Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9/11. Show all posts
Monday, November 5, 2012
9/11 'truther' film September Morn
Martin Sheen and Woody Harrelson set for 9/11 'truther' film September Morn
Film's advance publicity says: 'We the people demand an independent investigation into the tragic events of 9/11'
Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 October 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/oct/17/martin-sheen-woody-harrelson-9-11-truther
Hollywood is to court controversy with a film that will challenge the official version of the events of 9/11, a previously taboo topic for the industry mainstream. Martin Sheen, Woody Harrelson and Ed Asner, who have all supported conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks, have signed up to the movie, which is entitled September Morn.
Styling itself as a drama in the tradition of Twelve Angry Men, the film's advance publicity note hints at a cover-up, saying: "We the people demand that the government revisit and initiates a thorough and independent investigation to the tragic events of 911."
Details of the film, which is to be directed by BJ Davis and written by Howard Cohen, are expected to be revealed at an American Film Market conference in Los Angeles next week, Deadline.com reported.
The production has been set up by Fleur de Lis Film Studios, which has also made the documentary A Noble Lie, about the Oklahoma City bombing, and Operation: Dark Heart, a feature based on an intelligence agent's memoirs.
Until now Hollywood has steered clear of claims that the Bush administration, or other elements in the government, may have been behind the 9/11 attacks, in which hijacked passenger planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennslyvania. The fourth plane was apparently en route to the Capitol.
Oliver Stone, who has challenged official history in JFK and other films, steered clear of conspiracy theories in his 2006 film World Trade Center, which focused on the heroism of police and rescuers.
September Morn has assembled a cast linked to the so-called truther movement, which alleges official inconsistencies, complicity and cover-up.
Sheen, who starred in Apocalypse Now and television's The West Wing, has long questioned whether Islamist hijackers single-handedly brought down the Twin Towers, killing 2,605 people.
"I did not want to believe that my government could possibly be involved in such a thing, I could not live in a country that I thought could do that – that would be the ultimate betrayal," he told an interviewer in 2007.
Sheen grew suspicious after his son Charlie, also an actor, alerted him to apparent contradictions, such as how a structure known as "Building 7" fell.
He said: "However, there have been so many revelations that now I have my doubts, and chief among them is Building 7 – how did they rig that building so that it came down on the evening of the day?"
Asner, who has won seven Emmys, has several times urged a new investigation into 9/11. In 2010, he told an interviewer: "This country – which is the greatest, strongest country that ever existed in the world, in terms of power – supposedly had a defence that could not be penetrated all these years. But all of that was eradicated by 19 Saudi Arabians, supposedly. Some of whom didn't even know how to fly."
Harrelson, who starred recently in The Hunger Games, has also supported the self-styled 9/11 truth movement.
September Morn is also the name of a Neil Diamond album and a painting by the French artist Paul Émile Chabas which hangs in New York's Metropolitan Musuem of Art.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Significa 1-5-12
Kool Websites
Watch Live Baseball
http://www.watchlivebaseball.com/
Tune in to Watch Baseball Live Streaming online on your pc with instant access payments...
Watch Live NBA Online
http://www.watchlivenba.tv/
Watch all the top NBA games through high quality online streams...
The Jinn
http://www.thejinn.net/
UFO, alien, poltergeist, demon, ascended master, space brother, monster, Watcher, nephilim, reptilian, Grey, Bigfoot, ghost....
We don't actually know a single thing about life on other planets. Scientific evidence that extraterrestrials visit us doesn't exist.
Our belief that they do is fantastic modern mythology in the making.
However, there is enormous evidence that deceptive entities are masquerading as extraterrestrials.
There are unseen creatures that we share this Earth with.
They don't come from other planets.
They've been called many names: aliens, spirits, Etherians, Ultraterrestrials, and more.
In the Koran they are called the Jinn.
Information about the Jinn reads like a textbook description of UFO and other paranormal phenomena.
Discovering these entities gives you an essential key to understanding paranormal phenomena.
They are the major players behind our myths and most perplexing mysteries.
UFOs aren't extraterrestrial -- They're extradimensional.
*
Celente’s Trends Proven Accurate; What Will 2012 Bring?
Gerald Celente
Trends Research
December 16, 2011
“Wake-Up Call” Trend: The Decline of America trend is nowhere near bottom, and the worse is yet to come.
One year later: “Worse” has happened, as the country piles up more and more debt, politicians are gridlocked, paralyzed in some perpetual political traffic jam of inaction.
“Crack-Up 2011” Trend: Teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter...
One year later: The Sovereign debt crisis threatens both the European Union and Euro, currency wars are underway and the US and China are trading trade barbs.
“Crime Time” Trend: No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
One year later: Thieves are stealing copper piping and cables, cooking oil and temple donation boxes; “Criminal recycling” is flourishing; in 2011 a record number of cyber crimes is reported to the FBI: more than 23,000 per month.
“Screw the People” Trend: As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations.
One year later: In the two-tier American justice system, the long arm of the law only reaches down to the low hanging fruit. Banks are slapped with slap on the wrist fines for billion dollar crimes, and like Jon Corzine, no crime time. But swift justice is readily dealt out for small time crimes. From closing down lemonade stands operating without a license to swat teams busting raw foods cooperatives, in America, Justice means “just us!”
“Students of the World Unite” Trend: “University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”
One year later: Occupy Wall Street is just one of the scores of worldwide student protest movements, some of which have proven powerful enough to bring down governments.
“Crackdown on Liberty” Trend: A national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
One year later: TSA strip searches of little old ladies; Obama backs bill “authorizing indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens.”
“Journalism 2.0” Trend: With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0” has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit.
One year later: Aleksai Navalny, an imprisoned young Russian blogger/Twitterer with some 200,000 followers, is “credited with mobilizing a generation of young Russians through social media, a leap much like the one that spawned Occupy Wall Street and youth uprisings across Europe this year.”
“Cyberwars” Trend: The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant – and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.
One year later: Iran proudly displayed a sleek, white U.S. drone that was used for spying on Iranians; Iranians were able to capture what US military officials privately told Bloomberg was a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 by hacking into its security code; PayPal shuts off service to WikiLeaks.
Gerald Celente was spot on with his Top Trends 2011. No one else came even close. To get a heads up on “History before it happens,” you’ll want the Top Trends 2012.
*
Why the Smell of Cinnamon Makes You Spend Money
Retailers know how to manipulate all our senses — and that includes our olfactory ones
Martin Lindstrom
December 16, 2011
http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/16/why-the-smell-of-cinnamon-makes-you-spend-money
Lindstrom's latest book is Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.
Every December, you vow it’s not going to happen and yet, without fail, you return home from your Christmas shopping with far more than you intended. Do you ever wonder why? The answer might surprise you, because you’ve probably been seduced by something you can neither see nor hear.
It was a perfectly normal kind of day when I was first struck by that feeling of Christmas in the air, the one that links directly to childhood anticipation of the festive season. The odd thing was that it was early November, yet my need for tangible symbols of the festive season had bitten like a bug. I studiously hit the streets of my neighborhood in search of the perfect tree. I bought decorations and wrote Christmas cards, only to realize that Nov. 5 was a little early to be mailing them.
I was astounded by my behavior. After all, I’m a 41-year-old man who’s long since stopped believing in Santa Claus. So what was it that led me to this neat pile of cards ready to be mailed a good six weeks before Christmas? In my attempt to understand, I went over the details of the days leading up to my own personal Christmas frenzy, and I tracked the origins of it back to a brief window of time as I changed flights in the Zurich airport. I noticed the duty free shops were already full of the colors of Christmas. There was a ginormous tree topped by a gleaming star, surrounded by images of Santas and reindeer and sleighs. But surely it would take more than clichéd icons to turn me into a Christmas zombie?
Not having anything else to go on, I investigated further. Turns out I was on the right path, for the truth of the matter was to be found in the mechanisms behind the displays. To be more precise, carefully camouflaged tubes strategically placed amongst the tinsel and glitz were piping in the sumptuous smells of Christmas: a perfect mix of cinnamon and pine.
Although it seemed I’d gotten to the nub of the issue, I was still perplexed. I mean, can a tube dispensing cinnamon and pine really compel me to embrace the Christmas spirit way ahead of time? Surprisingly, yes. Dr. Gemma Calvert, who is an expert in modern brain imaging based in Oxford, England, discovered the remarkable ability smells have to reactivate childhood memories. She exposed a group of volunteers to cinnamon and then viewed their reactions, using an fMRI scanner. As they breathed in the sweet spicy scent, their brains fired up — including the region responsible for authentic emotional engagement. It seems cinnamon is one of the main ingredients associated, over time, with baking and cider-making rituals and can kick-start an emotional journey whenever it wafts our way.
So while it might seem as though retailers are concentrating on everything that delights your eyes and ears, they also might be surreptitiously enticing you to buy more through your nose. And they might not even be doing it in a sneaky manner. This season, Trader Joe’s, Publix, and other supermarkets are prominently displaying heavily-scented “cinnamon brooms” by the check out — large, smelly bunches of twigs to hang inside your home and anoint with cinnamon oil when their pungency starts to fade. At Bed, Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, and other big-box stores, cinnamon-scented pine cones for sale greet you as you walk in the door. Take these items home and you might even get the urge to rush out shopping again. Christmas is in the air — quite literally!
Lindstrom is a marketing consultant and the author of Brandwashed. The views expressed are his own.
*
Konformist Book Club
The World's Greatest Conspiracies
http://www.atomicbooks.com/index.php/worlds-greatest-conspiracies.html
$21.95
Too unsettling to be buried in the shadows for far too long, the Pandora’s Box of information unleashed in this completely updated and expanded expose proves you just can’t get away from Them. Hidden agendas, massive cover-ups, diabolically sinister plots—if you can handle it, the lowdown on the latest right-under-your-nose conspiracies is right here, including: - 9/11: Islamic terrorism...or inside job? - George W. Bush: The real powers behind the leader of the free world - Atlantis Rising: the deep and wide mythology of a “lost” civilization - Elvis: Still everywhere, with new King-size theories aplenty - Cuidad Juarez: Who—or what—is behind the unsolved serial killings of more than 90 women in this otherwise sleepy border town? - Dick “Darth” Cheney: Dr. Evil for the New Millennium? - And many others that will have you looking over your shoulder With the sordid truth finally leaking more and more into the nightly news, this provocative compilation is crucial reading for seeing beyond what They want you to believe. Whether you’re a cynic or completely certain, this walk on the wild side will convince you of one thing: You should be very, very nervous. “Fills a desperate need in this paranoid era.” —Wired magazine
Jonathan Vankin / John Whalen
Publisher Citadel Press
Page Count 844pp
Publication Date June 29, 2010
ISBN 978-0806528786
The Man Cave Book
Jeff Wilser
Kindle Price: $9.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
Paperback $10.19
What separates the men from the boys? The Man Cave.
Boyhood Fort Vs. Man Cave
Who's allowed
Boyhood Fort: Not girls—they have cooties
Man Cave: Not women—they have authority
Primary materials used in construction
Boyhood Fort: Wood, stuff your mom doesn't want
Man Cave: Particleboard, stuff your wife doesn't want
Key activities inside
Boyhood Fort: Goofing around, avoiding responsibility
Man Cave: Goofing around, avoiding responsibility
Peak periods of use
Boyhood Fort: After school, weekends
Man Cave: After work, weekends
Slumber parties with buddies?
Boyhood Fort: Yes
Man Cave: No
Food and beverages consumed
Boyhood Fort: Soda and unhealthy snacks
Man Cave: Beer and unhealthy snacks
Spend the night inside?
Boyhood Fort: Not as a habit, but it's been known to happen
Man Cave: Not as a habit, but it's been known to happen
Money spent on space
Boyhood Fort: As little as possible
Man Cave: As much as possible
Is this a phase you will outgrow?
Boyhood Fort: Yes
Man Cave: No
The Man Cave Book is a tribute to great and glorious man spaces and the craftsmen behind them. Complete with instructions and insights into creating your own unique refuge and shrine to beer, sports, and everything else that's right with the world, this is an essential manual for any man cave enthusiast.
About the Author
A former USMC Reserves squad leader and the author of The Maxims of Manhood, Jeff Wilser is a regular columnist on dating, nightlife, and pop culture who has contributed to GQ, Esquire, Glamour, MTV, and VH1.
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 8251 KB
Print Length: 192 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Original edition (April 19, 2011)
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ASIN: B004U73C1S
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Amazon URL
Kindle Edition:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Cave-Book-ebook/dp/B004U73C1S/thekonformist
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Cave-Book-Jeff-Wilser/dp/0062003925/thekonformist
*
Awesome Quotes
“You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of this country, much better.”
Matt Damon on Barack Obama
"The sound of five pretentious old guys joylessly grinding out sub-shoegaze drone and patting themselves on the back for being 'subversive.' It's more out of touch than a bunch of CEOs starting a drum circle at an Occupy rally and as sonically disastrous."
Entertainment Weekly, in naming the Lou Reed - Metallica collaboration Lulu the worst album of the year
*
YouTube Greatest Hits
Tiger Woods Amazing Miracle Shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHMPpZVOfbI
16th Hole at the 2005 Masters in Augusta...
The Dark Crystal, Part 1 of 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnFMAF_0RQ
All eight parts are available...
Bill Hicks: On Letterman (1993)
The Cut Set
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vf340K_Ed0o
In honor of what would be his 50th birthday on December 16th:
http://alchemicalarchives.blogspot.com/
Hicks constantly faced problems with censorship. In 1984, Hicks was invited to appear on Late Night with David Letterman for the first time. He had a joke that he used frequently in comedy clubs about how he caused a serious accident that left a classmate confined to a wheelchair. NBC had a policy that no handicapped jokes could be aired on the show, making his stand-up routine difficult to perform without mentioning words such as "wheelchair". Hicks was disappointed that the TV audience didn't get to experience the uncensored Bill Hicks that people saw in clubs.
On October 1, 1993, about five months before his death, Hicks was scheduled to appear on Late Show with David Letterman, his twelfth appearance on a Letterman late night show but his entire performance was removed from the broadcast — then the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping. Hicks' stand-up routine was removed from the show allegedly because Letterman and his producer were nervous about Hicks' anti-religious jokes. Hicks said he believed it was due to a pro-life commercial aired during a commercial break. Both the show's producers and CBS denied responsibility. Hicks expressed his feelings of betrayal in a letter to John Lahr of The New Yorker. Although Letterman later expressed regret at the way Hicks had been handled, Hicks did not appear on the show again. The full account of this incident was featured in a New Yorker profile by Lahr, which was later published as a chapter in Lahr's book, Light Fantastic.
