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Why government shills & intellectual cowards LOVE the term "conspiracy theory"

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« on: August 24, 2010, 10:47:10 am »

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/ridicule-of-conspiracy-theories-focuses.html

Ridicule of Conspiracy Theories Focuses On Diffusing Criticism of the Powerful

Washington's Blog
Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The label "conspiracy theory" is commonly used to try to discredit criticism of the powerful in government or business.

For example, just this week - after Tony Blair was confronted by the Iraq Inquiry with evidence that he had used lies to sell the Iraq war - Blair dismissed the entire Iraq Inquiry as simply being part of Britain's "obsession with conspiracy theories". (Not only did Blair know that Saddam possessed no WMDs, but the French this week accused Blair of using of ‘Soviet-style' propaganda in run-up to the Iraq war).

Of course, the American government has been busted in the last couple of years in numerous conspiracies. For example, William K. Black - professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - says that the government's entire strategy now - as during the S&L crisis - is to cover up how bad things are ("the entire strategy is to keep people from getting the facts").Similarly , 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's during the "Latin American Crisis", and the government's response was to cover up their insolvency.

And the government spied on American citizens (even before 9/11 ... confirmed here and here), while saying "we don't spy". The government tortured prisoners in Iraq, but said "we don't torture".

In other words, high-level government officials have conspired to cover up the truth.

And Tom Brokaw notes:

    All wars are based on propaganda.

A concerted effort to produce propaganda is a conspiracy.

Acceptable Versus Unacceptable Conspiracy Theories

Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy. The heads of Enron were found guilty of conspiracy, as was the head of Adelphia. Numerous lower-level government officials have been found guilty of conspiracy. See this, this, this, this and this.

Time Magazine's financial columnist Justin Fox writes:

    Some financial market conspiracies are real ...

    Most good investigative reporters are conspiracy theorists, by the way.

Indeed, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven by the evidence.

But - while people might admit that corporate executives and low-level government officials might have engaged in conspiracies - they may be strongly opposed to considering that the wealthiest or most powerful might possibly have done so.

Indeed, those who most loudly attempt to ridicule and discredit conspiracy theories tend to focus on defending against criticism involving the powerful.

This may be partly due to psychology: it is scary for people to admit that those who are supposed to be their "leaders" protecting them may in fact be human beings with complicated motives who may not always have their best interests in mind. And see this.

[Continued...]


http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/02/there-are-no-conspiracies-because-daddy.html

There are No Conspiracies Because Daddy Will Always Protect Us

Washington's Blog
Thursday, February 11, 2010

Yesterday, I wrote:

    It is scary for people to admit that those who are supposed to be their "leaders" protecting them may in fact be human beings with complicated motives who may not always have their best interests in mind.

Indeed, long-term psychological studies show that approximately one-quarter of the American population has an "authoritarian personality", where they look for a "strong leader" to protect them (that's why even after his lies were exposed, Bush still stayed at approximately a 25% approval rating).

Authoritarians not only don't want to hear that the most powerful people might be acting against their interest, they will aggressively defend against any such information.

But it's not just the quarter of the population that can be said to clinically suffer from authoritarian personality disorder.

All of us - to one degree or another - have invested tremendous hope in the idea that our leaders and institutions will protect us.

As just one example, Americans have traditionally believed that the "invisible hand of the market" means that capitalism will benefit us all without requiring any oversight. However, as the New York Times notes, the real Adam Smith did not believe in a magically benevolent market which operates for the benefit of all without any checks and balances:

[Continued...]


http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3001.shtml

See no evil

By David Cogswell
Online Journal
Feb 27, 2008
 
I recently had a conversation with a person I'll just call "a successful writer," and when I mentioned an idea that he classified as "conspiracy theory" he said this: "The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they really take a toll on readership. Many people write you off as a conspiracy nut and the result is that you don't get to have your voice in the mainstream dialogue."

Now that gave me pause. It was a slap in the face that forced me to confront the question: Why write? I had to consider the question of whether I want to participate in a dialogue in which one must wear blinders and observe strict boundaries to the free flow of logical discourse or thought. Must I stymie the flow of rational thought whenever I reach a point deemed unacceptable by the establishment? Let's be clear with our terms. The term "conspiracy theory" is not a literal description, it's a label for ideas that cross certain borders, in particular, ideas that suggest abuses of power and illegal activity by people in high places. Conspiracy theory is the label for forbidden thought. The problem with "going there" is not just that one can be proven wrong. It is that it is forbidden to even think about it or discuss it. If one disobeys, one is exiled from the community.

The fact that the term "conspiracy theory" has no literal meaning is one of the many things that was firmly established by the events of 9/11. The official explanation of events of that day is unequivocably a theory of conspiracy. It's the ultimate conspiracy theory for the world's most spectacular crime, but it's not called a conspiracy theory. That term is reserved for any ideas that contradict the official story. This is a very important point. Conspiracy theories are not about conspiracies, they are about forbidden thought. The label "conspiracy theory" is a stop sign on the avenues of rational thought and inquiry. It says, "Stop here. Entrance forbidden."

When one reaches the stop sign, one must turn around, one must find another way, must bend the very laws of physics if that is what it takes, or throw them out altogether in order to avoid following a certain train of thought to its logical conclusion. In 2008 the abuses and outrages of the American political system have ballooned to such monstrous proportions, that there is very little room to think at all if one wishes to remain respectable. That's why the noise from the official media propaganda system is so overwhelmingly loud. The box that we are forced to contain our thoughts within is getting so small there is barely enough room within it to scratch one's nose.

[Continued...]


http://www.prisonplanet.com/george-carlin-%E2%80%93-conspiracy-theorists.html

George Carlin – Conspiracy Theorists

You Tube
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

       

The late George Carlin talks about how the term “conspiracy theorist” is a label used by the establishment to dismiss the idea that powerful people might get together and actually plan anything.
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« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2010, 10:48:00 am »

http://www.gatecreepers.com/entries/exclusive-debunking-myths-on-conspiracy-theorie/

Debunking Myths on Conspiracy Theories

Article written by Gatecreepers.
 
The purpose of this article is to redress a number of general myths concerning so-called 'conspiracy theories', repeated by media organisations and other self-proclaimed guardians of the orthodoxy, as well as people who have been erroneously convinced that conspiracy theories are intellectual aberrations rather than the acknowledgment of a common historical and social phenomenon.

This document does not claim that every event is the product of a conspiracy. It remains true, however, that conspiracies are far more common than admitted by the establishment. Whether conspiracy or coincidence was involved, we believe that the matter should be arbitrated by evidence rather than falsehoods on the alleged motives or state of minds of alternative researchers.

For the purposes of this guide, a conspiracy theory may be defined as:

    A theory detailing the involvement of two or more people who have secretly or otherwise conspired to commit an act that is against the public interest, and furthermore who may have conspired to cover up these acts in concert with the media and other authorities.

Conspiracy theories should not be confused with other schools of alternate reality. Such claims may include:

*  Supernatural claims. Elite groups may believe and act upon them, but those beliefs alone do not pertain to conspiracy as discussed in this document.

*  Mythological or religious claims. A theory that an occult group engages in subversion according to its religious beliefs may be considered a conspiracy theory, but interpretations of religion and scriptures are not covered by this manual.

*  Claims pertaining to alternative science. The act itself of covering up scientific discoveries is a conspiracy, but the legitimacy of the scientific claims are to be determined by researchers with the proper qualifications.

*  Existential claims. Claims pertaining to the alleged existence of hidden or unobservable phenomena or beings (such as aliens) are not in and of themselves conspiracy theories. Inexperienced proponents of such claims however may attempt to justify their lack of evidence with a conspiracy theory, usually that the evidence is covered up by the government or the entity alleged to exist (in most cases, however, this is a straw man). This secondary claim must be addressed apart from the primary claim with at least evidence that the alleged conspirators believe in the existence of the alleged phenomena, and that they have made attempts to cover it up.

If the entity is alleged to be a participating actor in a conspiracy, then its existence must be proven and the entire claim must be treated as a conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy myths may be divided into the following categories:

*  Claims that discredit proponents of conspiracy theories as legitimate researchers

Ad Hominem attacks are often leveled at conspiracy theorists to label them as paranoid, delusional, extremist, hyperbolic or mentally incompetent. In the case of academics, attempts will be made to undermine their credibility by labeling them as incompetent, unprofessional, or lacking objectivity, or by publicising issues of their lives or beliefs that are unrelated to the theories they propose.

*  Claims that associate conspiracy theories with group behaviour or psychological pathology

This category is a subset of the first category, but it gets special mention because a large amount of anti-conspiracy propaganda aims at using scientific-sounding theories to equate it with paranoia, frivolous fantasies or security blankets.

Claims of this nature are usually made by purported experts from various academic fields. Like the specifically listed claims such as #1, #5, #9, #13, #20, #21 and #22, other claims trying to pin conspiracy theories on group behaviour and psychological disorders are groundless and pseudo-scientific.

In extreme cases of demonisation, there may be attempts to conflate belief in conspiracies with paranoid delusion. As pointed out in Myth #16, pathologising anti-establishment researchers has been done in many authoritarian regimes such as current Communist China and the historical Soviet Union, with various labels ranging respectively from 'political maniac' to 'sluggishly progressing schizophrenic'.

There may also be attempts to pin belief in conspiracies on sociological reasons, such as alleged needs to 'make sense of a traumatic event' and similarly formulated 'theories'. Those claims are usually found in articles which, despite being written by experts in their own field, rarely cite or point to academic research, are filled with political bias and aim at discrediting a specific conspiracy that started to gain prominence. Articles of this nature are formulaic and often start with statements alleging that conspiracy theories are popular amongst average people and have accompanied most major events (Claim #29).

*  Claims made by academic scholars that delegitimise the role of conspiracies played in society and history

Many scholars reject conspiracy theories in favour of the so-called 'institutional' perspective, which ascribes events to the dynamics of institutions rather than organised groups. We do not believe that conspiracies and institutions are mutually exclusive; they often work together. Certain institutions that are taken for granted originated from conspiracies; likewise, institutional factors may explain what motivates people and groups to conspire.

We believe that the conspiratorial point of view has its merits because not all activities operate within recognised institutions. Hidden, extra-institutional groups can exert major influence in ways that are overlooked by institutionalists.

Possible reasons why conspiracy theories are frequent targets of ridicule may include:

*  Institutionalised intellectual elitism. Mainstream media personalities and academics may feel that their authority and experience are challenged by what they perceive to be 'amateur' research, while seeing themselves in the role of gatekeepers who filter the information to protect the public from what they view as 'unsuitable' information.

*  Deliberate propaganda campaigns aimed at protecting established truths. An example of such a practice has been documented by a declassified document admitting attempts by the CIA to use academics and the media to discredit alternative theories on the assassination of JFK. The document reveals that many of the myths still widespread today and debunked in this document originated from the CIA (see Countering Criticism of the Warren Report). Other documents reveal CIA infiltration of American and foreign media as well as academia (see How to co-opt academia and Operation Mockingbird).

*  The presence of unfounded and over the top conspiracy theories which undermine the credibility of more rational theories. It is speculated that many of those theories were deliberately spread in order to divide or ridicule research communities as well as confuse or turn away people who come across the alternative versions of the official story.

*  Perception of conspiracy theories as being part of a cultural phenomenon or fad rather than a serious investigation of the motives and actions of the ruling elite. Such perceptions are reinforced by stereotypical portrayals in movies and sitcoms, such as 1997 movie Conspiracy Theorist and Dale Gribble in King of the Hill. This stereotypical view of conspiracy theorists, however, appears to be limited to American culture; in fact the expression 'conspiracy theorist' itself appears to be an invention of the American media. Most equivalent terms in other languages are directly translated, sometimes awkwardly (such as in French "partisan de la théorie du complot"), and are not used to label other people to the extent that they in the United States. It is also mainly in American language that one finds expressions such as "tin-foil hat". It is thought that those cultural caricatures originate from the controversies around the JFK assassinations, possibly with initial or on-going prompting from the CIA (see point #2).

The following is a collection of general statements purporting to dismiss conspiracy theories heard in various places from mainstream media articles to discussion forums.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2010, 10:49:02 am »

http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_203.shtml

Paranoid shift

By Michael Hasty
Online Journal
Jan 10, 2004

Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in American ideals of “freedom” and “democracy.“ They really only wanted “absolute power.”

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit “sixty of Allen Dulles’ closest friends” to a polygraph test concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions again “in hell.”

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I call a “paranoid shift.” I recognize the phenomenon, because something similar happened to me.

Although I don’t remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the ‘60s. This was at the same time I was beginning to question the government’s actions in Vietnam. In fact, my personal “paranoid shift” probably began with the disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American foreign policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to believe.

But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people got together and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.

What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe this to be necessarily true.

In his book, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower,” William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of “conspiracy theory” an immediate “object of ridicule.” This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling class -- for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated with what Blum calls “the media’s most effective tool -- silence.” But in case somebody’s asking questions, all you have to do is say, “conspiracy theory,” and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words “conspiracy theory” (which seems more often, lately) it usually means someone is getting too close to the truth.

Take September 11 -- which I identify as the date my paranoia actually shifted, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Unless I’m paranoid, it doesn’t make any sense at all that George W. Bush, commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20 minutes after he was informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, listening to children read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the Number 2 man, Dick Cheney -- even knowing that “the commander” was on a mission in Florida -- nevertheless sat at his desk in the White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service dragged him out by the armpits.

Unless I’m paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon -- well over an hour after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking in progress. It also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks took place, after leaving explicit instructions that he not be disturbed -- which he wasn‘t.

In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat at various desks, inert. Why weren’t they in the “Situation Room?” Don’t any of them ever watch “West Wing?”

In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here on this side of the paranoid shift, it’s business as usual.

Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American forces to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for various imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent upon “a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor,” to gain the majority support of the American public to set the plans into motion. When the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way . . . and presto, the path to global domination was open.

Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous evidence that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored’s annual list of underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a New American Century (now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in 2000, contains the above “Pearl Harbor” quote.

Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly warned us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate “the masses?” Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he warned of the extreme “danger” to democracy of “the military industrial complex?” Was Barry Goldwater just being a quaint old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the Trilateral Commission was “David Rockefeller’s latest scheme to take over the world, by taking over the government of the United States?” Were Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy just being class traitors when they talked about a small group of wealthy elites who operate as a hidden government behind the government? Especially after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn’t we believe the late CIA Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA “owns everyone of any major significance in the major media?”

Why can’t we believe James Jesus Angleton -- a man staring eternal judgment in the face -- when he says that the founders of the Cold War national security state were only interested in “absolute power?” Especially when the descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in the White House.

Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen Dulles, CIA director, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and international business lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles’ law firm. As such, he was the beneficiary of Dulles’ miraculous ability to scrub the story of Bush’s treasonous investments in the Third Reich out of the news media, where it might have interfered with Bush’s political career . . . not to mention the presidential careers of his son and grandson.

Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October by investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette, reveal that Prescott Bush’s involvement in financing and arming the Nazis was more extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing director of the Union Banking Corporation, the American branch of Hitler’s chief financier’s banking network; but among the other companies where Bush was a director -- and which were seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act -- were a shipping line which imported German spies; an energy company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl fuel; and a steel company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug in the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these revelations have been largely ignored, with the exception of a single article in the Associated Press. And there are those, even on the left, who question the current relevance of this information.

But Prescott Bush’s dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a family pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering -- from George Senior’s sale of TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior’s zany misadventures in crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.

More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph Hitler and George W. Bush:

A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in military uniform (which no previous American president has ever done while in office). Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception. Open assaults on labor unions and workers’ rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism. Contempt for international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient “terrorist” attacks, to justify a police state and the suspension of liberties. A carefully manufactured image of “The Leader,” who’s still just a “regular guy” and a “moderate.” “Freedom” as the rationale for every action. Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget deficits and massive military spending.

And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism -- including the violent suppression of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture, assassination and concentration camps; and most important, Benito Mussolini’s preferred definition of “fascism” as “corporatism, because it binds together the interests of corporations and the state.”

By their fruits, you shall know them.

What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most paranoiacs: why don’t other people see these connections?

Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like Online Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research, and the Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing conspiracists and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we are only a furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod people in the live-action, 21st-century version of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits into our system, why more people don’t see the connections we do. Fortunately, there are a number of possible explanations.

