Can Truth Retain Its Independence?
Justin Raimondo had a good column last week on Antiwar.com. It is written as a fundraiser. But what it shows is that journalists (and whistle-blowers) who tell the truth in America are more likely to be pummeled than rewarded, whereas those who lie for powerful interest groups live high on the hog.
It wasn't just George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives who deceived us into an illegal war in behalf of a hidden agenda. It was the American media. Raimondo names some of the culprits who are complicit in the deaths of some 1 million Iraqis, an unknown number of Afghans and thousands of American soldiers.
It was all for a lie. A lie told by the president of the United States and his handmaidens in the media.
Two of the worst handmaidens, Billy Kristol and Thomas Friedman, have been rewarded for their treachery to America by The New York Times, which pays these men, who have never been right about anything, to pontificate from columns on its pages. Others, such as Peter Beinart, are installed at The Washington Post and other publications.
The benefit of being a name columnist at a name newspaper is that it puts you on the lucrative speaking circuit. Raimondo reports, for example, that Friedman is paid $65,000 for a speech.
Such extravagant fees are not paid for words of wisdom. They are paid by interest groups for service. Even if Friedman had anything intelligent to say, it is unnecessary to pay him $65,000 to repeat what he writes in The New York Times.
The same interest groups that control the government offer the most extravagant fees on the speaking circuit. Global corporations that are driving up their stock prices and management bonuses by moving American jobs offshore reward journalists who write propaganda about the benefits of globalism. The military-security complex rewards journalists that feed hysteria about terrorism and foreign threats.
There are far better columnists available than Friedman and Kristol. There's Raimondo himself. There's Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, Pat Buchanan and Lew Rockwell, to name just a few. If the print media had columnists of intelligence and integrity explaining events, instead of propagandists for government and interest groups, the United States would not have wasted eight years (so far) in pointless, illegal and immoral wars of aggression that have been financed by foreign loans, thus sapping the strength of the dollar and American power.
In America, money, not truth, has the power. If The New York Times had Cockburn instead of Friedman and The Washington Post had Raimondo instead of Beinart, the newspapers would lose advertising revenues and connections with the power brokers.
The same problem exists outside the media. Studies produced by think tanks and university professors serve the causes of those who finance them. Does anyone think we will ever see a study from the American Enterprise Institute, for example, that is critical of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians, the military-industrial complex or the offshoring of American jobs? With rare exceptions, think tanks serve the interests of donors.
Even in universities there is not much of the academic freedom that we hear a great deal about. The Israel lobby was able to reach into an American Catholic university and deny tenure to a fine scholar, Norman Finkelstein, who refused to obey the rule against truthfully examining Israeli policy and behavior.
Try to find an academic economist who will describe the devastation that offshoring has brought to the American economy and the economic prospects of U.S. labor.
Try to find an academic physicist who will express in public his doubts about the official explanation for the collapse of the three World Trade buildings. An academic career in physics is almost totally dependent on government research grants. By bringing federal funding to education, liberals handed government the power to control. One physicist who expressed his doubts about the collapse of the twin towers, Steven Jones, was terminated by Brigham Young University at the insistence of the federal government, which held the power of the purse over the university's head.
The same constraint on truth exists everywhere. I once asked the proprietor of a distinguished engineering firm why he didn't publicly express his doubts about the World Trade Center buildings. He said it would be the end of his business, that he would be denounced as an anti-American and demonized as a terrorist sympathizer. The fact that he would be an expert giving an expert opinion would carry no weight.
The same resistance to truth is found in scholarship where enormous vested interests are entrenched. Taking on these vested interests is most often a career-ending event.
Even when the United States had an independent press with independent points of view, hysteria could sweep the country in wrong-headed directions. Today, it is easier than ever.
Even when research and scholarship were dependent on philanthropic foundations that supported independent views, academic fraud was not uncommon. Today, many academics are bought and paid for.
When government and special interests finance education and research, and the media are concentrated in a few large corporations dependent on government broadcast licenses, there is not much room left for truth.
Consequently, today we have the Internet and a new generation of documentary filmmakers who, together, provide the information, opinions and research that the media, the universities and the think tanks cannot provide. These sources are our last best hope.
Scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi said that truth requires people to believe in it as a force independent of material interests and intellectual dogmas, and to relentlessly seek it. Truth is a belief system, he said—and if we cease to believe in it, it will disappear.
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I read about the work of Steven Jones when it was first reported and knew that even though he was writing objectively as a scientist, he would be condemned and given the boot. Still, I'm sorry to read that such in fact happened to him. "The truth is out there," but so few want to know.
Great truths that you speak sir.
The NY Times labels Tom Friedman and Bill Kristol as conservative columnists to counter their hard-leftist writers like Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert. The Times has been a fountain of left-wing propaganda for decades, so why do you think they portray neocons as the conservative counterbalancers? To keep the real conservatives marginalized and under the radar, of course. After two terms of Bush, America will never elect a conservative president if her electorate is convinced that the radical movement of Kristol, Krauthammer, and Co. is that of the Right, rather than an offshoot of the Left. American conservatives will be forever removed from the political mainstream, while neocons remain the face of the American Right as far as voters are concerned.
