MEDIA ROOTS- The term “conspiracy theory” has been hijacked by the establishment propaganda machine in order to marginalize anyone in the mainstream political discourse who simply questions the official government or media narrative about an event. This ad hominem attack tool is extremely effective at shutting down serious debates about crucial topics, like whether or not the US government was criminally complicity in the attacks of 9/11. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former editor for the Wall Street Journal, writes for Global Research about the Orwellian redefinition of the term and its prevalent use to blanketly demonize 9/11 truth seekers.
Abby
***
GLOBAL RESEARCH– While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.
A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.
For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.
In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.
When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”
In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.
The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.”
This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.
Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.
In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.
The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.
The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.
Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.
In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.
Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.
Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.
As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators. To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.
The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.
If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.
A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.
AOL NEWS– When it comes to measuring casualties and death rates, Pakistani computer scientist Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani is a world-class expert. His Ph.D. thesis looked at complex simulations calculating blast waves from suicide bombings, with an eye toward preventing mass casualties from such attacks.
Now Usmani, an assistant professor at Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province who recently completed five years as a Fulbright scholar in the U.S., is applying that expertise to the contentious debate over drone strikes. And his website, Pakistan Body Count, draws a striking conclusion about the unacknowledged CIA drone strikes in Pakistan: More than 90 percent of the reported casualties are civilians.
Pakistani youngsters sit beside the bloodstain wall of a house after a suspected U.S. drone missile strike in Mohammadkhel, a village in the Pakistani north Waziristan region along Afghan border, 2008.
Since the beginning of the drone attacks, Usmani estimates that over 1,200 civilians have been killed by the strikes, compared to only 30 members of al-Qaida.
Usmani brings a unique background to the work. His work on blast simulations has looked at the details of a terrorist attack that may determine who lives and who dies. He and his colleagues found, for example, that circular crowds suffer the worst in terrorist attacks (more than a 50 percent death rate), while people arranged in rows, such as at prayer in a mosque, had only a 20 percent death rate.
ROLLING STONE– Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don’t laugh.
It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. Fans of obscure 1970s television may remember a short-lived children’s show called Far Out Space Nuts, in which a pair of dimwitted NASA repairmen, one of whom is played by Bob (Gilligan) Denver, accidentally send themselves into space by pressing “launch” instead of “lunch” inside a capsule they were fixing at Cape Canaveral. This plot device roughly approximates the political and cultural mechanism that is sending Michele Bachmann hurtling in the direction of the Oval Office.
Bachmann is a religious zealot whose brain is a raging electrical storm of divine visions and paranoid delusions. She believes that the Chinese are plotting to replace the dollar bill, that light bulbs are killing our dogs and cats, and that God personally chose her to become both an IRS attorney who would spend years hounding taxpayers and a raging anti-tax Tea Party crusader against big government. She kicked off her unofficial presidential campaign in New Hampshire, by mistakenly declaring it the birthplace of the American Revolution. “It’s your state that fired the shot that was heard around the world!” she gushed. “You are the state of Lexington and Concord, you started the battle for liberty right here in your backyard.”
TRUTHDIG– The most important moral and intellectual voices within a disintegrating society are slowly discredited when their nonviolent protests and calls for justice cannot alter intransigent and corrupt systems of power. The repeated acts of peaceful civil disobedience, efforts at electoral and political reform and the fight to protect the rule of law are dismissed as useless by an embittered, dispossessed and betrayed public. The demagogues and hatemongers, the purveyors of violence, easily seduce enraged and bewildered masses in the final stages of collapse with false promises of vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. And in the spiral downward the good among us are reviled as naive and ineffectual fools.
There is no shortage of courageous dissidents in America. They seek to thwart the imperial disasters, looming financial insolvency and suicidal addiction to fossil fuel. They have stood in small knots on street corners week after week, month after month, year after year, to denounce the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have occupied banks, shut down coal-fired power plants, attempted to halt mountaintop removal, interfered with whaling ships and walked in blustery weather to the White House, where they were arrested. They are struggling to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza on a ship called the Audacity of Hope. But because the corporate state and the two major political parties are indifferent to principled calls for reform, and because the mass of the public still buys into the myths of globalization and the American dream, the plundering and destruction continue unimpeded.
When most Americans face the nightmare before us, when they realize the irreversible devastation unleashed on the ecosystem and the economic misery from which they cannot escape, violence will have a broad and terrifying appeal. Those of us who demand a return to the rule of law and remain steadfast to nonviolence will find ourselves cast aside—the useful idiots Lenin so despised. I watched this happen in the social and political implosions in El Salvador, Guatemala, the Palestinian territories, Algeria, Bosnia and Kosovo. I watched the same cocktail of despair, economic collapse and callousness from a corrupt power elite mix itself into potent brews of civil strife. I watched the same untiring efforts by those who detested the violence and cruelty of the state, and the nascent violence and intolerance of the radical opposition. I covered as a reporter the disintegration that tore these societies apart. Those who held fast to moral imperatives, including Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador and Ibrahim Rugova in Kosovo, were thrust aside and replaced with killers on both sides of the divide who embraced violence.
