The Difficulty of Being an Informed American
The American print and TV media have never been very good. These days, they are horrible. If a person intends to be informed, he must turn to foreign news broadcasts, to Internet sites, to foreign newspapers available on the Internet or to alternative newspapers that are springing up in various cities. A person who sits in front of Murdoch's Fox "News" or CNN or who reads The New York Times is simply being brainwashed with propaganda.
Before conservatives nod their heads in agreement, I'm not referring to "the liberal media." I mean the propaganda that issues from the U.S. government and the Israel lobby.
It was neoconservative Bush regime propaganda fed to America through Judith Miller and The New York Times and through Murdoch's Fox "News" that convinced Americans that they were in danger from a small secular Arab country halfway around the globe called Iraq. It was the American media that convinced Americans that getting rid of dangerous "weapons of mass destruction," weapons that did not exist in Iraq, would be a cakewalk paid for by Iraqi oil revenues.
It is the same propagandistic American print and TV media that have rationalized President Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan based on seven years of lies and deception.
It is the same media that today provide only Israeli propaganda as "coverage" of the Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
It was The New York Times that spiked for one year the leaked information from the National Security Agency that the Bush regime, in violation of U.S. law, was illegally spying on Americans without warrants. The "liberal" New York Times agreed to suppress the story so that Bush would not face re-election under the cloud of his outlaw behavior.
Conservatives think The Washington Post is "liberal media" despite the fact that the editorial and commentary pages are controlled by neocons and their sympathizers.
During the run-up to wars and during wars, the American media have always been propagandists for the government. The only exceptions occurred during the Vietnam War and the Contra-Sandinista conflict in Central America. Karen de Young and some others tried to honestly cover the Contras and Sandinistas and were demonized by "patriots" taken in by the government's lies.
Conservatives still blame the "liberal" media for losing the Vietnam War, when in fact all the media did was to provide some truthful reports that opened some American eyes.
When the truth cuts against the position of the U.S. government, conservatives see it as "liberal."
When propaganda supports the government's lies, conservatives see it as "patriotic."
However, any resemblance to independent reporting disappeared from the American media when the Democratic regime of President Clinton allowed Murdoch and a small handful of moguls to concentrate the American media in a few corporate hands. That was the end of American reporting.
Journalists disappeared from media management and were replaced by corporate advertising executives with an eye not to offend any source of advertising revenue, and certainly not to offend the government, which controls the broadcast licenses that comprise the value of the mega-companies. Today, reporters write the stories that their masters want to hear, or they are out. The function of editors is to make certain that no uncomfortable information reaches the public.
The public is slowly catching on, and the print media are slowly dying. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times are all on the ropes to one extent or another.
Americans are still subjected to Fox "News" and CNN propaganda piped into airport waiting rooms, doctors' offices and exercise centers. It is very much the situation that George Orwell describes in 1984.
People ask me where they can get reliable information. I tell them that their goal cannot be reached without commitment of their time.
People who have access to television services that provide English language foreign broadcasts, such as Iran's Press TV, Russia Today or Al Jazeera, can get news and insights from those parts of the world demonized by the U.S. media.
The BBC World Service still reports facts while covering itself by providing the views of the U.S., British and Israeli governments.
Both the Asia Times and Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz can be read online in English. There are other such newspapers, and all of them provide information that Americans will never see in their own media. Any American newspaper that was as truthful about the Israeli government as Haaretz would be closed down.
The only U.S. print media with which I am familiar in which some honest reporting can be found on a regular basis is the McClatchy papers.
Americans addicted to print media must turn to alternative newspapers, which tend to be weekly or bi-weekly. However, the news and commentary provided are often superb.
I have made no study of alternative newspapers and know very few. The Rock Creek Free Press is terrific. After reading one issue, you will waste no more time on the "mainstream media." The Rock Creek Free Press is likely to rescue even the dullest mind from its brainwashed state.
Other alternative newspapers, such as The Liberty Voice, lift your spirit as well as inform.
Alternative newspapers are often the children of people motivated by a sense of justice and the love of truth. Such people have become an endangered species in the American "mainstream media." The free press Americans have today is online and in the alternative media.
The function of the "mainstream media" is to sell products and brainwash the audience for the government and interest groups. By subscribing to it, Americans support their own brainwashing.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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I just clicked on the CNN website. If I didn't know better I would not know that USA was at war. There is no mention of the troops or the war in Iraq on their front web page. The top story in the "more news" column is "Playboy founder talks". Meanwhile Americans give their lives for "democracy". A very sad a state of media affairs!
