sought to restrict investigative journalism and dissident opinions
about the so-called "War on Terror." However, it is more difficult
to understand the fact that the "left alternative" media --
including The Nation, Z magazine, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Alternative
Radio and Democracy Now -- have shied away from examining the pretext
for endless war. They ignored the national "Deception Dollar"
campaign, which has distributed six million Deception
Dollars listing websites of the independent investigations of 9/11.
Do these alternative publications expect the readers to believe that they
did not attend the many peace rallies around the time of the US seizure
of Iraq, where many of the DDs were distributed?
Most "alternative" media institutions have chosen
not to help the independent investigations sift through the evidence for
official foreknowledge and complicity, and have spent three years pretending
that the evidence does not exist. While some of the evidence is questionable
or erroneous, there is an enormous amount of material that has been tripled
checked from mainstream sources and is extremely credible -- but you would
not be aware of this from the liberal / left / progressive media. Worse,
several of these publications have attacked independent media and journalists
who have done excellent work exposing the lies behind the official stories
of 9/11. In the spring of 2002, when some of the material documenting
official foreknowledge of 9/11 began to surface in the corporate media,
The Nation, Z, Political Research Associates and Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting attacked independent investigators who pieced together the
documentation that proves 9/11 was not a surprise attack.
Within a few weeks of 9/11, independent journalists using
mainstream news sources had pieced together a mountain of evidence that proved beyond reasonable
doubt that Team Bush had full foreknowledge of 9/11 and allowed the "attacks"
to happen to create the pretext to seize
the Middle East oil fields.
In early 2002, Norman Solomon and David Corn of The Nation waged
a smear campaign against these efforts. This gave the Bush regime critical
assistance at its most vulnerable point by scaring
away much of the peace movement from Bush's Achilles heel. Their attacks
ignored the documented, specific warnings from US allies that 9/11 was imminent, the "put option" stock
trades on United and American airlines just before 9/11, and the suppression
of FBI agents who had figured out what was coming. Solomon campaigned
for censorship at Pacifica Radio (KPFA in Berkeley) on these themes, and
a few months later got to go on a US government sponsored trip to Iraq.
Meanwhile, non-embedded peace activists were threatened with felony prosecutions
for visiting Iraq.
Norman Solomon published an essay on Common Dreams that
avoided the word OIL while supposedly explaining Bush's Iraq war motivations.
Is this omission related to the role of elite foundations (Rockefeller,
Ford, Soros) funding certain "peace" groups?
The foundation-funded alternative media -- The Nation,
Mother Jones, Democracy Now, and
The Progressive -- refuse to mention the 9/11 Deception
Dollar campaign. Over six million Deception Dollars have been distributed,
including at the big peace rallies of the past few years.
It is revealing that you can read more about Peak
Oil in The New York Times and National Geographic than in the “alternative” press. Few mainstream or "alternative"
media emphasize permaculture solutions
to Peak Oil.
The “alternative” media mostly ignore the
Peak Oil motivation for the Iraq war, and they refuse to mention that
there were multiple war games on 9/11 that
paralyzed the air defenses over New York
and Washington.
On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy
was removed in a military coup d’etat after
he decided to turn off the Cold War and pull troops from Vietnam. This
coup led to three million dead in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Watergate,
October Surprise, Iran-Contra,
9/11 and the Iraq wars.
If the media had dealt honestly with 9/11 truth,
Bush would not have been able to invade Iraq, steal
the 2004 election, and the Katrina disaster would not have been deliberately mishandled. Now, we live in a "failed
state."
Why do foundation funded "liberal alternative" media support
the official story that 9/11 was a surprise attack despite the overwhelming
evidence that the Bush regime knew it was coming? Why do most "alternative"
media avoid the issues of "Peak Oil" (the primary motivation
for the US invasion of Iraq) and systematic election fraud?
The biggest danger in the US now are the "Not See's"
-- to paraphrase journalist Michael Ruppert (fromthewilderness.com),
conspiracies against democracy don't need lots of people to participate
in them, they need millions, however, to stay silent to ensure their success.
It is fascinating that Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, the Institute for Public Accuracy, The Nation, Z Magazine,
et al, chose to defend the official position of the Bush regime in early
2002 (at a point when the "Bush Knew" material was starting
to percolate into the corporate press) instead of
deciding to pool their collective talents to sift through the 9/11 material
and support those who have done the most credible work. There are
certainly careless people putting out 9/11 conspiracy
material (and careless people supporting the government under the guise
of liberal/left alternative media) -- but Ruppert is extremely cautious
and careful in his documentation. The fact that the foundation funded
left has attacked, and now ignores, the growing movement for independent
investigation of what happened with 9/11 makes THEM the controversy.
If Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter was urging "leftists" to shun
people investigating 9/11, it is likely that their opposition would inspire
us to look closer at this work. But for alleged "leftists" to
make this suggestion makes it much easier for it to be taken seriously
by liberals.
Pacifica radio journalist Kelia Ramares radio says that Norman Solomon
got a "National Interest" exemptions to the sanctions/siege
for this trip with a right-wing conservative Democrat, Nick Rahall of
West Virginia. (Most peace advocates who traveled to Iraq during the siege
got harassed by the State Department!) If true, it would be interesting
to understand why this was the case. Solomon had a hassle free trip to
Iraq a few months after his attacks on Pacifica / KPFA radio for daring
to air web journalist Michael Ruppert and his articles attacking Ruppert
for daring to document federal foreknowledge of 9/11.
Even worse, Solomon's compatriot in the "Get Ruppert"
campaign of the foundation-funded liberal "alternative" media,
David Corn, has a long history in trying to scuttle investigations of
this nature.
- Corn wrote a biography about CIA dirty trickster Ted Shackley called
"Blond Ghost," which sidestepped the allegations about Shackley's
involvement in the heroin trade during the Vietnam War. Even the New
York Times had to apologize to Allen Ginsberg many years ago for calling
him nuts for making the CIA-heroin allegation - and the CIA 1998 inspector
general report essentially confirmed that Gary Webb had been correct.
- Corn lept to the defense of the Agency after Gary Webb's 1996 expose
in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA's involvement in cocaine
smuggling during the 1980s "Contra" war on Nicaragua.
- After attacking Ruppert, Corn then moved on to attack the large peace
rallies last fall as being too leftist www.counterpunch.org/cockburn1114.html,
yet didn't do anything constructive to organizing anything less leftist.
It fits the tried and true COINTELPRO model.