First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the “cave art of the electronic age:” advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Karl Rove, gave credit for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass opinion to American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science of “public relations.” But the public relations universe available to the corporate empire that rules the world today makes the Goebbels operation look primitive. The precision of communications technology and graphics; the century of research on human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly capitalism, have combined to the point where “the manufacture of consent” can be set on automatic pilot.

A second major reason people won’t make the paranoid shift is that they are too fundamentally decent. They can’t believe that the elected leaders of our country, the people they’ve been taught through 12 years of public school to admire and trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers to their deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, just to satisfy their greed -- especially when they’re so rich in the first place. Besides, America is good, and the media are liberal and overly critical.

Third, people don’t want to look like fools. Being a “conspiracy theorist” is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of eminent experts on every TV and radio network is that any discussion of “oil” being a motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.” We can trust the integrity of our ‘no-bid” contracting in Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.” Of course, people sometimes make mistakes, but our military and intelligence community did the best they could on and before September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.”

Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.”

Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don’t make the paranoid shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world’s most powerful military and intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all three branches of government in the world’s only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the people’s votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don’t live in a particularly democratic system. And then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn’t be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal opposition, to serving as a “loyal resistance” -- like the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire’s hands, it would be doomed from the start.

Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a lot of work. It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in the empire’s technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines and transcending single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and applying energy at every level of government, local to global. It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as “terrorism.” In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A paradigm shift.

But as a paranoid, I’m ready to join the resistance. And the main reason is I no longer think that the “conspiracy” is much of a “theory.”

That the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was “probably” the result of “a conspiracy,” and that 70 percent of Americans agree with this conclusion, is not a “theory.” It’s fact.

That the Bay of Pigs fiasco, “Operation Zapata,” was organized by members of Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret society at Yale University whose membership also included Prescott, George Herbert Walker and George W Bush; that two of the ships that carried the Cuban counterrevolutionaries to their appointment with absurdity were named the “Barbara” and the “Houston” -- George HW Bush’s city of residence at the time -- and that the oil company Bush owned, then operating in the Caribbean area, was named “Zapata,” is not “theory.” It’s fact.

That George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what were estimated to be hundreds of American journalists, considered to be CIA “assets,” from the Church Committee, the US Senate Intelligence Committe chaired by Senator Frank Church that investigated the CIA in the 1970s; that a 1971 University of Michigan study concluded that, in America, the more TV you watched, the less you knew; and that a recent survey by international scholars found that Americans were the most “ignorant” of world affairs out of all the populations they studied, is not a “theory.” It’s fact.

That the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on official US government foreign policy; that the protection of US supplies of Middle East oil has been a central element of American foreign policy since the Second World War; and that global oil production has been in decline since its peak year, 2000, is not “theory.” It’s fact.

That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral Commission published a report which recommended that, in order for “globalization” to succeed, American manufacturing jobs had to be exported, and American wages had to decline, which is exactly what happened over the next three decades; and that, during that same period, the richest one percent of Americans doubled their share of the national wealth, is not “theory.” It’s fact.

That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the US Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve Banks are profit-making corporations, whose beneficiaries include some of America’s wealthiest families; and that the United States has a virtual controlling interest in the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, the three dominant global financial institutions, is not a “theory.” It’s fact.

That -- whether it’s heroin from Southeast Asia in the ‘60s and ‘70s, or **** from Central America and heroin from Afghanistan in the ‘80s, or **** from Colombia in the ‘90s, or heroin from Afghanistan today -- no major CIA covert operation has ever lacked a drug smuggling component, and that the CIA has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers, arms smugglers, mass murderers, perverts, sadists, terrorists and the Mafia, is not “theory.” It’s fact.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2010, 10:54:21 am »

From Dig at Prison Planet Forum:

Here is a so called "left" leaning truther concerning the ruling class and its stranglehold on Amerca.  His use of the word capitalists and capitalism really refers to corporatists and corporatism. I believe this is a failure on his part and there are other minor issues I disagree with, but he is locked and loaded on globalists and the ruling oligopoly. For that reason I highly recommend utlizing his speeches and essays to expose the NWO to any possible Obamanoids or mind controlled democrats:



Dr. Michael Parenti: "Terrorism, Globalism and Conspiracy"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6573660441809242121
1:00:41  - 4 years ago

OCTOBER 9, 2002, VANCOUVER: Dr. Michael Parenti, one of North America's leading radical writers on U.S. imperialism and interventionism, fascism, democracy and the media, spoke to several hunded people at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Vancouver. Dr. Parenti has taught political science at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and other countries. He was written 250 major magazine articles and 15 books and is frequently heard on public and alternative radio.



THE JFK ASSASSINATION II:
CONSPIRACY PHOBIA ON THE LEFT

http://www.911blogger.com/node/15824
From Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti (1996, City Lights Books) (Pages 172 - 191)

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon's downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as "a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery," the greatest financial crime in history.

Conspiracy or Coincidence?

Often the term "conspiracy" is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against "overheating" the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, "Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?" In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.

At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, "Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?" I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that "free-market reforms" are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, "more than $4.5 million U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies" (New York Times 11/25/95).

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: "Do you actually think there's a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?" For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together - on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot - though they call it "planning" and "strategizing" - and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Yet there are individuals who ask with patronizing, incredulous smiles, do you really think that the people at the top have secret agendas, are aware of their larger interests, and talk to each other about them? To which I respond, why would they not? This is not to say that every corporate and political elite is actively dedicated to working for the higher circles of power and property. Nor are they infallible or always correct in their assessments and tactics or always immediately aware of how their interests are being affected by new situations. But they are more attuned and more capable of advancing their vast interests than most other social groups.

The alternative is to believe that the powerful and the privileged are somnambulists, who move about oblivious to questions of power and privilege; that they always tell us the truth and have nothing to hide even when they hide so much; that although most of us ordinary people might consciously try to pursue our own interests, wealthy elites do not; that when those at the top employ force and violence around the world it is only for the laudable reasons they profess; that when they arm, train, and finance covert actions in numerous countries, and then fail to acknowledge their role in such deeds, it is because of oversight or forgetfulness or perhaps modesty; and that it is merely a coincidence how the policies of the national security state so consistently serve the interests of the transnational corporations and the capital-accumulation system throughout the world.


Kennedy and the Left Critics

In the winter of 1991-92 Oliver Stone's film JFK revived popular interest in the question of President John Kennedy's assassination. As noted in part I of this article, the mainstream media launched a protracted barrage of invective against the movie. Conservatives and liberals closed ranks to tell the public there was no conspiracy to murder the president for such things do not happen in the United States.

Unfortunately, some writers normally identified as on the Left have rejected any suggestion that conspiracy occurred. While the rightists and centrists were concerned about preserving the legitimacy of existing institutions and keeping people from seeing the gangster nature of the state, the leftists had different concerns, though it was not always clear what these were.

Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others challenge the notion that Kennedy was assassinated for intending to withdraw from Vietnam or for threatening to undo the CIA or end the cold war. Such things could not have led to his downfall, they argue, because Kennedy was a cold warrior, pro-CIA, and wanted a military withdrawal from Vietnam only with victory. Chomsky claims that the change of administration that came with JFK's assassination had no appreciable effect on policy. In fact, the massive ground war ordered by Johnson and the saturation bombings of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos ordered by Nixon represented a dramatic departure from Kennedy's policy. On some occasions, Chomsky says he refuses to speculate: "As for what JFK might have done [had he lived], I have nothing to say." Other times he goes on to speculate that Kennedy would not have "reacted differently to changing situations than his close advisers" and "would have persisted in his commitment to strengthen and enhance the status of the CIA" (Z Magazine, 10/92 and 1/93).

The evidence we have indicates that Kennedy observed Cambodian neutrality and negotiated a cease-fire and a coalition government in Laos, which the CIA refused to honor. We also know that the surviving Kennedy, Robert, broke with the Johnson administration over Vietnam and publicly stated that his brother's administration had committed serious mistakes. Robert moved with the tide of opinion, evolving into a Senate dove and then a peace candidate for the presidency, before he too was murdered. The two brothers worked closely together and were usually of like mind. While this does not provide reason enough to conclude that John Kennedy would have undergone a transition comparable to Robert's, it still might give us pause before asserting that JFK was destined to follow in the direction taken by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In the midst of this controversy, Chomsky wrote a whole book arguing that JFK had no intention of withdrawing from Vietnam without victory. Actually, Kennedy said different things at different times, sometimes maintaining that we could not simply abandon Vietnam, other times that it ultimately would be up to the Vietnamese to fight their own war.1

One of Kennedy's closest aides, Kenneth O'Donnell, wrote that the president planned to withdraw from Vietnam after the 1964 elections. According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who headed military support for the clandestine operations of the CIA, Kennedy dictated "the rich parts" of NSAM 263, calling for the withdrawal not only of all U.S. troops but all Americans, meaning CIA officers and agents too. Prouty reflects that the president thereby signed "his own death warrant." The Army newspaper Stars and Stripes ran a headline: "President Says - All Americans Out by 1965." According to Prouty: "The Pentagon was outraged. JFK was a curse word in the corridors."

Concentrating on the question of withdrawal, Chomsky says nothing about the president's unwillingness to escalate into a ground war. On that crucial point all Chomsky offers is a speculation ascribed to Roger Hilsman that Kennedy might well have introduced U.S. ground troops in South Vietnam. In fact, the same Hilsman, who served as Kennedy's Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, the officer responsible for Vietnam, noted in a long letter to the New York Times (1/20/92) that in 1963 "President Kennedy was determined not to let Vietnam become an American war - that is, he was determined not to send U.S. combat troops (as opposed to advisers) to fight in Vietnam nor to bomb North Vietnam." Other Kennedy aides such as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and General Maxwell Taylor made the same point. Taylor said, "The last thing he [Kennedy] wanted was to put in our ground forces . . . I don't recall anyone who was strongly against [the recommendation], except one man and that was the President." Kennedy opposed the kind of escalation embarked upon soon after his death by Lyndon Johnson, who increased U.S. troops in Vietnam from 17,000 to approximately 250,000 and committed them to an all-out ground war.

Kennedy and the CIA

Chomsky argues that the CIA would have had no grounds for wanting to kill JFK, because he was a dedicated counterinsurgent cold warrior. Chomsky arrives at this conclusion by assuming that the CIA had the same reading of events in 1963 that he has today. But entrenched power elites are notorious for not seeing the world the way left analysts do. To accept Chomsky's assumptions we would need a different body of data from that which he and others offer, data that focuses not on the Kennedy administration's interventionist pronouncements and policies but on the more private sentiments that festered in intelligence circles and related places in 1963.

To offer a parallel: We might be of the opinion that the New Deal did relatively little for working people and that Franklin Roosevelt actually was a tool of the very interests he publicly denounced as "economic royalists." From this we might conclude that the plutocrats had much reason to support FDR's attempts to save big business from itself. But most plutocrats dammed "that man in the White House" as a class traitor. To determine why, you would have to look at how they perceived the New Deal in those days, not at how we think it should be evaluated today.

In fact, President Kennedy was not someone the CIA could tolerate, and the feeling was mutual. JFK told one of his top officials that he wanted "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds" (New York Times, 4/25/66). He closed the armed CIA camps that were readying for a second Bay of Pigs invasion and took a number of other steps designed to bring the Agency under control. He fired its most powerful and insubordinate leaders, Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell. He tried to reduce its powers and jurisdiction and set strict limits as to its future actions, and he appointed a high-level committee to investigate the CIA's past misdeeds.

In 1963, CIA officials, Pentagon brass, anti-Castro Cuban émigrés, and assorted other right-wingers, including FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, hated JFK and did not believe he could be trusted with the nation's future. They referred to him as "that delinquent in the White House." Roger Craig records the comments of numerous Dallas police officers who wanted to see Kennedy done away with. Several years ago, on a San Francisco talk show on station KGO, I heard a listener call in as follows: "this is the first time I'm saying this. I worked for Army intelligence. In 1963 I was in Japan, and the accepted word around then was that Kennedy would be killed because he was messing with the intelligence community. When word came of his death, all I could hear was delighted comments like 'We got the bastard'."

In his book First Hand Knowledge, CIA operative Robert Morrow noted the hatred felt by CIA officers regarding Kennedy's "betrayal" in not sending the U.S. military into the Bay of Pigs fiasco. One high-level CIA Cuban émigré, Eladio del Valle, told Morrow less than two weeks before the assassination: "I found out about it last night. Kennedy's going to get it in Dallas."2 Morrow also notes that CIA director Richard Helms, "knew that someone in the Agency was involved" in the Kennedy assassination, "either directly or indirectly, in the act itself - someone who would be in a high and sensitive position . . . Helms did cover up any CIA involvement in the presidential assassination."

Several years after JFK's murder, President Johnson told White House aide Marvin Watson that he "was convinced that there was a plot in connection with the assassination" and that the CIA had something to do with it (Washington Post, 12/13/77). And Robert Kennedy repeatedly made known his suspicions that the CIA had a hand in the murder of his brother.

JFK's enemies in the CIA, the Pentagon, and elsewhere fixed on his refusal to provide air coverage for the Bay of Pigs, his unwillingness to go into Indochina with massive ground forces, his no-invasion guarantee to Krushchev on Cuba, his overtures for a rapprochement with Castro and professed willingness to tolerate countries with different economic systems in the Western hemisphere, his atmospheric-test-ban treaty with Moscow, his American University speech calling for reexamination of U.S. cold war attitudes toward the Soviet Union, his antitrust suit against General Electric, his curtailing of the oil-depletion allowance, his fight with U.S. Steel over price increases, his challenge to the Federal Reserve Board's multibillion-dollar monopoly control of the nation's currency,3 his warm reception at labor conventions, and his call for racial equality. These things may not have been enough for some on the Left but they were far too much for many on the Right.

Left Confusions and the Warren Commission

Erwin Knoll, erstwhile editor of the Progressive, was anther left critic who expressed hostility toward the conspiracy thesis and Oliver Stone's movie in particular. Knoll admitted he had no idea who killed Kennedy, but this did not keep him from asserting that Stone's JFK was "manipulative" and provided false answers. If Knoll had no idea who killed Kennedy, how could he conclude that the film was false?

Knoll said Stone's movie was "a melange of fact and fiction" (Progressive, 3/92). To be sure, some of the dramatization was fictionalized - but regarding the core events relating to Clay Shaw's perjury, eyewitness reports at Dealey Plaza, the behavior of U.S. law officers, and other suspicious happenings, the movie remained faithful to the facts unearthed by serious investigators.

In a show of flexibility, Knoll allows that "the Warren Commission did a hasty, slipshod job" of investigation. Here too he only reveals his ignorance. In fact, the Commission sat for fifty-one long sessions over a period of several months, much longer than most major investigations. It compiled twenty-six volumes of testimony and evidence. It had the investigative resources of the FBI and CIA at its disposal, along with its own professional team. Far from being hasty and slipshod, it painstakingly crafted theories that moved toward a foreordained conclusion. From the beginning, it asked only a limited set of questions that seemed to assume Oswald's guilt as the lone assassin.

The Warren Commission set up six investigative panels to look into such things as Oswald's background, his activities in past years and on the day of the assassination, Jack Ruby's background, and his activities on the day he killed Oswald. As Mark Lane notes, there was a crying need for a seventh panel, one that would try to discover who killed President Kennedy. The commission never saw the need for that undertaking, having already made up its mind.

While supposedly dedicated to bringing the truth to light, the Warren Commission operated in secrecy. The minutes of its meetings were classified top secret, and hundred of thousands of documents and other evidence were sealed for seventy-five years. The Commission failed to call witnesses who heard and saw people shooting from behind the fence on the grassy knoll. It falsely recorded the testimony of certain witnesses, as they were to complain later on, and reinterpreted the testimony of others. All this took careful effort. A "hasty and slipshod" investigation would show some randomness in its errors. But the Commission's distortions consistently moved in the same direction in pursuit of a prefigured hypothesis.

Erwin Knoll talks disparagingly of the gullible U.S. public and says he "despises" Oliver Stone for playing on that gullibility. In fact, the U.S. public has been anything but gullible. It has not swallowed the official explanation the way some of the left critics have. Surveys show that 78 percent of the public say they believe there was a conspiracy. Both Cockburn in the Nation and Chomsky in Z Magazine dismiss this finding by noting that over 70 percent of the people also believe in miracles. But the fact that people might be wrong about one thing does not mean they are wrong about everything. Chomsky and Cockburn are themselves evidence of that.