PCR,
there's an article at The Rock Creek Free Press claiming HIV does not lead to AIDS.
And there's a cartoon portraying Bush as a hillbilly...
---
Any doubt it'll shill for Obama?
Dr. Roberts makes some excellent points as always, but the problem he addresses is much broader and not at all recent. For one thing, there is no substantial difference in the US between political liberals and conservatives. The overwhelming majority of self-designated conservatives are liberals without even knowing it. Fox and NBC, the WSJ and the NYT have only marginal differences at most.
And as far as providing the propaganda build-up for war, when did the media behave any differently? The War of 1812? The Mexican War? The War between the states? How about the Spanish American war? WWI? WWII? No doubt in all these cases there were alternative media presenting an anti-government case, but it takes time and effort to seek out the alternative sources.
So this means we are talking about a characteristic inherent in mass democracy. Most people have no personal knowledge of what is going on and lack the time (or interest) to do in-depth research. The dominant media will be subject to the control or influence of the ruler or ruling oligarchy and most of the population will go along with what they are told. The only times when a good deal of the truth will leak down to the majority are when there is a split in the ruling oligarchy and both factions reach out for mass support, or when a systemic breakdown causes unpleasant realities to come crashing in on the majority.
I'm not sure there is a real solution to this problem under the present system. On domestic matters, you can use your own personal experience as a limited reality check, but you can't make it absolute. In foreign affairs, there should be a strong, almost absolute presumption, no matter what appears in the media, against use of military forces outside the borders of the country, against government foreign aid, and against arm sales to foreigners.
Looks like the usual Paul Craig Goebbels reference to the 'Israel lobby'.
Gosh, who has more money? the Israel lobby or Ford Foundation, Open Society, Oxfam, EC, EU
No, just as the 'international community' rushed to aid the failed nazi cause in 1948, it has never strayed from the course and supports the same failed nazis today.
PCR knows this, of course. He is/was a insider to US policy.
PCR scribbles another column and quick as a trice, slim is there to peck over the carcass like a vulture -- in search of offensive buzz words and phrases. No doubt Leo will soon weigh in, and they'll both be sending reports back to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL.
Labeling someone "Goebbels" or referring to him, however, indirectly as "nazi," has become, thank God, tired, trite and stupid, particularly on the fora of Chronicles where there is a core of folk who struggle to be informed and who think. There are usually valid counterpoints to make on most articles posted on these fora; however, the intellectual exchanges over those differences are, for the most part, courteous and respectful, even when sometimes heated and passionate. There are, of course, times when citing "Goebbels" or "Nazi" is quite valid. It is even proper to demonstrate an objective correlative between the method of Goebbels and methods being used today by a certain faction or institution; but to use such terms as pure ad homenim as has been done at 4 is without excuse! Dr. Roberts' article makes points and assertions worthy of discussion and debate; let's get on with it without the silly ad hominem.
@4
"Paul Craig Goebbels" - what a bore. If you can't write anything except insults you should go back to LGF or KOS.
God bless Mr. Roberts for speaking the truth. The so-called "conservative" media in this country are what you might called carefully house-trained conservatives who won't embarrass the overall left-liberal consensus. I had to stop watching those fatuous blowhards on Fox News, because my wife said that if i got any angrier I'd put my foot through the TV screen, and she didn't want to have to buy another set.
"The function of the “mainstream media” is to sell products and brainwash the audience for the government and interest groups. By subscribing to it, Americans support their own brainwashing."
Well said. This is why Americans are so eager to buy anything and everything on the department store shelf. This is why Americans are so eager to start another war on the least amount of 'evidence'. This is why Americans are so eager to follow their leaders into economic hell and then believe themselves the cause of the meltdown.
I've been in the media, both the MSM and the business press, for almost 20 years.
We are in the business of renting an audience to advertisers. The bigger and better quality the audience, the more we can charge for space. That's it.
Content is designed to get, maintain, and expand that audience. In other words, the media gives the people (its readers and viewers) what it wants. Determining what the public wants is done through the free market, where viewers and readers determine what media delivers by the content they want to buy.
Rather than blaming the media for the ignorance of the American public, maybe take a look at the public and why they are the way they are.