Then again, why do I speak as if this scenario is something which must be avoided and stopped? It has already happened. The Times has mostly succeeded.
"Truth is a belief system, he said—and if we cease to believe in it, it will disappear."
While truth can disappear, it cannot cease to exist. God in His mercy and justice will deal with those who work against truth.
Isaias 59:15
"And truth hath been forgotten: and he that departed from evil, lay open to be a prey: and the Lord saw, and it appeared evil in his eyes, because there is no judgment."
Ecclesiasticus 4:24
" For thy soul be not ashamed to say the truth."
Ecclesiasticus 15:8
"Lying men shall not be mindful of her(wisdom): but men that speak truth shall be found with her, and shall advance, even till they come to the sight of God."
Lew Rockwell a peice of garbage he writes things that sound good but really have no substance just like the John Birch Society.
Apart from Raimondo and I dont know who Jeffrey St. Clair the people you mentioned above are not independent investigative journalists but political commentators so can only comment on reports covered by the mainstream press.
Western press media is the worst. This was most evident during the Waco siege in the US when they were totally inbedded with the government kept about a mile away from the Branch Dividian compound.
In the Balkans they were implicit in supporting the mass influx of islamic terrorism into Bosnia under the leadership of islamist Bosnian president letting him set up terrorist training camps who in turn wipped of whole Serb villages in Bosnia.
The primary source for Bosnian support was the fake "Serbian death camp" hoax filmed by ITN and Channel 4 news of a Bosnian refugee camp cut and editted to look like a Nazi concentration camp.
Even the former oligarghs of Russian are made to look like democracy loving businessmen persecuted by the "evil" Putin who got there money through blackmail, extortion and murder and whos totally control of Russia during the 90's nearly destroyed the country.
"Friedman is paid $65,000 for a speech."
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA , BWAA, AHAHHAHAHAH !!!!
Where are my libertarian friends and free marketeers when I need them. One can attend talks, trips and gatherings for a fraction of the cost at Chronicles and actually be delighted while learning something true, good and beautiful, during the lectures and speeches. When one wonders why Tom Fleming and Clyde Wilson are a little irritable at times, just think of some quack like Friedman knocking down $65,000.00 a pop while wiser and gentler men, do it out of love for people who may leave them hanging with the trips expenses. $65,000.00 you say ? BWAAA,HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHH !!. What a world of sophists we have become-- Attempting to pay for that which can not be bought or sold. And thinking we found a bargain. HAHAHAHAH !! An old english professor of mine once described a comedy as having a beginning, middle and end . And then added in his own words "Because if this goes on forever, it ain't funny."
Mr. Roberts has longt shown a penchant for exaggeration and hysteria. Apparently he's a "truther," too, or at least a sympathizer. A bridge too far, for me.
Truth-tellers are the new hate group. Truth is something to shun; it requires work thinking about. Who wants to turn off the TV for a minute to think? You might as well just get up off the couch and fetch a beer from the fridge and another bag of chips.
And the truth about the World Trade Center: Roberts has written a good deal about it in detail already. He alludes right here to other articles others wrote. But it's a whole lot easier just to dismiss it all as "hysteria" than to deal with the reality that we live in a fallen world.
It's also a whole lot easier to pretend everything is all right. And when something really bad happens to a close friend, drop him, forget about him. When something really bad happens to a family member, it was his fault, he deserves it.
Truth is a slur word. (See comment #7.)
Yes, we live in a fallen world. Wicked deeds are done, and all of us are capable of them. Moreover, conspiracies exist.
That doesn't mean that the consipiracy the "9/11" "truthers" [NB: sarcastic usage] suspect is either plausible or real.
It's about time somebody called it straight. 911 was a miracle from God. The airplane at the 100th floor burned the steel and concrete in the basement. I know. I saw it on TV.
Mr. Roberts,
Its been one of the most painful lessons of my life to really accept the fact that bad and wicked people often prosper in this life, with few if any negative side effects to their lying, slander, manipulation, stealing, and cheating..................but it IS so. However, great nations like ours weren't built with hordes of people like them, but rather hordes of people like us-----and if its any salve, I can state assertively that many of the lousy people never seem #truly# happy. Look at Bill Clinton, he has womanized, won elections, had a fine life of luxury since being governor of Arkansas, but I still dont think he is happy. He doesn't love his wife, and has to have sleazy affairs to be contented, and is always trying to pour glory on himself. He is still being shoved aside in the modern Democratic party and will be a Jimmy Carter-like-figure, but with a sleazy cigar joke attatched to him, in 10 more years.
Its burning in hell that the cheaters in life have to worry about. If it is so, they will be extremely sad there, and no amount of lying, gaming, slander, or rigging will get them out of it. I wonder if the thought of that ever keeps them up at night?
The thing I dont understand about 9/11 is why no one investigates the people on the law suit charged with aiding the 9/11 attacks like Abdullah Bin Laden and his Benevolence Fund or tracking the movements of the terrorists before they came to the US like why exactly was Mohammed Atta in the Czech Republic and was Nick Berg his handler Atta had been given access to his laptop.