Preface: Please skip to the end of this essay (entitled “Why Should I Care?”) if you want to see why this issue is important to the economy, civil rights, and the political causes which are most important to you.
Yves does not necessarily agree with this essay. Indeed, she may dislike it so much that she bans me from the site. Please send any hate mail to me, not Yves, as I am solely responsible.
So why am I posting this? Because if I don’t have the courage of my convictions to speak unpopular truths, then why should I write at all?
Governments from around the world admit they carry out false flag terror:
- A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland. Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson
- The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950’s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister
- Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
- The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security” (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred)
- As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in the 1960’s, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Official State Department documents show that – only nine months before – the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. Neither plan was carried out, but they were both discussed as serious proposals
- The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert, and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing
- An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)
- According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.
- The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings
- As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”.
- Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”
- United Press International reported in June 2005:
U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.
- Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers
- At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence
Why Should I Care?
You may ask yourself “why should I care?”
You should care because terrorism harms the economy. Specifically, a study by Harvard and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) points out:
From an economic standpoint, terrorism has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002). First, the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism expenditures, drawing resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect negatively specific industries such as tourism.
The Harvard/NBER concludes:
In accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling for other types of country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP.
Terrorism has contributed to a decline in the global economy (for example, European Commission, 2001).
And see this.
In addition, you should care because terror causes governments to strip liberties and civil rights from the people:
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”
– Plato“If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
– U.S. President James Madison“Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.
“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin
Indeed, the political causes you hold most dear will be derailed if false flag terror is carried out. To see that this is true, let’s take a step back ..
Imagine, if you would, that you were a citizen in Germany right after the example of false flag terror by the Nazis discussed above had occurred. Do you believe you could have stopped the government from invading Poland by reminding Germans that war is bad and peace is good? Do you imagine you could have stopped the brownshirts and loss of domestic rights by writing about the desirability of civil liberties? Do you think that you could have convinced people that protecting the environment, or addressing human or civil rights, or helping the poor, or education, or equality, or any other political crusade was more important than “protecting the Fatherland” when Germans were terrified for their safety?
Please think about it.
The German people were whipped up into a state of hysteria and fear, because they thought they were under attack by Poles and other “bad guys”. The Germans were in shock, and rallied around their “strong” leader (it wasn’t just the bad economy). Without first exposing the truth that the attacks were false flag attacks – which were largely the source and root cause of the German people’s fears, and which allowed the German parliament and other institutions to hand Hitler total power – the sweeping away of good political causes by the wave of fear could not be stopped.
Moreover, the Nazis might have been derailed and perhaps brought to justice well before the Nuremberg trials if the false flag hoaxes had been exposed at the time. The German people could have been spared from the horrors inflicted on their nation and the world by the Nazis. And sanity and positive political changes might have prevailed in 1940’s-era Germany.
Please think about it . . .
Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
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Is this a general type of essay or do you have any specific recent false flag attempts in mind? (This is not a flame, I’m just curious.)
If anyone has recent admissions, I’ll add them to the essay. There are many other instances going back – literally – thousands of years, but I’m only addressing actual admissions by governments.
Throw in the Omagh bombing in 1998. It’s been alleged by many that British intelligence , MI5, knew it was going to happen.
The savage nature of the bomb discredited critics of the Belfast agreement (ie a divided Ireland with power sharing in the North), which had just been agreed upon.
OK, it’s not been fully admitted to, so it probably doesn’t qualify.
MI 5 admits they had information, but not enough to act on, etc.
There are many clues which lead to the theory that the so-called underwear bomber is an example of false flag terrorism. I have been looking into recent US actions to take control of the Horn of Africa, and more specifically to control the Bab el-Mandab FOR REASONS OF EMPIRE.
Bab el-Mandab, between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. Oil and other exports from the Persian Gulf must pass through Bab el -Mandab before entering the Suez Canal.
Yemen: Behind Al-Qaeda Scenarios, a Geopolitical Oil Chokepoint to Eurasia http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/Geopolitics___Eurasia/Chokepoint_Yemen/chokepoint_yemen.html
There are also articles like this one
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24577.htm
thst begins:
Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber
By Alex Lantier
February 03, 2010 “WSWS” — A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.
The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”
The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.
This is despite—or perhaps more accurately, because of—the fact that this information exposes the official government story of the near-disaster to be a lie. President Obama, who has joined with top US intelligence, FBI and Homeland Security officials to insist that Abdulmutallab was inadvertently allowed to board the plane carrying explosives because of a failure to “connect the dots,” has from the start been deceiving the American people….