Hicks' mother, Mary, appeared on the January 30, 2009, episode of Late Show. Letterman played the routine in its entirety. Letterman took full responsibility for the original censorship and apologized to Mrs. Hicks. Letterman also declared he did not know what he was thinking when he pulled the routine from the original show in 1993. Letterman said, "It says more about me as a guy than it says about Bill because there was absolutely nothing wrong with that."
*
Retropedia: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
http://www.retroland.com/santa-claus-conquers-the-martians
Earthlings have long held an affinity for the jolly bearded fellow in the red suit that hands out Christmas presents each year. Is it any wonder that other planets might just be a little jealous that we haven’t shared St. Nick with the rest of the galaxy? Well, that all changed in 1964, when the Martians took matters into their own hands in the campy sci-fi classic, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It might not have given Citizen Kane a run for its money in terms of quality, but that hasn’t stopped numerous generations from gleefully embracing this one-of-a-kind B-movie that remains popular to this day.
The poor kids on Mars have a tough life, what with all of that forced educational programming that has left them little freedom to have fun. Luckily, they are allowed access to some good ol’ Earth television and, as a result, have become enamored by famed North Pole resident, Santa Claus. One particular set of Martian parents, Kimar and Momar (dad and mom, respectively) become aware of this trend, thanks to their kids Girmar and Bomar, and bring their children’s fascination with St. Nick to the attention of the all-knowing Martian, Chochem, who realizes the importance in letting the children of Mars have a little fun in their lives. To that end, he instructs the Martian leaders to head over to Earth and kidnap the famed Kris Kringle.
The idea is to have Santa set up shop on Mars and start churning out toys for the kids, but that doesn’t sit well with one particularly cantankerous alien named Voldar, who would rather see Santa killed, rather than corrupt their ancient culture. So when Santa arrives, along with two Earth children, Betty and Billy, Voldar starts plotting their demise. He immediately sends his henchmen, Shim and Stobo to sabotage the new toy factory so that it builds defective products. And when fellow Martian, the dimwitted Dropo, starts impersonating Santa around town and shows up at the toy factory, Voldar mistakes his identity for the real thing and kidnaps the faux Santa. Meanwhile, the real all-knowing Santa is a step ahead of the scheming and Voldar’s plans quickly unravel. But the big guy is too kind-hearted to leave the children of the planet sans Santa and he has a pretty good idea of who might make a suitable replacement for him on the planet.
While there may not be any huge box-office revenues to report or a list of Academy Award nominations, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is one of those films that is almost impossible not to like, despite its “B” status. And, although the film certainly didn’t boast an all-star cast, eagle-eyed viewers might notice that one of the Martian kids is actually a very young Pia Zadora.
Recent generations were re-introduced to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as part of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 show on Comedy Central. The cast poked fun at (skewered) the film in their own inimitable way, leading it to become one of the most popular episodes, one that airs every holiday season. And, although rumors of a remake have persisted for years, it would appear that this classic film is safe from being re-invented as of this writing.
To view the movie:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/24/holiday-movie-santa-claus-conquers-the-martians
RawStory.com review:
There are b-movies and c-movies and then there’s this holiday confection, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” The title alone should tell you everything you need to know about how seriously this 1964 release takes itself. We file this one under “So bad, it’s good.” Actually, make that under “So bad, it’s AWESOME.”
Merry Christmas!
*
RIP
Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
Vaclav Havel, Czech dissident, playwright, politician dead at 75:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/18/world/europe/czech-republic-vaclav-havel-obit
Cheetah the Chimp, Johnny Weissmuller's sidekick in the Tarzan movies, at the age of 80, allegedly:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/cheetah-remembering-tarzans-hairy-sidekick.html
The Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1223-wilshire-grand-20111223,0,2448939.story
NOT RIP: Jon Bon Jovi. Also, Taylor Lautner isn't gay...
Watch Live Baseball
http://www.watchlivebaseball.com/
Tune in to Watch Baseball Live Streaming online on your pc with instant access payments...
Watch Live NBA Online
http://www.watchlivenba.tv/
Watch all the top NBA games through high quality online streams...
The Jinn
http://www.thejinn.net/
UFO, alien, poltergeist, demon, ascended master, space brother, monster, Watcher, nephilim, reptilian, Grey, Bigfoot, ghost....
We don't actually know a single thing about life on other planets. Scientific evidence that extraterrestrials visit us doesn't exist.
Our belief that they do is fantastic modern mythology in the making.
However, there is enormous evidence that deceptive entities are masquerading as extraterrestrials.
There are unseen creatures that we share this Earth with.
They don't come from other planets.
They've been called many names: aliens, spirits, Etherians, Ultraterrestrials, and more.
In the Koran they are called the Jinn.
Information about the Jinn reads like a textbook description of UFO and other paranormal phenomena.
Discovering these entities gives you an essential key to understanding paranormal phenomena.
They are the major players behind our myths and most perplexing mysteries.
UFOs aren't extraterrestrial -- They're extradimensional.
*
Celente’s Trends Proven Accurate; What Will 2012 Bring?
Gerald Celente
Trends Research
December 16, 2011
“Wake-Up Call” Trend: The Decline of America trend is nowhere near bottom, and the worse is yet to come.
One year later: “Worse” has happened, as the country piles up more and more debt, politicians are gridlocked, paralyzed in some perpetual political traffic jam of inaction.
“Crack-Up 2011” Trend: Teetering economies will collapse, currency wars will ensue, trade barriers will be erected, economic unions will splinter...
One year later: The Sovereign debt crisis threatens both the European Union and Euro, currency wars are underway and the US and China are trading trade barbs.
“Crime Time” Trend: No job + no money + compounding debt = high stress, strained relations, short fuses. Hardship-driven crimes will be committed across the socioeconomic spectrum by legions of the on-the-edge desperate who will do whatever they must to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.
One year later: Thieves are stealing copper piping and cables, cooking oil and temple donation boxes; “Criminal recycling” is flourishing; in 2011 a record number of cyber crimes is reported to the FBI: more than 23,000 per month.
“Screw the People” Trend: As times get even tougher and people get even poorer, the “authorities” will intensify their efforts to extract the funds needed to meet fiscal obligations.
One year later: In the two-tier American justice system, the long arm of the law only reaches down to the low hanging fruit. Banks are slapped with slap on the wrist fines for billion dollar crimes, and like Jon Corzine, no crime time. But swift justice is readily dealt out for small time crimes. From closing down lemonade stands operating without a license to swat teams busting raw foods cooperatives, in America, Justice means “just us!”
“Students of the World Unite” Trend: “University degrees in hand yet out of work, in debt and with no prospects on the horizon, young adults and 20-somethings are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”
One year later: Occupy Wall Street is just one of the scores of worldwide student protest movements, some of which have proven powerful enough to bring down governments.
“Crackdown on Liberty” Trend: A national crusade to “Get Tough on Crime” will be waged against the citizenry. And just as in the “War on Terror,” where “suspected terrorists” are killed before proven guilty or jailed without trial, in the “War on Crime” everyone is a suspect until proven innocent.
One year later: TSA strip searches of little old ladies; Obama backs bill “authorizing indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens.”
“Journalism 2.0” Trend: With its unparalleled reach across borders and language barriers, “Journalism 2.0” has the potential to influence and educate citizens in a way that governments and corporate media moguls would never permit.
One year later: Aleksai Navalny, an imprisoned young Russian blogger/Twitterer with some 200,000 followers, is “credited with mobilizing a generation of young Russians through social media, a leap much like the one that spawned Occupy Wall Street and youth uprisings across Europe this year.”
“Cyberwars” Trend: The demonstrable effects of Cyberwar and its companion, Cybercrime, are already significant – and will come of age in 2011. Equally disruptive will be the harsh measures taken by global governments to control free access to the web, identify its users, and literally shut down computers that it considers a threat to national security.
One year later: Iran proudly displayed a sleek, white U.S. drone that was used for spying on Iranians; Iranians were able to capture what US military officials privately told Bloomberg was a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 by hacking into its security code; PayPal shuts off service to WikiLeaks.
Gerald Celente was spot on with his Top Trends 2011. No one else came even close. To get a heads up on “History before it happens,” you’ll want the Top Trends 2012.
*
Why the Smell of Cinnamon Makes You Spend Money
Retailers know how to manipulate all our senses — and that includes our olfactory ones
Martin Lindstrom
December 16, 2011
http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/16/why-the-smell-of-cinnamon-makes-you-spend-money
Lindstrom's latest book is Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy.
Every December, you vow it’s not going to happen and yet, without fail, you return home from your Christmas shopping with far more than you intended. Do you ever wonder why? The answer might surprise you, because you’ve probably been seduced by something you can neither see nor hear.
It was a perfectly normal kind of day when I was first struck by that feeling of Christmas in the air, the one that links directly to childhood anticipation of the festive season. The odd thing was that it was early November, yet my need for tangible symbols of the festive season had bitten like a bug. I studiously hit the streets of my neighborhood in search of the perfect tree. I bought decorations and wrote Christmas cards, only to realize that Nov. 5 was a little early to be mailing them.
I was astounded by my behavior. After all, I’m a 41-year-old man who’s long since stopped believing in Santa Claus. So what was it that led me to this neat pile of cards ready to be mailed a good six weeks before Christmas? In my attempt to understand, I went over the details of the days leading up to my own personal Christmas frenzy, and I tracked the origins of it back to a brief window of time as I changed flights in the Zurich airport. I noticed the duty free shops were already full of the colors of Christmas. There was a ginormous tree topped by a gleaming star, surrounded by images of Santas and reindeer and sleighs. But surely it would take more than clichéd icons to turn me into a Christmas zombie?
Not having anything else to go on, I investigated further. Turns out I was on the right path, for the truth of the matter was to be found in the mechanisms behind the displays. To be more precise, carefully camouflaged tubes strategically placed amongst the tinsel and glitz were piping in the sumptuous smells of Christmas: a perfect mix of cinnamon and pine.
Although it seemed I’d gotten to the nub of the issue, I was still perplexed. I mean, can a tube dispensing cinnamon and pine really compel me to embrace the Christmas spirit way ahead of time? Surprisingly, yes. Dr. Gemma Calvert, who is an expert in modern brain imaging based in Oxford, England, discovered the remarkable ability smells have to reactivate childhood memories. She exposed a group of volunteers to cinnamon and then viewed their reactions, using an fMRI scanner. As they breathed in the sweet spicy scent, their brains fired up — including the region responsible for authentic emotional engagement. It seems cinnamon is one of the main ingredients associated, over time, with baking and cider-making rituals and can kick-start an emotional journey whenever it wafts our way.
So while it might seem as though retailers are concentrating on everything that delights your eyes and ears, they also might be surreptitiously enticing you to buy more through your nose. And they might not even be doing it in a sneaky manner. This season, Trader Joe’s, Publix, and other supermarkets are prominently displaying heavily-scented “cinnamon brooms” by the check out — large, smelly bunches of twigs to hang inside your home and anoint with cinnamon oil when their pungency starts to fade. At Bed, Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, and other big-box stores, cinnamon-scented pine cones for sale greet you as you walk in the door. Take these items home and you might even get the urge to rush out shopping again. Christmas is in the air — quite literally!
Lindstrom is a marketing consultant and the author of Brandwashed. The views expressed are his own.
*
Konformist Book Club
The World's Greatest Conspiracies
http://www.atomicbooks.com/index.php/worlds-greatest-conspiracies.html
$21.95
Too unsettling to be buried in the shadows for far too long, the Pandora’s Box of information unleashed in this completely updated and expanded expose proves you just can’t get away from Them. Hidden agendas, massive cover-ups, diabolically sinister plots—if you can handle it, the lowdown on the latest right-under-your-nose conspiracies is right here, including: - 9/11: Islamic terrorism...or inside job? - George W. Bush: The real powers behind the leader of the free world - Atlantis Rising: the deep and wide mythology of a “lost” civilization - Elvis: Still everywhere, with new King-size theories aplenty - Cuidad Juarez: Who—or what—is behind the unsolved serial killings of more than 90 women in this otherwise sleepy border town? - Dick “Darth” Cheney: Dr. Evil for the New Millennium? - And many others that will have you looking over your shoulder With the sordid truth finally leaking more and more into the nightly news, this provocative compilation is crucial reading for seeing beyond what They want you to believe. Whether you’re a cynic or completely certain, this walk on the wild side will convince you of one thing: You should be very, very nervous. “Fills a desperate need in this paranoid era.” —Wired magazine
Jonathan Vankin / John Whalen
Publisher Citadel Press
Page Count 844pp
Publication Date June 29, 2010
ISBN 978-0806528786
The Man Cave Book
Jeff Wilser
Kindle Price: $9.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
Paperback $10.19
What separates the men from the boys? The Man Cave.
Boyhood Fort Vs. Man Cave
Who's allowed
Boyhood Fort: Not girls—they have cooties
Man Cave: Not women—they have authority
Primary materials used in construction
Boyhood Fort: Wood, stuff your mom doesn't want
Man Cave: Particleboard, stuff your wife doesn't want
Key activities inside
Boyhood Fort: Goofing around, avoiding responsibility
Man Cave: Goofing around, avoiding responsibility
Peak periods of use
Boyhood Fort: After school, weekends
Man Cave: After work, weekends
Slumber parties with buddies?
Boyhood Fort: Yes
Man Cave: No
Food and beverages consumed
Boyhood Fort: Soda and unhealthy snacks
Man Cave: Beer and unhealthy snacks
Spend the night inside?
Boyhood Fort: Not as a habit, but it's been known to happen
Man Cave: Not as a habit, but it's been known to happen
Money spent on space
Boyhood Fort: As little as possible
Man Cave: As much as possible
Is this a phase you will outgrow?
Boyhood Fort: Yes
Man Cave: No
The Man Cave Book is a tribute to great and glorious man spaces and the craftsmen behind them. Complete with instructions and insights into creating your own unique refuge and shrine to beer, sports, and everything else that's right with the world, this is an essential manual for any man cave enthusiast.
About the Author
A former USMC Reserves squad leader and the author of The Maxims of Manhood, Jeff Wilser is a regular columnist on dating, nightlife, and pop culture who has contributed to GQ, Esquire, Glamour, MTV, and VH1.
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 8251 KB
Print Length: 192 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Original edition (April 19, 2011)
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ASIN: B004U73C1S
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Amazon URL
Kindle Edition:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Cave-Book-ebook/dp/B004U73C1S/thekonformist
Paperback:
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Cave-Book-Jeff-Wilser/dp/0062003925/thekonformist
*
Awesome Quotes
“You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of this country, much better.”