MEDIA ROOTS- The following contains the full transcript of President Obama’s June 22 speech
regarding the troop pullout in Afghanistan. All additional commentary is italicized.
President Obama on June 22, 2011
***
BARACK OBAMA: Good evening. Nearly 10 years ago, America suffered
the worst attack on our shores since Pearl Harbor. This mass murder was
planned by Osama bin Laden and his alQaeda network in Afghanistan, and
signaled a new threat to our security– one in which the targets were
no longer soldiers on a battlefield, but innocent men, women and
children going about their daily lives.
We can’t actually go to trial to prove Al Qaeda’s involvement because Leon Panettasupposedly had OBL murdered by special operations trained killers. How do you like that for due process?
BO: In the days that followed, our nation was united as we struck at alQaeda
and routed the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Thanks to the dutiful stenographer-like
news-casters and cowardly political elites, the Bush administration was able to
amplify and carry the trauma onto millions of Americans. People whose lives would otherwise have been
unaffected were suddenly subjected to fear, paranoia, anxiety, PTSD, anger,
hate and manipulation.
BO: Then, our focus shifted. A second war was launched in Iraq, and we spent
enormous blood and treasure to support a new government there. By the
time I took office, the war in Afghanistan had entered its seventh year.
Let me just gloss over the million or so
deaths in Iraq that were attributable to America’s
invasion and the trillions of
dollars pissed away to private contractors.
BO: But al Qaeda’s leaders had escaped into Pakistan
and were plotting new attacks, while the Taliban had regrouped and gone on the
offensive. Without
a new strategy and decisive action, our military commanders warned that we
could face a resurgent alQaeda, and a Taliban taking over large parts of
Afghanistan. For this reason, in one of the most difficult decisions that I’ve made as
President, I ordered an additional 30,000 American troops into Afghanistan.
When I announced this surge at West Point, we set clear objectives: to refocus
on alQaeda; reverse the Taliban’s momentum; and train Afghan Security Forces
to defend their own country.
Some might say that the
American and Coalition presence
in Afghanistan and Iraq are to strategically control the resources
there: oil, minerals, opium, etc. Well, everyone’s entitled to their
own opinion.
BO: I
also made it clear that our commitment would not be open-ended, and that we
would begin to drawdown our forces this July. [Nothing on the ground has really
changed, but hey, it’s an election year.
I can’t spin my December 2009 escalation of troops in Afghanistan as
having been effective if I don’t declare that we’ll be de-escalating now.] Tonight, I can tell you that we are fulfilling that commitment. Thanks to
our men and women in uniform [To whom you should all be grateful — man, it’s easy
to use the troops as props and political human shields — just tell your critics
that they’re not supporting the troops no one will dare disagree with you!] our civilian personnel, and our many coalition partners,
we are meeting our goals.
As a result, starting next month, we will be able to
remove 10,000 of our troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and we
will bring home a total of 33,000 troops by next summer, fully recovering the
surge I announced at West Point.
Notice how I cleverly don’t mention the amount of troops that would be left on the ground? Even after this fantasy withdrawal,
there will still be 70,000 troops and even more contractors in Afghanistan, just as there are in Iraq.
BO: After this initial reduction, our troops will
continue coming home at a steady pace as Afghan Security forces move into the
lead. Our mission will change from combat to support. By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and
the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security. We are starting this drawdown from a position of strength. Al Qaeda is under
more pressure than at any time since 9/11. Together with the Pakistanis, we
have taken out more than half of al Qaeda’s leadership.
Nevermind that the global “War on Terror”— yes, the phrase which I retired rhetorically but in all
other ways supported— has created more terrorists worldwide, more threats to
US security, and has even caused the US government to turn on its own people.
BO: And
thanks to our intelligence professionals and Special Forces, we killed Osama
bin Laden, the only leader that alQaeda had ever known. This was a victory for
all who have served since 9/11.
The
killing of one man has been worth spending trillions on the illegal,
immoral US wars that have killed more than a million civilians?
BO: One soldier summed it up well.
“The message,” he said, “is we don’t forget. You will be held accountable, no
matter how long it takes.” [Isn’t that cute?
This anonymous soldier thinks there’s accountability in this world.]