In David Corn's articles attacking Mike Ruppert, he ignored virtually
all of the evidence and then had the nerve to say there wasn't any evidence
that supported the conclusion (of US government foreknowledge of 9/11),
which is intellectually dishonest.
Neither Corn nor Solomon have written about the independent
9/11 investigations since making their attack on Ruppert in early 2002
(just at the point that Bush was starting to be vulnerable on the issue,
thus doing the unelected President a huge favor). If Ruppert's
work is so terrible that it needs a liberal group think coordinated campaign
to ensure that none of us listen to it, then why wasn't there any follow-up,
especially in the wake of the Deception Dollar campaign?
The REAL scandal is why these "leftists" came to the
defense of the Bush administration after Ruppert and other journalists
exposed blatant holes in the official story of 9/11. THAT is the true
controversy.
There has not been ANY coverage of the grassroots "Deception
Dollar" campaign in the left "alternative" media.
The "stand down" of the peace movement and the liberal
alternative media since 9/11 is one of the reasons why the well-intentioned
efforts to prevent the Iraq war were a failure. Lots of people
everywhere worked very hard to stop it, but most chose not to focus on
areas that could have been more effective. Few leaders of the peace movement
talked about Peak Oil (the reason for the invasion of Iraq) and even fewer
dared to talk about Bush's complicity in 9/11. Predictably, the protests
were fun, energizing, and not effective at stopping the invasion. In a
more rational system a failure of this magnitude from the peace movement
would be the opportunity to rethink strategy. It is surreal that the major
media have finally decided to look at the crucial issue of the global
peak of petroleum production (which is, of course, the primary reason
behind the US war on the Middle East -- and 9/11 is the pretext for this
invasion) -- but to date, the "left alternative" media has chosen
to completely ignore this. Why is it easier to get Peak Oil into the New
York Times and the National Geographic than The Nation, Democracy Now!
and allied institutions? Is it cowardice? A lack of understanding of ecological
limits upon industrial civilization? Directives from the foundations that
fund these "alternative" media, since many of these foundations
are heavily invested in petroleum?
Political correctness is a poor substitute for investigative journalism.
Democracy Now and the rest of the foundation
funded "left alternative" media are not doing the job they claim
they are doing. On some issues, they are excellent, but on Bush's biggest
scandal they are silent.
The Nation magazine, which has been one of the ringleaders in the "don't
look at 9/11 complicity" campaign on the alleged "left,"
publishes some good articles, but they also support the "Warren Commission"
(which covered up the coup against President Kennedy) and are funded by
some right-wing establishment foundations. Why does elite money fund ostensible
dissident publications? Do they support a stronger opposition -- or merely
a controlled opposition, which can safely "blow off steam" as
long as it doesn't question core assumptions of empire? It is similar
to the opposition group in "1984," which was secretly run by
the Party to snare the dissidents and the gullible.
There are many stories from the Holocaust
about Jews who found out about the killing fields and death camps and
tried to warn others -- in nearly all cases, most people did
not want to know the truth, and often attacked the messengers for
upsetting them. Perhaps it is merely part of human nature not to be able
to comprehend such venality. It is fascinating psychologically
to see many of the liberal voices who have no problems talking about US
empire war crimes with millions of victims in other countries, but will
not look at a war crime with three thousand victims in New York.
I hope future historians, if our society holds together, can better analyze
this phenomenon.
Phony opposition?
In George Orwell's "1984," Winston
Smith (the protagonist who spends his days rewriting the news at the Ministry
of Truth) becomes disillusioned and wants to join the underground resistance
to the Party. He eventually learns that the opposition is really an illusion
maintained by the Party itself to snare discontented people such as himself.
It is not really a surprise that many of the "alternative dissident"
publications that have chosen to ignore 9/11 and the war on terror, except
for bland pronouncements in favor of world peace instead of world war,
are funded by right-wing, oil money connected foundations.
Why do oil company money funded foundations give money liberal alternative
"left" media groups that are the core of the "get Ruppert"
campaign? Do these foundations want a strong left media that can expose
wealth and power? Is it because many of these groups have become so bland
that they aren't a threat to power and priviledge? Or is there another
agenda going on?
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that some fairly conservative, establishment
foundations contribute to these gatekeepers. Why would establishment wealth
give to publications that want to make social change that challenges the
power and priviledge of the establishment? Is the establishment really
interested in funding efforts that reduce their powers (a fraction of
the establishment is, perhaps)? Or do they give to groups like The Nation,
knowing that they will absorb lots of dissenting energy and swallow it
up in endless debates, tertiary issues and disinformation ("9/11
really was a surprise attack by evil terrorists. Honest.")
David Corn, Norman Solomon, Chip Berlet and other participants
in the "Get Ruppert" liberal cabal do not dare talk about the
9/11 war games, foreknowledge evidence, the politics of Peak Oil or solutions
to the crises of empire and overshoot. Instead, they have resorted to
tangential issues, insinuations, character assassination, etc, and then
have the nerve to grand stand against "the War on Iraq" when
it is probable that Bush would not have had the political
ability to invade Iraq if the "left gatekeepers" had bothered
to help the independent journalists investigating what happened on 9/11.
The money flow from the foundations to
the "left gatekeepers" isn't necessarily the sole reason for
their avoidance of these core issues -- but it does raise questions. It
is likely also fear, cowardice, denial and other psychological issues
going on that are more critical than the financial ties of these organizations
to right wing funding sources.
www.waynemadsenreport.com/diplomatic/foreign.htm
March 28, 2006 --
SPECIAL TO WMR from ROME AND WASHINGTON, DC
Play the Neo-cons’ Treasure Hunting!
By Burt Scully
Deploying the Right, Penetrating the Left, How the "Discrediting
Committee" Works:
Salon, NYT, and Ledeen, The Real Scandal of the Abu Ghraib Picture
.... The fact is that no Fascism has magic power to control a victim
population forever. A spontaneous and, in fact, insuppressible resistance
has emerged. It has emerged without, and actually despite, what is presented
officially as the institutions of the “opposition.” But
the Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Roves of this country have, of course, also,
shall we say, a left hand. We saw how the New York Times was used by
the psychological warfare and propaganda offices of the Pentagon with
Judith Miller’s “revelations” of the non-existing
weapons of mass destruction. We saw how the “liberal” New
York Times supplied the best cover to spread that line while being attacked
with all the expected vulgarity by the likes of Fox News. It is a perfect
system of weight and counterweight that, in the best ying-yang tradition,
allows the powers- that-be to control both, its side and the “other
side.” Nothing is really new in fact, any unlawful elite that
is determined to govern against the will and the welfare of its population
knows that, for example, its control would be more secure if it can
use – in a coordinated fashion -- both police and organized crime.