In any case, the comparison is between two opposite things. Chomsky and Cockburn are comparing the public's gullibility about miracles with its unwillingness to be gullible about the official line that has been fed to them for thirty years. If anyone is gullible it is Alexander Cockburn who devoted extra column space in the Nation to support the Warren Commission's tattered theory about a magic bullet that could hit both Kennedy and Connolley while changing direction in mid-air and remaining in pristine condition.

Chomsky says that it is a "curious fact that no trace of the wide-ranging conspiracy appears in the internal record, and nothing has leaked" and "credible direct evidence is lacking" (Z Magazine, 1/93, and letter to me, 12/15/92). But why would participants in a conspiracy of this magnitude risk everything by maintaining an "internal record" (whatever that is) about the actual murder? Why would they risk their lives by going public? Many of the participants would know only a small part of the picture. But all of them would have a keen sense of the immensely powerful and sinister forces they would be up against were they to become too talkative. In fact, a good number of those who agreed to cooperate with investigators met untimely deaths. Finally, what credible direct evidence was ever offered to prove that Oswald was the assassin?

Chomsky is able to maintain his criticism that no credible evidence has come to light only by remaining determinedly unacquainted with the mountain of evidence that has been uncovered. There has even been a decision in a U.S. court of law, Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, in which a jury found that President Kennedy had indeed been murdered by a conspiracy involving, in part, CIA operatives E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis, and FBI informant Jack Ruby.4

Nixon advisor H.R. Haldeman admits in his memoir: "After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic coverup." And "In a chilling parallel to their coverup at Watergate, the CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy's assassination and the CIA."

Indeed, if there was no conspiracy, why so much secrecy and so much cover-up? If Oswald did it, what is there to hide and why do the CIA and FBI still resist a full undoctored disclosure of the hundreds of thousands of pertinent documents? Would they not be eager to reveal everything and thereby put to rest doubts about Oswald's guilt and suspicions about their own culpability?

The remarkable thing about Erwin Knoll, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, and others on the Left who attack the Kennedy conspiracy findings is they remain invincibly ignorant of the critical investigations that have been carried out. I have repeatedly pointed this out in exchanges with them and they never deny it. They have not read any of the many studies by independent researchers who implicate the CIA in a conspiracy to kill the president and in the even more protracted and extensive conspiracy to cover up the murder. But this does not prevent them from dismissing the conspiracy charge in the most general and unsubstantiated terms.

Let's Hear It for Structuralism

When pressed on the matter, left critics like Cockburn and Chomsky allow that some conspiracies do exist but they usually are of minor importance, a distraction from the real problems of institutional and structural power. A structural analysis, as I understand it, maintains that events are determined by the larger configurations of power and interest and not by the whims of happenstance or the connivance of a few incidental political actors. There is no denying that larger structural trends impose limits on policy and exert strong pressures on leaders. But this does not mean that all important policy is predetermined. Short of betraying fundamental class interests, different leaders can pursue different courses, the effects of which are not inconsequential to the lives of millions of people. Thus, it was not foreordained that the B-52 carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos conducted by Nixon would have happened if Kennedy, or even Johnson or Humphrey, had been president. If left critics think these things make no difference in the long run, they better not tell that to the millions of Indochinese who grieve for their lost ones and for their own shattered lives.

It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a "conspiracist" who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret cabals, thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces. As Chomsky notes: "However unpleasant and difficult it may be, there is no escape from the need to confront the reality of institutions and the policies and actions they largely shape." (Z Magazine, 10/92).

I trust that one of the institutions he has in mind is the CIA. In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy.

As I pointed out in published exchanges with Cockburn and Chomsky (neither of whom responded to the argument), conspiracy and structure are not mutually exclusive dynamics. A structural analysis that a priori rules out conspiracy runs the risk of not looking at the whole picture. Conspiracies are a component of the national security political system, not deviations from it. Ruling elites use both conspiratorial covert actions and overtly legitimating procedures at home and abroad. They finance everything from electoral campaigns and publishing houses to mobsters and death squads. They utilize every conceivable stratagem, including killing one of their own if they perceive him to be a barrier to their larger agenda of making the world safe for those who own it.

The conspiracy findings in regard to the JFK assassination, which the movie JFK brought before a mass audience, made many people realize what kind of a gangster state we have in this country and what it does around the world. In investigating the JFK conspiracy, researchers are not looking for an "escape" from something "unpleasant and difficult," as Chomsky would have it, rather they are raising grave questions about the nature of state power in what is supposed to be a democracy.

A structuralist position should not discount the role of human agency in history. Institutions are not self-generating reified forces. The "great continuities of corporate and class interest" (Cockburn's phrase) are not disembodied things that just happen of their own accord. Neither empires nor national security institutions come into existence in a fit of absent-mindedness. They are actualized not only by broad conditional causes but by the conscious efforts of live people. Evidence for this can be found in the very existence of a national security state whose conscious function is to recreate the conditions of politico-economic hegemony.

Having spent much of my life writing books that utilize a structuralist approach, I find it ironic to hear about the importance of structuralism from those who themselves do little or no structural analysis of the U.S. political system and show little theoretical grasp of the structural approach. Aside from a few Marxist journals, one finds little systemic or structural analysis in left periodicals including ones that carry Chomsky and Cockburn. Most of these publications focus on particular issues and events - most of which usually are of far lesser magnitude than the Kennedy assassination.

Left publications have given much attention to conspiracies such as Watergate, the FBI Cointelpro, Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, CIA drugs-for-guns trade, BCCI, and savings-and-loans scandals. It is never explained why these conspiracies are important while the FJK assassination is not. Chip Berlet repeatedly denounces conspiracy investigations while himself spending a good deal of time investigating Lyndon LaRouche's fraudulent financial dealings, conspiracies for which LaRouche went to prison. Berlet never explains why the LaRouche conspiracy is a subject worthy of investigation but not the JFK conspiracy.

G. William Domhoff points out: "If 'conspiracy' means that these [ruling class] men are aware of their interests, know each other personally, meet together privately and off the record, and try to hammer out a consensus on how to anticipate and react to events and issues, then there is some conspiring that goes on in CFR [the Council for Foreign Relations], not to mention the Committee for Economic Development, the Business Council, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency." After providing this useful description of institutional conspiracy, Domhoff then conjures up a caricature that often clouds the issue: "We all have a tremendous tendency to want to get caught up in believing that there's some secret evil cause for all of the obvious ills of the world." Conspiracy theories "encourage a belief that if we get rid of a few bad people, everything will be well in the world."

To this simplistic notion Peter Dale Scott responds: "I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed." In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.

Why Care About JFK?

The left critics argue that people who are concerned about the JFK assassination are romanticizing Kennedy and squandering valuable energy. Chomsky claims that the Nazi-like appeals of rightist propagandists have a counterpart on the Left: "It's the conspiracy business. Hang around California, for example, and the left has just been torn to shreds because they see CIA conspiracies . . . secret governments [behind] the Kennedy assassination. This kind of stuff has just wiped out a large part of the left" (Against the Current 56, 1993). Chomsky offers no evidence to support this bizarre statement.

The left critics fear that people will be distracted or misled into thinking well of Kennedy. Cockburn argues that Kennedy was nothing more than a servant of the corporate class, so who cares how he was killed (Nation 3/9/92 and 5/18/92). The left critics' hatred of Kennedy clouds their judgment about the politcal significance of his murder. They mistake the low political value of the victim with the high political importance of the assassination, its implications for democracy, and the way it exposes the gangster nature of the state.

In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a conservative militarist. Clemenceau once conjectured that if the man's name had not been Dreyfus, he would have been an anti-Dreyfusard. Does that mean that the political struggle waged around l'affaire Dreyfus was a waste of time? The issue quickly became larger than Dreyfus, drawn between Right and Left, between those who stood with the army and the anti-Semites and those who stood with the republic and justice.

Likewise Benigno Aquino, a member of the privileged class in the Philippines, promised no great structural changes, being even more conservative than Kennedy. Does this mean the Filipino people should have dismissed the conspiracy that led to his assassination as an event of no great moment, an internal ruling-class affair? Instead, they used it as ammunition to expose the hated Marcos regime.

Archbishop Romero of El Salvador was a member of the Salvadoran aristocracy. He could not have risen to the top of the church hierarchy otherwise. But after he began voicing critical remarks about the war and concerned comments about the poor, he was assassinated. If he had not been murdered, I doubt that Salvadoran history would have been much different. Does this mean that solidarity groups in this country and El Salvador should not have tried to make his murder an issue that revealed the homicidal gangster nature of the Salvadoran state? (I posed these questions to Chomsky in an exchange in Z Magazine, but in his response, he did not address them.)

Instead of seizing the opportunity, some left writers condescendingly ascribe a host of emotional needs to those who are concerned about the assassination cover-up. According to Max Holland, a scribe who seems to be on special assignment to repudiate the JFK conspiracy: "The nation is gripped by a myth . . . divorced from reality," and "Americans refuse to accept their own history." In Z Magazine (10/92) Chomsky argued that "at times of general malaise and social breakdown, it is not uncommon for millenarian movements to arise." He saw two such movements in 1992: the response to Ross Perot and what he called the "Kennedy revival" or "Camelot revival." Though recognizing that the audiences differ, he lumps them together as "the JFK-Perot enthusiasms." Public interest in the JFK assassination, he says, stems from a "Camelot yearning" and the "yearning for a lost Messiah."

I, for one, witnessed evidence of a Perot movement involving millions of people but I saw no evidence of a Kennedy revival, certainly no millenarian longing for Camelot or a "lost Messiah." However, there has been a revived interest in the Kennedy assassination, which is something else. Throughout the debate, Chomsky repeatedly assumes that those who have been troubled about the assassination must be admirers of Kennedy. In fact, some are, but many are not. Kennedy was killed in 1963; people who today are in their teens, twenties, thirties, and forties - most Americans - were not old enough to have developed a political attachment to him.

The left critics psychologize about our illusions, our false dreams, our longings for Messiahs and father figures, or inability to face unpleasant realities the way they can. They deliver patronizing admonitions about our "conspiracy captivation" and "Camelot yearnings." They urge us not to escape into fantasy. They are the cognoscenti who guide us and out-left us on the JFK assassination, a subject about which they know next to nothing and whose significance they have been unable to grasp. Having never read the investigative literature, they dismiss the investigators as irrelevant or irrational. To cloak their own position with intellectual respectability, they fall back on an unpracticed structuralism.

It is neither "Kennedy worship" nor "Camelot yearnings" that motivates our inquiry, but a desire to fight back against manipulative and malignant institutions so that we might begin to develop a system of accountable rule worthy of the name democracy.

--------------------------------

1 Kennedy's intent to withdraw is documented in the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers ("Phased Withdrawal of U.S. Forces, 1962-1964," vol. 2, pp. 160-200). It refers to "the Accelerated Model Plan . . .. for a rapid phase out of the bulk of U.S. military personnel" and notes that the administration was "serious about limiting the U.S. commitment and throwing the burden onto the South Vietnamese themselves." But "all the planning for phase-out . . . was either ignored or caught up in the new thinking of January to March 1964" (p. 163) - the new thinking that came after JFK was killed and Johnson became president.

2 Del Valle's name came up the day after JFK's assassination when Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade announced at a press conference that Oswald was a member of del Valle's anti-communist "Free Cuba Committee." Wade was quickly contradicted from the audience by Jack Ruby, who claimed that Oswald was a member of the leftish Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Del Valle, who was one of several people that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison sought out in connection with the JFK assassination, was killed the same day that Dave Ferrie, another suspect met a suspicious death. When found in Miami, del Valle's body showed evidence of having been tortured, bludgeoned, and shot.

3 The bankers of the Federal Reserve System print paper money, then lend it to the government at an interest. Kennedy signed an executive order issuing over $4 billion in currency notes through the U.S. Treasury, thus bypassing the Fed's bankers and the hundreds of millions of dollars in interest that would normally be paid out to them. These "United States Notes" were quickly withdrawn after JFK's assassination.

4 See Mark Lane, Plausible Denial; Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1991). For testimony of another participant see Robert Morrow: First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992).
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« Reply #4 on: August 24, 2010, 10:56:22 am »

Another one from Dig:

Here is an article written before 9/11 which exposes the same BS "theories" that continue to target conspiracy facts...



Conspiracy fact vs. conspiracy theory
www.onlinejournal.com/archive/05-01-01_Binion.pdf
By Carla Binion


May 1, 2001—There have been actual conspiracies in this country, as we all know. Watergate, Iran-contra, BCCI, the savings and loan scandal, Iraq-gate, Cointelpro, and the CIA’s drugs-for- weapons trade are all examples of actual conspiracies. They’re all a matter of public record, most of them investigated by congressional committees.

In “Goebbels and mind control, part three,” we talked about the fact that social problems, such as poverty, the lack of affordable health care, and an inequitable tax system, are not the result of just one aberrant conspiracy. Instead, they are natural outcomes of a system whose central goal is the accumulation of wealth and power for the few.

That central goal is the main impetus behind many of the genuine conspiracies. Politicians might talk about education, health care and social security. However, for many politicians, the top priority is seeing that the very few, who own vast amounts of wealth, get their interests served ahead of 99 percent of the rest of the population . . . far ahead.

In order for the few to keep expanding their wealth, they seek to control public dissent. Corporations try to undermine environmentalists, civil rights workers and labor in ways we examined in the series on Goebbels and mind control. “The people” and our discontent are often described by the ruling class and their think-tanks as threats to be “managed” rather than as fellow human beings with valid points to make. For example, in “The Crisis of Democracy,” (a report prepared by three social scientists on behalf of a right-wing think-tank) Samuel Huntington warned there was an “excess of democracy” in this country, which he described as a dangerous increase in egalitarianism and a “democratic distemper.” Huntington argued that inflation, unemployment and other problems could best be solved by less, not more, democracy. (Bertram Gross, “Friendly Fascism,” South End Press, 1980.)

Do the very wealthy ever seek to maintain their power through conspiracy? In “Land Of Idols,” (St. Martin’s Press, 1994) Michael Parenti offers “alternatives” to conspiracy theory:

(1) Somnambulist Theory: The wealthiest 1 percent sleepwalk through life, never giving a thought to their vast wealth or how to keep it.

(2) Coincidence Theory: Things repeatedly happen by chance in ways that magically maintain the interests of the very wealthy, year after year.

(3) Stupidity Theory: The very rich are befuddled, incompetent and ineffectual. They just don’t know how they keep that power.

(4) Spontaneity or Idiosyncrasy Theory: Stuff happens (in a way that keeps the system in place.) Again and again. Over long periods of time.

(5) Aberration Theory: Dirty tricks of the CIA and so forth are “atypical departures” from the norm.

The above theories would have us believe our inequitable tax system, corporate-owned media, unjust social conditions and other wrongful policies are momentary aberrations, isolated from the central goal of our political system. Again, that goal is protecting the money and power of the wealthiest 1 percent.

Parenti points out that the wealthiest 1 percent naturally defend their interests, just as farmers or steelworkers defend theirs. He quotes a corporate executive voicing typical ruling class self- interest at a meeting of his colleagues, “The have-nots are gaining steadily more political power to distribute the wealth downward. The masses have turned to a larger government.” Another executive said, “If we don’t take action now, we will see our own demise. We will evolve into another social democracy.” (Leonard Silk and David Vogel, “Ethics and Profits: The Crisis of Confidence in American Business.”)

Conspiracy fact is harder to deal with than conspiracy theory, because it shows us that something is fundamentally wrong with a political system whose central goal is the accumulation of wealth and power for the very few. (I’m repeating that central goal deliberately, because it is vital to keep in mind as we look at every sub-topic.) As one example, it’s a matter of public record that a number of wars have been waged and insurrections suppressed with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency, (CIA) for the purpose of increasing profits or protecting markets for the wealthy. Most of the CIA’s covert actions have been conspiracies by definition. For example, a Contra-era CIA training manual, “Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare,” reads: “It is possible to neutralize carefully selected and planned targets, such as court judges, mesta judges, police and state security officials, CDS chiefs, etc. For psychological purposes it is necessary to take extreme precautions . . . The mission to replace the individual should be followed by: Extensive explanation within the population affected of the reason why it was necessary for the good of the people.” (David McGowan, “Derailing Democracy: The America The Media Don’t Want You To See,” Common Courage Press, 2000.)