Have a look at this short documentary on the london bombings. The film maker makes some startling indications that it was a false flag.
Everyone i know who has seen it changed their mind from doubt to suspiscion after watching this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2NXPl625A
You hardly even scratch the surface of the disinformation/false flag history of the US and Israel, not that numerous other governments don’t engage in comparable behavior. (E. G. the apartment bloc bombings _in Moscow_ before the Russian offensive into Chechnya after their initial repulse in 1994.) It is so vastly in the history of US policy to manipulate public resentment against ‘leftists’ and ‘nationalists’ in numerous other places, it is no wonder that such practices are endemic over the last sixty plus years. Truth? That’s for idiots. Reality is what you make of it!
One should assume as a matter of course that any US government release on the behavior of a non-‘ally’ OF ANY KIND is a lie/misrepesentation. I don’t say this to come off as paranoid; the track record justifies the remark just made. You are being lied to, and that’s policy. One should assume that any mainstream report of a ‘terrorist’ act or government operation is so severely distorted that it cannot be distinguished from fiction or an outright lie, and so must be treated as the same. One should assume that any report by additional media is fragmentary at best, and to needs confirmation and to be put in the context of past actions as verified over time.
This is sad but true. The only way to have any gauge on the truth value of a report is to have a history on the context, and to stay plugged-in. But ‘the official version’? If you believe it, you’re the fool.
watch this documentary regarding the london bombings. ripple effect.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2NXPl625A
Although it doesn’t change the general validity of the statement that there was a history of false flag attacks by governments all over the world and under different forms of governments, but you should check the time line with respect to your example of Nazi-Germany and the war against Poland. Total power was handed to the Nazis in 1933. The war against Poland was started in 1939. The pretext for the war certainly wasn’t the “source and root cause” for the rallying of the vast majority of Germans behind their Nazi-leaders. That had already happened years before the war. Ideological conditioning through (ethnic) nationalism and antisemitism among Germans had much more to do with this rallying than fear induced by some false flag attacks.
rc
RC,
You are correct, but the Reichstag fire was likely a false flag as well.
It was the pretext for suppressing opposition to the Nazis with terror. However, the criticism stands that you largely overstate the importance of such false-flag-stuff for shaping public opinion and the rallying of the majority of the Germans behind the Nazis. “False-flag-attacks” aren’t the “root cause”. There were much deeper causes for it than that.
So what’s the point of your essay, except one shouldn’t just believe at face value how things are presented by any government? This conclusion is OK with me, but what’s there beside this?
rc
This is will not stand!
You are absolutely wrong what Germany is concerned!(You are wrong what most of the false flag operations are concerned, not one of your examples seems to have successfully changed public opinion, furthermore I do not believe any of such operations can actually change public opinion, though leading it along is another question).
The example you have given concerning Germany is wrong in so many details, that one might almost assume that you are pushing an agenda?
You write: “The German people were whipped up into a state of hysteria and fear, because they thought they were under attack by Poles and other “bad guys””; at that point the Nazis wipped up public anger against pretty much anyone, any persons disagreeing had long been at least imprisoned or worse deported to concentration camps.
You write: “The German’s were in shock, and rallied around their “strong” leader (it wasn’t just the bad economy).” Actually the economy was not all that bad at the time(and had not been for ~5yrs) due to war preparations(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BSPDRWeltkriseEngl.PNG)
You write: “Without first exposing the truth that the attacks were false flag attacks – which were largely the source and root cause of the German people’s fears, and which allowed the German parliament and other institutions to hand Hitler total power – the sweeping away of good political causes by the wave of fear could not be stopped.”
Before that there was the complete repression of any opposition domestically(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleichschaltung; 1933&34), which pretty much put any opposition in concentration camps. Subsequently there was the annexation of Austria as well as parts of the Czechoslovakia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia) as well as the first Progroms against most of my compatriots with jewish ancestory(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novemberpogrome_1938)
You write:
“Without first exposing the truth that the attacks were false flag attacks – which were largely the source and root cause of the German people’s fears, and which allowed the
German parliament and other institutions to hand Hitler total power – the sweeping away of good political causes by the wave of fear could not be stopped.
Moreover, the Nazis might have been derailed and perhaps brought to justice well before the Nuremberg trials if the false flag hoaxes had been exposed at the time. The German people could have been spared from the horrors inflicted on their nation and the world by the Nazis. And sanity and positive political changes might have prevailed in 1940’s-era Germany.”
Get your f…ing history right! That point was long gone at the very latest after Chamberlain declared(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time). The point about the false flag operation was, if for anything, for international consumption. Democratic elections where over well before that!