I.e. if that elite can pull the strings of the law enforcers and the
law breakers, the terrorists and the antiterrorists… Everyone
has his role in the greater scheme, but only if they respond to the
puppet master.
So, it wouldn’t be surprising to find that this power has been
interested in placing his controlled assets deep inside what is officially
perceived as the opposite camp. It does not mean that they can totally
control any opposition. The opposition to dictatorship and brutality
(torture, for example) is something normal in every human being. No,
the trick consists in trying to penetrate, with operatives or controlled
useful idiots, any organized form of opposition and to try to subvert
it from the inside. It does not always work, of course, but the attempt
to do so is what one should expect from such unlawful power. So, when
the most conscious elements of a population, deprived of viable institutions
and denied a free media and a voice, turn towards new creative solutions
like the online blogs, make no mistake that the powers-that-be will
try to get inside. They have a huge apparatus, maybe even militarily
organized, that is familiar with the Internet (is anybody surprised?)
and trained in provocations and “Chaos & Confusion.”
There are certain special moments, however, in which this apparatus
runs the risk of being exposed and unmasked. Some informer observers
believe that the present situation -- characterized by a large majority
of the population being disgusted with the war in Iraq and the criminal
insanity of the elite, and rapidly becoming immune to the stimula of
fascist propagandists à la O’Reilly – is potentially
one of those moments. When the situation is ripe, as it appears to be
now, a relatively small event is enough to produce a chain reaction.
Such a “relatively small event” could very well be the mobilization
organized by the secret apparatus of provocation and distortion directed
at stopping the truth on the torture in Iraq. What we are doing with
this short report is an experiment, and we invite everybody who cares
for their country and their own future to do the same, the results could
be positively surprising. It could be a first example on how to unmask
the “apparatus.”
www.onlinejournal.com/Media/Conover060402/conover060402.html
Has the Establishment Left become a handmaiden of the Republican
Right?
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor and Publisher
June 4, 2002—Gangway for the self-appointed gatekeepers of the
left who are on a crusade to spin, smear, attack, and label as loony
anyone who won't accept the official line that the events leading up
to and surrounding September 11 are nothing more than a series of coincidences
and intelligence failures.
This cabal of lily-livered leftists, ensconced in their ivory towers,
have decreed we are bad kiddies for even suggesting that the Bush administration
was complicit in or took advantage of the September 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the baddest of all is Michael
C. Ruppert, who publishes From
the Wilderness.
Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive, in his May 29 article,
Crude Politics of Scandal, wrote, "The claim that Bush knew the
U.S. would be attacked and intentionally let it happen for his own nefarious
purposes is well beyond my significant skeptical powers. It assumes
callousness at the loss of innocent American lives that I wouldn't want
to impute to any President. And it greatly underestimates the likelihood
of bureaucratic incompetence. (A hedge fund against such incompetence
would be a sure profit-maker.)"
Someone should clue Rothschild that his "significant skeptical
powers" have failed him, because we have a Supreme Court selectee
in the White House, not a president. So it is not a president we are
imputing such "callousness" or possible criminality to. Or
has he joined the "get over it" crowd?
Among the others lobbing missiles at us from the battlements are Norman
Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy; David
Corn, The Nation's Washington editor; Michael Albert, co-founder of
Z Magazine and system operator of the magazine's Znet.org; Steve Rendall,
FAIR's senior analyst; Chip Berlet, senior research analyst for Political
Research Associates; Larry Bensky of Pacifica Radio's flagship station,
KPFA; and Noam Chomsky, writer, philosopher, and professor of linguistics
at MIT.
Quite a lineup, eh? And there are others.
Ask yourselves why, if we are so loony--and Mike Ruppert is the looniest
of all--why these gentlemen are expending so much energy in writing
reams of copy denouncing us, with what has become the new epithet, "conspiracy
theorists?" Why not simply ignore us? Pretend we don't exist?
What worse punishment can they mete out for our ignominious behavior
than ignoring us? Or is there more to their motives?
Might this be a tip-off that the Ivory Tower crowd prefers not to soil
its hands, but is using those of us in the trenches to do their work?
This could explain Rothschild calling for an independent commission
to get to the bottom of September 11, followed by, "But what we
don't need is crazy conspiracy theorists coming from the left,"
then destroying his own argument with the following:
"Almost every time I've spoken in public since September 11, I've
heard variations of the following theme: Bush not only knew about the
attacks, but wanted the United States to be attacked so that he could
(and here you can take your pick):
"a) Increase his popularity by waging war
"b) Justify an increase in Pentagon spending
"c) Boost the profits of the Carlyle Group, a private military
investment group that includes Bush's father, among other heavyweights."
So the "crazy conspiracy theorists" are confronting him wherever
he goes. That says something about people not buying in to the official
spin. And some would even say that they would answer "all the above"
to what George W. Bush & Co. knew or took advantage of.
Let us not forget the "dastardly" Rep. Cynthia McKinney, one
of the few Democrats in Congress with some spine, who had the gall to
call for an investigation into what warnings the Bush administration
received before the attacks. Rothschild included her among the "arch
conspiracists," leaving the others unnamed.
Corn, blowing a gasket for the second time over Ruppert's September
11 investigation--this time in a diatribe called The September 11 X-Files--stooped
to the old Soviet trick, since picked up by the right wing, of questioning
Ruppert's sanity.
The most malicious part of this smear is to stigmatize everyone who
seeks psychiatric treatment, as Ruppert did while he was on the Los
Angeles police force.
"Ruppert is not a reporter," Corn wrote, as if to imply journalism
is some sort of elite club and one must possess special credentials
to gain admittance. We don't license journalists in this country--yet.
. Furthermore, Corn is also dismissing the fact that Ruppert does have
credentials as an investigator. He was, after all, a cop.
He goes on, "He mostly assembles facts--or purported facts--from
various news sources and then makes connections. The proof is not in
any one piece--say, a White House memo detailing an arms-for-hostages
trade. The proof is in the line drawn between the dots. His masterwork
is a timeline of fifty-one events (at last count) that, he believes,
demonstrate that the CIA knew of the attacks in advance and that the
US government probably had a hand in them. Ruppert titled his timeline
"Oh Lucy!--You Gotta Lotta 'Splaining To Do."