One more point, despite the braying of the chattering classes, very few North Americans are all that interested in what goes on in foreign affairs. They are interested in the immediate things that affect their lives--crime, the economy, sports, entertainment, and, yes, the latest gadget they want to buy
Pablo,
Read Christopher Simpson's 'Blowback' and you'll see what a crock of BS this 'lobby' is.
The CIA, which long ago commandeered US media for spreading geopolitical 'big lies', was created from the Gehlen Org.
US policy, including the slanders of Israel and spreading of 'protocols' type propaganda, makes more sense if you keep this in mind.
I'm permanently banned from LGF because I defended Serbs, and I would never spend any time in the Soros/Kos world of antisemitism.
There are very few of us that stand up to Islamism, but we know that we are in the right. Unfortunately, there does not seem to exist much evidence that the US is opposed to it, which makes sense given our Gehlen Org ancestry.
Deny the existence and power of the "Israel lobby" if you like, but Congress just passed, nearly unanimously, a resolution on the Gaza affair that slavishly parrots the Zionist line. Rasmussen says a majority of Democrats don't support this miserable adventure. Perhaps all these ex-DAs and millionaires in Congress are true believers, but it's more reasonable to believe that they know where a different stance will end up biting them, and prefer to sit comfortably in their Barca loungers.
Incidentally, many American Jews are among the skeptics on this one.
Etienne,no doubt pipsqueak,I've been a reader and supporter of Chronicles of over twenty-five years.Mr.Roberts' most recent article is just simply annoying.It is not my problem if you and he have trouble getting and understanding information.It surprises no one.The idea that I report to the ADL or the SPLC will come as a surprise to both them and my many friends on the right.I've never had to respond to your pipsqueak comments before but you apparently fancy yourself now as a "David Frum"who can challenge my allegiances.Shut up,little man.
Hey Leo, I second what Etienne said. By the way, I am 6'3", 250 LBS and a former state superheavyweight boxing champion. WHY DON'T YOU TRY SHUTTING ME UP, you snivelling little turd?
And for "Mr. Stonehouse @ 10:
Ah, the refrain of drug dealers and purveyors of kiddie porn everywhere - "I was just giving my customers what they wanted!"
Yea, sure, Americans want to be lied to about the causes of war; they enjoy being insulted and condescended to on the subject of illegal immigration; they've demanded to be treated like swooninging teenage girls by being subjected to Rock Star worship coverage of politicians. Uh huh, tell me another whopper.
I can understand how you've managed to stick around in the news media biz for all these years - you've got the BS script down pack.
OK, @14 I meant to say "troll", not "turd". I apologize for the confusion.
PCR is deranged. Are we now supposed to believe the war in Afghanistan is "illegal" too? I thought Afghanistan was the "good" war in which Bin Laden was to be ferreted out (or does PCR believe the 9-11 was an "inside job"), while the Iraq war was ginned up with false reports of "weapons of mass destruction"? What Isreal has to do with the war in Afghanistan is not apparent either.
Goodness knows, I will be the last person to defend BIG MEDIA (especially with CNN showning fake videos from Gaza, a French network showing dead Palestinians from a supposed Israeli air strike when it was actully from a Hamas "work accident" in which a Hanas bomb exploded prematurely in a Palestinian refugee camp, and the BBC emoting about the suffering of Gazans without the predicate of the suffering of Israelis huddling in bomb shelters because of thousands of Hamas rockets fired from schools, mosques, and residential areas), but why does PCR assume that foreign media are immune from the falsity that affects American media?
Does the BBC always tell the truch (or are its prejudices ones the PCR finds more congenial). Does the Russian media (influenced by god-knows-whom) always tell the truth, no matter how embarassing? Is the media in India on which PCR relies aimed at the Muslim population? Is the Arab media disinterested and unflinching in its coverage?
When you read a PCR column, there is (between the laughs) the conclusion that it contains a whif of conspiracy mongering. He has the idea that only "smart people," people like PCR, have any hope of knowing what is really going on since most people are drones easily fooled by the demon Murdoch and a manipulative media.
Maybe he is right. After all, the American people electecd Obama, a man from nowhere who raised a tidal wave of money (unless you are one of those naifs who actually believe that he raised $700 million from small donations on the internet).
What is the objective of the popular media? To make money, not to inform. So why are people complaining that they are misinformed?