I really enjoy reading your opinion on most of the economic/financial questions, but if you don´t have a clue about european history. How about just not commenting?
A short piece of advice on that front: if you want to get Germans pissed off, be unfairly critical and call them racists. If you want to really piss them off however just reexamine european history through the lense of what you have learned in highschool and blame “false flag operations”(/make it an international conspiracy if you can[maybe accuse GS]) for one of the greatest desasters in human history, that would be bound to win you a lot of friends in Europe and especially in Germany[sarcasm alert, special service for yo yanks]…
I added the Reichstag fire: February 27, 1933. Please look again at the main essay.
“I added the Reichstag fire: February 27, 1933. Please look again at the main essay.”, and you may have very well mentioned the only (at least half-)real domestic “false flag” operation in Germany at that time. Despite that I do not see any change in the general interpretation you give. So if I get the generall idea of your essay right, what you are trying to say is: whatever happend before 1939 doesn´t really have anything to do with what happend in Germany politically(subsequently in most of the rest of Europe afterwards), its all due to a “false flag” operation???
Im am very sorry: “Yves does not necessarily agree with this essay. Indeed, she may dislike it so much that she bans me from the site. Please send any hate mail to me, not Yves, as I am solely responsible.”, I do not intend to send any hate mail(never have and never will!), but if Yves is in her right sense of mind your fear of being excluded from her site may actually hold true. The key point for an expert is to be extremely well informed about their area of expertise, for a journalist it is to express himself in such a way, that any lack of knowledge does not become apparent. You do not meet either criteria, in addition, you sound like you are lobbying for the “white supremacist movement”(and yes, I have been reading your blog on occasion).
My point stands however: I will call you, or anyone I read, on any blog I read, out on implicit or(as in this case fairly) obvious antisemitism.
anti-semitism? What? How is Washington being an anti-semite? What a ridiculous, uncalled-for smear.
When I spot an obvious astroturfer/corporate shill/CIA COINTELPRO op, I’ll call them out. And you, sir, are most definitely counter-intelligence, paid smear.
Antisemitism? What are you talking about?
Obviously, I condemn the Nazis for the holocaust.
Did you notice the examples I gave of Muslim countries using false flag terror (Indonesia)?
This issue doesn’t concern any single religious, ethnic or geographical group. It is a world-wide historical fact.
A.Z., I think you should learn how to read.
Clearly, English is not A.Z.’s first language.
Also, note that while he blames the Nazi’s false flag attacks that “victimize” the German people, he seems to imply that the German people were not part of the Nazi govt, only victims of it…….cute.
all people are easily incited by those they think have wronged them and false flags are common.
watch the ripple effect regarding the london bombings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2NXPl625A
“If you want to really piss them [Germans, rc] off … blame “false flag operations”(/make it an international conspiracy if you can[maybe accuse GS]) for one of the greatest desasters in human history, that would be bound to win you a lot of friends in Europe and especially in Germany[sarcasm alert, special service for yo yanks]…”
That would win him a lot of friends in Germany, indeed. No sarcasm.
rc
Hi RC, I understand your comment, after having read the current version of the Washingtons Blog post. The initial version however of the text and effective argument was, that all Germans were suprised by the “false flag” and took it for a real threat, completely(assumingly, completely blending out everything that happend before).
I actually do not have to much of a problem with “Washington”´s post right now. My point before this however was that the original version of the post put the Shoa in a direct line with numerous supposed or real false flag operations. Which I find completely unacceptable and offensive. I stated this on the basis of the text posted, and I stand by it. The holocaust was the greatest disaster in human history and I find it disturbing if it is interpreted as just a quirk to be adjusted and distorted to fit a conspiracy theory. I am fairly certain that virtually all of my compatriots feel likewise.
The sentence: “if you want to get Germans pissed off, be unfairly critical and call them racists. If you want to really piss them off however just reexamine european history through the lense of what you have learned in highschool and blame “false flag operations”(/make it an international conspiracy if you can[maybe accuse GS]) for one of the greatest desasters in human history, that would be bound to win you a lot of friends in Europe and especially in Germany.”, was written precisely with that in mind, the fact that this is not just one of the situations that one just trifels with to support a theory, but rather one of the darkest hours of human, and first and foremost German, history.
Which was precisely my point: the Shoa is a fact that is recognized and deeply regretted by virtually everyone in Germany. This will lead to strong objections,by anyone from Germany to a post, in which historic facts are plainly (ditorted&twisted) to support a conspiracy theory!