Matt Damon on Barack Obama
"The sound of five pretentious old guys joylessly grinding out sub-shoegaze drone and patting themselves on the back for being 'subversive.' It's more out of touch than a bunch of CEOs starting a drum circle at an Occupy rally and as sonically disastrous."
Entertainment Weekly, in naming the Lou Reed - Metallica collaboration Lulu the worst album of the year
*
YouTube Greatest Hits
Tiger Woods Amazing Miracle Shot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHMPpZVOfbI
16th Hole at the 2005 Masters in Augusta...
The Dark Crystal, Part 1 of 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnFMAF_0RQ
All eight parts are available...
Bill Hicks: On Letterman (1993)
The Cut Set
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vf340K_Ed0o
In honor of what would be his 50th birthday on December 16th:
http://alchemicalarchives.blogspot.com/
Hicks constantly faced problems with censorship. In 1984, Hicks was invited to appear on Late Night with David Letterman for the first time. He had a joke that he used frequently in comedy clubs about how he caused a serious accident that left a classmate confined to a wheelchair. NBC had a policy that no handicapped jokes could be aired on the show, making his stand-up routine difficult to perform without mentioning words such as "wheelchair". Hicks was disappointed that the TV audience didn't get to experience the uncensored Bill Hicks that people saw in clubs.
On October 1, 1993, about five months before his death, Hicks was scheduled to appear on Late Show with David Letterman, his twelfth appearance on a Letterman late night show but his entire performance was removed from the broadcast — then the only occasion where a comedian's entire routine was cut after taping. Hicks' stand-up routine was removed from the show allegedly because Letterman and his producer were nervous about Hicks' anti-religious jokes. Hicks said he believed it was due to a pro-life commercial aired during a commercial break. Both the show's producers and CBS denied responsibility. Hicks expressed his feelings of betrayal in a letter to John Lahr of The New Yorker. Although Letterman later expressed regret at the way Hicks had been handled, Hicks did not appear on the show again. The full account of this incident was featured in a New Yorker profile by Lahr, which was later published as a chapter in Lahr's book, Light Fantastic.
Hicks' mother, Mary, appeared on the January 30, 2009, episode of Late Show. Letterman played the routine in its entirety. Letterman took full responsibility for the original censorship and apologized to Mrs. Hicks. Letterman also declared he did not know what he was thinking when he pulled the routine from the original show in 1993. Letterman said, "It says more about me as a guy than it says about Bill because there was absolutely nothing wrong with that."
*
Retropedia: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
http://www.retroland.com/santa-claus-conquers-the-martians
Earthlings have long held an affinity for the jolly bearded fellow in the red suit that hands out Christmas presents each year. Is it any wonder that other planets might just be a little jealous that we haven’t shared St. Nick with the rest of the galaxy? Well, that all changed in 1964, when the Martians took matters into their own hands in the campy sci-fi classic, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. It might not have given Citizen Kane a run for its money in terms of quality, but that hasn’t stopped numerous generations from gleefully embracing this one-of-a-kind B-movie that remains popular to this day.
The poor kids on Mars have a tough life, what with all of that forced educational programming that has left them little freedom to have fun. Luckily, they are allowed access to some good ol’ Earth television and, as a result, have become enamored by famed North Pole resident, Santa Claus. One particular set of Martian parents, Kimar and Momar (dad and mom, respectively) become aware of this trend, thanks to their kids Girmar and Bomar, and bring their children’s fascination with St. Nick to the attention of the all-knowing Martian, Chochem, who realizes the importance in letting the children of Mars have a little fun in their lives. To that end, he instructs the Martian leaders to head over to Earth and kidnap the famed Kris Kringle.
The idea is to have Santa set up shop on Mars and start churning out toys for the kids, but that doesn’t sit well with one particularly cantankerous alien named Voldar, who would rather see Santa killed, rather than corrupt their ancient culture. So when Santa arrives, along with two Earth children, Betty and Billy, Voldar starts plotting their demise. He immediately sends his henchmen, Shim and Stobo to sabotage the new toy factory so that it builds defective products. And when fellow Martian, the dimwitted Dropo, starts impersonating Santa around town and shows up at the toy factory, Voldar mistakes his identity for the real thing and kidnaps the faux Santa. Meanwhile, the real all-knowing Santa is a step ahead of the scheming and Voldar’s plans quickly unravel. But the big guy is too kind-hearted to leave the children of the planet sans Santa and he has a pretty good idea of who might make a suitable replacement for him on the planet.
While there may not be any huge box-office revenues to report or a list of Academy Award nominations, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is one of those films that is almost impossible not to like, despite its “B” status. And, although the film certainly didn’t boast an all-star cast, eagle-eyed viewers might notice that one of the Martian kids is actually a very young Pia Zadora.
Recent generations were re-introduced to Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as part of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 show on Comedy Central. The cast poked fun at (skewered) the film in their own inimitable way, leading it to become one of the most popular episodes, one that airs every holiday season. And, although rumors of a remake have persisted for years, it would appear that this classic film is safe from being re-invented as of this writing.
To view the movie:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/24/holiday-movie-santa-claus-conquers-the-martians
RawStory.com review:
There are b-movies and c-movies and then there’s this holiday confection, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” The title alone should tell you everything you need to know about how seriously this 1964 release takes itself. We file this one under “So bad, it’s good.” Actually, make that under “So bad, it’s AWESOME.”
Merry Christmas!
*
RIP
Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011:
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011
Vaclav Havel, Czech dissident, playwright, politician dead at 75:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/18/world/europe/czech-republic-vaclav-havel-obit
Cheetah the Chimp, Johnny Weissmuller's sidekick in the Tarzan movies, at the age of 80, allegedly:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/12/cheetah-remembering-tarzans-hairy-sidekick.html
The Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1223-wilshire-grand-20111223,0,2448939.story
NOT RIP: Jon Bon Jovi. Also, Taylor Lautner isn't gay...
Friday, November 18, 2011
It doesn't matter to them if it's untrue...
The Anti-Empire Report
November 1st, 2011
William Blum
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html
It doesn't matter to them if it's untrue. It's a higher truth.
"We came, we saw, he died."
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi
Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: "We came, we saw, 3,000 died... ha-ha."
Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands ... this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a "bloodbath" in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn't intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi's army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)1
The New York Times (March 22) observed:
... the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.
The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels' media operation:
It's not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:
•No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
•No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
•No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
•No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That's [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)
The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels' trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for "humanitarian" intervention; followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can't get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined that they would have endorsed it?
In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.2
For further discussion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at this video.
If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.3
In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.4 The new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation, and laws that contradict "the teachings of Islam" would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the Quran, allows men up to four wives.5
Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as "terrorists" in the United States for a lot less.
What began in Libya as "normal" civil war violence from both sides — repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military intervention at all (the US actually continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes) — was transformed by the Western propaganda machine into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent Libyans. Addressing the validity of this very key issue is another video, "Humanitarian War in Libya: There is no evidence". The main feature of the film is an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.
Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can document various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities? The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi's planes? Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, that's the rebels who carried out the civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other times Bouchuiguir speaks of "eyewitnesses": "little girls, boys who were there, whose families we know personally". After awhile, he declares that "there is no way" to document these things. This is probably true to some extent, but why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?
Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization's working with the National Endowment for Democracy in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.
Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons has been the International Criminal Court. The Court's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in this film at a news conference discussing the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to an ICC document of 77 pages which he says contains the evidence. The film displays the document's Table of Contents, which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public; these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and evidence, are marked as "redacted". In an appendix, the ICC report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of his sources. The documentation is thus a closed circle.
Historical footnote: "Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective punishment, summary execution, detention without trial, routine torture — these were the weapons of Europe's takeover" in the Mideast.6
The worldwide eternal belief that American foreign policy has a good side that can be appealed to
On April 6, 2011 Moammar Gaddafi wrote a letter to President Obama, in which he said: "We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. ... Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your intervention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair."7
Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United States. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, they added, they would also talk about US oil concessions.8 ... Then came shock and awe!
In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that briefly ousted Hugo Chávez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chávez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place shortly thereafter.9
In 1994, it was reported that the leader of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos, said that "he expects the United States to support the Zapatistas once US intelligence agencies are convinced the movement is not influenced by Cubans or Russians." "Finally," Marcos said, "they are going to conclude that this is a Mexican problem, with just and true causes."10 Yet for many years, the United States provided the Mexican military with all the training and tools needed to crush the Zapatistas.
The Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1983 all made their appeals to Washington to be left in peace.11 The governments of all three countries were overthrown by the United States.
In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, a genuine admirer of America and the Declaration of Independence, wrote at least eight letters to President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.12 Ho Chi Minh received no reply. He was, after all, some sort of communist.
America's presstitutes
Imagine that the vicious police attack of October 25 on the Occupy Oakland encampment had taken place in Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or in any other ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) ... Page One Righteous Indignation with Shocking Photos. But here's the Washington Post the next day: A three-inch story on page three with a headline: "Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide"; no mention of the Iraqi veteran left unconscious from a police projectile making contact with his head; as to photos: just one — an Oakland police officer petting a cat that was left behind by the protesters.
And here's TV comedian Jay Leno the same night as the police attack in Oakland: "They say Moammar Gaddafi may have been one of the richest men in the world ... 200 billion dollars. With all of the billions he had, he spent very little on education or health care for his country. So I guess he was a Republican."13
The object of Leno's humor was of course the Republicans, but it served the cause of further demonizing Gaddafi and thus adding to the "justification" of America's murderous attack on Libya. If I had been one of Leno's guests sitting there, I would have turned to the audience and said: "Listen people, under Gaddafi health care and education were completely free. Wouldn't you like to have that here?"
I think that enough people in the audience would have applauded or shouted to force Leno to back off a bit from his indoctrinated, mindless remark.
And just for the record, the 200 billion dollars is not money found in Gaddafi's personal bank accounts anywhere in the world, but money belonging to the Libyan state. But why quibble? There's no business like show business.
The Iraqi Lullabye
On February 17, 2003, a month before the US bombing of Iraq began, I posted to the Internet an essay entitled "What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?" concerning the expected war. Included in this were the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the American Enterprise Institute, which was one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq:
If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.
After a year of the tragic farce that was the American intervention in Iraq I could not resist. I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his words and saying simply: "I'd like to ask you what songs your children are singing these days."
I received no reply.
Has there ever been an empire that didn't tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?
The United Nations vote on the Cuba embargo — 20 years in a row
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions):
Year Votes (Yes-No) No Votes
1992 59-2 US, Israel
1993 88-4 US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994 101-2 US, Israel
1995 117-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996 138-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997 143-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998 157-2 US, Israel
1999 155-2 US, Israel
2000 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002 173-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003 179-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2004 179-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005 182-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006 183-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007 184-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008 185-3 US, Israel, Palau
2009 187-3 US, Israel, Palau
2010 187-2 US, Israel
2011 186-2 US, Israel
Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.
How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."14 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.
Notes
1.Viagra: Reuters, April 29, 2011
2.See, for example, "Million Man, Woman and Child March in Tripoli, Libya", June 20, 2011
3.The Guardian (London), September 3, 2011
4.Washington Post, September 15, 2011, "Islamists rise to fore in new Libya"
5.USA Today, October 24, 2011
6.Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies, Columbia University, Washington Post, November 11, 2007
7.Associated Press, April 6, 2011, some obvious errors in the original have been corrected
8.New York Times, November 6, 2003
9.New York Times, April 16, 2002
10.Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1994, p.7
11.Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1982), p.183; Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (1965), p.774-9; Bishop: Associated Press, May 29, 1983, "Leftist Government Officials Visit United States"
12.The Pentagon Papers (NY Times edition, 1971), pp.4, 5, 8, 26; William Blum, Killing Hope, p.123)
13.Washington Post, October 26, 2011
14.Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885
–
William Blum is the author of:
•Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
•Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
•West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
•Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org/
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
November 1st, 2011
William Blum
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer99.html
It doesn't matter to them if it's untrue. It's a higher truth.
"We came, we saw, he died."
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi
Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: "We came, we saw, 3,000 died... ha-ha."
Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands ... this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a "bloodbath" in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn't intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi's army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)1
The New York Times (March 22) observed:
... the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.
The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels' media operation:
It's not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:
•No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
•No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
•No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
•No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That's [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)
The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels' trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for "humanitarian" intervention; followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can't get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined that they would have endorsed it?
In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.2
For further discussion of why Libyans may have been motivated to support Gaddafi, have a look at this video.
If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.3
In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.4 The new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation, and laws that contradict "the teachings of Islam" would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, the Quran, allows men up to four wives.5
Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as "terrorists" in the United States for a lot less.
What began in Libya as "normal" civil war violence from both sides — repeated before and since by the governments of Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria without any Western military intervention at all (the US actually continues to arm the Bahrain and Yemen regimes) — was transformed by the Western propaganda machine into a serious Gaddafi genocide of innocent Libyans. Addressing the validity of this very key issue is another video, "Humanitarian War in Libya: There is no evidence". The main feature of the film is an interview with Soliman Bouchuiguir, Secretary-General, and one of the founders in 1989, of the Libyan League for Human Rights, perhaps the leading Libyan dissident group, in exile in Switzerland.
Bouchuiguir is asked several times if he can document various charges made against the Libyan leader. Where is the proof of the many rapes? The many other alleged atrocities? The more than 6,000 civilians alleged killed by Gaddafi's planes? Again and again Bouchuiguir cites the National Transitional Council as the source. Yes, that's the rebels who carried out the civil war in conjunction with the NATO/US forces. At other times Bouchuiguir speaks of "eyewitnesses": "little girls, boys who were there, whose families we know personally". After awhile, he declares that "there is no way" to document these things. This is probably true to some extent, but why, then, the UN Security Council resolution for a military intervention in Libya? Why almost eight months of bombing?
Bouchuiguir also mentions his organization's working with the National Endowment for Democracy in their effort against Gaddafi, and one has to wonder if the man has any idea that the NED was founded to be a front for the CIA. Literally.
Another source of charges against Gaddafi and his sons has been the International Criminal Court. The Court's Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is shown in this film at a news conference discussing the same question of proof of the charges. He refers to an ICC document of 77 pages which he says contains the evidence. The film displays the document's Table of Contents, which shows that pages 17-71 are not available to the public; these pages, apparently the ones containing the testimony and evidence, are marked as "redacted". In an appendix, the ICC report lists its news sources; these include Fox News, CNN, the CIA, Soliman Bouchuiguir, and the Libyan League for Human Rights. Earlier, the film had presented Bouchuiguir citing the ICC as one of his sources. The documentation is thus a closed circle.