What mystifies me is why SLIM and LEO, zealous (possibly fanatical) apologists for the Zionist concoction called Israel, don't fly or sail over to that pestiferous entity, take up citizenship (if they aren't citizens already), join the IDF, and then begin bashing-in heads of innocent children and women of the Palestinians. I think it would be cathartic for them. They could glory in it and at the same time leave America somewhat lightened in terms of dung.
Thomas Miller
I think you've been punched in the head once too often.
Nowhere did I say this is the way I want the media to be--I just explained the way it is.
The reality is there are two models of media ownership--public and private.
Publicly owned media always evolves into politically biased propaganda.
Privately owned media either devolves into mass media targeting as many people as possible, which results in content targeting the lowest common denominator, or it takes a rifle approach targeting a smaller, but more captive market with shared interests like Chronicles. Either way, it has to deliver what its market wants or its out of business. Would you read Chronicles if the content was liberal claptrap?
As for the truth of the content, the media for the most part reflects the views and opinions of its readership if it is to survive in the marketplace. Whether you share those views largely determines whether you believe they are telling the truth or not.
The idea that most news reporters (not opinion columnists who are supposed to be advocates) are intentionally lying is nonsense. The reality is the truth is hard to find--reporters are often faced with interviewing people with hidden agendas that aren't easily uncovered, complex situations with no clear answers, and market pressures to deliver news on a 24-hour cycle. If the truth was self-evident, there would be no need for the media.
Meng,
You still smarting from the beatdowns on his prior columns?
Point us to the evidence of an Israeli policy on killing palestinian kids, or take your impotent rage to gaza and take on the IDF like a real man.
We can go to memritv and see that hamas enjoys using women and children to deflect bullets, however.
Several posters on this thread have mentioned that the MSM's job is to make money, nothing else -- and therefore like all good marketeers, they give their customers what they want.
Isn't that the entire problem with America -- that every bloody issue or policy decision or motivation is rooted in a desire for PROFIT?
What's the matter Leo? It seems you cannot operate a space bar, yet have the temerity to insult me. I'm fully aware of SPLC and ADL's tactics, and the network of useful idiots they pay off, because I occasionally still get hate mail from them. As for the comparison with David Frum; them's fighting words pilgrim. Meet me out back of Clark Brothers.
There seems to be among the posters an unspoken attitude the things-are-going-hell-and-there's-no-denying-it. The faux wisdom of this attitude is enraging. The articles here suffer from that attitude. There is no point except to adopt a world-weary attitude of constant, knowng gloom. The country apparently passed its peak in 1785 and now is a riot of surly Negoes, uppity women, and deluded men who fail to see reality, not to mention the foreign hordes crashing our borders.
McNulty, if you're so upset and angry about what we say and post here at the Chronicles website, why do you bother coming here? Do you have a thing for us, as the girls say?
Mr. Roberts really shakes the tree, which is his merit.
#10 Mr. Stonehouse, you are quite right. The media merely reflect the empty heads and small souls of the American public.
I can see why certan posters want to drive me away. Its comfortable having a site where the posters conform already-held opinions. I too am a cultural conservative, although the misanthropy of the Chronicles site obscures it. My objection is how quickly the Chronicles site (and its posters) seem eager to ghetto-ize thenselves in a site where all voices are world-weary and generally disgusted with the state of thingz, like Clyde Wilson. I have no desire to disappear.
McNulty's right. PCR's bread and butter seems to be letting everyone know that the country is going to hell in a hand basket thanks to certain 'lobbies'.
Gosh, if we can all adopt his brand of Arabism, everything will be great!
Incidentally, the MSM isn't trying to make the most money possible. Imagine if the MSM exposed the fact that the government uses the MSM for propaganda purposes? This would blow most people's minds.
What if the MSM told the truth about US Balkan policy? What if it told the truth regarding some of our pro-Islamist policies?
Or would this interfere with all the 'Jewish lobby' crapola that it spews?
It's goal seems to be to make money within the framework of what it is allowed to dispense.
No one wants to "drive you away," McNulty. And the notion that we all agree here is laughable. Have you noticed the knock-down-drag-outs that we have with each other on slews of subjects, whether social, religious, oe political?
Slim is the odd man out here too -- he expresses viewpoints that most of us loathe. But I admire Slim's courage in coming here and toughing it out with anyone and everyone. Sure, he's a crazed Zionist -- but he's got moxie.