The information that we recovered from bin Laden’s compound shows alQaeda
under enormous strain. Bin Laden expressed concern that
alQaeda has been unable to effectively replace senior terrorists that have
been killed, and that alQaeda has failed in its effort to portray America as a
nation at war with Islam – thereby draining more widespread support. [I’m
counting on you to not try and verify anything I’m saying by actually talking
with people who might be brown and from other countries.].
BO: Al Qaeda remains dangerous, and we must be
vigilant against attacks. But we have put alQaeda on a path to defeat, and we
will not relent until the job is done. [We will also keep killing, exploiting, torturing and waging war on
people all over the world, and then pretend to express shock and incompetence when these victims
retaliate.] In Afghanistan, we’ve inflicted serious losses on the Taliban [and in
Mcchyrstal’s words, an “amazing number of people” who were not threats] and taken a number of its strongholds.
Along with our surge, our allies also increased their commitments, which helped
[de-] stabilize more of the country. Afghan
Security Forces have grown by over 100,000 troops, and in some provinces and
municipalities we have already begun to transition responsibility for security
to the Afghan people.
In the face of violence and intimidation,
Afghans are fighting and dying for their country [and mainly to kick us out of
their country], establishing local police forces, opening markets and schools,
creating new opportunities for women and girls, and trying to turn the page on
decades of war. Of course, huge challenges remain. This is the beginning – but not the end –
of our effort to wind down this war. We will have to do the hard work of
keeping the gains that we have made[don’t ask for specifics about the “gains” I am referring to], while we
drawdown our forces and transition responsibility for security to the Afghan
government. And next May, in Chicago, we will host a summit with our NATO
allies and partners to shape the next phase of this transition.
We do know that peace cannot come to a land that has known so much war
without a political settlement. So as we strengthen the Afghan government and
Security Forces, America will join initiatives that reconcile the Afghan
people, including the Taliban. [Is that why we are paying members of the Taliban to “switch” to our side?] Our position on these talks is clear: they
must be led by the Afghan government, and those who want to be a part of a
peaceful Afghanistan must break from alQaeda, abandon violence, and abide by
the Afghan Constitution. But, in part because of our military effort, we have
reason to believe that progress can be made.
The goal that we seek is achievable, and can be expressed simply: no
safe-haven from which alQaeda or its affiliates can launch attacks against our
homeland, or our allies. We will not try to make Afghanistan a perfect place.
We will not police its streets or patrol its mountains indefinitely. That is
the responsibility of the Afghan government, which must step up its ability to
protect its people; and move from an economy shaped by war [a war that we’ve had a
huge hand in for decades] to one that can sustain a lasting peace. What we can do, and
will do, is build a partnership with the Afghan people that endures – one that
ensures that we will be able to continue targeting terrorists and supporting a
sovereign Afghan government [and as long as energy and mining companies can
extract resources from the soil and seas in and around the country].
Of course, our efforts must also address terrorist safe-havens in Pakistan.
No country is more endangered by the presence of violent extremists, which is
why we will continue to press Pakistan to expand its participation in securing
a more peaceful future for this war-torn region. [How do we know they’re
violent? We’ve got their calling cards
in our Rolodexes. And they’ve got
receipts from subsidized weapons sales from American dealers.] We will work
with the Pakistani government to root out the cancer of violent extremism, and
we will insist that it keep its commitments. For there should be no doubt that
so long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe-haven
for those who aim to kill us: they cannot elude us, nor escape the justice they
deserve.
Don’t bother asking
about justice for American politicians. I believe in the double standards
afforded by American exceptionalism. We
are an empire– laws and
justice are for other people.
BO: My fellow Americans, this has been a difficult decade for our country. We
have learned anew the profound cost of war — a cost that has been paid by the
nearly 4500 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq, and the over 1500 who
have done so in Afghanistan – men and women who will not live to enjoy the
freedom that they defended. Thousands more have been wounded. Some have lost
limbs on the field of battle, and others still battle the demons that have
followed them home.
Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. [Let
me frame that in a way that makes war a phenomena that is caused by the pull of
celestial bodies and gravity, rather than the design and greed of men.] Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving
in harm’s way. [Don’t ask who put them there.]
We have ended our combat mission in
Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country. [Don’t
ask how many tens of thousands of troops remain, and how many contractors are
still cashing nice checks in the name of freedom and democracy and liberation. Did I mention that June was the deadliest month for the US Army in Iraq since 2009?]
And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure
peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible
end.
As they do, we must learn their lessons. [Let me ignore the lessons of
Vietnam and from every other war in history. That
way, I can choose lessons that won’t preclude future military
interventions.] Already this decade of
war has caused many to question the nature of America’s engagement around the
world. Some would have America retreat from our responsibility as an anchor of
global security, and embrace an
isolation that ignores the very real threats that we face. Others would have
America over-extend ourselves, confronting every evil that can be found abroad.