An earlier CIA training manual, “A Study of Assassinations,” reads: “No assassination instruction should ever be written or recorded . . . The simplest local tools are often the most efficient means of assassination . . . anything hard, heavy and handy will suffice . . . The most efficient accident . . . is a fall of 75 feet or more onto a hard surface . . . Falls before trains and subway cars are usually effective, but require exact timing . . . assassinations can seldom be employed with a clear conscience. Persons who are morally squeamish should not attempt it.” (McGowan, “Derailing Democracy.”)

In his 1995 book, “The Twilight Of Democracy,” former CIA political analyst Patrick E. Kennon argues that democracy is a failure, and that only well-trained technocrats are qualified to run the country. He claims that voters and our elected officials are too ignorant to question bureaucratic experts or contribute to decision-making. The problem is, the technocrats often give us the kinds of anti-ethics “solutions” recommended in the above CIA training manual excerpts. Today we have a president who was appointed instead of democratically elected. His team of well-trained technocrats run the country on behalf of the wealthiest 1 percent, with little regard for the other 99 percent of us. This is not a result of any one aberrant conspiracy, but is the rational outcome of a political system that exists to protect the wealth and power of the few at the expense of the many.

What we are living with today is the result of money-and-power run amok. It’s a political system that has gradually inched away from its stated purpose of government instituted “of, by and for the people,” toward a system aimed at fleecing the people, with no annoying “moral squeamishness” to interfere. There have been many actual conspiracies along the road from the former system to the latter
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« Reply #5 on: August 24, 2010, 11:01:10 am »

It's worth noting that, despite their differences, all three types--the zombies, the cowards, and the self-appointed know-it-alls--all have the same general reaction upon being told about such things as false flag terrorism, banker-engineered depressions, and the NWO agenda: they blindly dismiss them as (you guessed it!) "conspiracy theories."

Everyone knows that, when a frightened little child clings to his teddy bear, he does so purely because of the emotional comfort it gives him. Yet what few adults -- particularly authority-worshipping coincidence theorists -- will ever admit to is that they invoke the term "conspiracy theory" for the same exact reason





The only difference, of course, is that a four-year-old has an excuse for acting that childish.
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« Reply #6 on: August 24, 2010, 11:02:35 am »

There is clearly a massive and utterly pathetic PSYOP underway:

------------------------------

http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-says-nazis-al-qaeda-terrorists-and-conspiracy-theorists-targeting-children-online.html

Media says Nazis, Al Qaeda, Terrorists, and Conspiracy Theorists Targeting Children Online

Ruben Meyer
Prisonplanet.com
March 16, 2010

Gone are the days when Conspiracy theorists were portrayed as harmless crazies who wore tin foil hats. According to the mainstream media, today Conspiracy Theorists are targeting your children on the internet alongside Al Qaeda, and Neo-Nazi Organizations.

On March 15 the lead story on FoxNews.com (under a glowing banner of SS Storm Troopers) was “Terrorists Targeting Children via Facebook, Twitter.”

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/03/15/terrorists-targeting-children-via-facebook-twitter/

This article goes on to cite the 2010 Digital Terror Report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Tolerance in which the Wiesenthal Center found a 20% increase in the prevalence of hate-filled web sites. But the most troubling aspect of this piece of “Fair and Balanced Journalism” put out by Fox News is this paragraph.

“The report found a 20% increase to 11,500 in hate-filled social networks, Web sites, forums, blogs, Twitter feeds, and so on (up from 10,000 last year). It notes that beyond its role in our social lives, the Internet often acts as the incubator and validator of dangerous conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 and organ theft.”

Dangerous Conspiracy Theories? The article does not go on to explain exactly how Conspiracy Theories are dangerous but it does a fine job at implying how they are dangerous by going on to associate Conspiracy Theorists with Neo-Nazis, Islamic Terrorists, and of course Al Qaeda.

The article continues on to say that “ The Wiesenthal Center uncovered expanded ‘how-to’ posts for terrorists, including binary and laser technology. And even more disturbing, the Center found hate games, including one inviting the user to bomb Haitian earthquake victims, continue to target young people.”

I can hear the fear crazed, mainstream media brainwashed, populace clamoring “How-to Posts for Terrorists, including binary and Laser Technology on the internet? I’m not sure what it is but it sounds scary so we better censor the internet in order to protect the children.”

The article concludes by recapping (in the usual way, with minimal detail) with

“FoxNews.com reported that the 6-year-old son of a Colorado nursing student who ran off to Europe to join a terrorist murder cell was brainwashed into a hate-filled Islamic fundamentalist zombie, his family said Saturday. Her family said she struck up an Internet friendship with a Colorado radical.”

See the Internet has converted this innocent 6 Year Old into (Quoting Fox News Here) “a hate-filled Islamic Fundamentalist Zombie.” But the implication is clear, if a Neo-Nazi got to the child first via the Internet he would have become a “Hate-Filled White Supremacist Zombie.” But if the child stumbled upon some websites asking why the BBC reported WTC Building 7 collapsing before the building collapsed, or a website asking why thermite dust was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center, or a website asking why the Pentagon has never released the videos of the hijacked airliner striking the Pentagon then the mainstream media would be reporting that the internet turned the child into a “Hate-Filled 9/11 Truther Zombie.”

Or if the child simply read the UK Guardian Online Article “ Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent.” http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs that child would now be referred to as a “Hate-Filled Anti-Semite Zombie.”

The writing on the walls is clear. The number of 9/11 Truthers has grown to a level where the media can no longer discount our fact-based arguments effectively with a simple “Go look for Black Helicopters cook.”

9/11 Truthers come from a wide diverse background from all sectors of society and form a large and ever growing population. They are physicists, engineers, doctors, celebrities, actors, Governors, Former German Defense Ministers, and of course they are the brave people on the street passing out DVDs and fliers.

So with their favorite ad hominem attack of “Cooky Tin-Foil Hat wearing Man” rendered useless they have been forced to turn to a more provocative slander. That 9/11 Truthers are violent extremists.

Shortly following the Pentagon shooting on March 4, 2010 the media was quick to point out that shooter John Patrick Bedell was a 9/11 Truther. Questions remain whether this was a staged event or not but either way the propagandists have ran with it, 9/11 Truth is a violent, dangerous movement.

And as a matter of fact, FoxNews.com ran a slideshow as part of this article entitled “The World Wide Web of Hate.” in which they expose “The Web’s Worst Sites.” John Patrick Bedell’s audio files are listed in this list alongside Neo Nazi Blogs, White Supremacist Websites, Hamas Training Videos, and the website for Al Qaeda in the Southern Arabian Peninsula.

Does one of these not belong with the others? Nazi, White-Supremacist, Islamic Terrorist, 9/11 Truther.

According to the mainstream media, no. They are all violent hate mongers. And if the propagandists succeed they will set the tone for all future debate in the pattern of “9/11 an Inside Job? What are you Al Qaeda?” Never mind that 9/11 truth does not believe that Al Qaeda even exists outside of a CIA operation. That is what you will be told by the Fair and Balanced truth dispensing glowing box in the room.

But most frightening of all, is that this FoxNews.com article just continues in the pattern of “We must protect the children from the hate-filled Internet.” The mainstream media will make it appear that most people are frightened by the Internet and that they support government oversight of it in the name of protecting our children. This is a lie. Most people are opposed to any censorship online but that’s not what you will hear on the TV. You will hear “You don’t want to censor the internet? What are you? A ****, a terrorist, an evil 9/11 Truther? Because those are the only people that want a free uncensored Internet.” Any mention of free speech will quickly be glossed over.

The reason that this is happening is simple, The controllers are afraid of 9/11 Truth and the Internet.

[Continued...]

------------------------------

The predatory, parasitic, ruling-class oligarchs who've hijacked our government -- and the minions and thugs-for-hire who gleefully serve them -- know that they're anti-American criminals who belong behind bars, and that the masses are becoming increasingly aware of this fact. So they're trying desperately to project their very own clinical psychosis and treasonous/terroristic behavior onto anyone who dares not worship them as Gods (or at least grovel to them like a cowardly slave).

"Waaaah! Look! All those horrible people are actually thinking for themselves instead of letting us tell them what to think! They're actually criticizing us for engaging in the very 'terrorism' we profess to oppose, for turning America into a Nazi-style police state, and for waging economic war against them! Waaaah! Waaaah! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"







Just bwakes ur wittle heart, doesn't it?
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« Reply #7 on: August 24, 2010, 11:03:29 am »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/should-conspiratorial-thinking-be-the-default-position.html

Should Conspiratorial Thinking Be The Default Position?

Would society really collapse if Americans stopped trusting government wholesale, or would only the corrupt in power be threatened?



Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, March 19, 2010

Considering the number of times governments have been caught lying over the last few decades, we have to ask the question, should the belief that major world events and political developments happen as a result of a conspiracy of some form or other be the default position in contemporary thinking, or should we continue to blindly trust government and afford it the credibility it plainly doesn’t deserve in order to maintain a perceived sense of order?

Knowing their track record, trusting governments has become the height of foolishness. It would be like betting your mortgage on a horse that has lost every race it ever ran to win the Kentucky Derby.

And yet under the Obama administration, Americans are not only being told to trust government but to serve government, a complete reversal of the role of the state as laid down by the founders.

Would society really collapse if the vast majority of Americans distrusted government and authority figures as a reflex response, or would such a prevalent attitude lead to the most rapid restoration of freedom ever witnessed?

With corruption and injustice so virulently entwined in just about every sector of the federal government, a vacuum of power would inevitably ensue, leading potentially to a temporary state of anarchy. However, the common need for limited government would create fertile soil for the organic growth of more representative bodies.

The only way for the conspiratorial view of history to be dislodged from the prominent position in the body politic it has come to occupy would be for governments to start telling the truth again and stop lying to the public on an almost habitual basis. This is why reflex distrust of government is inherently healthy for a free and prosperous society.

However, since this is far too inconvenient for them, the establishment has decided instead to make their propaganda more sophisticated and more believable, in the hope that the public will grow tired of asking questions and reluctantly accept a contrived substitute for reality.

The establishment’s war on “conspiracy theories,” illustrated by White House regulatory czar Cass Sunstein’s attempt to ban or tax them, is almost completely focused around creating a misconception of why conspiracy theories attract prominence, advocacy, and credibility. They do so not as a result of some mass mental illness on behalf of the population, but as a natural reaction to endless government corruption, cover-ups and misdeeds.

The increasing conspicuity of the conspiratorial view of history is merely a symptom of growing distrust in government. Widespread distrust in government does not pose a threat to the public nor to their freedoms, it only poses a threat to tyrants and monopoly men who want to maintain their oppressive power over others.

Distrust in government is not extremist, unstable or psychotic as the military-industrial complex owned media would have it, it’s necessary, healthy and the most patriotic expression of freedom imaginable.

America was founded on distrust of government, and so long as that remains the case the fires of liberty will burn bright, even in times of mass deception and authoritarian brainwashing.
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« Reply #8 on: August 24, 2010, 11:04:41 am »

Since most people have been conditioned to fear being labeled a "conspiracy theorist" more than death itself, when speaking to someone for the first time about 9/11 truth or something similar, you should always start out by asking him (or her) to define the word "conspiracy" for you.

Then, once he finishes bumbling through his Miss Teen South Carolina-style answer, show him what it really means:

    CONSPIRACY - 18 U.S.C. 371 makes it a separate Federal crime or offense for anyone to conspire or agree with someone else to do something which, if actually carried out, would amount to another Federal crime or offense. So, under this law, a 'conspiracy' is an agreement or a kind of 'partnership' in criminal purposes in which each member becomes the agent or partner of every other member.

    In order to establish a conspiracy offense it is not necessary for the Government to prove that all of the people named in the indictment were members of the scheme; or that those who were members had entered into any formal type of agreement; or that the members had planned together all of the details of the scheme or the 'overt acts' that the indictment charges would be carried out in an effort to commit the intended crime.

    Also, because the essence of a conspiracy offense is the making of the agreement itself (followed by the commission of any overt act), it is not necessary for the Government to prove that the conspirators actually succeeded in accomplishing their unlawful plan.

    What the evidence in the case must show beyond a reasonable doubt is:

    First: That two or more persons, in some way or manner, came to a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan, as charged in the indictment;

    Second: That the person willfully became a member of such conspiracy;

    Third: That one of the conspirators during the existence of the conspiracy knowingly committed at least one of the methods (or 'overt acts') described in the indictment; and

    Fourth: That such 'overt act' was knowingly committed at or about the time alleged in an effort to carry out or accomplish some object of the conspiracy.

    An 'overt act' is any transaction or event, even one which may be entirely innocent when considered alone, but which is knowingly committed by a conspirator in an effort to accomplish some object of the conspiracy.

    A person may become a member of a conspiracy without knowing all of the details of the unlawful scheme, and without knowing who all of the other members are. So, if a person has an understanding of the unlawful nature of a plan and knowingly and willfully joins in that plan on one occasion, that is sufficient to convict him for conspiracy even though he did not participate before, and even though he played only a minor part.



Make sure you point out the phrase, "two or more persons," so that he sees with his own eyes that, under the law, two is all it takes to make a "conspiracy."

Then ask him, "In view of this definition, is the official government account of 9/11 a conspiracy?"

Once you get him to admit that even the official story is a (gasp!) "conspiracy," you will have greatly reduced if not eliminated the psychological block he likely has to taking seriously anything that has that particular term attached to it.

Unless, of course, he's completely brainwashed, in which case he'll continue to mindlessly invoke the dreaded "C" word no matter how much smoking gun evidence you provide, and thereby prove what a total waste of time it is to discuss anything of importance with him to begin with.

Time is precious these days, so cast your pearls wisely.
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« Reply #9 on: August 24, 2010, 11:06:26 am »

http://www.infowars.com/cbs-propaganda-placement-conspiracy-theorists-are-anti-american-domestic-terrorists/

CBS Propaganda Placement: Conspiracy Theorists Are Anti-American, Domestic Terrorists

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Monday, May 24th, 2010

A primetime CBS show that aired last week featured a notable example of so called “propaganda placement”, where a talking point is inserted into the plot in order to shape public perception, often at the behest of the government.

CSI NY’s episode entitled “Point of View” featured a character who researches “conspiracy theories”, such the deliberate dispersal of potentially dangerous chemtrails into the atmosphere.

First the character, a professor, is labeled ”odd”, then “anti-American”, before finally he is revealed to be a “domestic terrorist” hell bent on releasing a biological weapon in New York.

The following is a partial transcript of dialogue from the show:

    CSI detective: “I have a little intel on Professor Scott; he has a history of espousing various conspiracy theories; sharing them with his students got him into a little trouble.”

    Professor’s friend: “Every university has a least one unconventional professor.”

    Second CSI detective: “Oh come on Payton, this guys ideas here are totally anti-American. Look at this; water fluoridation, tsunami bombs, chemtrails…

    First CSI detective: “What are chemtrails?”

    Third CSI detective: “Some people believe that vapor exhaust from aircraft are actually dangerous bio-chemicals dispersed into the air.”

    Friend of the professor: “Which only proves that the professor is a little odd.”

Watch the video (the above dialogue begins at around 24:40)

[Video clip omitted - see original article for embedded player]

Call me a rabid conspiracy theorist, but the episode happens to coincide with a State Department guide that dismisses a range of “conspiracy theories”, including the use of depleted uranium by U.S. forces in Iraq as existing only “in the realm of myth”.

But the government cannot inject plot lines into TV dramas – that’s simply a baseless conspiracy theory, isn’t it?

Unfortunately no, it is not. As we covered in depth last year, in just one publicly announced instance, shows on all the major networks in the U.S. were infested with plot lines and talking points aimed at promoting “service and volunteerism”, as well as other topics high on the priorities list of the Obama administration.

One of those shows, according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation, was CSI: NY on CBS.

The week that followed saw many subliminal messages, as well as overt talking points, inserted into shows on all the networks.

Neither was this the first time the corporate networks prostituted their integrity and handed over control of their content to the Obama administration. Back in June 2009, ABC News mimicked the likes of Communist China and North Korea by completely turning its news coverage over to the government and excluding any dissenting opinions to promote President Obama’s health care agenda.