Many parts of the article have been altered by now, conforming a lot more to historic reality and I find myself vindicated by the fact, that the post in question has been adjusted in a way that does not put one of the greatest tragedies in human history on the same level as, what may or may not have been, a CIA operation.
(I still have a problem with the fact that articles can be adjusted, without giving commentators the opportuinty to adjust their comments in conjunction.)
This phenomena is best demonstrated in this country by the regular arson committed by local firemen, all across the country.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/04/coatesville.arson/index.html
http://www.firefightingnews.com/article.cfm?articleID=62324
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2009/11/plea_deal_reached_in_coatesvil.html
One of the worst arson assaults in Coatesville, PA found a former fire chief and and firefighter applicant arrested for a 2 year arson spree that terrified this town of 11,000.
You can google countless other cases as well as Homeland Security studies of the problem.
Many political activists from the ’60 civil rights and anti war movements have documented violent agent provacateurs who start riots to bring abo
I apologize for my truncated post.
….provocateurs would start riots to justify police response up to and including deadly force, eg Kent State and Jackson State massacres of May 1970.
Senator Church headed up his commission which uncovered the FBI’s Cointelpro counterintelligence program which attacked non-violent political groups, in some cases fomenting gang warfare in urban communities.
Government sponsored provocations under the pretense of a criminal, extremist political or foreign directed enemy, see “I was a Communist for the FBI”, have been uncovered in the US as well many other countries. Witness the Iranian trials and executions of opposition and the accusation of working for foreign (USA) interests. From the Tsar and his Cheka to the Reichstag Fire of the Nazi’s, blamed on the Communists, creating a need where one did not exist, is a tried and true path to Homeland Security, or a bigger township firefighting budget.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html CIA dumps crack cocaine in south Los Angeles.
I have a problem with the last sentence “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”. I think it was G.B. Shaw who said “History teaches us that history teaches us nothing”.
Hi Mr. Washington
You might also add examples from the Apartheid ragime to your thesis. There were some cases of false flag ops carried (bombings mostly) out by the black ops org the Civil Cooperation Bureau. The agents involved had to make a full confession in order to get amnesty from the TRC -Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This was in the mid 90s and internet came late to South Africa but there should be transcripts somewhere.
I added one example.
About the non-serialized guns: corruption is so endemic among US forces (military & contractors) that someone who really wants a box of non-serialized guns can get one. In Pakistan, you get can them handmade by old guys in huts (and beautiful work, too).
This is not necessarily a false flag op.
Or the manufacturer could be producing weapons without serial numbers on the frames to sell under the table, too.
Or a ring of employees might be stealing parts from production and assembling them for sale.
Or someone might be making frames (the only really controlled part) and assembling weapons using after-market & DIY parts. Making frames is easy using a CNC milling machine.
Hi there,
If you think Yves might not agree why don’t you just talk to her before you post? Of course you have a right to speak up, but should you use a forum somebody else made big? To answer that question speak first to the person who “owns” the forum.
This is a blog about banking, or more generally economic and finance affairs. At the end you say that ‘false flag terror’ hurts the economy and that ‘that’s why we should care’. The damage to the economy seems also to be the motivation for you to post it here. In fact we should care because the supposed ‘false flag terror’ is about misleading and hurting innocent people. That’s a bit more important than the economy. So your motivation for posting is a bit thin I would say.
If you post citations of Goering in a post about something that concerns affairs today you make a discussion. Everybody loves father christmas and everybody loathes nazis. Indeed whoever doesn’t love father christmas and whoever doesn’t loathe nazis I might be perceived as unethical by others. That’s what you play upon when you connect nazis and some issue you put forth. You suggest that anybody who is not of your view is unethical. That’s not very helpful for a discussion.
Does this refer to theories about the americans themselves being behind 9/11? If so, then you don’t help the credibility of this blog.
Bravo Vaudt Varken! I guess we might start discussing how the financial crisis was another George Bush conspiracy to destroy the economy for the next President. He never did like John McCain you know.
Conspiracy theories are wonderful at deflecting blame from where it truly belongs. Corrupt government, corrupt business, corrupt financiers? It must be a conspiracy. Maybe if Americans weren’t so morally bankrupt and otherwise stupid, we wouldn’t be so easily fooled. Crappy education – there’s a conspiracy for you.
Conspiracy theory has been a very effective meme to silence anyone who questions the official version in this country. And, in this country, everything must be questioned. But our press has been fractured if not totally destroyed as a vehicle for finding and reporting the truth.