While ripping Ruppert's timeline, contending he has no hard proof, Corn,
like the others, offers no hard proof that events surrounding September
11 were merely a series of intelligence blunders and coincidences with
tragic results. He completely omits the fact that Ruppert's timeline
is but one small part of a nine-month long and multi-faceted investigation,
which includes pre- and post-September 11 geopolitics, and evidence
of US government and corporate crime that no one else has touched.
Not content with trashing Ruppert and also bashing on McKinney, Corn
dismisses Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, whom he calls Ruppert's
"one truly original find," as a con man with a long criminal
history. With no proof to counter Vreeland's claim of being a US Navy
intelligence officer, Corn dismisses the memo Vreeland said he wrote
last August, while being held in a Canadian jail on charges that were
subsequently dropped, and gave to his jailers for safekeeping. This
is the memo in which Vreeland claimed he had foreknowledge of the horror
that was to transpire in the US.
Michael Albert and Stephen R. Shalom ramble on for 18 pages in an attempt
to cast conspiracy theorists as nutcases, but "institutional theorists"
as good guys, all in another attempt to debunk the very idea that there
was anything conspiratorial in nature about September 11.
Norman Solomon, of all people, who for years has taken the corporate
media to task in his weekly column Media Beat, has been at the forefront
of the effort to discredit Ruppert, again without offering any hard
evidence that refutes what Ruppert has been writing.
In his April 25 column, Solomon wrote, "A former Los Angeles cop
named Michael Ruppert has been proclaiming that Vreeland 'was able to
write a detailed warning of the attacks before they occurred' on Sept.
11. Ruppert has attracted a loyal following, but he's likely to lose
all but the most faithful adherents if they look at the actual 'warning
note' or find out a lot more about Vreeland's background."
He accuses Ruppert of being an "expert at combining facts with
unreliable reports and wild leaps of illogic," when, like a good
prosecutor, all Ruppert has been doing is laying out bits and pieces
of information that seem to point to either the Bush administration's
foreknowledge of September 11 or its callously taking advantage of the
horror to strip the people of many of their constitutional rights under
the guise of "homeland security"--a term that should be sending
chills through every thinking person, not to mention an nonelected occupant
of the White House who has taken it upon himself to declare war without
end on some enemy defined only as "terrorists," when the Constitution
says only Congress can issue a declaration of war.
Where Solomon has erroneously called those who have been helping and
support Ruppert in his research "a loyal following," Steve
Rendall has ratcheted that up to "Ruppertites," implying that
they are nothing more than a bunch of mindless groupies. Shame!
Noam Chomsky, to some the father of the Establishment Left, who has
been persona non grata on corporate-controlled US airwaves recently
turned up on CNN with the "virtuous" Heritage Foundation fellow
and Washington retread William Bennett, who on a previous CNN appearance
with Paula Zahn dismissed Chomsky's bestseller "911" as appealing
to "the kooks in our midst." That insult apparently didn't
bother Chomsky one iota as he essentially agreed with Bennett that the
September 11 attacks were carried out by "terrorists" because
"they hate us."
Chip Berlet on Larry Bensky's Sunday Salon provided convoluted and erroneous
responses as to why military planes weren't scrambled the moment it
was known that a hijacking was in progress.
Said Berlet, "Why weren't there plans in place to scramble jets…why
wasn't there an assumption that hijackers would seize planes and fly
them into buildings?" And if you research every one of those questions,
what you find is information that goes back, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years about
discussions about the cost effectiveness of changing the way that hijackings
are responded to. Remember that the air traffic controllers were out
of New Hampshire, and they were sitting with a book in front of them,
telling them what to do in what order, okay? And if you look…and
this is all stuff that you can find, not on the web, but if you go to
government repositories, you'll look at documents, and they'll say things
like, 'You don't scramble planes until you've made contact with the
hijackers.' Now why? Because the assumption, which turns out to be false,
is the hijackers are either going to make a demand or want to land.
And that if you hijack [sic] planes before you're talking to them, they
could freak out and shoot the pilot. So you don't want planes flying
next to hijacked airliners until you're talking to the hijackers. Now
is that a bad idea, in retrospect? Sure it is, but it goes back 7 or
8 years."
Talk about pulling stuff from thin air. The FAA's and Joint Chiefs of
Staff's instructions pertaining to hijackings say nothing about communicating
with hijackers before taking action. To the contrary, it is the absence
of communication with a plane that makes the situation an emergency.
Has Berlet forgotten that in October 1999, when a twin-engine Lear jet
carrying golf champion Payne Stewart and four others lost contact with
ground controllers, shortly after taking off from Orlando International
Airport in Florida for what was supposed to be a routine flight to Dallas,
the FAA requested help from the military? Two Air Force F-16s were dispatched
and followed the runaway plane as it raced across a half-dozen states,
then ran out of fuel and crashed in central South Dakota, killing all
aboard.
It gets better: "'Why weren't the planes flown out of New Jersey
instead of the Cape?' Well, because the citizens of New Jersey who live
around the air force base, which is being dismantled little by little,
McGuire Air Force Base and several other air force bases which have
been being deconditioned and lowered in status for the last 30 years
because suburbs grew up around them, and they don't want jet fighters
scrambling from those bases all the time."
All the time? How many planes have been hijacked or lost contact with
ground controllers in the last 10 years? Is there something else we
don't know about? And a New Jersey community's sensitivity to noise
would hardly be a factor in such circumstances.
Yes, it is possible we could be wrong about the way the dots seem to
connect. But September 11 did not occur in a vacuum and more and more
keeps coming out each day. Moreover, the nonelected occupant of the
Oval Office and his cronies by manipulating energy costs—oil,
gas, electricity—started the economy on a downward spiral even
before they were handed the White House. Now we not only have an economy
in tatters, an empty treasury, the Social Security trust fund and the
federal workers' pension fund tapped out to hide the fact Washington
has defaulted on its loans, an illegal war that has been decreed to
go on into perpetuity, but an administration that in a little more than
16 months has broken the record for scandals.
So how do we explain this behavior of the lily-livered left? If the
Ivory Tower gentlemen are leaving it to us in the trenches to get to
the truth, because they won't dirty their hands to help us collect the
bits and pieces to connect the dots, why then are they so ferociously
attacking our efforts? Are they currying favor with someone? Is it time
for us to start following the money?
Conspiracy theories and real reporters (Carla Binion,
Online Journal) www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/Binion061702/binion061702.html
Under close examination, the "structuralism vs. conspiracy theory"
dialectic used by the Left media gatekeepers to give an air of intellectual
legitimacy to their stubborn thought-policing quickly reveals itself to
be laden with logical contradictions and blind spots.