Historical footnote: "Aerial bombing of civilians was pioneered by the Italians in Libya in 1911, perfected by the British in Iraq in 1920 and used by the French in 1925 to level whole quarters of Syrian cities. Home demolitions, collective punishment, summary execution, detention without trial, routine torture — these were the weapons of Europe's takeover" in the Mideast.6
The worldwide eternal belief that American foreign policy has a good side that can be appealed to
On April 6, 2011 Moammar Gaddafi wrote a letter to President Obama, in which he said: "We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. ... Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your intervention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair."7
Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United States. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, they added, they would also talk about US oil concessions.8 ... Then came shock and awe!
In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that briefly ousted Hugo Chávez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chávez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place shortly thereafter.9
In 1994, it was reported that the leader of the Zapatista rebels in Mexico, Subcommander Marcos, said that "he expects the United States to support the Zapatistas once US intelligence agencies are convinced the movement is not influenced by Cubans or Russians." "Finally," Marcos said, "they are going to conclude that this is a Mexican problem, with just and true causes."10 Yet for many years, the United States provided the Mexican military with all the training and tools needed to crush the Zapatistas.
The Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1983 all made their appeals to Washington to be left in peace.11 The governments of all three countries were overthrown by the United States.
In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, a genuine admirer of America and the Declaration of Independence, wrote at least eight letters to President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, USSR, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.12 Ho Chi Minh received no reply. He was, after all, some sort of communist.
America's presstitutes
Imagine that the vicious police attack of October 25 on the Occupy Oakland encampment had taken place in Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or in any other ODE (Officially Designated Enemy) ... Page One Righteous Indignation with Shocking Photos. But here's the Washington Post the next day: A three-inch story on page three with a headline: "Protesters wearing out their welcome nationwide"; no mention of the Iraqi veteran left unconscious from a police projectile making contact with his head; as to photos: just one — an Oakland police officer petting a cat that was left behind by the protesters.
And here's TV comedian Jay Leno the same night as the police attack in Oakland: "They say Moammar Gaddafi may have been one of the richest men in the world ... 200 billion dollars. With all of the billions he had, he spent very little on education or health care for his country. So I guess he was a Republican."13
The object of Leno's humor was of course the Republicans, but it served the cause of further demonizing Gaddafi and thus adding to the "justification" of America's murderous attack on Libya. If I had been one of Leno's guests sitting there, I would have turned to the audience and said: "Listen people, under Gaddafi health care and education were completely free. Wouldn't you like to have that here?"
I think that enough people in the audience would have applauded or shouted to force Leno to back off a bit from his indoctrinated, mindless remark.
And just for the record, the 200 billion dollars is not money found in Gaddafi's personal bank accounts anywhere in the world, but money belonging to the Libyan state. But why quibble? There's no business like show business.
The Iraqi Lullabye
On February 17, 2003, a month before the US bombing of Iraq began, I posted to the Internet an essay entitled "What Do the Imperial Mafia Really Want?" concerning the expected war. Included in this were the words of Michael Ledeen, former Reagan official, then at the American Enterprise Institute, which was one of the leading drum-beaters for attacking Iraq:
If we just let our own vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to be clever and piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants, I think we will do very well, and our children will sing great songs about us years from now.
After a year of the tragic farce that was the American intervention in Iraq I could not resist. I sent Mr. Ledeen an email reminding him of his words and saying simply: "I'd like to ask you what songs your children are singing these days."
I received no reply.
Has there ever been an empire that didn't tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?
The United Nations vote on the Cuba embargo — 20 years in a row
For years American political leaders and media were fond of labeling Cuba an "international pariah". We don't hear that any more. Perhaps one reason is the annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba". This is how the vote has gone (not including abstentions):
Year Votes (Yes-No) No Votes
1992 59-2 US, Israel
1993 88-4 US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994 101-2 US, Israel
1995 117-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996 138-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997 143-3 US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998 157-2 US, Israel
1999 155-2 US, Israel
2000 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001 167-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002 173-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003 179-3 US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2004 179-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005 182-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006 183-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007 184-4 US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008 185-3 US, Israel, Palau
2009 187-3 US, Israel, Palau
2010 187-2 US, Israel
2011 186-2 US, Israel
Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of other governments.
How it began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: "The majority of Cubans support Castro ... The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. ... every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba." Mallory proposed "a line of action which ... makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."14 Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted the suffocating embargo against its eternally-declared enemy.
Notes
1.Viagra: Reuters, April 29, 2011
2.See, for example, "Million Man, Woman and Child March in Tripoli, Libya", June 20, 2011
3.The Guardian (London), September 3, 2011
4.Washington Post, September 15, 2011, "Islamists rise to fore in new Libya"
5.USA Today, October 24, 2011
6.Rashid Khalidi, professor of Arab studies, Columbia University, Washington Post, November 11, 2007
7.Associated Press, April 6, 2011, some obvious errors in the original have been corrected
8.New York Times, November 6, 2003
9.New York Times, April 16, 2002
10.Los Angeles Times, February 24, 1994, p.7
11.Guatemala: Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1982), p.183; Jagan: Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days (1965), p.774-9; Bishop: Associated Press, May 29, 1983, "Leftist Government Officials Visit United States"
12.The Pentagon Papers (NY Times edition, 1971), pp.4, 5, 8, 26; William Blum, Killing Hope, p.123)
13.Washington Post, October 26, 2011
14.Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba (1991), p.885
–
William Blum is the author of:
•Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
•Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
•West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
•Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at http://www.killinghope.org/
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Combating ignorance, avoiding arrogance
The American public often hides in 'willed ignorance' about the world around them.
Robert Jensen
13 Sep 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181583553110197.html
After 9/11 it became immediately clear that US leaders were going to use the events to justify war. Those of us who were critical of such policies began to articulate principled and practical arguments against the mad rush to war. We were right, but the wars came anyway.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is tempting to want to linger on the part about "being right," but it’s more important to focus on why "it didn’t matter" because we are still right, and it still doesn’t matter. Understanding this is necessary to shape a realistic political programme for the next decade. As bad as the past 10 years have been, the next 10 are likely to be worse, and we need to speak bluntly about these political, economic, and social realities in the United States.
What we did and didn’t accomplish
When I say "we were right," I count in the "we" those people who can be described as "anti-empire," rather than just "anti-war". This is how I described that position in an interview:
"The broad outlines of US foreign policy since WWII have remained unchanged: A desire to deepen and extend US power around the world, especially in the most strategically crucial regions such as the energy-rich Middle East; always with an eye on derailing the attempts of any Third World society to pursue a course of independent development outside the US sphere; and containing the possibility of challenges to US hegemony from other powerful states. The Bush administration policy is a departure from recent policy in terms of strategy and tactics, and perhaps also in the intensity of ideological fanaticism. ... None of this is unprecedented; all of it is dangerous and disturbing."
The folks at the core of the resistance to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq mostly shared that critique, seeing both the continuities and the distinctive threat of the moment. Others spoke out and organised but offered no framework for understanding the invasions - some Democrats who prefer less brutal methods of empire-maintenance or simply reject wars started by Republican presidents; isolationists, including some Republicans, who want to reduce military adventures to preserve US affluence; and those who identify as pacifists and reject any war.
Although the anti-empire analysis has continued to be the most compelling explanation of US policy and its effects, anti-empire movements remain small. The movements that have seen some growth in recent years - the Tea Party and right-wing libertarianism - include some anti-war elements, but repudiate a leftist critique of empire or anything else.
So, we are right, and we are a failed movement. As someone who has participated in these organising and education efforts, I have been part of the failure. I know that I could have done more, taken more risks, pressed harder - but I don’t know if that would have made a significant difference. I don’t know whether there was a winning strategy leftists could have employed, or whether historical forces doomed our efforts from the start. Whatever the case, we failed, and it is sensible to try to learn from that failure.
To say we failed is not to ignore the limited accomplishments in different times and places. I remember the organising meeting we held in Austin the day after 9/11 that drew nearly 200 people and led to a new anti-war group by the end of the week; the fact that we mounted a resistance to the invasions almost immediately after 9/11 speaks to our clarity and resolve. The worldwide demonstrations that involved at least 10m people on February 15, 2003 were the result of incredible organising efforts. We can be proud of this and still understand that we failed. That failure need not undermine our will to keep organising and educating, but it should be in our minds as we plan future projects.
I don’t need a guarantee of success to continue. I am not afraid of failing, but I would like to make sure I’m not failing in the same old ways. To avoid that, we have to think about why it didn’t matter that we were right. We have to understand the culture’s ignorance.
It is always tempting to label political opponents ignorant and bemoan their stupidity: If only they could know what we know and understand as we understand, then certainly they would adopt our politics. I try not to fall into that trap, realising that in a complex world reasonable people can disagree. But if we are to confront the challenges ahead we have to recognise that the contemporary United States is both a technologically advanced society with an educational system that is first-rate on some criteria, yet at the same time is also a profoundly ignorant society.
Manipulated ignorance: Knowing incorrectly
Some of that ignorance is the result of the conscious effort to divert and deceive people. The sophisticated techniques to shape public attitudes developed by the public relations and advertising industries are used effectively by corporations and politicians, with the independent news media - consciously or unconsciously - often serving an important transmission function. Much of this is designed to make sure people don’t know things, to create or deepen ignorance.
An example of the consequences of that in relation to imperial wars: A Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll conducted on January 3-6, 2003, showed that 44 per cent of the respondents thought that "most" or "some" of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis; only 17 per cent knew the correct answer, "none". Also in that poll, 65 per cent said they thought Iraq and Al Qaeda were allies, and 91 per cent believed that Saddam Hussein was concealing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. As many as 41 per cent said Iraq already had nuclear weapons, a claim that not even Bush officials made.
That poll wasn’t idiosyncratic. A Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey conducted on February 12-13, 2003, found that 57 per cent of Americans believed that weapons inspectors had proof that Iraq was trying to hide weapons of mass destruction (which inspectors never said) and that 57 per cent also believe Saddam Hussein had a direct role in helping the 9/11 hijackers.
This ignorance matters. The Program on International Policy at the University of Maryland, based on polls conducted from June through September 2003, found that 48 per cent of the public believed that evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda had been found; 22 per cent believed that WMD had been found; and 25 per cent believed that world public opinion had favoured a US war with Iraq. Overall, 60 per cent had at least one of those misperceptions, which were highly correlated with support for war. Of people who held none of those beliefs, only 23 per cent supported war. With each misperception, support for the war increased:
-1 misperception: 53 per cent support for war.
-2 misperceptions: 78 per cent support for war.
-3 misperceptions: 86 per cent support for war.
It’s difficult enough in a political conversation to argue for a radical interpretation of basic facts. But in a society where basic facts can be so slickly and easily repackaged by power - where black is white and up is down - then there is no possibility of meaningful debate in the mainstream political culture.
Willed ignorance: Not knowing
As distressing as this manipulated ignorance can be, it is the willed ignorance of so much of the population that is most troubling. This ignorance is not primarily about asserting claims that are inaccurate or distorted, but is about not knowing, about not caring enough to make a claim. This is the result not of a lack of access to accurate data or an inability to analyse the available information. Instead, this ignorance is willed, the product of people making a choice to not-know so that they don’t have to face the moral and political implications of knowing.
There is no survey data to chart the scope of, and reasons for, this ignorance. But in two decades of political work, I have watched countless people use this strategy. There seem to be two routine ways to ensure this not-knowing. One is to avoid exposure to any in-depth information and analysis, even though one has the resources and time to find and evaluate the material - keep your head down and don’t look at what’s happening. We can call this a deliberate diversion from a disturbing world.
The other strategy, employed by those who are too curious to ignore the world around them, is to bemoan the lack of trustworthy news sources, or express confusion over the mutually exclusive accounts of the world that circulate, or note the maddening level of complexity in a globalised world - whatever the reason, there are so many impediments that to actually know anything is impossible. We can call this a feigned frustration with a complex world.
Affluence increases not only the likelihood of political inaction but also of willed ignorance. That is, people who are materially comfortable in a society are not only less likely to take the serious risks that radical politics requires but more likely to avoid knowing things that will force them to ask why they aren’t acting.
Implications of ignorance
My experience tells me there are conservatives and liberals in each of these ignorance camps, manipulated and willed. Perhaps conservatives, who tend to be more committed to an ideology that denies uncomfortable facts about US crimes, are more easily conned into believing claims for which there is little or no evidence. Maybe liberals, who tend to be more accepting of a critical view, are most likely to pursue the willed-ignorance strategy of avoidance. But what matters most is not the route to, but rather the consequences of, ignorance. Whether one actively cheerleads for the US imperial project around the world or passively accepts it, the result is the same: Policymakers can pursue the project without constraint from citizens.
So, we were right, but in this political culture it doesn’t matter. The anti-empire movement hasn’t been defeated by a superior argument that does a better job of explaining the world, nor has it been suppressed through the large-scale violence and coercion that has destroyed movements in other times and places (though in the contemporary United States such violence is used selectively and always is available should things get out of hand). Instead, this critique has been rendered irrelevant by power interests that work to create ignorance, and a citizenry that hides in ignorance.
To be clear: I am not arguing that the problem is that "people are stupid". Yes, people often are stupid. I am often stupid. I say and do stupid things on a regular basis, and so does everyone else - that’s part of being human. But another part of being human in a democratic political system is accepting the benefits and burdens of participation, and participation requires that we strive to not be stupid about politics. Democracy works only if we care enough to know about the world.
Given the destructive power of the US military and the corrosive nature of the high-energy/consumption lifestyle of the US public, there’s a lot riding on the success of democracy in the United States. There’s no guarantee that a fuller and richer public dialogue based on a good-faith search for knowledge will produce solutions to the deeply entrenched problems of social injustice and ecological unsustainability. Nor does identifying solutions guarantee that a nation will adopt such policies. But without that democratic conversation, we are doomed.
Avoiding arrogance
In addition to talking bluntly about ignorance, we must be careful to avoid the arrogance that comes so easily to us humans. Let me personalise this: For the first half of my life, I accepted the liberal version of US mythology (we are the greatest nation, but prone to making mistakes because of our extraordinary power). In the second half of my life, I started reading and talking to people who helped me overcome the combination of manipulated and willed ignorance that had defined my intellectual and political life. I read work critiquing patriarchy, white supremacy, US dominance, capitalism, and the human assault on the ecosphere. Over several years, I constructed a worldview that is radical on all these fronts. I don’t claim to have a unified field theory of politics, but I am confident that the analysis I’ve worked out rests on solid ground.
I also recognise that I could be wrong on basic aspects of that analysis, and that even if I’m right I should constantly be looping back to question my assumptions, collect new data, listen to counter-arguments, and recalibrate strategy based on this process. Life is a balance of asserting what we believe with confidence and remembering how wrong we can be. With that caution, I return to where I started:
We were right. The events of the past decade have demonstrated that our instincts on 9/11 - guided by a radical critique of the systems and structures of power - led us to see the folly of these wars. I remember sitting in my office at the University of Texas on 9/11, listening to the commentary on television, and realising that the events of that day were going to be used to justify large-scale violence in the service of power. I was scared, not of dying in another terrorist attack on the United States, but of what US policymakers were ready and willing to do.