That thing in Libya that I’ve done—yeah,
don’t think about that…
BO: We must chart a more centered course. Like generations before, we must
embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events. But we must be
as pragmatic as we are passionate; as strategic as we are resolute. When
threatened, we must respond with force – but when that force can be targeted,
we need not deploy large armies overseas. When innocents are being slaughtered
and global security endangered, we don’t have to choose between standing idly
by or acting on our own. Instead, we must rally international action, [by
pressuring the UN and then broadly interpreting UN resolutions, such as UNSCR
1970] which we are doing in Libya, where we do not have a single soldier on the
ground, but are supporting allies in protecting the Libyan people and giving
them the chance to determine their destiny.
When we’re attacked by Libyans in years to come, remember, act
surprised!
BO: In all that we do, we must remember that what sets America apart is not
solely our power – it is the principles upon which our union was founded. We
are a nation that brings our enemies to justice while adhering to the rule of
law [don’t mention torture, don’t mention torture], and respecting the rights
of all our citizens. [Never mind that privacy is completely eradicated in this country and that big brother is watching your every move.] We protect
our own freedom and prosperity by extending it to others.
That nut-grab at the
airport is just a friendly freedom
fondle!
BO: We stand not for empire, but
for self-determination. That is why we have a stake in the democratic
aspirations that are now washing across the Arab World. [Even though,
admittedly, we propped up and befriended those very dictators that are now
getting overthrown… see, it’s useful to American politicians to have an
American public so ignorant of history.]
We will support those revolutions with fidelity to our ideals, with the
power of our example, and with an unwavering belief that all human beings
deserve to live with freedom and dignity.
Actually, it’s not so much that we care about congruence of ideals—I
mean, look at China. Where it suits the
interests of the economic elites and warprofiteers, we’ll turn a blind eye to
human rights. Though sometimes I wish we could
censor the internet like China does, so we could prevent ugly reports pointing out American hypocrisy from being accessed.
BO: Above all, we are a nation whose strength abroad has been anchored in
opportunity for our citizens at home. Over the last decade, we have spent a
trillion dollars on war [actually close to three or five], at a time of rising
debt and hard economic times. Now, we must invest in America’s greatest
resource – our people. We must unleash innovation that creates new jobs and
industry, while living within our means. We must rebuild our infrastructure and
find new and clean sources of energy. And most of all, after a decade of
passionate debate, we must recapture the common purpose that we shared at the
beginning of this time of war. For our nation draws strength from our
differences, and when our union is strong no hill is too steep and no horizon
is beyond our reach.
Let’s not talk about 800 military bases, or the fact that US military spending costs more than 2
billion dollars a day. I hope no one
looks up the employment effects of military spending either.
BO: America, it is time to focus on nation building here at home. In this effort, we draw inspiration from our fellow Americans who have
sacrificed so much on our behalf. To our troops, our veterans and their
families, I speak for all Americans when I say that we will keep our sacred
trust with you, and provide you with the care, and benefits, and opportunity
that you deserve.
I met some of those patriotic Americans at Fort Campbell. A while back, I
spoke to the 101st Airborne that has fought to turn the tide in Afghanistan,
and to the team that took out Osama bin Laden. Standing in front of a model of
bin Laden’s compound, the Navy SEAL who led that effort paid tribute to those
who had been lost – brothers and sisters in arms whose names are now written on
bases where our troops stand guard overseas, and on headstones in quiet corners
of our country where their memory will never be forgotten. This officer – like
so many others I have met with on bases, in Baghdad and Bagram, at Walter Reed
and Bethesda Naval Hospital – spoke with humility about how his unit worked
together as one – depending on each other, and trusting one another, as a
family might do in a time of peril.
That’s a lesson worth remembering – that we are all a part of one American
family. Though we have known disagreement and division, we are bound together
by the creed that is written into our founding documents, and a conviction that
the United States of America is a country that can achieve whatever it sets out
to accomplish. Now, let us finish the work at hand. Let us responsibly end
these wars, and reclaim the American Dream that is at the center of our story.
With confidence in our cause; with faith in our fellow citizens; and with hope
in our hearts, let us go about the work of extending the promise of America –
for this generation, and the next. May God bless our troops. And may God bless
the United States of America.
Transcript of Obama’s Speech, Commentary written by Smedley Butler’s ghost
GLOBAL RESEARCH– While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.
AOL NEWS
ROLLING STONE
TRUTHDIG
BO: Then, our focus shifted. A second war was launched in Iraq, and we spent
enormous blood and treasure to support a new government there. By the
time I took office, the war in Afghanistan had entered its seventh year. 