An Incorrect Political Memoir (Daniel Brandt, 1992)
www.namebase.org/news03.html
Written in the immediate aftermath of the furor over Oliver Stone's JFK,
this fascinating essay examines the ideological crusades of "Leftists"
such as Chip Berlet against conspiracy research, and connects this agenda
with the ascendance of politically correct identity politics and multiculturalism
which neutered the Left as a viable opponent of the ruling elite, which
surely must delight the powers that be. The conclusions of this essay
have been confirmed many times over during the past decade (especially
by Bob Feldman's research which shows a pattern of CIA-linked
establishment foundations favoring and encouraging the monopoly of identity
politics on the Left).
America's Extremist Center (Sam Smith, Progressive Review. 1995) http://emporium.turnpike.net/P/ProRev/center.htm
This 1995 article makes a strong case that anticonspiratorial
dogmatism has little to do with enlightened, progressive thinking,
and instead bears its lineage from centrist liberal elitism and McCarthyism.
Also, there is interesting historical background on the scapegoating of
the grassroots right in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (in
which Left anti-conspiracist John Foster "Chip" Berlet played
a leading role). Although the issues and events being dealt with currently
are different, this is still a timely and relevant analysis of media hype
and the myths of extremist "paranoia."
| How
the establishment corrupted Dissent |
These international conferences and teach-ins are often financed by government
grants and donations from the large private foundations (Ford Foundation,
MacArthur Foundation, etc.).
This "funding of dissent" plays a key role. It essentially
circumscribes the boundaries of dissent. In other words, one cannot meaningfully
question the legitimacy of the goverments and business corporations while,
at the same time, expecting them to foot the bill. The "funding of
dissent ensures that these organizations will criticize the system without
going against their government and corporate sponsors. In other words,
they will not take a lead in the development of a meaningful mass movement.
Many of the organizations involved have, in the process, become "lobbyists,"
often funded by the governments or intergovernmental organizations. Demands,
petitions and declarations are foumulated to little avail, largely with
respect to issues of debt cancellation, environmental standards and macro-economic
reform, etc.
Michel Chossudovsky's superb 9/11 book. pg. 138
BUILDING MEANINGFUL MASS MOVEMENT
www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/9c.htm
John Taylor Gatto, Underground History of American Education, Chapter
9: The Cult of Scientific Management
The Ford System And The Kronstadt Commune
"An anti-intellectual, a hater of individuals," is the way
Richard Stites characterizes Taylor in Revolutionary Dreams, his book
on the utopian beginning of the Soviet Era. Says Stites, "His system
is the basis for virtually every twisted dystopia in our century, from
death under the Gas Bell in Zamiatin’s We for the unspeakable
crime of deviance, to the maintenance of a fictitious state-operated
underground in Orwell’s 1984 in order to draw deviants into disclosing
who they are."
Oddly enough, an actual scheme of dissident entrapment was the brainchild
of J.P. Morgan, his unique contribution to the Cecil Rhodes–inspired
"Round Table" group. Morgan contended that revolution
could be subverted permanently by infiltrating the underground and subsidizing
it. In this way the thinking of the opposition could be known as it
developed and fatally compromised. Corporate, government, and foundation
cash grants to subversives might be one way to derail the train of insurrection
that Hegelian theory predicted would arise against every ruling class.
It is interesting that there is virtually no discussion of foundation
funding on the "left." Some right-wing critics of the peace
and environmental movements have reported on this, but their ideological
bias (and often some severe mistakes stemming from that bias) serve to
turn off many peace advocates and environmentalists from considering the
real problems here.
One example is
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12423
"Charitable" Foundations: ATMs for the Left
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 2, 2004
Front Page is a neo-conservative publication that has little, if any
credibility in liberal circles, yet part of this article is very accurate
(and part is nonsense). If you ignore the snide red-baiting and other
forms of hate speech in the article, there is a kernel of truth worth
looking at (the role of wealthy elites in funding opposition movements).
The Front Page article is correct in noting how this money flow can easily
create instant organizations (American Coming Together was a notorious
example of this during the 2004 election campaign - instantly created
to support Kerry, and instantly dissolved after the election - ACT as
an organization refused to prepare for the obvious electoral fraud even
though many working for the group understood the threat.)
Front Page magazine delights in exposing the funding scam of certain
elite liberal groups, but is noticeably silent about discussing their
own paymasters and the much larger flood of money flowing into neo-conservative
think tanks.
It is sad - and predictable - that the largest sums of foundation funds
flow toward the blandest parts of the liberal pantheon of discourse. Investigative
journalists who dig the most into deep politics (how the system really
works) rarely get foundation grants from anyone.
In August 2003, Molly Ivins wrote a column that concluded that there
wasn't much to investigate about 911, since it was obviously the fault
of Saudi Arabia. www.oilempire.us/saudi.html
Perhaps if the liberal consensus was to examine the evidence that
9/11 was not a surprise and the failure of the Air Force to follow standard
operating procedures her column would have focused on these issues. Her
comments about 9/11 were the liberal equivalent of "pack journalism."
In September 2003, she wrote "There is a general consensus
on both the left and right that we need to get more people over there
[to Iraq], take control, and fix the lights and water ... If it takes
more American troops, I suggest we send more American troops."
However, the United Arab Emirates managed to rebuild a hospital in Iraq
in a week (as a gift to their neighbors), something the US occupation
forces do not seem interested in doing. More US troops in Iraq will not
ease the humanitarian crises there, and would only prolong the civilian
suffering.
| Commentary
from "Questions Questions" |
Those who have
fully studied the issues and facts concerning 9/11 and the Bush administration's
inexplicable coverup and lies understand rationally that this is not a
topic of "conspiracy theory" but instead a true scandal of serious
proportions. This can no longer be denied. It
is a scandal which, if aggressively pursued by the media, should have
helped hamstring and sideline the Bush administration months ago, which
would have made it politically impossible for them to push ahead with
their war plans in the first place.
www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/0920_response.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/05/265330.shtml
The hour is late, and it's time to get down to brass tacks: there is no
legitimate critique of the "War on Terror", no legitimate anti-war
position, which does not place discussion of the 9/11 cover-up and the
impressive evidence for US government complicity in the spotlight —
front and center. To claim a dissident or anti-war position while
accepting the official story of how and why 9/11 happened (including establishment-crafted
"limited hangout" spin) is a self-contradiction — hypocrisy,
to be blunt — and this has in fact been the case since
around the end of 2001, by which time a formidable body of evidence and
unanswered questions exposing official lies had already been amassed by
diligent independent researchers.