Today I am even more scared, but not just by the imperial project that continues no matter how obvious its failure. In addition to the crimes committed by the powerful against the powerless, we face even greater threats in the human assault on the living world. In past years I spoke about environmental problems, but I abandoned that phrase because we don’t have discrete environmental problems. We face multiple, cascading ecological crises - groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of "dead zones" in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity. And don’t forget global warming/climate change/climate disruption/global weirding.
High-energy/high-technology societies pose a serious threat to the ability of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it. Grasping that reality is a challenge, and coping with the implications is an even greater challenge. We likely have a chance to stave off the most catastrophic consequences if we act dramatically and quickly. If we continue to drag our feet, it’s "game over”.
Whether people’s ignorance about this is manipulated or willed - whether we deny climate change and pretend no change is necessary, or accept it but refuse to support those changes - the result is the same: game over. To date, the movements advocating these necessary changes have not been defeated by a superior argument nor suppressed through the large-scale violence and coercion. Instead, these movements have been marginalised by power interests that work to create ignorance, and a citizenry that hides in ignorance.
What can save us? My honest answer is, "probably nothing". But that answer doesn’t keep me from working in projects to promote social justice and ecological sustainability. I pursue that work without a guarantee of success, without illusions about my own ability to devise a winning strategy, without certainty that I know it all. But I’m pretty sure I’m right in my basic framework.
I’m also pretty sure that I can’t argue people into accepting that framework, no matter how compelling a case I can present. The key to attracting more people to radical political positions is not to adopt the manipulative tactics of the powerful or to pretend we aren’t facing such overwhelming challenges. Instead, I believe we have to think about how to create spaces for people to experience the solidarity that bolsters our courage to explore new ideas and to take risks to challenge power.
In Austin, Texas, people with varied interests in social justice and ecological sustainability have joined forces to create one such space in a community centre with offices, meeting space, and gardens. The core organisers of "5604 Manor" share a radical politics, but a radical badge isn’t required for entry. The work going on there is focused not only on immediate political objectives but also on creating resilient communities that can face the challenges ahead. The project may fail, but even in failure we will advance radical politics in this one place.
Our task is to create as many of those places as we can. In those places, we are right and it will matter.
Robert Jensen is a founding member of the Nowar Collective, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Robert Jensen
13 Sep 2011
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181583553110197.html
After 9/11 it became immediately clear that US leaders were going to use the events to justify war. Those of us who were critical of such policies began to articulate principled and practical arguments against the mad rush to war. We were right, but the wars came anyway.
On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, it is tempting to want to linger on the part about "being right," but it’s more important to focus on why "it didn’t matter" because we are still right, and it still doesn’t matter. Understanding this is necessary to shape a realistic political programme for the next decade. As bad as the past 10 years have been, the next 10 are likely to be worse, and we need to speak bluntly about these political, economic, and social realities in the United States.
What we did and didn’t accomplish
When I say "we were right," I count in the "we" those people who can be described as "anti-empire," rather than just "anti-war". This is how I described that position in an interview:
"The broad outlines of US foreign policy since WWII have remained unchanged: A desire to deepen and extend US power around the world, especially in the most strategically crucial regions such as the energy-rich Middle East; always with an eye on derailing the attempts of any Third World society to pursue a course of independent development outside the US sphere; and containing the possibility of challenges to US hegemony from other powerful states. The Bush administration policy is a departure from recent policy in terms of strategy and tactics, and perhaps also in the intensity of ideological fanaticism. ... None of this is unprecedented; all of it is dangerous and disturbing."
The folks at the core of the resistance to the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq mostly shared that critique, seeing both the continuities and the distinctive threat of the moment. Others spoke out and organised but offered no framework for understanding the invasions - some Democrats who prefer less brutal methods of empire-maintenance or simply reject wars started by Republican presidents; isolationists, including some Republicans, who want to reduce military adventures to preserve US affluence; and those who identify as pacifists and reject any war.
Although the anti-empire analysis has continued to be the most compelling explanation of US policy and its effects, anti-empire movements remain small. The movements that have seen some growth in recent years - the Tea Party and right-wing libertarianism - include some anti-war elements, but repudiate a leftist critique of empire or anything else.
So, we are right, and we are a failed movement. As someone who has participated in these organising and education efforts, I have been part of the failure. I know that I could have done more, taken more risks, pressed harder - but I don’t know if that would have made a significant difference. I don’t know whether there was a winning strategy leftists could have employed, or whether historical forces doomed our efforts from the start. Whatever the case, we failed, and it is sensible to try to learn from that failure.
To say we failed is not to ignore the limited accomplishments in different times and places. I remember the organising meeting we held in Austin the day after 9/11 that drew nearly 200 people and led to a new anti-war group by the end of the week; the fact that we mounted a resistance to the invasions almost immediately after 9/11 speaks to our clarity and resolve. The worldwide demonstrations that involved at least 10m people on February 15, 2003 were the result of incredible organising efforts. We can be proud of this and still understand that we failed. That failure need not undermine our will to keep organising and educating, but it should be in our minds as we plan future projects.
I don’t need a guarantee of success to continue. I am not afraid of failing, but I would like to make sure I’m not failing in the same old ways. To avoid that, we have to think about why it didn’t matter that we were right. We have to understand the culture’s ignorance.
It is always tempting to label political opponents ignorant and bemoan their stupidity: If only they could know what we know and understand as we understand, then certainly they would adopt our politics. I try not to fall into that trap, realising that in a complex world reasonable people can disagree. But if we are to confront the challenges ahead we have to recognise that the contemporary United States is both a technologically advanced society with an educational system that is first-rate on some criteria, yet at the same time is also a profoundly ignorant society.
Manipulated ignorance: Knowing incorrectly
Some of that ignorance is the result of the conscious effort to divert and deceive people. The sophisticated techniques to shape public attitudes developed by the public relations and advertising industries are used effectively by corporations and politicians, with the independent news media - consciously or unconsciously - often serving an important transmission function. Much of this is designed to make sure people don’t know things, to create or deepen ignorance.
An example of the consequences of that in relation to imperial wars: A Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll conducted on January 3-6, 2003, showed that 44 per cent of the respondents thought that "most" or "some" of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis; only 17 per cent knew the correct answer, "none". Also in that poll, 65 per cent said they thought Iraq and Al Qaeda were allies, and 91 per cent believed that Saddam Hussein was concealing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. As many as 41 per cent said Iraq already had nuclear weapons, a claim that not even Bush officials made.
That poll wasn’t idiosyncratic. A Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey conducted on February 12-13, 2003, found that 57 per cent of Americans believed that weapons inspectors had proof that Iraq was trying to hide weapons of mass destruction (which inspectors never said) and that 57 per cent also believe Saddam Hussein had a direct role in helping the 9/11 hijackers.
This ignorance matters. The Program on International Policy at the University of Maryland, based on polls conducted from June through September 2003, found that 48 per cent of the public believed that evidence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda had been found; 22 per cent believed that WMD had been found; and 25 per cent believed that world public opinion had favoured a US war with Iraq. Overall, 60 per cent had at least one of those misperceptions, which were highly correlated with support for war. Of people who held none of those beliefs, only 23 per cent supported war. With each misperception, support for the war increased:
-1 misperception: 53 per cent support for war.
-2 misperceptions: 78 per cent support for war.
-3 misperceptions: 86 per cent support for war.
It’s difficult enough in a political conversation to argue for a radical interpretation of basic facts. But in a society where basic facts can be so slickly and easily repackaged by power - where black is white and up is down - then there is no possibility of meaningful debate in the mainstream political culture.
Willed ignorance: Not knowing
As distressing as this manipulated ignorance can be, it is the willed ignorance of so much of the population that is most troubling. This ignorance is not primarily about asserting claims that are inaccurate or distorted, but is about not knowing, about not caring enough to make a claim. This is the result not of a lack of access to accurate data or an inability to analyse the available information. Instead, this ignorance is willed, the product of people making a choice to not-know so that they don’t have to face the moral and political implications of knowing.
There is no survey data to chart the scope of, and reasons for, this ignorance. But in two decades of political work, I have watched countless people use this strategy. There seem to be two routine ways to ensure this not-knowing. One is to avoid exposure to any in-depth information and analysis, even though one has the resources and time to find and evaluate the material - keep your head down and don’t look at what’s happening. We can call this a deliberate diversion from a disturbing world.
The other strategy, employed by those who are too curious to ignore the world around them, is to bemoan the lack of trustworthy news sources, or express confusion over the mutually exclusive accounts of the world that circulate, or note the maddening level of complexity in a globalised world - whatever the reason, there are so many impediments that to actually know anything is impossible. We can call this a feigned frustration with a complex world.
Affluence increases not only the likelihood of political inaction but also of willed ignorance. That is, people who are materially comfortable in a society are not only less likely to take the serious risks that radical politics requires but more likely to avoid knowing things that will force them to ask why they aren’t acting.
Implications of ignorance
My experience tells me there are conservatives and liberals in each of these ignorance camps, manipulated and willed. Perhaps conservatives, who tend to be more committed to an ideology that denies uncomfortable facts about US crimes, are more easily conned into believing claims for which there is little or no evidence. Maybe liberals, who tend to be more accepting of a critical view, are most likely to pursue the willed-ignorance strategy of avoidance. But what matters most is not the route to, but rather the consequences of, ignorance. Whether one actively cheerleads for the US imperial project around the world or passively accepts it, the result is the same: Policymakers can pursue the project without constraint from citizens.
So, we were right, but in this political culture it doesn’t matter. The anti-empire movement hasn’t been defeated by a superior argument that does a better job of explaining the world, nor has it been suppressed through the large-scale violence and coercion that has destroyed movements in other times and places (though in the contemporary United States such violence is used selectively and always is available should things get out of hand). Instead, this critique has been rendered irrelevant by power interests that work to create ignorance, and a citizenry that hides in ignorance.
To be clear: I am not arguing that the problem is that "people are stupid". Yes, people often are stupid. I am often stupid. I say and do stupid things on a regular basis, and so does everyone else - that’s part of being human. But another part of being human in a democratic political system is accepting the benefits and burdens of participation, and participation requires that we strive to not be stupid about politics. Democracy works only if we care enough to know about the world.
Given the destructive power of the US military and the corrosive nature of the high-energy/consumption lifestyle of the US public, there’s a lot riding on the success of democracy in the United States. There’s no guarantee that a fuller and richer public dialogue based on a good-faith search for knowledge will produce solutions to the deeply entrenched problems of social injustice and ecological unsustainability. Nor does identifying solutions guarantee that a nation will adopt such policies. But without that democratic conversation, we are doomed.
Avoiding arrogance
In addition to talking bluntly about ignorance, we must be careful to avoid the arrogance that comes so easily to us humans. Let me personalise this: For the first half of my life, I accepted the liberal version of US mythology (we are the greatest nation, but prone to making mistakes because of our extraordinary power). In the second half of my life, I started reading and talking to people who helped me overcome the combination of manipulated and willed ignorance that had defined my intellectual and political life. I read work critiquing patriarchy, white supremacy, US dominance, capitalism, and the human assault on the ecosphere. Over several years, I constructed a worldview that is radical on all these fronts. I don’t claim to have a unified field theory of politics, but I am confident that the analysis I’ve worked out rests on solid ground.
I also recognise that I could be wrong on basic aspects of that analysis, and that even if I’m right I should constantly be looping back to question my assumptions, collect new data, listen to counter-arguments, and recalibrate strategy based on this process. Life is a balance of asserting what we believe with confidence and remembering how wrong we can be. With that caution, I return to where I started:
We were right. The events of the past decade have demonstrated that our instincts on 9/11 - guided by a radical critique of the systems and structures of power - led us to see the folly of these wars. I remember sitting in my office at the University of Texas on 9/11, listening to the commentary on television, and realising that the events of that day were going to be used to justify large-scale violence in the service of power. I was scared, not of dying in another terrorist attack on the United States, but of what US policymakers were ready and willing to do.
Today I am even more scared, but not just by the imperial project that continues no matter how obvious its failure. In addition to the crimes committed by the powerful against the powerless, we face even greater threats in the human assault on the living world. In past years I spoke about environmental problems, but I abandoned that phrase because we don’t have discrete environmental problems. We face multiple, cascading ecological crises - groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of "dead zones" in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity. And don’t forget global warming/climate change/climate disruption/global weirding.
High-energy/high-technology societies pose a serious threat to the ability of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it. Grasping that reality is a challenge, and coping with the implications is an even greater challenge. We likely have a chance to stave off the most catastrophic consequences if we act dramatically and quickly. If we continue to drag our feet, it’s "game over”.
Whether people’s ignorance about this is manipulated or willed - whether we deny climate change and pretend no change is necessary, or accept it but refuse to support those changes - the result is the same: game over. To date, the movements advocating these necessary changes have not been defeated by a superior argument nor suppressed through the large-scale violence and coercion. Instead, these movements have been marginalised by power interests that work to create ignorance, and a citizenry that hides in ignorance.
What can save us? My honest answer is, "probably nothing". But that answer doesn’t keep me from working in projects to promote social justice and ecological sustainability. I pursue that work without a guarantee of success, without illusions about my own ability to devise a winning strategy, without certainty that I know it all. But I’m pretty sure I’m right in my basic framework.
I’m also pretty sure that I can’t argue people into accepting that framework, no matter how compelling a case I can present. The key to attracting more people to radical political positions is not to adopt the manipulative tactics of the powerful or to pretend we aren’t facing such overwhelming challenges. Instead, I believe we have to think about how to create spaces for people to experience the solidarity that bolsters our courage to explore new ideas and to take risks to challenge power.
In Austin, Texas, people with varied interests in social justice and ecological sustainability have joined forces to create one such space in a community centre with offices, meeting space, and gardens. The core organisers of "5604 Manor" share a radical politics, but a radical badge isn’t required for entry. The work going on there is focused not only on immediate political objectives but also on creating resilient communities that can face the challenges ahead. The project may fail, but even in failure we will advance radical politics in this one place.
Our task is to create as many of those places as we can. In those places, we are right and it will matter.
Robert Jensen is a founding member of the Nowar Collective, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
War–The Fiscal Stimulus of Last Resort
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/war-the-fiscal-stimulus-of-last-resort
“War! Good God, ya’ll. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”
So went the anti-Vietnam War protest song popularized by Edwin Starr in 1970 and revived by Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.