The use of the chemtrails talking point in CSI: NY is interesting given that the dispersal of sulphur containing aerosols into the atmosphere is a practice that has been proven to have been undertaken, and is a regular part of controversial discussions concerning geo-engineering the planet in the face of climate change.

Of course, you’re not supposed to know that, you’re just supposed to think it’s a crazy conspiracy theory espoused by nut case anti-American terrorists who want to kill you with bio weapons.

Could this latest example of propaganda placement be a manifestation of Obama’s information czar Cass Sunstein’s all out war on “conspiracy theories”? Or is that just another conspiracy theory too?
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« Reply #10 on: August 24, 2010, 11:08:01 am »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-psychology-of-conspiracy-denial.html

The Psychology of Conspiracy Denial

Wired Magazine writer Jonah Lehrer claims his critics are engaging in “cognitive dissonance,” by expressing concern about experimental vaccines, which in fact is the perfect description for Lehrer’s own behavior



Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, August 5, 2010

Wired Magazine writer Jonah Lehrer attempts to offset the overwhelmingly critical response to his attack on Alex Jones by characterizing skepticism of authority in the context of vaccines and mass medication as a psychological dysfunction, despite the fact that the history of government-funded medical research in the United States is replete with examples of scientific abuse against unwitting victims.

Lehrer fires another salvo in the controversy surrounding brain-altering vaccines that eliminate stress and induce artificial states of “focused calm” by portraying those who are concerned about the potential abuse of such treatments as paranoid cult members who believe in space aliens coming to rescue them from an imminent apocalypse.

Unable to properly address Alex Jones’ video journal about the dangers of mind-altering vaccines point by point, Lehrer resorts instead to retelling a completely unrelated story from the 1950’s about a woman in Minneapolis who thought a giant spaceship would rescue her from the end of the world.

According to Lehrer, people who are concerned about fluoridated drinking water and the New World Order, in other words, anyone who expresses consternation about what they are putting in their own body or what powerful people are planning to do with the planet, are mentally disturbed cult members who are victims of cognitive dissonance.

Of course, Lehrer’s tactic of labeling of those who disagree with him in pointing out that there are very real proposals to mass medicate the water supply with lithium, in addition to the already prevalent neurotoxin sodium fluoride, with a psychological dysfunction, could just as easily be applied to Lehrer himself.

The acid test on who is engaging in cognitive dissonance and ‘doubling down’ on their beliefs even in light of conflicting evidence, be it Lehrer or the “conspiracy theorists,” has to come down to the basic facts.

It’s a fact that Lehrer’s own fellow Oxford luminary Julian Savulescu, in a 2008 white paper, called for populations to be mass-medicated through pharmacological ‘cognitive enhancements’ added to the water supply.

It’s a fact that Professor Allan Young of Vancouver’s Institute for Mental Health told the BBC that “Large-scale trials involving the addition of lithium to drinking water supplies may…be feasible,” following claims that lithium led to a reduction in the number of suicides in Japan and helped to alleviate “mood disorders”.

It’s a fact that Barack Obama’s top science czar John P. Holdren advocated in his own textbook Ecoscience that a “planetary regime” should employ a “global police force” to enforce totalitarian measures of population control, including forced abortions, mass sterilization programs conducted via the food and water supply.

These facts are not a product of some spurious Internet link found on Google, as Lehrer spins it, nor do they have anything to do with alien spaceships or the apocalypse, they were either written or said directly by the individuals themselves.

In Lehrer’s first article on the subject, he wrote that people who expressed concern about proposals to put lithium as well as sterilants in the water supply were trafficking in “idiotic conspiracy theories”.

Lehrer’s knee jerk denial of these manifestly provable facts that he derides as “idiotic conspiracy theories” is proof positive that it’s Lehrer himself, and not the conspiracy theorists, who is engaging in cognitive dissonance and “doubling down” on his beliefs even in light of conflicting evidence.

Lehrer’s behavior is a classic case of cognitive dissonance – when presented with the fact that proposals are in place to mass medicate the water supply, he continues to spin yarns about space aliens from the 50’s while defending his belief system with sophomoric name-calling and discredited stereotypes which attempt to label anyone who disagrees with him as mentally unstable.

Given the multi-decade documented history of the United States government using its own population as unwitting guinea pigs for the most abhorrent scientific experiments and trials, to deny that such plots could be hatched today is the height of cognitive dissonance.

Lehrer’s argument frames skepticism of authority in the context of vaccines and health care as a mental disorder, a trait of people who are susceptible to cults, people who believe in space aliens and the apocalypse.

In fact, skepticism of authority in the context of health care is the most rational and intellectual mind set one could possibly embrace.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #11 on: August 24, 2010, 11:09:23 am »




Pretty much sums up this entire thread, does it not?
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« Reply #12 on: September 03, 2010, 09:44:57 am »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/conspiracy-theories-spread-violence-claims-government-propagandist.html

Conspiracy Theories Spread Violence, Claims Government Propagandist

Demos member who authored report calling for conspiracy websites to be infiltrated in order to “increase trust in government” tries to belittle online backlash, but only serves to reinforce the fact that Demos is a PR firm for the British state



Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, September 3, 2010

One of the authors of a report which called for the authorities to infiltrate conspiracy websites in a bid to “increase trust in the government” has responded to an online backlash by claiming conspiracy theories, and not the government, are responsible for spreading lies and distrust which ultimately lead to violence.

As we highlighted on Monday, a report published by the UK think tank Demos called The Power of Unreason encouraged the government to “fight back” against conspiracy theories by infiltrating websites in an effort to restore confidence in the state and discredit evidence of government complicity in the 7/7 and 9/11 terror attacks.

Appearing on a website for activists involved in the Liberal Democrat Party, one of the members of the new coalition government in Britain, an article by Demos’ Carl Miller attempts to diffuse criticism of the report by belittling the backlash as “an interesting micro-study” into how dangerous “conspiracy theories” have a harmful social influence.

Miller characterizes “conspiracy theories” as dangerous ideas that “demolish trust between government and communities”. He later claims that conspiracy theories spread, “lies, distrust, bigotry, intolerance and ultimately violence.”

The delicious irony about this is that Miller’s terms of reference do not fit the “conspiracy theory” mould whatsoever, and yet they characterize precisely the effect that government lies and propaganda, the type that Demos routinely helps transmit, have on society.

For it was government lies about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction and his mythical 45 minute strike capability that spread distrust between Tony Blair’s Labour government, which was riddled with Demos cronies, and the people of Britain. And it was that same lie that ultimately led to the violence of a million dead Iraqis.

Miller’s claim that “conspiracy theories are used to justify acts of violence” is particularly ill-timed in its inaccuracy, given the fact that just two days ago it was a crazed gunman acting on a top-down political doctrine, that of environmentalism and overpopulation, as a motivation for his taking hostages at gunpoint at the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland.

James Jay Lee wasn’t motivated by “conspiracy theories” in his pursuit of violence, he was motivated by the very extremist belief system – eugenics – that so-called “conspiracy theorists” like Alex Jones have been attempting to discredit for years.

Indeed, the only notable individual to cite conspiracy theories as a justification for violence in recent times was radio talk show host Hal Turner – who also happened to be paid by the FBI to do so. Turner conspired with the FBI to spout violent rhetoric in an effort to entrap “conspiracy theorists”.

Miller and Demos’ obvious intention is to use the pejorative term “conspiracy theory” as a veil behind which to hide the true target of their ideological assault – dissent against government and healthy suspicion of authority.

As one of the respondents to Miller’s article points out, “Calling something a “conspiracy theory” is a powerful rhetorical device. It has the immediate effect of shutting down inquiry and debate, and of anathematising the advocate as mentally ill, a danger to civlisation, a social pariah.”

    This is dangerous, pernicious nonsense, and deeply corrosive of freedom of speech and free inquiry.

    What is a “conspiracy theory”? I ask, because those who make it their business to decry such things and anathematise those who propound them, never give us a definition.

    So, I will provide a definition which I think fits pretty well. A “conspiracy theory” is an interpretation of a historical event or concatenation of events that the decrier does not like and/or considers ideologically unacceptable.

    If someone makes a claim about a historic event that conflicts with “official” or orthodox understandings, the first only only inquiry should be: “Is the claim true?”

    But Carl Miller and his friends reject this procedure. To them, any such claims are heresies and cannot be entertained on purely a priori grounds.

    Liberals must surely see the extreme dangers in what Carl Miller and his friends are doing.

    About a week ago, the UK government admitted that the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the RUC colluded with the Roman Catholic Church to protect an IRA murderer, Father John Chesney, in order to obviate embarrassment to the Church. If David Icke had said this, his claim would be dismissed with haughty smugness and anyone taking it seriously would be called feeble-minded or deranged. Yet it happens to be true.

Miller soon dispenses with mental gymnastics and snidey semantics and just settles for outright falsehoods in rubbishing the claim that Demos is a “marxist” front group, despite the fact that the organization was founded by Martin Jacques and Geoff Mulgan, former editors of Marxism Today, which was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

In addition, Demos became notorious in the late 1990’s as a mouthpiece for the marxist factions within Blair’s Labour Party, people like former Home Secretary John Reid, another ex-Communist, who gave a speech at a Demos function in 2006 calling for Britons to Britons “modify their notion of freedom.”

Miller scoffs at the apparently ludicrous charge that the Demos report itself was “government-sponsored disinformation,” while failing entirely to mention the fact that not only did Demos cosy up to the Blair government at every available opportunity, but they also worked with current Prime Minister David Cameron on their “Progressive Conservatism” project on numerous different occasions.

How can Miller attempt to cast Demos as an independent organization when Cameron is a regular speaker at their events?

Demos is nothing more than a PR firm for the British government, and dutifully serves the agenda whether a liberal or a tory is in office.

Miller is just like the hundreds of other elitist lackeys that hide their disdain for healthy distrust of authority behind the cloak of faux-intellectual reasoning. What he has completely failed to grasp is the fact that the establishment is now so utterly discredited that his call to “confront conspiracy theories” has no audience.

Just look at the comments below Miller’s article. Almost every one demolishes his thinly-veiled assault on free speech for what it is.

The vast majority of people have no interest in ‘confronting conspiracy theories’ because they are too busy confronting propagandists like Miller and Demos, who continue to spew the most dangerous anti-freedom rhetoric in service of the lying, corrupt and pernicious state for whom they operate.
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« Reply #13 on: September 03, 2010, 03:44:30 pm »

http://www.infowars.com/demonizing-alex-jones-abc-nightline-hit-piece-backfires/

Demonizing Alex Jones: ABC Nightline Hit Piece Backfires

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 3, 2010

Last night on ABC’s Nightline, Dan Harris tried to discredit Alex Jones and make him out as a charming kook.

“Jones, who sits at the helm of an independent media empire, is arguably the nation’s premiere purveyor of what could be called paranoia ****,” Harris writes in an article posted on ABC’s website. “People who monitor hate groups say they’re extremely worried about Jones’ growing influence. His six-day-a-week radio show and webcast reach an estimated one million people a day.” Harris says “Jones’ critics say that by floating his highly-charged ideas at a time when the nation is already very angry and anxious, he’s upping the odds for unbalanced people to do stupid things.”

       

Stupid things. For instance, storming a television network like James Lee did earlier this week. James Lee, the gunman ultimately taken out by a police SWAT team, was a psychotic environmentalist and fan of eugenics who believed children are no different than an infestation of cockroaches. If we use Harris’ logic, the corporate media is responsible for spreading “highly-charged ideas” with its non-stop propaganda about the debunked theory of climate change and over population. Such sensationalism has increased “the odds for unbalanced people to do stupid things.”

In the Nightline piece, Harris fumbled in his effort to characterize Jones as a conspiracy nut after Jones pointed out the obvious — the global elite are establishing world government. ABC and the corporate media have reported on this fact numerous times. Jones showed Harris and ABC documentation of this fact, but it ended up on the cutting room floor because the point of the Nightline segment is not to present objective facts, but portray Jones as a dangerous conspiracy kook.

Is the usually staid Wall Street Journal a coven of conspiracy nuts? In November of 2009, the newspaper reported that the Copenhagen Agreement engineered plans for “a transnational ‘government’ on a scale the world has never before seen” under the aegis of the United Nations.

The Financial Times, a British newspaper no less staid than the Journal, published an article in late 2008 on the agenda to establish “global governance,” shorthand for world government. Gideon Rachman, FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator, wrote that while he does not believe in black helicopters, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.”

Earlier this year, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy went on the record in a very visible way and demanded world government in response to the bankster engineered financial crisis, itself a ploy to force world government on Europe and the rest of the developed world. Van Rompuy’s call was covered by the Independent, another staid establishment newspaper. Nobody called the editors deranged conspiracy theory mental cases.

ABC is well aware of the world government agenda, but they count on the ignorance of their audience — or the perceived ignorance, since millions of people are now awake to the reality of a one-world authoritarian government. ABC’s assigned task is to convince people Jones is a dangerous nut, not present the facts in an objective manner. It is irrelevant that Jones backs up his claims with plenty of research.

Harris repeated the corporate media canard that the water is safe to drink and only paranoid right-wing nut cases talk about fluoride and drugs in our drinking water. And yet the corporate media routinely reports on the dangers of water fluoridation and numerous cities and municipalities around the country are calling for the substance to be removed.

In 2008, paranoid and dangerous radicals at none other than USA Today reported that pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. The New York Times attempted to mollify the herd by claiming the presence of this cocktail of poison is not necessarily a bad thing. “Little study has been devoted to the long-term effects of low-concentration exposure on humans,” the Gray Lady reported, never mind numerous studies revealing the presence of drugs has feminized male fish, earthworms and zooplankton.

It is a common tactic for the corporate media to report the news and then characterize those of us who comment on it as stark raving nut cases akin to deranged sidewalk preachers warning the end of the world is upon us.

It should come as no surprise Dan Harris and ABC did not include documentation Alex Jones provided to make his point, documentation easy enough to find if one searches the corporate media’s own stories posted on the internet. ABC and other corporate media dinosaurs are not interested in reporting the truth. A million people listening and watching Alex Jones six days a week is the issue, not world government or the soft kill agenda of the global elite.

ABC’s hit piece — while mostly polite with well-placed zingers designed to convince people to stay away from Jones and the patriot and truth movement — is mostly a flailing and doomed effort.

Far too many people are awake and many of them understand what ABC’s Nightline segment on Alex Jones represents — a desperate and feeble attempt to shut down the opposition. Casting Jones as a dangerous hatemonger is absurd and will not demonize the man or his message. In fact, it will likely do the opposite of what ABC and the establishment media intend.
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« Reply #14 on: September 08, 2010, 05:30:25 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/abc-nightline-hit-piece-smears-alex-jones-as-king-of-paranoia-****.html

ABC Nightline Hit Piece Smears Alex Jones As King of “Paranoia ****”

Dan Harris proves yet again why the establishment media is increasingly shunned and distrusted



Paul Joseph Watson & Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Friday, September 3, 2010

An ABC Nightline hit piece on Alex Jones which aired last night attempts to smear the radio talk show host as a dangerous purveyor of “paranoia ****” who is inciting followers to violence, an unfortunate angle to take in light of the fact that just a day earlier, James Jay Lee was inspired not by Alex Jones, but by top-down establishment propaganda about environmentalism, when he decided to take hostages at gunpoint during the Discovery Channel building siege.

The headline of the piece, “Angry in America: Inside Alex Jones’ World,” instantly implies that Jones lives within his own paranoid fantasy bubble and that “Alex Jones’ world” bears no relation to the real world.

The agenda from the outset is to portray Jones as a kind of freak show leader for mentally disturbed conspiracy theorists. Interviewer Dan Harris constantly asks Jones if he believes in what he says, an ceaseless ploy to undermine the authenticity of the subjects about which Jones warns his listeners.

Jones is depicted not as a journalist, but as an entertainer and a purveyor of “paranoia ****,” as if his entire career is just one big sideshow, something to be scoffed at by real intellectuals who watch ABC News. The problem with this smear is the fact that ABC News, along with almost every other establishment media network, is hemorrhaging viewers because their credibility is shot.

Watch the clip.