www.questionsquestions.net/topics/left_gatekeepers.html
investigative report: journalist Bob Feldman follows the money trail to
"Left" media organizations that have sought out funding from
the big establishment foundations. Are the interests of the people
being served by "dissidents" who are being subsidized by the
agencies of the ruling class whom they should be exposing? What does this
say about the motivations behind the Left establishment's ideological
warfare against conspiracy researchers, and their adoption of an increasingly
watered-down analytical view which fails to look closely at the inner
power structures and conspiracies of the ruling elite?
www.questionsquestions.net/topics/left_911.html
The Left establishment's attack on 9/11 skeptics
Soon after revelations concerning Bush administration prior knowledge
of the 9/11 attacks ("Memogate"), a number of well-known
media "liberals" and "progressives" launched a heavy-handed
series of broadsides against independent 9/11 researchers who had been
developing alternative theories in response to the deeply flawed and fraudulent
official story. Why would they do this, at precisely the point that the
Bush administration was clearly sweating bullets and in deep trouble?
This question is particularly important in light of the fact that the
anti-conspiracy critics have not been able (nor apparently willing) to
articulate their own theory of what happened on 9/11 (and why) which can
explain the devastating evidence and contradictions that have been exposed
by independent researchers. Instead of offering a credible explanation,
the gatekeepers merely saw fit to pathologize 9/11 skeptics as "paranoid
conspiracy nuts" and "a danger to our movement."
Not surprisingly, the rank and file didn't buy into the hype—nor
were many convinced by the gatekeepers' offhand, passionless calls for
an official investigation. Interest in alternative 9/11 reporting continued
to grow, and by the time that members of 9/11 victim's families began
publicly demanding an end to the government cover-up and even mainstream
media outlets such as the NY Times were admitting that the lack of an
independent investigatory commission was "extraordinary," the
Left media gatekeepers backed down and adopted a new tactic of silent
stonewalling and tacit support for the official story.
www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/corn2.html
Corn is pursuing a debunking approach of "divide and conquer"
towards the evidence. This type of tactic reminds me of a slick mob lawyer
who gets his client off the hook by knocking down each piece of evidence
one by one on legal technicalities, dazzling and overwhelming the jury
and distracting from the fact that the "big picture" with all
the pieces put together carefully is quite consistent and shows an identifiable
pattern of wrongdoing. Another problem is that dilligent and honest
research into some "conspiracy theories" quickly reveals how
some "leftist" media pundits like Corn have for years chronically
downplayed how corrupt and blood-soaked the system really is,
all the way up to the top. This in itself does far more damage to the
truth than all the efforts of the world's Karl Roves and Ari Fleischers.
Really, the tautological insistence by Corn and others that "conspiracy
theory" is the ultimate nemesis of activism against the "real"
problems of government is a divisive fear tactic which exploits the genuine
concerns of those who may be vulnerable to worries about whether they
are being a "good activist" or a "good progressive"
who is making a practical difference. As usual, it is brought
up here as an ex-cathedra dictum without justification or explanation
(sometimes, when an explanation is offered, it is based on no
more than an assertion that "conspiracy theory" does not conform
with orthodox "structuralist" or "institutional" old-left
ideology). Normon Solomon has been even more heavy-handed in this regard,
with arm-waving Chicken Little announcements about people like Ruppert
being "very dangerous to the movement."
www.questionsquestions.net/documents/kpfa_ruppert.html
KPFA censors 9/11 investigator Mike Ruppert
In a couple previous essays I have written in utter frustration about
the dysfunctional, petulantly closed-minded rejection by some on the Left
of any information or ideas concerning 9/11 and the "War on Terror"
which can be seen from certain hard-wired ideological viewpoints as "conspiracy
theory." For a long time I have sensed, at gut level, the presence
of a smug and defensive reaction formation on the part of many old-school
Leftists and political activists which leads them to disparage any controversial
allegations or theories about government corruption which are either outside
their safe comfort zone or do not fit neatly within their favored ideological
narrative. In addition, I am both amused and appalled to see those types
often borrow a tactic which was originally invented by establishment pundits
and the corporate media: arbitrarily labeling outspoken whistleblowers
against deep, systemic government criminality and conspiracy as "right
wing extremists."
I probably could not fairly describe myself as leftist (I used to, but
after having exposed myself to a much broader spectrum of viewpoints,
I have moved on to a more heretical and agnostic view of things); however,
as I have written previously, I feel that the Left has a very critical
role to play in broaching an open discussion of the current conflict and
presenting viable alternatives to the terrifying far-right juggernaut
that has taken control. I join many others in feeling a great disappointment
in how the Left has handled 9/11 so far (please see my previous editorial,
Now... Will the Real Skeptic Please Stand Up? ).
The disappointment has turned to outright anger with news of what seems
to be a concerted campaign by a few of the crusty
old guard
of the leftist pantheon to keep
the research and ideas of independent investigator Mike Ruppert off the
air at KPFA. Whose side are they on? What follows is a public comment
from Ruppert, released 2 April, with an appended commentary from UC Berkeley
professor Peter Dale Scott (a respected political writer who also serves
as a contributing editor to Ruppert's newsletter, From the Wilderness
). For years, Ruppert has been a consistent and vocal supporter of KPFA
and Pacifica Radio, which makes the situation even more absurd.
from Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness
www.questionsquestions.net/documents/kpfa_ruppert.html
A second and more insidious attack has been launched by Norman Solomon
of FAIR. In a secretive internal memo Solomon has implied that I am
a right-wing racist, accused me of being sloppy, and again failed to
discuss a single one of the documented facts I have reported on since
September 11th.
Solomon's arguments included the fact the one of the web sites I recommend
is that of Matt Drudge. Dishonestly, Solomon did not mention that I
do not recommend or endorse Drudge for his editorial position. The reason
that I recommend the site is because, from the home page, Drudge maintains
links to about 100 of the world's largest press web sites, including
that of The Nation. As one continually immersed in research I find it
a convenient place to go and read stories from all over the world and
just use the "Back" button to go to another site. I have been
emailed that Drudge even maintains a link to Solomon's site. I just
looked but couldn't find it — there are so many links on the page.