The song echoed popular sentiment. The Vietnam War ended. Then the Cold War ended. Yet military spending remains the government’s number one expenditure. When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, half the government’s budget now goes to the military/industrial complex.
After 9/11, the pop hit “War” was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.
Protesters have been trying to stop the military juggernaut ever since the end of World War II, yet the war machine is more powerful and influential than ever. Why? The veiled powers pulling the strings no doubt have their own dark agenda, but why has our much-trumpeted system of political democracy not been able to stop them?
The answer may involve our individualistic, laissez-faire brand of capitalism, which forbids the government to compete with private business except in cases of “national emergency.” The problem is that private business needs the government to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate demand. The process has to start somewhere, and government has the tools to do it. But in our culture, any hint of “socialism” is anathema. The result has been a state of “national emergency” has had to be declared virtually all of the time, just to get the government’s money into the economy.
Other avenues being blocked, the productive civilian economy has been systematically sucked into the non-productive military sector, until war is now our number one export. War is where the money is and where the jobs are. The United States has been turned into a permanent war economy and military state.
War as Economic Stimulus
The notion that war is good for the economy goes back at least to World War II. Critics of Keynesian-style deficit spending insisted that it was war, not deficit spending, that got the U.S. out of the Great Depression.
But while war may have triggered the surge in productivity that followed, the reason war worked was that it opened the deficit floodgates. The war was a huge stimulus to economic growth, not because it was a cost-effective use of resources, but because nobody worries about deficits in wartime.
In peacetime, on the other hand, the government was not supposed to engage in competitive enterprise. As Nobel Prize winner Frederick Soddy observed:
The old extreme laissez-faire policy of individualistic economics jealously denied to the State the right of competing in any way with individuals in the ownership of productive enterprise, out of which monetary interest or profit can be made . . . .
In the 1930s, the government was allowed to invest in such domestic ventures as the Tennessee Valley Authority, but this was largely because private sector investors did not believe they could turn a sufficient profit on the projects themselves. The upshot was that the years between 1933 and 1937 proved to be the biggest cyclical boom in U.S. history. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 12 percent rate and nominal GDP grew at a 14 percent rate. But when the economy appeared to be back on its feet in 1937, Roosevelt was leaned on to cut back on public investment. The result was a surge in unemployment. The economic boom died and the economy slipped back into depression.
World War II reversed this cycle by re-opening the money spigots. “National security” trumped all, as Congress spent with reckless abandon to “preserve our way of life.” The all-out challenge of World War II allowed Congress to fund a flurry of industrial activity, as it ran up a tab on the national credit card that was 120% of GDP.
The government ran up the largest debt in its history. Yet the hyperinflation, currency devaluation, and economic collapse predicted by the deficit hawks did not occur. Rather, the machinery and infrastructure built during that booming period set the nation up to lead the world in productivity for the next half century. By the 1970s, the debt-to-GDP ratio had dropped from 120% to less than 40%, not because people sacrificed to pay back the debt, but because the economy was so productive that GDP rose to close the gap.
Stimulus Without War
World War II may have created jobs; but like all wars, it took a terrible toll. Economist John Maynard Keynes observed:
Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better. [Emphasis added.]
War was the economic stimulus of last resort when politicians were so confused in their understanding of economics that they would not allow the government to go into debt except for national emergencies. But Keynes said there are less destructive ways to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate the economy. Workers could be paid to dig ditches and fill them back up, and it would stimulate the economy. What a lagging economy needed was simply demand (available purchasing power). Demand would then stimulate businesses to produce more “supply”, creating more jobs and driving productivity. The key was that demand (money to spend) must come first.
The Chinese have put workers to work building massive malls and apartment buildings, many of which are standing empty for lack of customers and purchasers. It may be a wasteful use of resources, but it has succeeded in putting wages in workers’ pockets, giving them the purchasing power to spend on products and services, stimulating economic growth; and unlike wasteful war spending, the Chinese approach has not involved death and destruction.
A less costly alternative would be Milton Friedman’s hypothetical solution: simply drop money from helicopters. This has been linked to “quantitative easing” (QE), but QE as currently applied is not what Friedman described. The money has not been showered on the people and the local economy, putting money in people’s pockets, stimulating spending. It has been dropped into the reserve accounts of banks, where it has simply accumulated without reaching the productive economy. “Excess” reserves of $1.6 trillion are now sitting in reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve. A helicopter drop of the sort proposed by Friedman has not been tried.
A Better Solution
War, digging ditches, and dropping money from helicopters could all work to stimulate demand and increase purchasing power, but there are better alternatives. Today we have major unmet needs — infrastructure that is falling apart, overcrowded classrooms, energy systems waiting for development, research labs in need of funding. The most cost-effective solution today would be for the government to stimulate the economy by spending on work that actually improves the standard of living of the people.
This could be done while actually reducing the national debt. In a recent article, David Swanson cites a study by Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe, looking at the $60 billion lost by the Pentagon to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. They calculated that this money could have created 193,000 more jobs than its military use created, if diverted to domestic commercial purposes. Swanson goes on:
There are some other calculations in the same study . . . . If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we’d spent it on healthcare, we’d have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we’d spent it on education, we’d have created 1.05 million more jobs. . . .
Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.
Labor and resources are sitting idle while the bogeyman of “deficits” deprives the population of the goods and services they could create. Diverting a portion of our massive war spending to peaceful use could add jobs, improve living standards, and add infrastructure, while reducing the national debt and balancing the government’s budget by increasing the tax base and government revenues.
Prepared for “The Military Industrial Complex at 50”, a conference in Charlottesville, VA, September 16-18, 2011.
_______
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://publicbankinginstitute.org/. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com/ and http://ellenbrown.com/
“War! Good God, ya’ll. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”
So went the anti-Vietnam War protest song popularized by Edwin Starr in 1970 and revived by Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.
The song echoed popular sentiment. The Vietnam War ended. Then the Cold War ended. Yet military spending remains the government’s number one expenditure. When veterans’ benefits and other past military costs are factored in, half the government’s budget now goes to the military/industrial complex.
After 9/11, the pop hit “War” was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.
Protesters have been trying to stop the military juggernaut ever since the end of World War II, yet the war machine is more powerful and influential than ever. Why? The veiled powers pulling the strings no doubt have their own dark agenda, but why has our much-trumpeted system of political democracy not been able to stop them?
The answer may involve our individualistic, laissez-faire brand of capitalism, which forbids the government to compete with private business except in cases of “national emergency.” The problem is that private business needs the government to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate demand. The process has to start somewhere, and government has the tools to do it. But in our culture, any hint of “socialism” is anathema. The result has been a state of “national emergency” has had to be declared virtually all of the time, just to get the government’s money into the economy.
Other avenues being blocked, the productive civilian economy has been systematically sucked into the non-productive military sector, until war is now our number one export. War is where the money is and where the jobs are. The United States has been turned into a permanent war economy and military state.
War as Economic Stimulus
The notion that war is good for the economy goes back at least to World War II. Critics of Keynesian-style deficit spending insisted that it was war, not deficit spending, that got the U.S. out of the Great Depression.
But while war may have triggered the surge in productivity that followed, the reason war worked was that it opened the deficit floodgates. The war was a huge stimulus to economic growth, not because it was a cost-effective use of resources, but because nobody worries about deficits in wartime.
In peacetime, on the other hand, the government was not supposed to engage in competitive enterprise. As Nobel Prize winner Frederick Soddy observed:
The old extreme laissez-faire policy of individualistic economics jealously denied to the State the right of competing in any way with individuals in the ownership of productive enterprise, out of which monetary interest or profit can be made . . . .
In the 1930s, the government was allowed to invest in such domestic ventures as the Tennessee Valley Authority, but this was largely because private sector investors did not believe they could turn a sufficient profit on the projects themselves. The upshot was that the years between 1933 and 1937 proved to be the biggest cyclical boom in U.S. history. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew at a 12 percent rate and nominal GDP grew at a 14 percent rate. But when the economy appeared to be back on its feet in 1937, Roosevelt was leaned on to cut back on public investment. The result was a surge in unemployment. The economic boom died and the economy slipped back into depression.
World War II reversed this cycle by re-opening the money spigots. “National security” trumped all, as Congress spent with reckless abandon to “preserve our way of life.” The all-out challenge of World War II allowed Congress to fund a flurry of industrial activity, as it ran up a tab on the national credit card that was 120% of GDP.
The government ran up the largest debt in its history. Yet the hyperinflation, currency devaluation, and economic collapse predicted by the deficit hawks did not occur. Rather, the machinery and infrastructure built during that booming period set the nation up to lead the world in productivity for the next half century. By the 1970s, the debt-to-GDP ratio had dropped from 120% to less than 40%, not because people sacrificed to pay back the debt, but because the economy was so productive that GDP rose to close the gap.
Stimulus Without War
World War II may have created jobs; but like all wars, it took a terrible toll. Economist John Maynard Keynes observed:
Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth, if the education of our statesmen on the principles of the classical economics stands in the way of anything better. [Emphasis added.]
War was the economic stimulus of last resort when politicians were so confused in their understanding of economics that they would not allow the government to go into debt except for national emergencies. But Keynes said there are less destructive ways to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate the economy. Workers could be paid to dig ditches and fill them back up, and it would stimulate the economy. What a lagging economy needed was simply demand (available purchasing power). Demand would then stimulate businesses to produce more “supply”, creating more jobs and driving productivity. The key was that demand (money to spend) must come first.
The Chinese have put workers to work building massive malls and apartment buildings, many of which are standing empty for lack of customers and purchasers. It may be a wasteful use of resources, but it has succeeded in putting wages in workers’ pockets, giving them the purchasing power to spend on products and services, stimulating economic growth; and unlike wasteful war spending, the Chinese approach has not involved death and destruction.
A less costly alternative would be Milton Friedman’s hypothetical solution: simply drop money from helicopters. This has been linked to “quantitative easing” (QE), but QE as currently applied is not what Friedman described. The money has not been showered on the people and the local economy, putting money in people’s pockets, stimulating spending. It has been dropped into the reserve accounts of banks, where it has simply accumulated without reaching the productive economy. “Excess” reserves of $1.6 trillion are now sitting in reserve accounts at the Federal Reserve. A helicopter drop of the sort proposed by Friedman has not been tried.
A Better Solution
War, digging ditches, and dropping money from helicopters could all work to stimulate demand and increase purchasing power, but there are better alternatives. Today we have major unmet needs — infrastructure that is falling apart, overcrowded classrooms, energy systems waiting for development, research labs in need of funding. The most cost-effective solution today would be for the government to stimulate the economy by spending on work that actually improves the standard of living of the people.
This could be done while actually reducing the national debt. In a recent article, David Swanson cites a study by Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe, looking at the $60 billion lost by the Pentagon to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. They calculated that this money could have created 193,000 more jobs than its military use created, if diverted to domestic commercial purposes. Swanson goes on:
There are some other calculations in the same study . . . . If we had spent that $60 billion on clean energy, we would have created (directly or indirectly) 330,000 more jobs. If we’d spent it on healthcare, we’d have created 480,000 more jobs. And if we’d spent it on education, we’d have created 1.05 million more jobs. . . .
Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs per year. Take another $50 billion and move it into healthcare spending. There’s an additional 400,000 jobs. Take another $100 billion and move it into clean energy. There’s another 550,000 jobs. And take another $62 billion and turn it into tax cuts, generating an additional 200,000 jobs. Now the military spending in the Department of Energy, the State Department, Homeland Security, and so forth have not been touched. And the Department of Defense has been cut back to about $388 billion, which is to say: more than it was getting 10 years ago when our country went collectively insane.
Labor and resources are sitting idle while the bogeyman of “deficits” deprives the population of the goods and services they could create. Diverting a portion of our massive war spending to peaceful use could add jobs, improve living standards, and add infrastructure, while reducing the national debt and balancing the government’s budget by increasing the tax base and government revenues.
Prepared for “The Military Industrial Complex at 50”, a conference in Charlottesville, VA, September 16-18, 2011.
_______
Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://publicbankinginstitute.org/. In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her websites are http://webofdebt.com/ and http://ellenbrown.com/
Where was the Pat Tillman Story on NFL Sunday?
Dave Zirin
Monday, September 12, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163328/where-was-pat-tillman-story-nfl-sunday
In 2004, President George W. Bush appeared on the Jumbotron at Arizona’s Sun Devil stadium to address the combat death of former NFL player turned Army Ranger, Pat Tillman. Bush said: “Pat Tillman loved the game of football. Yet, as much as Pat Tillman loved competing on the football field, he loved America even more… Courageous and humble, a loving husband and son, a devoted brother and a fierce defender of liberty. Pat Tillman will always be remembered.”
But Sunday--- while NFL teams around the country commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks---Pat’s name was only mentioned before the game in Arizona. In stadium after stadium, in pregame show after pregame show, as the NFL’s 9/11 commemoration strategy was rolled out with lockstep discipline, Tillman’s name was conspicuously absent. George W. Bush certainly got his moment in the spotlight, receiving a standing ovation by 70,000 fans at the Meadowlands. On other football fields, massive flags were unfurled, “official NFL/9/11 logos” were unveiled, soldiers were cheered, Reebok’s “We Will Never Forget” 9/11 gear was worn, and yet it was as if Pat Tillman had never existed.
The NFL’s media man, Brian McCarthy, vigorously contested this when we called for comment. “Yesterday was a day to remember to those who lost lives on 9/11...We did not single out any NFL player that had been in the military. We saluted all military members around the country and the world. Pat means so much to the NFL. We have funded the “Pat Tillman USO Center,” a USO center in his name in Afghanistan at Bagram [Airfield]. We also worked with his wife Marie on the creation of the NFL scholarship. The first thing you see in the NFL [New York] building is Pat’s jersey. He is very dear to the. NFL family. We salute him every day. If [you are] trying to create controversy there is none.”
I respectfully disagree. I don’t contest that Tillman’s jersey is in the NFL office, or that “he is honored every day.” But I think it’s worth asking why the NFL paid so little attention to Pat. It’s worth asking because the answer says a great deal. Pat Tillman is the only NFL player – or professional athlete – to die in the theater of war since September 11th, 2001. He walked away from millions of dollars to join the U.S. Army because of the way 9/11 shook his system. On 9/12/01, Tillman gave an interview where he said, “My great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars, and I really haven’t done a damn thing.”
Twenty-two months after enlisting, Pat Tillman was dead. His memorial service was aired on national television. The Army awarded him a Silver Star for his “gallantry in action against an armed enemy.” They said Tillman's convoy had been ambushed in Afghanistan. They said Tillman charged up a hill to protect his men but was shot down by the Taliban. Responding to this heroic story, the NFL, as they are quick to mention, created statues and memorials in his honor.