       

Having covered up and lied for the Bush administration for eight years about weapons of mass destruction, torture and illegal invasions, and having continued in the same vein under Obama in shilling for big government, state run health care and the collapsing economy, the big networks are watched and trusted by barely anyone aside from frightened old geriatrics who have lost control of their bladders.

Harris’ efforts to label Jones as a nutcase ranting on a street corner through the implied reasoned credibility of ABC News is an exercise in futility, since ABC’s credibility disappeared many years ago.

In a follow up article posted on the ABC website, Dan Harris invokes the familiar smear of attempting to denigrate Jones’ material by accusing him of proliferating hate and violence.

“Jones’ critics say that by floating his highly-charged ideas at a time when the nation is already very angry and anxious, he’s upping the odds for unbalanced people to do stupid things,” he writes.

Unfortunately for Harris, he couldn’t have picked a worse moment for this lazy sideswipe, since just this week it was a top-down belief system, that of neo-eugenics and environmentalism, promoted not by conspiracy theorists by by the establishment itself, that inspired crazed gunman James Jay Lee to take hostages after he stormed the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Indeed, Alex Jones has spent the past four years rallying against the very extremist ideals that Lee cited as his motivation, beliefs that have constantly been pushed by corporate media networks, ABC News amongst them.

In addition, the only people in the alternative media promoting violent rhetoric are people like Hal Turner – who was paid by the FBI to do so.

The best Harris can muster is a lone nut who snuck into Bohemian Grove eight years ago, injuring nobody whatsoever, and the case of a woman who took photos of an Air Force base who was never even charged with a crime.

In the Nightline piece, Harris fumbled in his effort to characterize Jones as a conspiracy nut after Jones pointed out the obvious — the global elite are establishing world government. ABC and the corporate media have reported on this fact numerous times. Jones showed Harris and ABC documentation of this fact, but it ended up on the cutting room floor because the point of the Nightline segment is not to present objective facts, but portray Jones as a dangerous conspiracy kook.

Is the usually staid Wall Street Journal a coven of conspiracy nuts? In November of 2009, the newspaper reported that the Copenhagen Agreement engineered plans for “a transnational ‘government’ on a scale the world has never before seen” under the aegis of the United Nations.

The Financial Times published an article in late 2008 on the agenda to establish “global governance,” shorthand for world government. Gideon Rachman, FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator, wrote that while he does not believe in black helicopters, “for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.”

Earlier this year, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy went on the record in a very visible way and demanded world government in response to the bankster engineered financial crisis, itself a ploy to force world government on Europe and the rest of the developed world. Van Rompuy’s call was covered by the Independent, another staid establishment newspaper. Nobody called the editors deranged conspiracy theory mental cases.

       

       

       

Indeed, when Jones provided Harris and ABC News with articles and clips of Van Rompuy and a multitude of other top globalists calling for a new world order and a one world government, Harris simply claimed that they were talking about a different kind of world government, whatever that is supposed to mean. Presumably, the conspiracy for world government only exists if it is characterized as a happy-clappy utopia for everyone. As soon as you dare criticize it and point out that its very nature is fundamentally undemocratic, you instantly become a dangerous lunatic and the whole thing doesn’t exist.

ABC is well aware of the world government agenda, but they count on the ignorance of their audience — or the perceived ignorance, since millions of people are now awake to the reality of a one-world authoritarian government. ABC’s assigned task is to convince people Jones is a dangerous nut, not present the facts in an objective manner. It is irrelevant that Jones backs up his claims with plenty of research.

Harris repeated the corporate media canard that the water is safe to drink and only paranoid right-wing nut cases talk about fluoride and drugs in our drinking water. And yet the corporate media routinely reports on the dangers of water fluoridation and numerous cities and municipalities around the country are calling for the substance to be removed.

In 2008, paranoid and dangerous radicals at none other than USA Today reported that pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans. The New York Times attempted to mollify the herd by claiming the presence of this cocktail of poison is not necessarily a bad thing. “Little study has been devoted to the long-term effects of low-concentration exposure on humans,” the Gray Lady reported, never mind numerous studies revealing the presence of drugs has feminized male fish, earthworms and zooplankton.

ABC wasn’t going to allow Jones the time to present a shred of evidence because this wasn’t a balanced investigation, it was a hit piece. John P. Holdren, the current White House science czar, wrote a textbook in which he called for a “planetary regime” to carry out forced abortions and mandatory sterilization procedures, as well as drugging the water supply in an effort to cull the human surplus. Harris wasn’t about to give that issue a moment’s attention because the whole process was about shooting down the messenger, not seriously evaluating any of the evidence of Alex Jones’ claims.

It should come as no surprise Dan Harris and ABC did not include documentation Alex Jones provided to make his point, documentation easy enough to find if one searches the corporate media’s own stories posted on the internet. ABC and other corporate media dinosaurs are not interested in reporting the truth. A million people listening and watching Alex Jones six days a week is the issue, not world government or the soft kill agenda of the global elite.

Indeed, ABC itself reported on the secret meeting between billionaires such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and David Rockefeller, a gathering to discuss ways of curbing overpopulation, and yet Harris cites a CNN article about encouraging women not to have children and dismisses it as nothing more than sarcasm.

ABC’s hit piece — while mostly polite with well-placed zingers designed to convince people to stay away from Jones and the patriot and truth movement — is mostly a flailing and doomed effort.

Far too many people are awake and many of them understand what ABC’s Nightline segment on Alex Jones represents — a desperate and feeble attempt to shut down the opposition. Casting Jones as a dangerous hatemonger is absurd and will not demonize the man or his message. In fact, it will likely do the opposite of what ABC and the establishment media intend.
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« Reply #15 on: September 08, 2010, 10:55:15 pm »

Their intellectual sincerity is self evident with their "creative cuts".
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« Reply #16 on: December 06, 2010, 11:36:23 am »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/your-favorite-authority-figure-was-wrong-and-the-conspiracy-theorists-were-right.html

Your Favorite Authority Figure Was Wrong And The “Conspiracy Theorists” Were Right

The Excavator
Dec 6, 2010

The “conspiracy theorists,” the cranks, the nutjobs, the crazies, the truthers, had it right about the 9/11 attacks. Alex Jones and William Cooper (RIP) were right; Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Fox News were wrong. Noam Chomsky, and the left were wrong too. And let’s not forget The New York Times, CNN, The Nation, The Progressive, The Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, The History Channel, ABC, NBC, CBS, CBC, The Globe and Mail, and every single other print publication and broadcast media. They were all wrong about the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The people who were telling the truth all along were treated poorly, and perceived as lunatics. Like medieval lepers, the individuals who raised the banner of 9/11 truth were insulted, and excluded from public dialogue, and the respectable boundaries of communal conversation that exists in every human society.

What is strange about people’s mental blindness towards the truth is that you don’t have to be smart to connect the dots and see that high-level U.S. government officials were behind 9/11; to see that 2+2 equals 4. It doesn’t require any special mental skill to judge lies as lies.

Perhaps the most difficult truth to swallow is that the lie about 9/11 fooled people, including experienced scientists and highly gifted intellectuals, not because of media brainwashing, government manipulation of the public, or a lack of access to information, but because of human conceit and an unwillingness on the part of many individuals to take a look at the evidence about the controlled demolition of the twin towers and building se7en. People just don’t want to take off the government’s blindfold.

For the past several years almost everyone had access to a computer, where they could have easily searched the phrases “9/11 truth” or “9/11 evidence” or “9/11 was an inside job” but many people didn’t choose to because a) they weren’t intellectually humble enough, b) they were afraid of what they might find, and c) they were lazy.

Most people chose to conform to the popular opinion that the 9/11 attacks were done by Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, as the government had told them. They thought to themselves “Why bother researching for evidence about the collapse of the towers? Only crazy and mentally deluded people think individuals within U.S. government were behind 9/11.” Calling someone who speaks the truth a “crazy” or a “conspiracy theorist” is psychological reassuring, but it is pathetic.

The biggest problem in Western society is conformity. The American psychologist Rollo May said: “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.” Gay individuals know what it is like to be trashed and ridiculed by the mainline culture with terms like “faggots,” and so do black individuals who were psychological abused, murdered because of their skin color, and called dehumanizing names that need not be repeated here to make a point. The term “conspiracy theorist” is another present-day example of how language can be used to dehumanize, and ridicule individuals that are not in the norm.

“Conspiracy theorists” are thought to be intellectually inferior people who don’t deserve to receive attention. The term is used by both mainline conservatives and liberals, as well as people across the political spectrum, to dismiss thoughtful individuals that bring up damning evidence that implicates the highest authority figures in the United States government in grand crimes and events, the most famous being the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr., and the murder of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.

“I would say the term conspiracy theorists,” says Graeme MacQueen, a retired professor, and founder of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University, in a fantastic interview with WFHB Fire House Broadcasting, “has been an extremely powerful and useful term for those who want to prevent any questioning of what happened on September 11, 2001, and I think it doesn’t survive scrutiny. I think its a thought stopper and a silencer.” He added that when you call someone a conspiracy theorist “everyone breathes a sigh of relief and says ‘good, we don’t have to look this, this is just a conspiracy theory, we don’t have to look for evidence, we don’t have to use our critical faculties’ and it operates that way, it prevents people from thinking. . .If I wanted to denigrate you I can say you’re an idiot, but calling you a conspiracy theorist is much more effective because it’s a sophisticated term.”

MacQueen is doing tremendous work along with Laurie Manwell, a professor at Guelph University in Neuroscience and Applied Cognitive Sciences, in educating the American and Canadian public about the scientific evidence that rules out the official 9/11 story and explaining the psychological and political ramifications that arise when first realizing this haunting truth. In September they gave a presentation called “Peace Through Truth; 9/11 and State Crimes Against Democracy” at the 9/11 Working Group of Bloomington in Indiana. The event received little media coverage, obviously, but the Indiana Daily Student did publish a short article called “9/11 skeptics present ‘Peace Through Truth” by Rachel Trees. An excerpt:

[Continued...]
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« Reply #17 on: September 16, 2011, 01:53:43 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/destroying-freedom-truth-and-justice-with-the-power-of-words.html

Destroying Freedom, Truth And Justice With The Power of Words

The Excavator
May 27, 2011

    “The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” – Philip K. ****

    “Men must have spoken freely long before they formulated the idea of free speech. Perhaps the idea itself was developed in reaction against attempts to take it away from them — or in a fight to regain it.

    One way to get at the answer — and dig into the thoughts of a vanished civilization — is to examine the words they used. A thought or concept clearly held finds expression in a word that embodies it. If it wasn’t on their tongues, it wasn’t in their minds. The way to delve into their minds is to look into their vocabulary.” – I.F. Stone.

We should all reflect on the words we say, write, and think because words are powerful. Words are a bigger threat to freedom, justice, and truth than bullets because authoritarian governments can use words to enslave millions of minds and turn people into obedient machines without a will and without any understanding of their actions beyond the lies that their leaders tell them.

The term “conspiracy theory” has contributed more to the destruction and enslavement of America than the oligarchical Establishment’s assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, and other truth-telling political reformers. The stigma surrounding ideas and topics that are collectively referred to as “conspiracy theories” prevents people from thinking critically about the true intentions of their political leaders and the policies enacted by their government.

The claim that topics like 9/11 truth or the Federal Reserve are out of bounds and don’t belong in proper political discussion is an attack on free speech and justice. Whenever any idea or opinion is demarcated as crazy, paranoid, or cynical by political leaders and the Establishment it means they are afraid and have something to hide. President George Bush warned people to stay away from conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks because he didn’t want people to know that he played a big part in the planning and execution of 9/11.

Words can shape a people’s destiny for good or evil, hide ugly truths from the people, and protect the powerful from retribution. There are numerous examples of terms like “conspiracy theory” that are used to kill the free debate of ideas and ban critical opinion from mainstream discussion.

II. Before The Revolution Comes The Word

All revolutions are fought with words and ideas. The Western oligarchy’s revolution against Western liberty is no exception. They are presenting tyranny to the people by masking their evil designs in words from hallmark greeting cards.

Chinese and Soviet communists got rid of their political enemies through the primitive and old-fashioned way: killing them by the truckload. Western social engineers and America’s totalitarian establishment have instituted draconian change and directed Western civilization towards collectivist tyranny in a far less violent way. They learned from the Soviets and Chinese of how not to violently takeover a government and radically makeover a society from the top down. Since the end of World War II they have turned America upside down in a slow, gradual, step-by-step process by relying chiefly on propaganda, censorship, mental brainwashing, political harassment, cleansing of history in the people’s minds, subversive advertising, psychological conditioning, and perception management techniques.

Instead of banging heads and crushing skulls through the front door like the Soviets and Chinese did when their stubborn enemies resisted their draconian policies, the American and Western totalitarian revolutionaries came through the back door, silently, secretly, like petty thieves, without causing too much of an alarm. Naturally, large segments of the American and Western population have remained asleep throughout the past six decades, undeterred by the screaming of “conspiracy theorists” who are raising the alarm that tyrants and thieves have broken into the house and seek to burn it down to the ground. Thus, the sleeping people pose little threat to the traitorous intruders who have mega-death and mass slavery in store for them.

Freedom of speech is threatened in America and the West by words, not guns. Words like “conspiracy theorists” stop critical thought from naturally maturing into an informed opinion about history and the course of politics. Another freedom-destroying word is “domestic terrorist” which is used by the Department of Homeland Security and other unlawful government authorities to automatically stigmatize a person or a group who resist criminal government polices.

Words like “conspiracy theorists” and “domestic extremists” are words of darkness, evil, tyranny, and ignorance. These words are repeated by Western governments and the Western media for precise political purposes: to destroy free thought and free speech, as well as vilify freedom fighters, people who question government, politically awakened individuals, law abiding citizens, constitutionalists, and patriots who support the principles of freedom.

But words lose their power over time no matter how much they are repeated. To counter act this phenomenon, evil governments and rulers commit new atrocities to reinvigorate the words with meaning and bring new life to them. If the hijacked U.S. government stages another terrorist attack on the level of the September 11 attacks then the persecution of “conspiracy theorists” and “extremists” will be given a huge boost. The people might fall in line. Or they might not. This question can only be answered when the time comes.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #18 on: September 16, 2011, 01:56:28 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-and-the-orwellian-redefinition-of-conspiracy-theory.html

9/11 and the Orwellian Redefinition of “Conspiracy Theory”

Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
June 20, 2011

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.”

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.

Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators. To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.
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« Reply #19 on: September 16, 2011, 01:58:05 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-truth-conspiracy-theories-and-the-crisis-of-communication.html

9/11 Truth, “Conspiracy Theories,” And The Crisis of Communication

THE EXCAVATOR
June 23, 2011

“We don’t know when this madness will end but I do know that God is speaking. I have to believe that in my heart, and I have to know that God will use even this tragedy, to shake up the world.” – Unknown. You can hear the words in this video made by OwlMedic from 1:22 – 1:54.



A psychological gap exists between the people who accept the truth that 9/11 was an inside job and the people who can not come to the same conclusion because it is too painful, depressing, and earth-shattering. I have made it my personal mission in life, along with thousands of other people, to bridge this psychological gap so that people see the 9/11 event from an entirely different perspective – from the innocent victims’ point of view, not from the evil government conspirators’ point of view.

Mankind’s future is dependent on our understanding that 9/11 was a false flag event committed by a small faction of criminal traitors who control the governments of America., Israel, and England. These traitors will continue to commit criminal acts of state violence because they want to build a global garrison state to control people’s freedom of movement and prevent a transnational revolution against the private banking occupation of America and the Western world.

As a result of the psychological divide between 9/11 truth tellers and 9/11 truth deniers there is a spiritual and emotional divide between people in modern Western culture. We have forgotten how to speak to each other. Instead of engaging in thoughtful discussions about politics people automatically use the words “cranks” “conspiracy theorists” and “racists” to smear anyone who disagrees with government narratives, especially liberals who should know better. The definition of liberal is, “Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.”

Modern liberals have many ugly prejudices and intolerantly accuse government critics of being paranoid and racist. They degrade the work and views of a true hero, Ron Paul, by saying he supports corrupt banks on Wall Street, when in fact he is going after the one institution that enables Wall Street to steal trillions of dollars from the American people: the private, fraudulent, and foreign owned Federal Reserve Bank.