Solomon's second aspersion on my integrity as a journalist is the fact
that I quoted Oliver North in one of my stories. Anyone who knows me
and my story is aware that there are few people in the world that I
like less than Oliver North. But an effective writer often quotes his
enemies when their words serve to make his point. Such is the essence
of debate. Solomon apparently knows little on this subject.
Solomon concludes his internal character assassination by implying that
I am a right-wing racist. He neglects to mention that after my televised
confrontation with CIA Director John Deutch in 1996, I was endorsed
by the Black American Political Action Committee (BAPAC) and the Los
Angeles (Black) Baptist Ministerial Conference. He forgets to mention
that I have spoken to the IWW International and for the All African
People's Revolutionary Party. Nor does he mention that I have shared
a podium with former Black Panther Dhoruba bin-Wahad or been publicly
addressed as "My white son," by Pacifica Board member Dick
Gregory. There is nothing anywhere in my history or any of my writings
to support a charge of right-wing or racist. I made Chip Berlet retract
libelous statements to that effect last year and I have the records
to prove that also.
But the mindless and the unqualified leaders within Pacifica will take
a slight, offhand comment in shameful co-dependency and thus disserve
their greatest responsibility — to fearlessly serve the truth.
Unless they are willing to shoulder that responsibility they have no
place protecting public airwaves.
It is my research, and the fact that the facts cannot be disputed,
that is really what this oppressive censorship is all about.
Neither Solomon nor Corn nor Martin Lee nor any of those who I am told
are working feverishly to ban me from Pacifica's airwaves will comment
upon the documented facts of my research — except by innuendo.
None of them will address my documentation of insider trading before
9-11. Not one of them will address the undisputed court evidence that
Delmart Vreeland wrote a warning of the 9-11 attacks a month before
they happened. None of them will address the fact that fighters were
deliberately not scrambled after the simultaneous hijackings of four
commercial airliners when it has been standard procedure for more than
25 years to do so. Not one of them will address the fact that Zbigniew
Brzezinski wrote in 1997 that the next war would be where we are fighting
today and that the American people would never support such a venture
absent an attack on America of the magnitude of Pearl Harbor. None of
them will dare come near me and my research in the healthy spirit of
intellectual honesty that is required for a democracy to flourish because
they cannot win that fight.
www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0518_ruppert911.html
Mike Ruppert on Amy Goodman and the 9/11 Latecomers
Brian Salter, questionsquestion.net
18 May 03
It has been a full year since the left establishment gatekeepers'
war of personal attacks and debunkery against 9/11 skeptics kicked into
high gear, in a notorious phase which followed the "Bush knew"
scandal. Foremost among their targets was Mike Ruppert and his news service,
From the Wilderness.
In his latest article on the development of US geopolitical strategy in
the Middle East, Ruppert has penned an introductory statement laying out
a clear truth that is now unavoidable: he has been fully vindicated. Ruppert
and many others who have struggled against the arrogant indifference of
this well-connected clique of gatekeepers to bring a full discussion of
the 9/11 coverup to the progressive / left media and the antiwar movement
now hold the high ground. Those who have now found themselves on the trailing
edge owe their audiences much more than mere catching up and "me
too" in order to restore their legitimacy... to say the least.
The hour is late, and it's time to get down to brass tacks: there
is no legitimate critique of the "War on Terror", no legitimate
anti-war position, which does not place discussion of the 9/11 cover-up
and the impresive evidence for US government complicity in the spotlight
— front and center. To claim a dissident or anti-war position while
accepting the official story of how and why 9/11 happened (including establishment-crafted
"limited hangout" spin) is a self-contradiction — hypocrisy,
to be blunt — and this has in fact been the case since around the
end of 2001, by which time a formidable body of evidence and unanswered
questions exposing offical lies had already been amassed by dilligent
independent researchers. Those of us who have been engaged in
getting the truth out on 9/11 have had to make these arguments over and
over — to the point of mental fatigue. It is satisfying
to be able to see leading researchers like Ruppert vindicated, and to
know that it is now the stubborn gatekeepers who have the explaining to
do. Their atrocious mishandling of the 9/11 issue is no water-under-the-bridge
error in judgement, but instead reflects a deep-seated pathology which
must continue to be exposed and understood, lest a Johnny-come-lately
epiphany, such as appears to be occuring with Amy Goodman, wind up being
followed later by yet more episodes of ridicule and censorship towards
other key issues that may emerge in the future.
Ruppert's statement follows:
Sometimes pointing out that one was right is not about ego. Sometimes
it's about saying that if others had listened, a lot of lives might
have been saved because things would have been handled differently.
It is about saying that there are things that can be changed now to
prevent that kind of damage from being carried forward... one more time.
On May 14 I watched Amy Goodman, producer and anchor of Pacifica Radio's
"Democracy Now," appear on CNN discussing the bombings in
Saudi Arabia and recently well-publicized statements by Senator Bob
Graham -- former chair of the Senate intelligence committee -- suggesting
that the Bush administration was engaging in a cover-up of 9-11. It
was a pyrrhic vindication for me. Make no mistake, Graham is nothing
more than damage control as he describes what happened as "intelligence
failures." He should not be trusted under any circumstances. But
Goodman's repeated focus on the inconsistencies, deceptions and lies
of 9/11 -- on CNN no less -- was a bittersweet and ironic validation
of positions I took on three Pacifica stations (WBAI, KPFA and KPFK)
more than 18 months ago. I was labeled as: a money grubbing,
conspiracy theorist; libelously as a fired ex-cop; and as an unstable
mental case who did sloppy research by the likes of David Corn of The
Nation, Norman Solomon, Larry Bensky, Sonali Kolhatkar and Marc Cooper.
Goodman has merely ignored my work. Yet, according to someone who gave
it to her, she has had my tape "The Truth and Lies of 9-11"
for many months. And she knows that what I was saying eighteen months
ago is exactly what Graham is trying to spin now. I know this because
many people who emailed her asking her to have me as a guest sent me
copies. Gore Vidal has had the tape for quite a while too. Vidal used
every one of the quotes from Zbigniew Brzezinski's book "The Grand
Chessboard" which I brought to public light in the fall of 2001
in his own lengthy 9/11 article and conveniently forgot to mention the
person who did the work or what he was trying to say. Now, a
day late and a dollar short, the Lilly Livered Left has arrived on the
scene with the brilliant observation, "Wait, we have to look at
9/11! We have to look at 9/11!"