Why didn’t we hear Tillman’s name on Sunday? It’s because the Pentagon’s official story, the very story the NFL initially embraced, is an awful lie. Tillman actually died in friendly fire, a fact that was criminally hidden from his family, his fans, and to the greater public. Tillman also began to turn against the war before his death, telling friends in the Rangers that he believed the war in Iraq was “illegal.” A voracious reader, he started reading anti-war authors in an attempt to wrap his head around how he had become the most famous solider in an endless conflict.
After the Bush administration finally revealed the truth, Tillman’s shocked family and friends did the only thing they could do: fight to find out the real facts of his death. They went public with the narrative of a Pat Tillman that was inconsistent with the Bush administration and NFL’s. They put forth a Pat Tillman that was an intensely iconoclastic atheist, turning against war.
The misrepresentation of Pat Tillman’s death speaks to the lies used to sell war, and to the way people’s rage and grief was exploited in the wake of 9/11. But thanks to the tireless work of his family, and the creators of the documentary The Tillman Story, his true story is now public knowledge. As Pat’s mother Mary said in The Tillman Story, “I think they just thought, if they spun the story and we found out ... we'd just keep it quiet because we wouldn't want to diminish ... his heroism or anything like that ... but, you know, nobody questions Pat's heroics. He was always heroic. What they said happened, didn't happen. They made up a story, and so you have to set the record straight.”
In one respect their effort saved Pat Tillman’s name this past Sunday. In the least it saved his family and friends the pain of knowing that Pat was being displayed in a way he would have found, in the words of fellow Ranger Jade Lane, as “criminal.” But the NFL’s exclusion of Tillman in their commemoration is a statement of its own. They could have discussed Tillman’s service in all its complicated, messy glory. They could have respected his sacrifice as well as his inner conflicts. They could have interviewed the eloquent and elegant Mary Tillman on all the pregame shows. The country could have learned not just about Pat Tillman, but that the former Commander in Chief being cheered at the Meadowlands had committed a felony in falsifying the facts of Tillman’s death. It’s an awful story, but it’s real. It's also far from finished. As The Tillman Story director Amir Bar-Lev said: “This is an unsolved mystery; nobody has ever really paid a price for what was done to the Tillmans. No one has taken accountability or made an admission for a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth. This story is not over yet.”
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Monday, September 12, 2011
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163328/where-was-pat-tillman-story-nfl-sunday
In 2004, President George W. Bush appeared on the Jumbotron at Arizona’s Sun Devil stadium to address the combat death of former NFL player turned Army Ranger, Pat Tillman. Bush said: “Pat Tillman loved the game of football. Yet, as much as Pat Tillman loved competing on the football field, he loved America even more… Courageous and humble, a loving husband and son, a devoted brother and a fierce defender of liberty. Pat Tillman will always be remembered.”
But Sunday--- while NFL teams around the country commemorated the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks---Pat’s name was only mentioned before the game in Arizona. In stadium after stadium, in pregame show after pregame show, as the NFL’s 9/11 commemoration strategy was rolled out with lockstep discipline, Tillman’s name was conspicuously absent. George W. Bush certainly got his moment in the spotlight, receiving a standing ovation by 70,000 fans at the Meadowlands. On other football fields, massive flags were unfurled, “official NFL/9/11 logos” were unveiled, soldiers were cheered, Reebok’s “We Will Never Forget” 9/11 gear was worn, and yet it was as if Pat Tillman had never existed.
The NFL’s media man, Brian McCarthy, vigorously contested this when we called for comment. “Yesterday was a day to remember to those who lost lives on 9/11...We did not single out any NFL player that had been in the military. We saluted all military members around the country and the world. Pat means so much to the NFL. We have funded the “Pat Tillman USO Center,” a USO center in his name in Afghanistan at Bagram [Airfield]. We also worked with his wife Marie on the creation of the NFL scholarship. The first thing you see in the NFL [New York] building is Pat’s jersey. He is very dear to the. NFL family. We salute him every day. If [you are] trying to create controversy there is none.”
I respectfully disagree. I don’t contest that Tillman’s jersey is in the NFL office, or that “he is honored every day.” But I think it’s worth asking why the NFL paid so little attention to Pat. It’s worth asking because the answer says a great deal. Pat Tillman is the only NFL player – or professional athlete – to die in the theater of war since September 11th, 2001. He walked away from millions of dollars to join the U.S. Army because of the way 9/11 shook his system. On 9/12/01, Tillman gave an interview where he said, “My great-grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars, and I really haven’t done a damn thing.”
Twenty-two months after enlisting, Pat Tillman was dead. His memorial service was aired on national television. The Army awarded him a Silver Star for his “gallantry in action against an armed enemy.” They said Tillman's convoy had been ambushed in Afghanistan. They said Tillman charged up a hill to protect his men but was shot down by the Taliban. Responding to this heroic story, the NFL, as they are quick to mention, created statues and memorials in his honor.
Why didn’t we hear Tillman’s name on Sunday? It’s because the Pentagon’s official story, the very story the NFL initially embraced, is an awful lie. Tillman actually died in friendly fire, a fact that was criminally hidden from his family, his fans, and to the greater public. Tillman also began to turn against the war before his death, telling friends in the Rangers that he believed the war in Iraq was “illegal.” A voracious reader, he started reading anti-war authors in an attempt to wrap his head around how he had become the most famous solider in an endless conflict.
After the Bush administration finally revealed the truth, Tillman’s shocked family and friends did the only thing they could do: fight to find out the real facts of his death. They went public with the narrative of a Pat Tillman that was inconsistent with the Bush administration and NFL’s. They put forth a Pat Tillman that was an intensely iconoclastic atheist, turning against war.
The misrepresentation of Pat Tillman’s death speaks to the lies used to sell war, and to the way people’s rage and grief was exploited in the wake of 9/11. But thanks to the tireless work of his family, and the creators of the documentary The Tillman Story, his true story is now public knowledge. As Pat’s mother Mary said in The Tillman Story, “I think they just thought, if they spun the story and we found out ... we'd just keep it quiet because we wouldn't want to diminish ... his heroism or anything like that ... but, you know, nobody questions Pat's heroics. He was always heroic. What they said happened, didn't happen. They made up a story, and so you have to set the record straight.”
In one respect their effort saved Pat Tillman’s name this past Sunday. In the least it saved his family and friends the pain of knowing that Pat was being displayed in a way he would have found, in the words of fellow Ranger Jade Lane, as “criminal.” But the NFL’s exclusion of Tillman in their commemoration is a statement of its own. They could have discussed Tillman’s service in all its complicated, messy glory. They could have respected his sacrifice as well as his inner conflicts. They could have interviewed the eloquent and elegant Mary Tillman on all the pregame shows. The country could have learned not just about Pat Tillman, but that the former Commander in Chief being cheered at the Meadowlands had committed a felony in falsifying the facts of Tillman’s death. It’s an awful story, but it’s real. It's also far from finished. As The Tillman Story director Amir Bar-Lev said: “This is an unsolved mystery; nobody has ever really paid a price for what was done to the Tillmans. No one has taken accountability or made an admission for a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth. This story is not over yet.”
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Probability of Large-Scale False Flag Terror Event Increasing
Probability of Large-Scale False Flag Terror Event Increasing As European Banking Panic Looms
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
September 9, 2011
http://tarpley.net/2011/09/09/probability-of-false-flag-terror-event-increasing
Washington DC, Sept. 9, 2011 – Late yesterday, Obama administration officials speaking off the record told reporters that they had a “credible but unconfirmed” threat warning for a terror attack around the time of the 9/11 anniversary is coming Sunday.
This announcement caps a week in which numerous veterans of the original 9/11 false flag terror attack and cover-up have been prodigal with their media warnings that a repetition of the bloody tragedy of 10 years ago is simply a question of time. These figures have included former New York Mayor Giuliani, 9/11 commission chairs Hamilton and Kean, and many others.
Based on the current intelligence constellation, a large-scale false flag terror attack over the coming weeks and months is now increasing in probability. This is because such a terror attack, plus the wars it could unleash and the martial law which it might be used to impose in Europe and North America, would facilitate measures which the ruling finance oligarchs of these nations judge to be essential for their short-term survival. The false flag attack could be blamed on Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, or a range of others.
Once again, the initiative may be passing into the hands of that rogue network, invisible government, secret government, parallel government, deep state, or special forces underground which exists at the point where Wall Street and City of London financial bosses intersect with the dominant personalities – active-duty and retired – of the Anglo-American secret intelligence establishment.
Imminent Banking Panic Means New and Bigger Bailouts Imposed by Martial Law
The leading factor compelling the Anglo-American power elite into a new false flag terror adventure is the now rapidly worsening breakdown crisis of the European and US banking systems. Almost 2 years of Anglo-American financial warfare against the euro, generally taking the form of credit default swap (CDS) assaults on European government bonds, have now created an extraordinarily serious crisis. There is presently a list of at least one dozen large European banks, each of whom is a candidate to play the role of Lehman Brothers in the blowup which can now be expected for some time over the next two months. This includes the top British banks. This crisis is almost exclusively the handiwork of the City of London and Wall Street, and they have created it in order to relieve pressure on the dollar, and to neutralize the threat to the future role of the dollar as the world reserve currency. Over the past few days, Anglo-American commentators have been chortling as the dollar has picked up a few pennies of value compared to the euro.
The problem for the Anglo-Americans is that panic runs on European banks will quickly be translated into panic runs on US banks, and on the dollar. Institutions like Bank of America, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and even the vaunted Goldman Sachs, which have existed as zombie banks thanks to government largess since September 2008, are now exhibiting telltale signs of a Lehman-like death spiral. In short, if the European banks blow, the London and New York banks will not be far behind. Maybe the Wall Street geniuses of international financial warfare should have thought of that before they embarked on their current lunatic beggar-my-neighbor campaign against their confreres in continental Europe.
Experience teaches that if the New York money center banks are faced by imminent bankruptcy, their first instinct would be to demand a second bailout of trillions of dollars at US taxpayer expense. The problem for them is that the first bailout has left such a bitter aftertaste that congressional passage of such a monstrous funding bill would be anybody’s guess. From the Wall Street point of view, this makes martial law a much more attractive alternative than in the recent past. Under the impact of a huge false flag event, new bailouts could be railroaded through the Congress or even approved by Wall Street puppet Obama as executive orders and validated later. They could even be approved as a measure necessary for national defense in an emergency. The impact in Europe would be similar.
Martial law declared in response to a terror attack would automatically be used to suppress public protests against the bailouts and austerity cuts decreed by the zombie bankers and hedge fund hyenas. No matter what the ins and outs, a new terror crisis would help Wall Street get its money. And there is nothing like an imminent financial panic to make the Anglo-American ruling elite go collectively bonkers.
The Twelve Tyrants of Austerity Threaten the Pentagon Budget
A second and related problem is represented by the first meeting yesterday of that extralegal pseudo-judicial organism which the American people are increasingly referring to as the Twelve Tyrants. This is the infamous Super Committee or Super Congress, an entity which exists in clear violation of the United States Constitution. If, according to one likely scenario, the Twelve Tyrants, the Congress, and Obama fail to agree on a common program of genocidal austerity against the American people, and automatic budget guillotine will come down around Christmas of this year, and will begin cutting $60 billion per year out of the Pentagon budget. According to a number of observers, this prospect by itself is sufficient to move the intelligence old boys of the rogue network to stage a substantial new terror stunt to protect their current level of funding. If new terror attacks occur, it will be much harder to cut the Pentagon budget. Having been deprived of the Cold War 20 years ago, these bellicose militarists do not intend to be deprived of their ersatz Global War on Terror, and they are prepared to go far off the reservation to assert themselves.
The anxiety in these circles is increased by news reports that the US presence in Iraq is about to be scaled down to about 3,000 troops. At the same time, public pressure for an early exit from Afghanistan is growing, while others are calling for a strategy based on limited special forces and the use of predator drones, but without large numbers of infantry.
Republican Warmongers Pose as Isolationists
The disgust of the US population with the endless wars of the past decade has gradually transformed much of the Republican Party from a self-professed congeries of warmongers into a purported gaggle of isolationists, as seen in the recent debates. Naturally, for most of these figures the dovish transformation is purely demagogic. A robust false flag terror event would go far towards flipping the Republicans back to the warmongers stance they find inherently congenial.
London and Washington Still Want to Attack Pakistan
Another factor which disturbs the Anglo-American imperialist planners is their inability to launch their military incursion against Pakistan. This had been planned for the immediate aftermath of the May 1st “Bin Laden” publicity stunt, and would have included an attempt by US Special Forces to seize or destroy the Pakistani strategic nuclear deterrent, leaving that country defenseless. The Anglo-Americans have been held in this case by a timely ultimatum from China, specifying that Beijing would treat an attack on Pakistan just like an attack on the Chinese homeland. This has largely checkmated China and Washington ever since. However, in the aftermath of a new false flag event blamed on Pakistan, it would be possible for the Anglo-American to revisit this issue with increased blackmail potential against the Chinese.
The US-UK Assault on Syria is Failing
In the Middle East, the Anglo-American power elite has wagered everything on the successful march of color revolutions backed up with NATO military aggression, leading to the overthrow of most of the existing regimes in the Arab world. Syria poses the most serious test so far for this new Anglo-American strategic doctrine. After all, it was relatively easy for the Anglo Americans to destabilize and overthrow the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, given that these states were already located within the Anglo Americans sphere.
NATO’s Urgent Need to Attack Syria
Libya has proven a much tougher nut to crack, and NATO, and despite a brutal application of genocidal force, has not yet cracked it. Because of Qaddafi’s superior fighting qualities, the long war in Libya has tended to shield Syria from the next, planned wave of NATO attack. In the meantime, the Syrian army has made substantial progress in quelling the armed rebellion mounted by death squads and armed gangs loyal to the Moslem Brotherhood, itself the creation of British intelligence. The optimum time for NATO to invade Syria would have been two months ago, but this proved impossible because so many of NATO’s strictly limited military assets were tied down on the Libyan front. Very soon, there will be very little of the Muslim Brotherhood soldatesca left in Syria for NATO to come and rescue.
A false flag terror attack, however, would immediately change this equation by creating political conditions in which Obama could successfully extort increased military assets from Congress and from Europe to carry out a direct attack on Syria. This in turn would likely embroil NATO in all-out war not just with Syria, but with Hezbollah and Iran as well. If one thinks of a world war evolving along the lines of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-1648), then this would begin to look very much like such a world war.