Liberals’ hostility to criticism of the Federal Reserve and 9/11 truth is anti-liberal. I expect conservatives to religiously trust the voices of authority and unquestioningly accept what they say because conservatives like to go with the flow, but it is disappointing to see that liberals are matching conservatives’ blind ignorance.

What all this means is that the categories of liberal and conservative are no longer relevant political terms. We have to communicate with each other and define each other with a whole new political perspective. Northop Frye said that there is “a built-in wisdom in the human mind, which is a part of its need to survive,” (1). I think many of us are tapping into this built-in wisdom. It is something we must do because the prospect of a new world war threatens human survival and human civilization.

It is stupid to speak about a war between Western civilization and Islamic barbarism. Newsflash: none of us are civilized. Maybe the Swiss, but that’s it. We in the West are not in a state of civilization and a state of freedom because there are demons of war running amok who are staging barbaric false flag events like 9/11 to further their corrupt agendas.

The demonic war establishment in Washington, Israel and England use the media to cast out truth-tellers out of polite society by demonizing them as cranks and conspiracy theorists. Telling the truth is poison to the arrogant ears of power. Authorities and power structures that justify their existence on lies need people to believe in the lies or else they will perish.

The U.S. war establishment should have been destroyed after the fall of Communism because it was no longer needed. But it gained so much power in the name of fighting the Soviet Union that it was able to use its academic, media, and government resources to invent a new enemy, terrorism, to keep itself alive on the backs of the American people.

On 9/11 the war establishment revealed its true wolfish nature, proving that it was no longer the protector of the American people. I doubt the war establishment was ever America’s protector because America has been in the hands of private, foreign bankers ever since 1913.

The two points that need to be communicated to 9/11 truth deniers is that a free society and a war establishment cannot coexist, and that a war establishment needs to manufacture lies and myths to stay relevant in the lives of people. War makers like the neocons are natural enemies of peace, free speech, and justice. Either freedom survives, or Washington’s satanic war establishment will end up destroying itself and in the process bring this world down.

The War on Terror is 3/5 a war on language and 2/5 a war on thought. Paul Craig Roberts writes in his latest article called ‘Conspiracy Theory,’ that language is used by the U.S. government to construct false narratives of history and take away the freedoms of the people. Roberts writes: “A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.”

[Continued...]
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« Reply #20 on: September 16, 2011, 01:59:36 pm »

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25501

Conspiracies

by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research
July 4, 2011

In a June column, I concluded that “conspiracy theory” is a term applied to any fact, analysis, or truth that is politically, ideologically, or emotionally unacceptable. This column is about how common real conspiracies are. Every happening cannot be explained by a conspiracy, but conspiracies are common everyday events.  Therefore, it is paradoxical that “conspiracy theory” has become a synonym for “unbelievable.”

Conspiracies are commonly used in order to advance agendas. In the July issue of American Rifleman, a National Rifle Association publication, the organization’s executive vice president, Wayne Lapierre reports on a congressional  investigation led by Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and Department of Justice conspiracy to further gun control measures by smuggling guns across the border to Mexican criminals and blaming it on American firearm sellers.

Lapierre writes:

    “Thanks to federal agents coming forth with evidence on the gun smuggling operation, this government sanctioned criminal conspiracy has been exposed.

    “Leading an administration-wide cover up--marked by an arrogant dismissal of Congress’ constitutional role--is Attorney General Eric Holder, who has blocked all efforts to get to the truth. His minions have directed federal employees with knowledge of the gun-running scam to refuse to cooperate with congressional investigators.”

Many Americans will find the uncovered conspiracy hard to believe. The US Federal agency, BATFE, with the DOJ’s participation, has been providing firearms to Mexico’s drug cartels in order to create “evidence” to support the charge that US gun dealers are the source of weapons for Mexican drug gangs. The purpose of the government’s conspiracy is to advance the gun control agenda.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s stonewalling of the congressional investigation has resulted in Rep. Issa’s warning to Holder:  “We’re not looking at the straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General. We’re looking at you.”

The most likely outcome will be that Grassley and Issa will have accidents or be framed on sex charges.

Conspiracies are also a huge part of economic life. For example, the Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, is known to have shorted financial instruments that it was simultaneously selling as sound investments to its customers.  The current bailouts of EU countries’ sovereign debt is a conspiracy to privatize public domain. 

Economic conspiracies are endless, and most succeed. NAFTA is a conspiracy against American labor, as are H-1B and L-1 work visas. Globalism is a conspiracy against First World jobs.

The sex charge against Dominique Strauss-Kahn could turn out to have been a conspiracy.  According to the New York Times, the hotel maid has bank accounts in four states, and someone has been putting thousands of dollars into them.

Sometimes governments are willing to kill large numbers of their own citizens in order to advance an agenda. For example, Operation Northwoods was a plan for false flag terrorist events drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by General Lyman Lemnitzer.  It called for the CIA and other “black op” elements to shoot down Americans in the streets of Miami and Washington, D.C., to hijack or shoot down airliners, to attack and sink boats carrying Cuban refugees to the US, and to fabricate evidence that implicated Castro.  The agenda of the Joint Chiefs and the CIA was to stir up American fear and hatred of Castro in order to support regime change in Cuba.

Before the reader cries “conspiracy theory,” be apprised that the secret Operation Northwoods was made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board.  When the plan was presented to President Kennedy in 1962, he rejected it and removed Lemnitzer as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Wikipedia quotes extensively from the plan’s menu of proposed false flag terrorist acts. Those who distrust Wikipedia can obtain a copy of the plan from the National Archives.

When I tell even highly educated people about Operation Northwoods, they react with disbelief--which goes to show that even US government-acknowledged conspiracies remain protected by disbelief a half century after they were hatched and 14 years after being revealed by the government.

[Continued...]
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« Reply #21 on: September 16, 2011, 02:01:14 pm »

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11 Reasons Why The 9/11 Fable is So Popular

THE EXCAVATOR
Aug 1, 2011

1. The bigness of the lie. Adolf Hitler said: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.” William Hazlitt said, “the greater the lie, the more enthusiastically it is believed and greedily swallowed.” And Hannah Arendt said:

    This doubt of people concerning themselves and the reality of their own experience only reveals what the Nazis have always known: that men determined to commit crimes will find it expedient to organize them on the vastest, most improbable scale. Not only because this renders all punishments provided by the legal system inadequate and absurd; but because the very immensity of the crimes guarantees that the murderers who proclaim their innocence with all manner of lies will be more readily believed than the victims who tell the truth. (The Portable Hannah Arendt; pg. 120).

2. Mythical archetype of Osama Bin Laden and Islamic terrorists. Osama Bin Laden’s iconic image and the creed of Islamic jihad against Western civilization is exciting historical material. It makes for a good Hollywood script. People are captivated and scared at the thought of Muslims rising against their oppressors, striking at the heart of the West and destroying America’s two biggest cultural artifacts, the Pentagon and World Trade Center. But it is fiction, not reality.

The imperial masters of fiction crafted the Osama Bin Laden myth to symbolically represent the new spirit of the times and the changing nature of the global order in the post-Soviet Union collapse.

How do you lead a disoriented and leaderless mob? The Neocons, CIA, Mossad, and MI6 know the trick. You put your own manufactured revolutionary figurehead in front of the mob to mislead it and misdirect it towards violence and vengeance. In this case that figurehead is Bin Laden. This trick works the same in every society and in every age. Getting in front of the mob with a flag and a simplistic creed to follow is one of the ancient tricks of statecraft.

3. Most people are children who are easily controlled by fear and mentally guided by authoritative rhetoric. They will believe any absurdity if voices of authority tell them it is true. Authority is their father, and government is their mother. The State is infallible to them. They are psychologically incapable of mental rebellion and of questioning government stories and government statements.

4. Peer pressure, and the fear of mockery and ridicule. A lot of people, especially on the left, are afraid of being called a kook and a conspiracy theorist so they don’t ever go out on a limb and tell the truth as they know it. They believe it is insane to question the foundations of the official 9/11 story so they don’t even bother to examine the facts and evidence that serves as the bedrock of the 9/11 truth movement. The human herd stampedes on the fields of facts and the valleys of truth to get to the desert of ignorance.

5. Terrorism is regarded as a mysterious, hidden and arcane phenomena, and by showing proof that the CIA, Mossad and MI6 are behind terror attacks in the West we give people the knowledge to re-examine their beliefs and to act.

The idea that false flag terrorism can be explained by examining historical data (Operation Gladio in Europe, Pearl Harbor Attack, Gulf of Tonkin, U.S.S. Liberty) and by researching all the evidence complied by average citizens is an idea that discomforts a lot of people. They are put on the spot, because suddenly their false perception of the 9/11 events and terrorism in general unravels and shatters.

6. The financial-terrorism-media-military-industrial-Zionist-congressional complex is a beast of prey that puts out propaganda everyday to create a culture of disinformation and myth. This beast controls the most sacred opinions of the people.

As a result of the government-media war against the public mind the truth is mistaken for a product of insanity whilethe lie is cherished and protected. In this state most people are like fish in the water, they have no grasp that they are living and breathing in an ocean of lies.

7. Mass social, cultural, and political brainwashing. Western society is controlled by totalitarian governments and a totalitarian media system that includes television, print media, publishing companies, films, music, and other aspects of the culture industry. Conformity is preached and uniformity of thought is encouraged. A radical diversity of opinion about the war on terrorism, 9/11, and other government myths is not allowed.

8. A lack of knowledge of history. A lot of people are unaware of Operation Gladio, the U.S.S. Liberty attack, and the reality of false flag terrorism.

9. A lack of skepticism, curiosity and a sense of wonder. 9/11 truth deniers believe all knowledge about terrorism is settled, and that the government has a monopoly on truth. So they feel free to give up their mental independence on the question of 9/11 and go with the flow instead of using their analytical skills to dig deeper.

10. A lack of humility to admit ignorance. 9/11 truth deniers have a very high opinion of themselves and a low opinion of 9/11 truth-tellers. Why? Because they are arrogant, fearful and close-minded individuals.

11. The 9/11 lie is sacred. To question the lie and say the shadow governments of the United States and Israel were behind the attacks is sacrilegious and blasphemes. Questioning the lie threatens not just an entire worldview, but civilization as we know it. The individual’s sense of well-being is based on the lie being real, and he/she undergoes the terror of psychological transformation when coming to face to face with the monstrous truth about 9/11.

The lie is a psychological attack on the community, the individual, and nature. The criminal conspirators behind the attacks and the cover-up want to destroy not just the truth and the dark history of that day, but the very idea of truth itself.
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« Reply #22 on: September 16, 2011, 02:02:04 pm »

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14 Conspiracy Theories That The Media Now Admits Are Conspiracy Facts

The American Dream
Aug 24, 2011



How many times have you heard the mainstream media dismiss certain points of view as “conspiracy theories”?  It seems as though one of the easiest ways to brush something off is to label it as something that only “conspiracy theorists” would believe.  Well, you know what?  A whole lot of the time the “conspiracy theorists” are right and the mainstream media is wrong.  In fact, we owe a great debt to “conspiracy theorists” because they will go places and investigate things that the mainstream media would never even touch.  The reality is that the mainstream media only tells us what the government and the big corporations want us to hear, and much of the time it is those in the alternative media that are left with the task of trying to figure out what the real truth is.  So don’t look down on conspiracy theories or conspiracy theorists.  In a world where almost everything we are told is a lie, the truth can be very difficult to find.
 
The following are 14 conspiracy theories that the media now admits are conspiracy facts….

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« Reply #23 on: September 16, 2011, 02:03:54 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-13-psy-ops-against-you.html

The 13 Psy-Ops Against You

Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator
August 24, 2011

Six months ago, Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings reported that the “U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war,” in his article “Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators.”

The reality that psychological operations play a big part in our 21st century, media-saturated society is rarely discussed in the print and television media, for obvious reasons. So I was very happy that Rolling Stone was shedding some light on the mental battlefield that politicians, soldiers, journalists, military generals, geopolitical analysts, think tank elitists, and citizens all live on in this century.

Alex Jones has made famous the idea that there is an Infowar being waged against the American people and the global public mind. This is a hundred percent true. We are at war with gangsters and corporate monopolists who control our governments from behind the scenes through a shadow and informal government-private network comprised of top government officials, corporate insiders, media kings, and politically connected individuals.

Whether you are watching television on your couch, manning a checkpoint in Iraq, propagating the latest talking points in Washington, or surfing the internet, the information we breathe into our mental lungs and muscles of perception is perhaps as important as the air we breathe in our homes, offices and streets. Through the suppression and perversion of information, we become enslaved to politically constructed perceptions and fake narratives that a benefit a privileged few.

Making people familiar with the concept that our current reality is manipulated and politically engineered is a slow process, but not impossible. Once the full awakening to the truth happens inside an individual it’s like waking up to a whole new world. After that, it becomes an obsession to strengthen your mental muscles of perceptions and achieve as much mental clarity as possible about the crazy world you live in.

Below, I list, according to my knowledge, the most important thirteen psychological operations that are being carried out against you, without your consent, by the power elite in America, Israel and the West.

1. The war on terror is a war on your rights, privacy, mind and everyday reality. This is a war fought in the name of goodness and freedom, but increasingly the architecture of propaganda that surrounds the war is falling apart.

In America and other Western nations freedom fighters are being demonized as domestic terrorists, while real terrorists like the al-Qaeda fighters in Libya are hailed by the Western media as defenders of liberty. Clearly, the propaganda in the war on terror does not add up.

2. The war on Social Security, Medicare, public pension plans, the general welfare, and the public good. Say what you will about government pension programs, the fact remains that seniors and workers put their own money aside every month under the assumption that the federal government would hold up its end of the deal.

A government program is not “an entitlement” when you paid taxes for the program. The only industries that are receiving government entitlements are the military, big banks, and political monopolies like GE, Monsanto, etc. These banks and corporations, especially the private Federal Reserve Bank, have committed crimes and robbed the American people. Abusing the political system in Washington is one thing, but destroying an entire nation is treasonous and unforgivable.

3. The war on self-sufficiency. The federal government in Washington is not allowing American citizens and families secure independent sources of economic livelihood and access alternative food markets and trade markets. The war on raw milk, organic farming, local production of food, and small farms is an attack on the American family, the community, and the nation. Who benefits? A few monopolistic, anti-free market, multinational corporations. They are political monopolies. Every totalitarian state has them. And the same trend can be seen in other Western nations.

As Alex Jones says in this video: “They don’t want you growing your own crops and selling it to your neighbour, or producing your own eggs and selling it, or having lemonade stands. That’s all over. The whole police state apparatus is here to revenue generate and to shut down the underground economy. That’s the essence of an occupied country.”

4. The war on knowledge and freedom of information. The greatest weapon that the tyrants who control modern secret intelligence agencies have on their side is the public disbelief about the evil nature of their existence, aims, goals and methods. Any truth that implicates the CIA, Israel’s Mossad and the MI6 in treasonous crimes against the populations they are meant to serve and defend is smeared as a “conspiracy theory.” The corporate-state media is complicit in this concerted attack on public knowledge and real history.

If it wasn’t for the success of the alternative media and voices like Alex Jones, Jesse Ventura, Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, William Rodriguez, as well as others who tell the truth about the 9/11 attacks, then there would be no hope to speak of. We would be lost, and defenseless against the evil forces of tyranny.

5. The war on hope. It is a fallacy that there are no heroes in the present age. John F. Kennedy was a hero. William Cooper was a hero. Ron Paul is a hero. Alex Jones is a hero. Jesse Ventura is a hero. It is important to praise such people because they tell the truth, defend the public good, and fight for freedom.

The reason why the establishment media says “Ron Paul can’t win,” even when he is leading in the polls is because they want the American people to admit defeat, and pick between two evils in the voting booth every four years. But there is hope to improve the political situation and restore the people’s voice in the American government. President Obama does not represent that hope. He is the anti-hope virus who is eating away at the fruits of hope from inside the system which is controlled by larger political and economic forces.

6. The war on reality and truth. This is an era of media misinformation, political fantasies and lies. There is a siege on the American mind and the global mind. This is also a war on real history and real science. What the 9/11 fraud and the laughable NIST report on World Trade Center 7 shows is that even in this scientifically advanced age, even in a supposedly democratic society, political and economic elites are able to use the name of science to cover up their crimes.

7. The war on language. The strategic deployment of language by politicians, the pentagon, corporations and media institutions to win political points, and advance their secret, undeclared agendas, is a basic fact of our age.