You, on the other hand, pretend to be a "cultural conservative" (what's that mean -- you attend the ballet or something?), but you essentially argue a Neo-con Lite line. So what's your motivation in coming here? To be the pharisee among the lepers?
The caliber of dialogue to be found lately in Chronicles comments calls to mind some of the great debates I've heard while channel-surfing past WWE programs.
Now that I have that off my chest, I am also reminded--in this thread--of an advertising club luncheon I attended over 20 years ago while laboring in that industry. The featured speaker was the news director of one of our local Columbus TV stations. If cynicism can be pure, this man's was pure as the driven snow. The one quotation from that day that I will never forget--spoken with deadpan candor by Ron Bilek--was this: "We're not in the news business; we're in the entertainment business."
What more need we know about the American broadcast news media?
CNN is one of the worst.
During the Kosovo bombing campaign PsychOps interns were brought in to CNN headquarters to cover the war and during the recent Georgian conflict they used footage from an RT reporter of bombed out South Ossetia and claimed it was Gori.
One of the best examples of imbedded reporting other than the Balkans wars was how they covered the Waco siege.
A big myth is that the BBC was anti-Iraq war before troops were sent in. It was not.
Slim
All governments use the media for propaganda purposes, as does its opposition and a host of other special interests with various acts to grinds. But the government doesn't control the media--the consumer does. The reason your views aren't found in the mainstream media is because they are not mainstream, as can be evidenced from this thread
As for the media not trying to make as much money as possible, that's gibberish. Every commissioned ad sales rep I've ever worked with, or had working for me, is driven solely by the dollar. That attitude stretches from the bottom to top of the commercial end of the business
Regarding Frank's comment @2, The Rock Creek Free Press already came out with the following leading headline in its December, 2008 issue: "What Change? Obama Will Continue Bush 'War on Terror' Plans 'Surge' in Afghanistan, Still Believes in Osama bin Easter Bunny."
Regarding Osama, as the late radio broadcaster Bill Cooper asked, isn't it kind of odd that a CNN reporter was able to (supposedly) interview Bin Laden back in July 2001 while at the same time the CIA was totally frustrated in its efforts to find that evil genius.
The coverage of the bush war in Rhodesia during the 70's was proof enough of what was going on, and their coverage of South Africa was no different, and in both cases it was as disgusting as their Kosovo coverage, except that may not have been as well scripted or as tightly controlled. The mainstream media was been nothing but a propaganda arm of the government, big corporations, and leftism for decades.
slim,
I have read you call PCR an Arab or I believe an "Arabist" and a Nazi, which implies that one who takes a look at the plight of Palestinians and attempts to recognize brutal treatment of them by Israelis is not only a Nazi, but practically an Arab. Number one, using an ethnic term as an epithet as you did is conspicuous evidence of the same kind of ideological hatred for an ethnic group of people as that which you constantly sense in everybody who is critical of Israel and disagrees with her right to exist as a nation-state. Number two, the term "nazi" is the name of a political party in Germany which posessed a wide array of campaign stances and issues, not just contempt for Jews, and PCR and all of the members of the Chronicles staff and probably all of the regular comment posters make a habit of denouncing them daily in our thoughts and in words when necessary, issues such as eugenics and national socialism. Will you still be so narrow-minded and ideological in the future and continue to play the nazi and Arab cards when someone criticizes Israel or American aid to Israel? My last question is a repeat of an earlier request, one that you did not answer. If you intend to do nothing but self-righteously insult PCR and those of us who agree with him, rather than ask questions of us and try to learn from us, would you kindly leave this website? I do not go to Commentary's or AIPAC's discussion forum and tell them and their followers that we are right and they are wrong. On the website of a magazine which is the conservative and non-ideological alternative to the mainstream media, you are a guest who possesses opposing opinions, and what I have asked of you would be the respectful thing for you to do as a guest, just as the guest at someone's residence will leave if he finds something distasteful about the decor, the resident's religious views, etc., not stay and say to the resident that he needs to change those things.
Leo,
I have asked that you leave this site previously, and it was for a much greater offense than slim. I must respectfully ask again, after reading your previous posts. Be assured I do not condone Mr. Gervaise's retaliation towards you, but I believe that's a first time for him when it comes to name-calling, unlike yourself. Not to mention your gravest offense, if you were telling Mr. Gervaise the truth, and that's collaboration with those self-worshipping wicked authoritarian lawyers at the SPLC. That is especially unwelcome here.