Isolated Israel Faces the PLO Demand for Statehood and the Hostility of Turkey
A further exacerbating factor is represented at the ongoing internal political crisis and increasing international isolation of Israel. Right after the 9/11 anniversary, the United Nations General Assembly will convene in New York City. Here there will be a determined attempt by the Palestinian Authority to exert its existence as a sovereign and independent United Nations member state. This bid will enjoy overwhelming sympathy around the world. It is quite possible that the General Assembly will approve the Palestinian request. The United States faces the humiliating isolation of having to block Palestinian statehood with a solo veto in the Security Council. Saudi Arabia is on record as saying that this outcome will lead to a catastrophe in US-Saudi relations.
Will Turkey Decline Role of US-UK Kamikaze Puppet Against Syria?
A further complication involves Turkey. According to the Anglo-American dream scenario, Turkey should by now have attacked Syria, citing the pretext of wanting to stop the refugee flow across the two countries’ common border. For a time it looked like the Turks would indeed accept the role of kamikaze puppet against Syria in the service of London and New York. But, for the moment, it looks like they may have paused. Instead of invading Syria, Turkey is currently engaged in a high profile diplomatic clash with the Israelis, which makes much more sense from the point of view of Turkish interests and internal politics, and which increases the pressure on the desperados of the Netanyahu regime. All this comes at the moment when half a million Israelis have demonstrated in the streets to show their rejection of the militarism and economic austerity measures of Netanyahu.
A Turkish-Egyptian Alliance?
There are even reports of a possible alliance between Egypt and Turkey, which would be most unwelcome to the US, British, and Israelis. The Egyptians, for their part, have become somewhat less subservient neighbors for the Israelis in the Sinai, especially after some Egyptian forces were killed by Israeli bombing raids targeting Gaza.
Iran: Bushehr Goes Online
In the background, the Iranian nuclear program is quietly proceeding. The Bushehr nuclear power station has come online, producing electricity for Iran’s national grid. The Washington Post, citing a September report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, claims that the Iranian nuclear program represents “an undimmed danger.” In a September 6 editorial, the paper claims that Iran has begun to use a new and more advanced centrifuge for the enrichment of uranium, and that rapid progress is being made in transferring existing centrifuges into a large underground facility located in a mountain near Qom, which makes them all but invulnerable to outside military attack. The protracted campaign of assassination against Iranian nuclear scientists, it would appear, has not been effective in stopping this progress. In the fevered imaginations of imperialist military planners, we may therefore be approaching the point of no return for an attack on Iran.
Neocon Bonapartist Petraeus Now Running the CIA
As of this past Tuesday, the General David Petraeus has now taken control of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Petraeus has long been noted as the favorite Bonapartist of the neocon faction, and their chosen vehicle for a return to power en masse. Petraeus is carrying out a personal union of the Pentagon and the CIA, the two pillars of his projected future authoritarian presidency. If the US ruling elite should decide to jettison Obama, look for Petraeus’ star to rise at the expense of the “bunch of cranks” populating the current Republican field which is “the weakest since 1940,” in the words of John Weaver of the Huntsman camp.
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
September 9, 2011
http://tarpley.net/2011/09/09/probability-of-false-flag-terror-event-increasing
Washington DC, Sept. 9, 2011 – Late yesterday, Obama administration officials speaking off the record told reporters that they had a “credible but unconfirmed” threat warning for a terror attack around the time of the 9/11 anniversary is coming Sunday.
This announcement caps a week in which numerous veterans of the original 9/11 false flag terror attack and cover-up have been prodigal with their media warnings that a repetition of the bloody tragedy of 10 years ago is simply a question of time. These figures have included former New York Mayor Giuliani, 9/11 commission chairs Hamilton and Kean, and many others.
Based on the current intelligence constellation, a large-scale false flag terror attack over the coming weeks and months is now increasing in probability. This is because such a terror attack, plus the wars it could unleash and the martial law which it might be used to impose in Europe and North America, would facilitate measures which the ruling finance oligarchs of these nations judge to be essential for their short-term survival. The false flag attack could be blamed on Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, or a range of others.
Once again, the initiative may be passing into the hands of that rogue network, invisible government, secret government, parallel government, deep state, or special forces underground which exists at the point where Wall Street and City of London financial bosses intersect with the dominant personalities – active-duty and retired – of the Anglo-American secret intelligence establishment.
Imminent Banking Panic Means New and Bigger Bailouts Imposed by Martial Law
The leading factor compelling the Anglo-American power elite into a new false flag terror adventure is the now rapidly worsening breakdown crisis of the European and US banking systems. Almost 2 years of Anglo-American financial warfare against the euro, generally taking the form of credit default swap (CDS) assaults on European government bonds, have now created an extraordinarily serious crisis. There is presently a list of at least one dozen large European banks, each of whom is a candidate to play the role of Lehman Brothers in the blowup which can now be expected for some time over the next two months. This includes the top British banks. This crisis is almost exclusively the handiwork of the City of London and Wall Street, and they have created it in order to relieve pressure on the dollar, and to neutralize the threat to the future role of the dollar as the world reserve currency. Over the past few days, Anglo-American commentators have been chortling as the dollar has picked up a few pennies of value compared to the euro.
The problem for the Anglo-Americans is that panic runs on European banks will quickly be translated into panic runs on US banks, and on the dollar. Institutions like Bank of America, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and even the vaunted Goldman Sachs, which have existed as zombie banks thanks to government largess since September 2008, are now exhibiting telltale signs of a Lehman-like death spiral. In short, if the European banks blow, the London and New York banks will not be far behind. Maybe the Wall Street geniuses of international financial warfare should have thought of that before they embarked on their current lunatic beggar-my-neighbor campaign against their confreres in continental Europe.
Experience teaches that if the New York money center banks are faced by imminent bankruptcy, their first instinct would be to demand a second bailout of trillions of dollars at US taxpayer expense. The problem for them is that the first bailout has left such a bitter aftertaste that congressional passage of such a monstrous funding bill would be anybody’s guess. From the Wall Street point of view, this makes martial law a much more attractive alternative than in the recent past. Under the impact of a huge false flag event, new bailouts could be railroaded through the Congress or even approved by Wall Street puppet Obama as executive orders and validated later. They could even be approved as a measure necessary for national defense in an emergency. The impact in Europe would be similar.
Martial law declared in response to a terror attack would automatically be used to suppress public protests against the bailouts and austerity cuts decreed by the zombie bankers and hedge fund hyenas. No matter what the ins and outs, a new terror crisis would help Wall Street get its money. And there is nothing like an imminent financial panic to make the Anglo-American ruling elite go collectively bonkers.
The Twelve Tyrants of Austerity Threaten the Pentagon Budget
A second and related problem is represented by the first meeting yesterday of that extralegal pseudo-judicial organism which the American people are increasingly referring to as the Twelve Tyrants. This is the infamous Super Committee or Super Congress, an entity which exists in clear violation of the United States Constitution. If, according to one likely scenario, the Twelve Tyrants, the Congress, and Obama fail to agree on a common program of genocidal austerity against the American people, and automatic budget guillotine will come down around Christmas of this year, and will begin cutting $60 billion per year out of the Pentagon budget. According to a number of observers, this prospect by itself is sufficient to move the intelligence old boys of the rogue network to stage a substantial new terror stunt to protect their current level of funding. If new terror attacks occur, it will be much harder to cut the Pentagon budget. Having been deprived of the Cold War 20 years ago, these bellicose militarists do not intend to be deprived of their ersatz Global War on Terror, and they are prepared to go far off the reservation to assert themselves.
The anxiety in these circles is increased by news reports that the US presence in Iraq is about to be scaled down to about 3,000 troops. At the same time, public pressure for an early exit from Afghanistan is growing, while others are calling for a strategy based on limited special forces and the use of predator drones, but without large numbers of infantry.
Republican Warmongers Pose as Isolationists
The disgust of the US population with the endless wars of the past decade has gradually transformed much of the Republican Party from a self-professed congeries of warmongers into a purported gaggle of isolationists, as seen in the recent debates. Naturally, for most of these figures the dovish transformation is purely demagogic. A robust false flag terror event would go far towards flipping the Republicans back to the warmongers stance they find inherently congenial.
London and Washington Still Want to Attack Pakistan
Another factor which disturbs the Anglo-American imperialist planners is their inability to launch their military incursion against Pakistan. This had been planned for the immediate aftermath of the May 1st “Bin Laden” publicity stunt, and would have included an attempt by US Special Forces to seize or destroy the Pakistani strategic nuclear deterrent, leaving that country defenseless. The Anglo-Americans have been held in this case by a timely ultimatum from China, specifying that Beijing would treat an attack on Pakistan just like an attack on the Chinese homeland. This has largely checkmated China and Washington ever since. However, in the aftermath of a new false flag event blamed on Pakistan, it would be possible for the Anglo-American to revisit this issue with increased blackmail potential against the Chinese.
The US-UK Assault on Syria is Failing
In the Middle East, the Anglo-American power elite has wagered everything on the successful march of color revolutions backed up with NATO military aggression, leading to the overthrow of most of the existing regimes in the Arab world. Syria poses the most serious test so far for this new Anglo-American strategic doctrine. After all, it was relatively easy for the Anglo Americans to destabilize and overthrow the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, given that these states were already located within the Anglo Americans sphere.
NATO’s Urgent Need to Attack Syria
Libya has proven a much tougher nut to crack, and NATO, and despite a brutal application of genocidal force, has not yet cracked it. Because of Qaddafi’s superior fighting qualities, the long war in Libya has tended to shield Syria from the next, planned wave of NATO attack. In the meantime, the Syrian army has made substantial progress in quelling the armed rebellion mounted by death squads and armed gangs loyal to the Moslem Brotherhood, itself the creation of British intelligence. The optimum time for NATO to invade Syria would have been two months ago, but this proved impossible because so many of NATO’s strictly limited military assets were tied down on the Libyan front. Very soon, there will be very little of the Muslim Brotherhood soldatesca left in Syria for NATO to come and rescue.
A false flag terror attack, however, would immediately change this equation by creating political conditions in which Obama could successfully extort increased military assets from Congress and from Europe to carry out a direct attack on Syria. This in turn would likely embroil NATO in all-out war not just with Syria, but with Hezbollah and Iran as well. If one thinks of a world war evolving along the lines of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe (1618-1648), then this would begin to look very much like such a world war.
Isolated Israel Faces the PLO Demand for Statehood and the Hostility of Turkey
A further exacerbating factor is represented at the ongoing internal political crisis and increasing international isolation of Israel. Right after the 9/11 anniversary, the United Nations General Assembly will convene in New York City. Here there will be a determined attempt by the Palestinian Authority to exert its existence as a sovereign and independent United Nations member state. This bid will enjoy overwhelming sympathy around the world. It is quite possible that the General Assembly will approve the Palestinian request. The United States faces the humiliating isolation of having to block Palestinian statehood with a solo veto in the Security Council. Saudi Arabia is on record as saying that this outcome will lead to a catastrophe in US-Saudi relations.
Will Turkey Decline Role of US-UK Kamikaze Puppet Against Syria?
A further complication involves Turkey. According to the Anglo-American dream scenario, Turkey should by now have attacked Syria, citing the pretext of wanting to stop the refugee flow across the two countries’ common border. For a time it looked like the Turks would indeed accept the role of kamikaze puppet against Syria in the service of London and New York. But, for the moment, it looks like they may have paused. Instead of invading Syria, Turkey is currently engaged in a high profile diplomatic clash with the Israelis, which makes much more sense from the point of view of Turkish interests and internal politics, and which increases the pressure on the desperados of the Netanyahu regime. All this comes at the moment when half a million Israelis have demonstrated in the streets to show their rejection of the militarism and economic austerity measures of Netanyahu.
A Turkish-Egyptian Alliance?
There are even reports of a possible alliance between Egypt and Turkey, which would be most unwelcome to the US, British, and Israelis. The Egyptians, for their part, have become somewhat less subservient neighbors for the Israelis in the Sinai, especially after some Egyptian forces were killed by Israeli bombing raids targeting Gaza.
Iran: Bushehr Goes Online
In the background, the Iranian nuclear program is quietly proceeding. The Bushehr nuclear power station has come online, producing electricity for Iran’s national grid. The Washington Post, citing a September report from the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, claims that the Iranian nuclear program represents “an undimmed danger.” In a September 6 editorial, the paper claims that Iran has begun to use a new and more advanced centrifuge for the enrichment of uranium, and that rapid progress is being made in transferring existing centrifuges into a large underground facility located in a mountain near Qom, which makes them all but invulnerable to outside military attack. The protracted campaign of assassination against Iranian nuclear scientists, it would appear, has not been effective in stopping this progress. In the fevered imaginations of imperialist military planners, we may therefore be approaching the point of no return for an attack on Iran.
Neocon Bonapartist Petraeus Now Running the CIA
As of this past Tuesday, the General David Petraeus has now taken control of the US Central Intelligence Agency. Petraeus has long been noted as the favorite Bonapartist of the neocon faction, and their chosen vehicle for a return to power en masse. Petraeus is carrying out a personal union of the Pentagon and the CIA, the two pillars of his projected future authoritarian presidency. If the US ruling elite should decide to jettison Obama, look for Petraeus’ star to rise at the expense of the “bunch of cranks” populating the current Republican field which is “the weakest since 1940,” in the words of John Weaver of the Huntsman camp.
9/11 Truth Critics: Do They Have A Case?
Paul Craig Roberts
The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.
Let’s examine the case against the truthers presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.
But first let’s define who the truthers are.
The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.
Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories. 9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.
For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.
The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.
The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings. It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones. It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes. It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.
The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists. When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.
When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.
When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel–and their testimony is backed up with photographs–in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there. When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.
When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.
It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.
That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.
What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29113.htm
Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?
Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.
Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here.
http://barnhardt.biz
Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.”
Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.
Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.
Now we come to Alex Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.
Alex avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years
Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”
Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.
Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Alex does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Alex writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon–they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both–stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”
If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.
I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometimes. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.
Alex’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.
Alex’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.
Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.
Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?
They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.
Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.
There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.
———————————–
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.
Let’s examine the case against the truthers presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.
But first let’s define who the truthers are.
The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of 9/11 conspiracy theorists.
Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.
Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories. 9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.
For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.
The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.
The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings. It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones. It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes. It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.
The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists. When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.
When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.
When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel–and their testimony is backed up with photographs–in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there. When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.
When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.
It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.
That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.
What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.)
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29113.htm
Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?
Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.
Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here.
http://barnhardt.biz
Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.”
Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.
Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.
Now we come to Alex Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.
Alex avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years
Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”
Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.
Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Alex does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Alex writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon–they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both–stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”
If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.
I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometimes. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.
Alex’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.
Alex’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.
Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.
Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?
They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.
Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.
There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.
———————————–
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
