by
Burden of Dreams
B07459 / Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:04:27 / "War on Terror"
“The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
–Aldous Huxley (author of “Brave New World”)
“The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary.” – George Orwell, on “Doublethink” from his book of faction, “1984”
Since my blog was mentioned in Stephen’s recent post on Jeff Berg’s article The Tube bombings: Cui Bono? , and since I’m too impatient to wait until said article appears in Site assets, I thought I”d say a few words and get it over with.
Berg’s piece is refreshing on a number of levels.
It doesn’t dismiss the possibility that London was a false flag simply ‘cause “the guv says so”; it acknowledges the existence of these operations (some of which are very well documented, such as The Lavon Affair and Gladio); it doesn’t use the term conspiracy theorist as an epithet, ridiculing the scores of people who give credence to these theories (and with good reason); it doesn’t resort to the kind of propaganda techniques witnessed in various other critiques by certain left and right gatekeepers (eg here ), which include:
Lies of Omission or “Blackouts”
The ignorance defense (“I haven’t actually looked at the evidence”)
Pseudo-intellectual posturing
Ridicule
Peddling disinformation
Confusing the Situation
Diverting Attention
Strawman arguments
“Bracketing” (hiding a plausible theory or fact within a string of absurdities)
Guilt by association
Sophistic appeals to “institutional analysis” and other ivory tower concepts
In other words, the very same techniques used by the Sean Hannity’s of the world when it comes to the war in Iraq.
Why “conspiracy theories” have become such a bugaboo on the left I’m not exactly sure. Some have suggested it has something to do with funding; Amy Goodman for instance receives cash from the Ford Foundation, at least that’s what I’m told. A few of the more hysterical types have gone so far as to say these people are “controlled” (Alex Jones has remarked that “Chomsky is a shill for the New World Order”).
Unfortunately, so long as progressives continue to ignore the elephant in the living room, or worse, attempt to convince people that the elephant simply isn’t there (even as it goes on shitting on their rug) they will continue to be subjected to these attacks—pun intended. They will be left behind.
As the gate-keepers continue to ignore, downplay and ridicule the crucial role of black ops in the intelligence world they will continue to be outmaneuvered, outfoxed and eventually outsourced by the regular men and women who have studied the evidence for themselves and who aren’t afraid of sullying their image in the eyes of “respectable” society.
That is after all the target audience of Chomsky and co. , is it not? The people, not their rulers?
In many ways the Chomskys and Goodmans deserve the slander: whatever their reasons – reputation, ego, strategic aims (conspiracies are a “distraction”), large quantities of ink devoted to “blowback” theories or even honest-to-goodness ignorance, there is no excuse for attempting to marginalize skeptics and bury the truth.
And make no mistake, left denial on “conspiracies” is not merely a question of agnosticism. As Jack Straw wrote in his article “Left denial on 9/11 turns irrational”:
“Ever since the events of 9/11, the American Left and even ultra-Left have been downright fanatical in combating notions that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks or at least had foreknowledge of the events.”
Cockburn has referred to “9/11 nuts”, Chomsky to “crazed theories about the CIA”, and Churchill, well, let’s take a look: “But, the problem with the idea that it was an inside job is that it suggests that brown people are not capable of such feats and gives all the credit to the white man, another master race fantasy”.
I won’t bother commenting on this, except to say that no man, whether Bin Laden or Larry Silverstein, could have brought down WTC7 without the use of (a) explosives or (b) an as-yet-unproven sixth sense, such as telekinesis.
Michael Albert of Znet quips “None of the above [9/11 theories] strike us as remotely interesting much less plausible.” As readers of Operation Northwoods are all too aware, Albert is only showcasing his own ignorance.
Berg’s article is a different matter entirely, and a welcome critique.
Unfortunately, since there isn’t yet enough evidence related to the London bombing to unabashedly support one theory or another (although such evidence is mounting), the author is forced to focus on ideology instead of evidence.
The theory, unless I’m mistaken, is that there is an organization known as “Al-Qaeda” which has, through a series of master-strokes, drawn the Anglo-American empire into a quagmire in the middle east, where it will eventually meet its demise. At the head of this organization is a Machiavellian super-villain named Bin Laden living in an extinct volcano stroking a cat, laughing maniacally.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
First things first: is there any such organization as “Al-Qaeda”?