Joe McNulty,
So we conservatives should put on a happy face and rest assured of the almighty goodness and infallibility of the U.S. government, and realize that things are just fine internally and domestically? Even with a $10 trillion debt? Even with a native people who are being systematically replaced by foreigners? Even with a populace who sheepishly follows the War on Terror propaganda and submits to the creed that "9-11 changed everything," so now we must give to the government extra power so that they can make us secure? You earlier rejected the ideological label I am about to bring up again, but that type of "positive" conservatism is a kind I read about everyday . . . in the op-eds of neocons like Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol. Part of being an American conservative, McNulty, is the ability to read the writing on the wall. America IS and for a long time HAS BEEN following the Roman road to ruin.
Joseph Salemi wrote: "Isn’t that the entire problem with America — that every bloody issue or policy decision or motivation is rooted in a desire for PROFIT?"
And putting "The Market" uber alles is precisely why Republicans have been reduced to cartoons of their former selves. Giving the market paramountcy, how long before America becomes just another 3rd world country where the poor are reduced to selling their children into de facto slavery and selling their organs to put a pot of beans on the table? Ah, the Bushes' Brave New World.
Brock H:
I do not understand your comment. First, is the blast against immigrants: the American people are being are being "systematically replaced by foreigners" I do not disagree that illegal immigration is a problem (for cultural reasons), but it overstates the matter to say that the American people are being "systematically replaced by foreigners." Even if I understand this as a cri de coer, most people are going to dismiss it was ethnic hatred. But it is also untrue, and can be proven untrue by anyone who looks at the question.
The problem is not that the American people are being "systematically" replaced. It is that even thel current level of immigration creates cultlural problems, expecially in states next to Mexico, which are subject to irredentist claims, and in other states because it encourages calls for "diversity," an idea that IS slowly changing the country into something I do not recognize. That is the argument that we must make, not "preaching to the choir" on Chronicles.
Let's face it: “9-11 changed everything,” For the first time, an enemy killed 3,000 Americans in the homeland. Not even the Nazis managed this. But how has our life changed? Aside from extra aggravation at the airport (explain to me how my name, "Joseph McNulty," winds up on a terrorist watch list), just how has our life changed? Will you really argue that my privacy interest in a call to Pakistan is grater than the government's interest in preventing a Pakistan-centered, 9-11-style plot?
I also do not know what your problem is with "neo-cons." Leaving aside the Jesish question, my understanding is that a "neo-con" is a former liberal, mugged by reality, who has become a conservative. Hence, "neo-con." I am not a former liberal and have been a conservative for 40 years. Does this still make me a "neo-con"?
I do not understand why being a "cultural conservative" means that I must lug around the baggage of the isolationist American First-ers, racial insensivity, and antisemitism.
@Joseph McNulty
An internal state enemy struck the US on 9/11 unless you want to ignore the mass contrary evidence to the government’s line that 19 Arab hijackers with boxcutters hijacked for commercial airlines and who were monitored by at least two separate foreign intelligence agencies as well as the FBI in the US and the Hamburg cell had a direct link to an MI6 agent and so called ambassador to Al Qaeda in Europe Abu Qatada.
An internal enemy struck the US on 9/11 unless you want to ignore the mass contrary evidence to the government’s line that 19 Arab hijackers with boxcutters hijacked four commercial airlines and who were monitored by at least two separate foreign intelligence agencies as well as the FBI in the US and the Hamburg cell had a direct link to an MI6 agent and so called ambassador to Al Qaeda in Europe Abu Qatada.
@Joseph McNulty
An internal enemy struck the US on 9/11 unless you want to ignore the mass contrary evidence to the government’s line that 19 Arab hijackers with boxcutters hijacked four commercial airlines and who were monitored by at least two separate foreign intelligence agencies as well as the FBI in the US and the Hamburg cell had a direct link to an MI6 agent and so called ambassador to Al Qaeda in Europe Abu Qatada.
Chronicles can delete the two previous comments above due to typing error.
Joe McNulty,
A neoconservative is NOT a FORMER liberal, and I use the word "liberal" to mean the same thing you do, I think - a leftist, not a classical liberal like J.S. Mill. Neocons are, in every way, CURRENT leftists of an equally radical variety as Gramsci and Marcuse, and they were never mugged by reality, nor did they ever BECOME conservatives. They were mugged by the realization that they had to change their image in order to get into positions of influence or power in the U.S. government.