This is so much more than "I told you so." The danger
and power of a fascist empire in warp drive to control global oil reserves
and crush opposition grows every day. This is all about the fact that
the consequences arising from the peak and inevitable decline of world
oil production are going to be the most cataclysmic events in human
history. That realization is all too slowly dawning upon people
who might be in a position to change the way this bloody game is being
played. Richard Heinberg's new book "The Party's Over" and
the diligent work of world-class oil experts like Colin Campbell of
the Association for the Study of Peak Oil- www.peakoil.net - are finally
making inroads into the collective consciousness of governments, business
and activists.
But the herd always seems to be ten paces behind the Empire.
Having been vindicated so many times I point again to Saudi Arabia and
also now to West Africa. Nine months ago FTW wrote that Saudi Arabia
would likely be the next stop on the Empire's world tour after Iraq.
Little noticed details of the recent bombings in Riyadh confirm it.
And recent developments in Africa, especially Nigeria - the world's
sixth largest oil producer - are sounding alarms that al Qaeda may be
about to reveal an African face, including that of Osama bin Laden.
Every time my analysis is vindicated, every time an FTW prediction comes
true, it is more affirmation that Peak Oil is real. And if Peak Oil
is real, the consequences of it are going to devastate human civilization
within our lifetimes. They are doing exactly that right now, today.
It started on 9/11. It doesn't take a genius to read a map, just someone
who is willing to look at it and choose the right road - the road less
traveled. September 11th is the place where the empire remains
vulnerable; there and with the criminal handling of taxpayer money and
the continued looting of the Treasury. - MCR
The rest of the article can be found at FTW:
Saudi Arabia, West Africa -- Next Stops in the Infinite War for Oil
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051503_saudi_africa.html
www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/denial.html
"Left" establishment denial validates
Iraq war
An ongoing political debate since 9/11 has concerned the
emergence of a "pro-war" Left, in particular among centrists,
who have lined up wholeheartedly with the military policies of the "War
on Terror", including the looming war on Iraq. According to the conventional
wisdom, a great rift has emerged in the Left between pro-war and anti-war
factions. I don't necessarily see it this way, however. While there appears
to be a rift judging by rhetoric and ideology, I nonetheless consider
almost the entirety of what one could call the "establishment Left"
to be pro-war, whether they say so or not. It all comes down to a state
of denial about the underlying facts of this so-called "War on Terror."
Let's be frank. At the heart of the Left establishment's
pro-war stance is their continuing refusal to recognize the fundamental
legitimacy of alternative 9/11 research and the imperative to question
the US government's lies about what happened, how, and why. The
Left establishment have bought the government story hook line and sinker
from day one, and have refused to make even the weakest challenges
to an ever-growing mountain of contradictions, lies, and coverups, even
in areas which are factually unambiguous and require no speculation or
deduction at all, such as the still-unexplained suspicious insider stock
trades from just before 9/11. Now, there is just a little cowardly lip
service being paid here and there, but so little effort or passion behind
it that it's more of an insult to the truth than saying nothing at all.
The Left media figures who are now strutting around
with their "anti-war" poses vis a vis Iraq and picking apart
every word from the Bush administration are being flagrantly hypocritical
if they do not also halt their own war of silence and join in the urgent
grassroots effort to investigate and
expose the still obscured truth about 9/11. The lies from the
Bush administration about 9/11 prior warnings
and the impossible inconsistencies in the official narrative about the
9/11 "terrorist" plot are every bit as serious and deserving
of attention as the farrago of B.S. and disinfo being served up in attempts
to justify the new Iraq war. There is a HUGE double-standard being applied
here.
By having ridiculed alternative 9/11 researchers
as "conspiracy theorists," creating a reprehensibly childish
atmosphere of stifling peer pressure to keep the subject a taboo, the
Left establishment have taken up a position inherently defending the very
pretext for the "War on Terror." Folks, read the goddamn
establishment analysis these days; read the latest issue of Foreign Affairs
from cover to cover. The now severly dubious idea that al Qaeda terrorists
were able to evade the giant US intel establishment and bypass all defenses,
taking us by "surprise," is EXACTLY the singular pretext for
the "Bush Doctrine" of pre-emptive military action against other
nations in the name of "defence." It is EXACTLY the singular
pretext that has ultimately brought us to the brink of Armageddon in the
Persian Gulf, and on top of this, even the factions of the US establishment
that don't want to rush into war on Iraq are merely arguing that handling
the Iraq situation poorly will endanger continuing the "War on Terror"
in the future. And much of the "Left" establishment is currently
playing into this good-cop / bad-cop game. The whole situation stinks
to high heaven.
The core pretext of US war policy is well summed up in
an article from Italy's La Stampa last month: "Deterrence is bound
to end up in history books, like all the relics of the Cold War: from
now on, the new US defense doctrine will be called pre-emptive strike....
This is a doctrine that was born from September 11, and that seems to
have been written exactly to justify the war in Iraq, but it may apply
to any country or terrorist organization that threatens US national security,
and, therefore, it is likely to have a historical impact that will go
well beyond the current crisis."
Could it be any more clear? Failure to question
the 9/11 pretext is a failure to question this war, and those
which will follow. A position which tacitly and gullibly takes for granted
the official narrative of the 9/11 attack (more appropriately known as
the "officially approved US government conspiracy theory") is
inherently a pro-war position, rhetoric notwithstanding.
It's time for everyone to deal with reality and look the
lies of 9/11 straight in the eye. I'm sick of the egoistical blindness
and foot dragging of the "Left" on this. Even from the most
cautious interpretation of the known facts, the Bush administration and
certain high US military officials are guilty of -- at the very least
-- TREASONOUS NEGLIGENCE.... The fact that the Bush administration has
gotten this far in their aggressive war plans the first place is a F-ing
travesty. I'm furious, and none of the current robotic, cookie-cutter,
single-issue "anti-war" bluster from the "Left" establishment
impresses me much at all.
A question: how likely is it that the Bush administration
would have survived the summer's corporate scandals if they had already
been under pressure from a massive surge of hard-hitting public allegations
and protest for a 9/11 investigation following the "Memogate"
scandal last spring?
This was not to be. Instead, the Solomons, Alberts, Benskys,
Berlets, Coopers, Corns, and their crusading followers on the Left helped
at a crucial juncture to nip it in the bud with their pompous, utterly
inappropriate, and ill-timed "conspiracy" bashing.
Now, we may be utterly screwed. The Fourth Reich's burning
of the Reichstag is shaping up to have been a smashing success.
Brian Salter
questionsquestions.net
3 October 2002
(modified slightly, 15 February 2003) |