Tony Blair doesn’t seem to think so.
Commenting on the possible role of Al Qaeda, Blair said, “Al Qaeda is not an organization. Al Qaeda is a way of working … but this has the hallmark of that approach.”
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/150705blairadmits.htm
Hell, even William Blum was careful to preface his recent comments about “Al-Qaeda” with (I’m paraphrasing): “assuming there is any such thing as Al-Qaeda”.
My hope is that progressive journalists may one day start putting Al-Qaeda in quotation marks along with the “war on terror”, but that may suggest a quantum leap in common sense, analytical ability and most important – courage – so far unseen amongst the Amy Goodmans et al.
Insofar as “Al-Qaeda” has any sort of tangible reality it appears to be a simple cut-out for deskmen working in Langley. This has been documented at length by Chussudovsky and others. Indeed, all the bombings attributed this group have been masterminded, according to mainstream newspaper reports, by informants working for western intelligence agencies.
This isn’t to say that aren’t plenty of enraged Muslisms out there who, if given the opportunity, would set off a bomb in New York or London, it’s just when analyzing these sorts of things we have to focus on evidence, not ideology, and all of the bombings attributed to “Al-Qaeda” have had the hands of intellligence all over them.
This is inescapable.
To ignore the role of intelligence is to miss a major piece of the puzzle. Without it, we are left in the dark, sitting ducks awaiting the next terra attack.
Parenti:
“As I pointed out in published exchanges with Cockburn and Chomsky (neither of whom responded to the argument), conspiracy and structure are not mutually exclusive dynamics. A structural analysis that a priori rules out conspiracy runs the risk of not looking at the whole picture. Conspiracies are a component of the national security political system, not deviations from it. Ruling elites use both conspiratorial covert actions and overtly legitimating procedures at home and abroad. They finance everything from electoral campaigns and publishing houses to mobsters and death squads. They utilize every conceivable stratagem, including killing one of their own if they perceive him to be a barrier to their larger agenda of making the world safe for those who own it.”
Peter Dale Scott:
“I believe that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead not to a few bad people but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed.” In sum, national security state conspiracies are components of our political structure, not deviations from it.”
If we’re gonna use the term “Al-Qaeda” to describe any bombing committed anywhere by any person with brown skin (or attributed to a person with brown skin), ok then, maybe the lads in London who were “proud to be British” and not particularly interested in politics whigged out for no particular reason, but let’s not pretend – based on not a shred of credible evidence – that there is some sort of highly organized network of al-Qaeda sleeper cells armed with suitcase nukes waiting to the do the bidding of some (probably long-dead) Saudi millionaire making video communiqués from beyond the grave in his cave in Afghanistan.
Talk about setting yourself up for disaster.
In light of the use of informants, a more plausible explanation as to what exactly Al-Qaeda is is offered by Webster Tarpley:
“But it should also be clear that state sponsored terrorism cannot call itself by its own real name. It must necessarily masquerade as an authentic voice of the oppressed – be they Arabs, Moslems, workers, national minorities, or whatever. The terror groups cannot be labeled CIA or KGB – they must call themselves Red Brigades, Red Army faction, ETA, or al Qaeda. The false flag and false ideology allows the terror group to pretend that it is something that it is not, and to convince billions of naïve viewers of CNN or al Jazeera that the false dumb-show is indeed reality.
...Something quite similar has been established in regard to the Italian Red Brigades. In 1982 an important official of the Italian Justice Ministry in Rome, Giovanni Senzani, was arrested on the charge of being the head of the Red Brigades in the Naples area. Senzani had been the object of a campaign in the Rome press about the need to discover the identity of “la talpa,” the mole in the state bureaucracy. Senzani was in close relations to SISMI, the Italian military intelligence service, an agency which had been implicated in the Milan bomb of 1969 and other terrorist atrocities. This would indicate that at least part of the Red Brigades structure was directed from inside the government.