America has never been isolationist, and neither are conservatives. We are NON-INTERVENTIONISTS. Find a new name to call the last remaining American patriots who wish to end the American empire and restore some semblance of the American republic, because "isolationist" is empty and devoid of meaning to the point of becoming annoying and tiring.
It is no surprise that you concur with the government's imperialist platitudes concerning "keeping us safe," after all, most Americans think too highly of their government to think twice about that prospect, about the fact that since their central government now has ultimate power over their state and local governments, nobody can then serve as a check on the power of that government. I just hope you remember what Ben Franklin said concerning giving up a little liberty for "security."
The American populace was 90% white when LBJ signed the Immigration Act in 1965. It is now down to 65%. Since then, Hispanics have gone from less than 1% to 15% now. Asian numbers are skyrocketing almost as fast. I always thought that a nation of people was defined by the ability of its native ethnicity of people to maintain dominant numbers in the population, and to be assured that its customs and traditions flourish in the public square, rather than those of another ethnic group of people - lest THEIR customs and traditions and languages become prevalent in the public square, hence bringing about the end of the original nation of people.
Of course, as you said, we authentic American conservatives are racist and insensitive xenophobes, and I suppose for that we deserve our unhappiness and disillusionment with the state of American affairs.
Here we go with the "secret knowledge" again. Do the posters at Chrolicles agree with the "9-11 Truth-ers" movement? So 9-11 was the result of . . . what . . . "internal enemies"? What does this mean? So I guess when Bin Laden joked about the martyrs on the planes, that was faked too. Maybe they have some out-of-work actor portraying Bin Laden. Did Tim McVeigh plan the caper? It is all very well to poke fun at "Arabs with box cutters," but is there any reason to believe that they could not have done it? A box cutter can be a deadly weapon when you are cutting helpless throats. "9-11" was a sucker punch -- the main intelligence failure was a failure of imagination -- no one thought it was possible. So what was the purpose in blaming the Arabs -- since the federal government has refused to launch a war against Islam ( the "Relicion of PeaceTM") and everyone bends over backwards to avoid "Islamphobia" --all the while more immigration continues from Pakistan, etc. This is a much greater problem than Mexican immigration -- at least those people are of the West and Christians. Now I see that the federal government is about to move into "Sharia financing." How does that help things? Why blame an act of war on Arabs when you want to engage in "Sharia financing" with them?
Brock H:
Just what "ethnicity" is American? It seems to me that we have been a mutt nation since European immigration began in a big way in the 1840s. Or do you think that you can be "American" only if you can trace you parentage back to England and your family has been here since 1700? The "American" identity has always been based not on ethnicity," but on acceptance of America's founding documents. If you believed in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, you could be an American. This co-exists with Christianity, which recognizes the sacred and the securlar ("Render unto Caesar whatr which is Caesar's."), but is inconsistent with Islam. We are allowing the immigration of people who do not and can never give allegiance to America's "Founding Documents." Islam teaaches that it is supreme to any "man-made belief" as Bin Laden has written. This has very practical consequences.
I think the truth about 9/11 requires a much broader view than merely the operation itself. Much of the history of the 20th century up to the present has been made in the netherworld of the interpenetration of intelligence organizations supposedly serving various countries, but often acting on their own, and terrorist groups supposedly serving certain causes, but often quite different ones. Spies and terrorists we have always had, but only in the past hundred years or so have they become the tail which often wags the dog.
In this "wilderness of mirrors" to use the phrase of superspook or superdupe James J. Angleton, we can sometimes catch glimpses of hidden truths which we will probably never know completely. Like the fact that Bin Ladin was an asset of Saudi intelligence at a time when the CIA had outsourced much of their mid-East spookery to the Saudis. Like the fact that Al-Zawahiri was broken by Egyptian interrogation and ratted out some of his fellow conspirators in the Sadat assassination plot and was then released. Had he become an asset? Was he passed on to others? Why did the Russians release him shortly after he was caught in their territory using a false passport? Like the fact that an Al Qaeda operative infiltrated the US Army Special Forces by the easy expedient of claiming to be a defector. Which side was he really working for or was he working for both or someone else entirely? Like the Israeli "art students" who were tracking some of the 9/11 hijackers in the US prior to the attack. What did they know and what were they really up to? I don't know the answers to these questions and many others, but the idea that Al Qaeda was just a stand alone, self-contained Islamic terrorist group which pulled off 9/11 and many other attacks entirely without outside help is contrary to everything we know historically about how terrorist groups operate.