The social, cultural and political programming of society through the deliberate misuse of language should be categorized as a crime against humanity. Those institutions and individuals who practice the manipulation of language to twist the public mind and confuse the herd should be held accountable in some form.

Political talking points have no place in public conversations about large and complicated issues. The soundbite media and the teleprompter presidency are serious threats to the public good. Notice how Barack Obama speaks. The guy is a robot and a machine who doesn’t have real thoughts of his own.

Most successful politicians like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Rick Perry have to act like robots because they are inauthentic creatures who smile and wave at you while behind your back they screw you. As John Lennon said, “But first you must learn how to smile as you kill, If you want to be like the folks on the hill.”

[Continued...]
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« Reply #24 on: September 16, 2011, 02:05:13 pm »

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-failure-to-stand-up-to-evil-leads-to-insanity-poverty-and-the-loss-of-all-our-rights.html

The Failure to Stand Up to Evil Leads to Insanity, Poverty and the Loss of All Our Rights

Washington’s Blog
March 24, 2011

Preface: I am using the word “evil” in its secular sense in this essay, as in a horrible, destructive act … religion is beyond the scope of this essay.

When someone fails to stand up to a heinous act, that leads to a whole chain of events.

It Enables More Destructive Acts

Initially, by failing to stand up to the bad act, we are enabling the person who committed it to do bigger and worse things in the future.

Army psychiatrist and Christian philosopher M. Scott Peck wrote extensively on evil in People of the Lie (since Peck was a psychiatrist and an empirical researcher, his investigation of the dynamics of those who commit heinous acts and the subsequent attempts to cover them up is very interesting, even for atheists who will disregard all religious overtones). As Peck wrote:

    It is necessary that we first draw the distinction between evil and ordinary sin. It is not their sins per se that characterize evil people…The central defect of the evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it.

And a longer passage:

    We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit. Some rudimentary form of conscience must precede the act of lying. There is no need to hide unless we first feel that something needs to be hidden. We come now to a sort of paradox. Evil people feel themselves to be perfect. At the same time, however, they have an unacknowledged sense of their own evil nature. Indeed, it is this very sense from which they are frantically trying to flee. The essential component of evil is not the absence of a sense of sin or imperfection but the unwillingness to tolerate that sense. At once and the same time, the evil are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness. Rather than blissfully lacking a sense of morality like the psychopath, they are continually engaged in sweeping the evidence of their evil under the rug of their own consciousness (or attempting to redefine their evil as good). The problem is not a defect of conscience, but the effort to deny the conscience its due. We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves. The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as a part of this cover-up process. Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it. Since they will do almost anything to avoid the particular pain that comes from self-examination, under ordinary circumstances, the evil are the last people who would ever come to psychotherapy. The evil hate the light – the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of the truth that penetrates their deception.

So when people fail to stand up to the heinous acts of a bad person, they are empowering that person’s cover up, the very core of their propensity to do further bad acts in the future.

It Destroys Our Ability to Think Rationally

Moreover, failure to stand up to the bad act requires people to rationalize their failure to act, which in turn ends up literally warping their thinking process.

As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, people will go to extreme lengths to rationalize their failure to recognize bad actions by those in power:

---------------

Sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The researchers found, as described in an article [.pdf] in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

    *  Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress.

    *  Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

    *  “For the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”

    *  “The study demonstrates voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information.”

    *  People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

    *  “We refer to this as ‘inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.

    *  “People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war.”

    *  “They wanted to believe in the link (between 9/11 and Iraq) because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

An article … in Alternet discussing the Sociological Inquiry article helps us to understand that the key to people’s active participation in searching for excuses for actions by the big boys is fear:

    Subjects were presented during one-on-one interviews with a newspaper clip of this Bush quote: “This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda.” The Sept. 11 Commission, too, found no such link, the subjects were told.

    “Well, I bet they say that the commission didn’t have any proof of it,” one subject responded, “but I guess we still can have our opinions and feel that way even though they say that.”

    Reasoned another: “Saddam, I can’t judge if he did what he’s being accused of, but if Bush thinks he did it, then he did it.”

    Others declined to engage the information at all. Most curious to the researchers were the respondents who reasoned that Saddam must have been connected to Sept. 11, because why else would the Bush Administration have gone to war in Iraq?

    The desire to believe this was more powerful, according to the researchers, than any active campaign to plant the idea.

    Such a campaign did exist in the run-up to the war…

    He won’t credit (politicians spouting misinformation) alone for the phenomenon, though.

    “That kind of puts the idea out there, but what people then do with the idea … ” he said. “Our argument is that people aren’t just empty vessels. You don’t just sort of open up their brains and dump false information in and they regurgitate it. They’re actually active processing cognitive agents”…

    The alternate explanation raises queasy questions for the rest of society.

    “I think we’d all like to believe that when people come across disconfirming evidence, what they tend to do is to update their opinions,” said Andrew Perrin, an associate professor at UNC and another author of the study…

    “The implications for how democracy works are quite profound, there’s no question in my mind about that,” Perrin said. “What it means is that we have to think about the emotional states in which citizens find themselves that then lead them to reason and deliberate in particular ways.”

    Evidence suggests people are more likely to pay attention to facts within certain emotional states and social situations. Some may never change their minds. For others, policy-makers could better identify those states, for example minimizing the fear that often clouds a person’s ability to assess facts …

The Alternet article links to a must-read interview with psychology professor Sheldon Solomon, who explains:

    A large body of evidence shows that momentarily (raising fear of death), typically by asking people to think about themselves dying, intensifies people’s strivings to protect and bolster aspects of their worldviews, and to bolster their self-esteem. The most common finding is that (fear of death) increases positive reactions to those who share cherished aspects of one’s cultural worldview, and negative reactions toward those who violate cherished cultural values or are merely different.

    ***

    Investors – as with politicians or Americans in general – believe that “when (they) come across disconfirming evidence . . . . they tend to … update their opinions”, but in reality, they cling to the beliefs they formed during certain heightened emotional states, such as fear.

As NPR noted last July:

    New research suggests that misinformed people rarely change their minds when presented with the facts — and often become even more attached to their beliefs.

    ***

    A new body of research out of the University of Michigan suggests … that we base our opinions on beliefs and when presented with contradictory facts, we adhere to our original belief even more strongly.

    The phenomenon is called backfire, and it plays an especially important role in how we shape and solidify our beliefs on immigration, the president’s place of birth, welfare and other highly partisan issues.

    ***

    It’s threatening to us to admit that things we believe are wrong. And all of us, liberals and conservatives, you know, have some beliefs that aren’t true, and when we find that out, you know, it’s threatening to our beliefs and ourselves.

    ***

    This isn’t a question of education, necessarily, or sophistication. It’s really about preserving that belief that we initially held.

Torture as a Quintessential Evil of the Last Decade

A good example of this dynamic is with torture.

Americans were first told by our government that we were not torturing anyone. Then, the government admitted it did a “little” waterboarding, but said that’s not torture, and that it was necessary to prevent more Al Qaeda attacks.

The truth, however, is that top experts in interrogation say that:

     *  Torture doesn’t work in providing information which will keep us safe.

     *  Torture actually reduces our national security and creates new terrorists.

     *  Most of those tortured were innocent.

     *  Torture has been used throughout history – not to gain information – but as a form of intimidation, to terrorize people into obedience. In other words, at its core, torture is a form of terrorism.

More importantly, the specific type of torture which was used the the U.S. in Iraq and Guantanamo was tailor-made to extract false confessions.

As I previously pointed out:

---------------

Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used torture techniques aimed at extracting false confessions.

McClatchy subsequently filled in some of the details:

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document…

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage. See also this and this.

Paul Krugman eloquently summarized the truth about the type of torture used:

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There’s a word for this: it’s evil.

---------------

Indeed, one of the two senior instructors from the Air Force team which taught U.S. servicemen how to resist torture by foreign governments when used to extract false confessions has blown the whistle on the true purpose behind the U.S. torture program.

As Truth Out reported yesterday:

    Jessen’s notes were provided to Truthout by retired Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns, a “master” SERE instructor and decorated veteran who has previously held high-ranking positions within the Air Force Headquarters Staff and Department of Defense (DoD).

    Kearns and his boss, Roger Aldrich, the head of the Air Force Intelligence’s Special Survial Training Program (SSTP), based out of Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, hired Jessen in May 1989. Kearns, who was head of operations at SSTP and trained thousands of service members, said Jessen was brought into the program due to an increase in the number of new SERE courses being taught and “the fact that it required psychological expertise on hand in a full-time basis.”

    Jessen, then the chief of Psychology Service at the US Air Force Survival School, immediately started to work directly with Kearns on “a new course for special mission units (SMUs), which had as its goal individual resistance to terrorist exploitation.”

    The course, known as SV-91, was developed for the Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) branch of the US Air Force Intelligence Agency, which acted as the Executive Agent Action Office for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jessen’s notes formed the basis for one part of SV-91, “Psychological Aspects of Detention.”

    ***

    Kearns was one of only two officers within DoD qualified to teach all three SERE-related courses within SSTP on a worldwide basis, according to a copy of a 1989 letter written Aldrich, who nominated him officer of the year.

    ***

    The Jessen notes clearly state the totality of what was being reverse-engineered – not just ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but an entire program of exploitation of prisoners using torture as a central pillar,” he said. “What I think is important to note, as an ex-SERE Resistance to Interrogation instructor, is the focus of Jessen’s instruction. It is exploitation, not specifically interrogation. And this is not a picayune issue, because if one were to ‘reverse-engineer’ a course on resistance to exploitation then what one would get is a plan to exploit prisoners, not interrogate them. The CIA/DoD torture program appears to have the same goals as the terrorist organizations or enemy governments for which SV-91 and other SERE courses were created to defend against: the full exploitation of the prisoner in his intelligence, propaganda, or other needs held by the detaining power, such as the recruitment of informers and double agents. Those aspects of the US detainee program have not generally been discussed as part of the torture story in the American press.”

    ***

    Jessen wrote that cooperation is the “end goal” of the detainer, who wants the detainee “to see that (the detainer) has ‘total’ control of you because you are completely dependent on him, and thus you must comply with his wishes. Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable that you must cooperate with him in some way (propaganda, special favors, confession, etc.).”

    ***

    Kearns said, based on what he has read in declassified government documents and news reports about the role SERE played in the Bush administration’s torture program, Jessen clearly “reverse-engineered” his lesson plan and used resistance methods to abuse “war on terror” detainees.

So we have the two main Air Force insiders concerning the genesis of the torture program confirming – with original notes – that the whole purpose of the torture program was to extract false confessions.

They Got the False Confessions They Wanted

And false confessions were, in fact, extracted:

---------------

The Miami Herald ran a story entitled “Alleged 9/11 mastermind: `I make up stories’”, noting:

    Accused al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed complained that interrogators tortured lies out of him…

    ”I make up stories,” Mohammed said …

    In broken English, he described an interrogation in which he was asked the location of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

    ”Where is he? I don’t know,” Mohammed said. ‘Then he torture me. Then I said, ‘Yes, he is in this area or this is al Qaeda which I don’t know him.’ I said no, they torture me.”

This is not new. It has already been documented that Mohammed confessed to crimes which he could not have committed, and that he said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information – telling them what he thought they wanted to hear – in an attempt to stop the torture.

Indeed, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the Red Cross:

    During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told the interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.

And see this Washington Post report.

***

Dick Cheney claimed that waterboarding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed stopped a terror attack on L.A., but as the Chicago Tribune notes:

    The Bush administration claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed helped foil a planned 2002 attack on Los Angeles — forgetting that he wasn’t captured until 2003.

(see this confirmation from the BBC: “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed … was captured in Pakistan in 2003″).

---------------

And as I pointed out last year:

---------------

[A]ccording to NBC news:

     *  Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured.

     *  At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”

     *  One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ.

     *  The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves.

***

Remember, as discussed above, the torture techniques used by the Bush administration to try to link Iraq and 9/11 were specifically geared towards creating false confessions (they were techniques created by the communists to be used in show trials).

***

The above-linked NBC news report quotes a couple of legal experts to this effect:

    Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says he is “shocked” that the Commission never asked about extreme interrogation measures.

    “If you’re sitting at the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than guess,” said Ratner, whose center represents detainees at Guantanamo. “Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore their conclusions are suspect.”…

    Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University’s School of Law, put it this way: “It should have relied on sources not tainted. It calls into question how we were willing to use these interrogations to construct the narrative.”

---------------

I also pointed out:

---------------

The official 9/11 Commission Report states:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these “detainees” have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot. Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting.

In other words, the 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand.

The Commission didn’t really trust the interrogation testimony. For example, one of the primary architects of the 9/11 Commission Report, Ernest May, said in May 2005:

    We never had full confidence in the interrogation reports as historical sources.

As I noted last May:

Newsweek is running an essay by [New York Times investigative reporter] Philip Shenon saying [that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees]:

    The commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda’s history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it.

    The panel raised no public protest over the CIA’s interrogation methods, even though news reports at the time suggested how brutal those methods were. In fact, the commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.

    That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission’s final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain.

    And yet it is a distinct possibility that Al Qaeda suspects who were the exclusive source of information for long passages of the commission’s report may have been subjected to “enhanced” interrogation techniques, or at least threatened with them, because of the 9/11 Commission….

    Information from CIA interrogations of two of the three—KSM and Abu Zubaydah—is cited throughout two key chapters of the panel’s report focusing on the planning and execution of the attacks and on the history of Al Qaeda.

    Footnotes in the panel’s report indicate when information was obtained from detainees interrogated by the CIA. An analysis by NBC News found that more than a quarter of the report’s footnotes—441 of some 1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program, including the trio who were waterboarded.

    Commission members note that they repeatedly pressed the Bush White House and CIA for direct access to the detainees, but the administration refused. So the commission forwarded questions to the CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel’s behalf.

    The commission’s report gave no hint that harsh interrogation methods were used in gathering information, stating that the panel had “no control” over how the CIA did its job; the authors also said they had attempted to corroborate the information “with documents and statements of others.”

    But how could the commission corroborate information known only to a handful of people in a shadowy terrorist network, most of whom were either dead or still at large?

    Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking. …

    Kerrey said it might take “a permanent 9/11 commission” to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

---------------

This essay will not go too far down the rabbit hole of 9/11.

The point is that the government used a specific set of torture techniques created to extract false confessions which would support a rationale for the Iraq war and the war on terror and which would allow a superficial reading of September 11th itself.

If we fail to stand up to this act of evil – the use of torture to obtain false confessions – we are not only complicit, but we will also eventually drive ourselves crazy in trying to rationalize what was done in our name.

It Disempowers Us and Leads to the Loss of All of Our Rights

As Yves Smith writes today about the Truth Out article:

    This revelation raises troubling questions about how programs like this relate to the coarsening of American society. Some readers will no doubt argue that trying to connect the dots between programs designed for use in combat settings and broad social trends is overreaching. Yet look at the themes Jessen stresses: control, dependency, compliance and cooperation. To use one pet example, why are people so apathetic in the wake of widespread abuses by banks, first the extortions that took place during the bailouts, and now the continued flouting of the law in mortgage servicing and foreclosures?

    Although there was no single architect like Jessen for the various elements of our current economic paradigm, they do seem to work to weaken, and perhaps in some cases, to break the will of ordinary citizens to stand up to their tormentors large and small. A policy preference for higher levels of unemployment (to keep inflation down and workers in their place) have reduced many if not most individuals’ sense of control of their own destiny and increased their sense of dependence. When job tenures are short and replacement work at the same level of pay can be hard to get, that alone produces a good deal of the sought-after state, compliance.

    Add to that an information apparatus which allows employers to see minor transgressions like late payment and misdemeanors such as getting arrested at protests, and you have effective mechanisms for social control. And there are those who look at the abuse of Bradley Manning, which would have seemed inconceivable fifteen years ago, and wonder who else might be deemed to be enough of a threat to merit similar mistreatment.

In other words, the failure to stand up to a heinous act not only destroys our ability to think, but also makes it less likely we will stand up to future bad acts … thus disempowering us.

That is the road to poverty, and a complete loss of all of our rights …
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"For the first years of [Ludwig von] Mises’s life in the United States...he was almost totally dependent on annual research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation.” -- Richard M. Ebeling

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