The Red Brigades had been created in the late 1960s at the Sociology Department of the University of Trento in northern Italy. The original members had displayed sociopathic symptoms, and they had gradually been eliminated by arrests and shootouts with the police. The Italian investigating judge Ferdinando Imposimato asserted in 1982 that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by the Israeli Mossad no later than 1978. Based on testimony from two jailed former members of the Red Brigades, Imposimato reported that the Mossad had provided the Italian terrorists with weapons, money, and information. As the original members suffered attrition, they were replaced by new recruits. One of these was Mario Moretti, reputedly the leader of the Red Brigades during
the Moro kidnapping. More senior members complained from their jail cells that Moretti failed to pass on warnings of coming police raids, and sabotaged attempted jail breaks.
Moretti advocated a policy of constantly escalating violence, and was widely considered an agent provocateur of the CIA.
In these cases, it is not the terrorist organization which has infiltrated the state apparatus, but the state apparatus which finds it convenient to practice a virtual interchangeability with top members of the state apparatus. Sanguinetti notes that, in certain safe houses or lairs of the Red Brigades, there was found “an abundance of ultra-confidential material issuing from police headquarters, central police stations and even from ministries. In view of such eloquent facts, spectacular information [i.e. new broadcasts] always claimed to explain them by emphasizing the ultra-efficient organization of the terrible Red Brigades, and by adding, in order to enhance this wonderful godsend for advertising, the fact that these clandestine militants, so hunted-down but so tentacular, have infiltrated
everywhere, even ministries and central police stations.” This, as we will see, is like some 9/11 researchers who conclude that, since the attacks took place on a day when so many special exercises were taking place, Al Qaeda must have infiltrated the Pentagon in order to know exactly when to strike. Naturally Sanguinetti cannot entertain such nonsense. His conclusion: Once more power speaks by way of counter-truth “it is not the Red Brigades who have infiltrated the central police stations and ministries, but agents of the State, issuing from the central police stations and ministries, who have infiltrated the Red Brigades by design, and not only their top leadership, to be sure.” (Sanguinetti 21)
As for speculating about the motivations of the super-genius in charge of this phantom organization, let’s take a closer look at Bin Laden:
“But Bin Laden is not the greatest political genius of today’s world, as the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris attempts to convince us. Bin Laden is a dilettante who could not survive very long without powerful protectors and a comprehensive support network, including kidney dialysis. Rather than a political genius, we see in Bin Laden a clueless dupe, a patsy who cannot comprehend the forces around him which make his day to day activity and above all his universal notoriety possible. According to one of Bin Laden’s handlers by the name of Beardman, during the Afghan years Bin Laden was not aware of
the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. In the words of Bin Laden (quoted by Beardman): “neither I, nor my brothers saw evidence of American help.” (Meyssan 2002 7) In an interview with Frontline, Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, said that when he first met bin Laden, in the nineteen-eighties, “I thought he couldn’t lead eight ducks across the street.”
account given by Saudi Prince Mahmoud bin Abdel Aziz to the
US press. The Prince recalled that night a decade ago when Osama Bin Laden attended an evening salon to describe his exploits fighting in
Afghanistan….[The prince] remembers young Osama floundering
when guests questioned him about the interpretation of religious
texts. “Finally, I had to signal with my hands for them to stop it,”
said the prince. “He really is quite a simple man.” (Anonymous
108)
‘My knowledge of Bin Laden makes me unable to conceive what is happening now,’ said Dr. Abdullah al Muayyad, a former director general of the Saudi finance ministry who worked with Bin Laden during the Afghan jihad.’”
The claim by Berg that the goals of “Al-Qaeda” and the CIA converge is absolutely correct; the mistake he makes is in assuming that the former isn’t simply a proxy or surrogate of the latter, as all of the evidence suggests.
The 9/11 truth movement is anarchy in action, a grass-roots awakening that is challenging not only authorities in government and the corporate sector but also authorities in the progressive media. Except for a handful of deep politickers such as Webster Tarpley and Ralph Schoenman, and a handful of whistle-blowers, no one in the public eye has dared to question the official story.
No one except the people, and they are demanding their voices be heard.
For two other excellent pieces on this controversy see
9/11 Conspiracies and the Defactualisation of Analysis:
How Ideologues on the Left and Right Theorise Vacuously to Support Baseless Supposition
and
CONSPIRACY PHOBIA ON THE LEFT by Michael Parenti.