What are you saying? That Bin Laden and Al Queda may be a "false flag" operation? That Bin Laden may really be a Mossad or CIA agent? Or that the world of intelligence is so opaque and tangled that we can never know what is really going on? If so. to what purpose? What over-arching goal is being pursued? James Jesus Angleton died a generation ago. I do not see where he is relevant to this discussion. Are we supposed to believe that Islamic terrorism does not exist? Or that it exists for some purpose that we cannot devine? You know that Al Queda grew out of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Sayid Qtub, and Salafi Islam. Saudi intellengence does not appeatr to have had any role in it. Or maybe there is something so dark and dense that we can never have an understanding of it. The Saudis reportedly laughed when Bin Laden offered to proect the country againt Saddam in 1991. So where does that leave us?
"The “American” identity has always been based not on ethnicity,” but on acceptance of America’s founding documents." - Joseph McNulty
Straight out of the neocon book of quotes and completely ahistorical.
Then I must assume that you would oppose the immigration of my forebears -- Irish Catholics in the 1880's. I understand that in the Nineteenth Century there was great debate over whether the Irish were "white people."
You stil haven't anewered my question: "What ethnicity is American?" I hate to think that I am secreetly a "nea-con" (so secret that not even I knew it).
Joe McNulty @45,
Why is it so far fetched that Bin Laden might be a false flag operation? Follow the money and things get murky and some rather interesting questions should be raised. Bin Ladens family partied with the Bushies back in the day. Shoot, Salem went to Harvard Business School with our president. On 9/11/01 Bush senior and Salem Bin Laden and co. met in Boston for a Carlysle group meeting. Just a coincidence maybe, but you never know. And what about the CIA funding and propping up just about every scumbag we have taken out since Khadafy? Hamas itself is a Mossad creation!!!! The goal is chaos out of order and the enusing endless chaos(war) will goad the sheep into finally accepting a Global Marxist type set up. Lenin and Trotsky and co tried to spread communism with the Red Army in 1920. THank God the Poles kicked their asses. Then Stalin was planning to do the same during WW II, waiting for Germany and the UK, France to bury each other while he stormed in when they were exhausted. Hitler got wind of it and had to launch his preemptive attack on the USSR, saving probably half of Europe from being taken out by the commies. The communists decided that they couldn't take the world by force, so they devised other methods to further their agenda. Order out of Chaos, it is not that hard to understand.
@Joseph McNulty
Islamic terrorism does exist but international Islamic terrorism is in reality an Islamic mercenary force used by western intelligence to fight there proxy wars for them against geopolitical rivals.
An international terrorist organisation called Al Qaeda led by Bin Laden against the US is fiction.
Al Qaeda is a CIA database of militants after the Afghan war that the CIA can use as an asset like they did in the Afghan war against the Soviets and there connections in the west through Islamic charities and NGO’s.
This explains 9/11 and why the FBI on its own website can’t find evidence to charge OBL with 9/11.
In the official indictment in Germany against the accused person who was said to have aided Atta it remarked that Atta was recruited to fight in Kosovo and Chechnya.
MI6 run a Chechen mine laying front NGO as well as other NGO’s in the Czech Rep.
Is this why Atta was in the Czech Rep?
In the 9/11 lawsuit in the US the Benevolence Fund is charged with financing the hijackers stay in the US.
Abdullah Bin Laden runs and finances the Benevolence fund who is the major financier of Chechen terrorism and ran camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.
In Paul Murphy’s book Wolves of Islam it said at least 5 of the Saudi hijackers were originally recruited to fight in Chechnya.
It is most likely 9/11 was a false flag terror operation to enact the PNAC agenda with mercenaries recruited by the Pentagon to hijack four planes which they thought would be a typical hijacking.
Why did the Shanksville plane hijackers let the passengers phone people would they not have been told by whoever they called that they would try to fly the plane into a building or perhaps the hijackers were trying to find out what was going on.
Were was air defence?
The Pentagon has its own radar and missile defence system.
This would also explain why the hijackers were monitored but never arrested and the huge Israeli spy ring uncovered in NYC.
Were they looking for patsies?
Mohammed Atta’s passport found near the attack site 2 days later that miraculously survived the plane impact which was hot enough to melt the steal in WTC is obviously planted.