The photo evidence of Bush neutered with only little school children for an audience provided cover for him personally in the minutes before, during and after 9/11, and in the context of an investigation he refused to do before political pressure prevailed, his own questioning demanded no notes, no oath, and the presence of Cheney (Bush was too stupid to be left to his own devices under questioning for one thing, and wasn’t really governing for another). And, with the poor condition of the free press so seriously fractured, by the time honest detailed reporting gets through, the propagandists have already accomplished their dirty work.
Parallels to Nazism are useful. What ‘forced appropriation’ of newspapers, TV and radio couldn’t accomplish in the US, the investment banking arm of our government has:
During the Third Reich, he [Max Amann] became (by forced appropriation) the largest newspaper publisher in Germany and made enormous profits off Nazism. In this role, he established Nazi control over the industry and gradually closed down those newspapers that did not fully support Hitler’s regime.
However, as a party official, Amann lacked talent, being a poor speaker and debater. In addition, his handwriting was illegible, thus his deputy, Rolf Rienhardt, performed these duties for him.[1]
Arrested by Allied troops after the war, …”
“”Conspiracy theory has been a very effective meme to silence anyone who questions the official version in this country.” Bingo!
Well put.
I recently heard a derisive comparison of (anti-Obama) “birthers” with “9/11 truthers” as equally nutty.
There are certainly conspiracy theories a lot more credible than the OFFICIAL stupid conspiracy theory we’re supposed to believe in.
I have a feeling some of the sillier stuff was made up to confuse things. The disinformers probably had fun. They added “noise” to discredit the idea of alternatives to the ridiculously flimsy official story.
The alternative to a “conspiracy” would be either that only one person was responsible, or that it was not a plot of any kind. Maybe it was an accident. For instance, perhaps it was all just part of the amazing set of coincidences on that day when there just happened to be a SIMLATED terror attack that was just like the events that actually took place, which was coincidentally exactly the same coincidence as the London train bombings, which took place at exactly the time and places they wwere scheduled to be SIMULATED.
Coincidences like that might just happen and not be conspiracies, right???
Thanks for this timely post. I’ll make sure not to invest in Nazi Germany or Algeria.
There are also examples of government acting relatively straightforwardly.
So what? All this proves nothing about the issues of the day.
This current post is worthless on its own “merits”. It does not even state a point. It has nothing special to do with econ or finance. If the point is that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job, and/or that the US Govt is analogous to that of Nazi Germany, that is NOT NOT NOT a post-worthy POV. Sorry. We all know what we think/believe etc. on these issues. We can go to any number of publications and web sites for much, much better written and better documented stuff on these topics if that’s our interest.
GW’s attempt to tie this post to be relevant to NC by saying that terrorism imposes costs on the economy is pitiful illogic. By that reasoning, virtually all matters can belong on NC. The question of whether God exists, issues relating to child abuse and what the LDL threshold to treat with a statin all have economic consequences–but IMO opinion pieces on them don’t belong on NC. And neither does this post.
Spreading false information is a general practice these days in all areas of society. Accounting rules are changes to facilitate extend and pretend. Children are promoted through school without learning what their grade level would indicate. Politicians and MSM routinely tell half truths and exaggerations. Tea party attendees become “tea baggers” in the crude and foul argot of frightened liberals. It goes on and on and is a story as old as original sin itself. Scientists cherry pick data to prove their theories. People should always be skeptical of what they are told.
Just this week, I quit my job and moved to a new city because some corporation said in a letter they would employ me next week. By your logic, I should not have trusted them, but then if there is no trust, there is no economy.
Be careful what you undermine with these rants.
Scuse me but they were already proudly calling themselves “teabaggers.”
Sorry if some liberals snickered a little too loudly.
Yves might ban you, but you have the courage of your convictions. Bravo, brave scribe!
You phony. This is precisely the kind of naive political tripe Yves loves. That one has to wade through to get to the financial links.
Reductio ad Hiterlum.
Yves, come on. You’re on Fox Business, CNBC, etc…you’ve got a book out…you’re one of the most respected bloggers in the business…and you have this moron despoiling your site.
And please, spare us the BS about “these are not necessarily the views of Yves Smith.”
If you had a guest poster come to your site…and one time this guest made the mistake of writing something to the effect of: “Looking back, Paulson did the best he could.” He’d be banned. Go away, and don’t come back.
Which of course, is your prerogative.
But stepping back for a moment…even though one may disagree with the Paulson statement, it really is quite benign, if ill-informed.
Yet, this clown, GW, will come out on your site and make pandering claims like “US Soldiers torture children!”…and he gets invited back time and time again.
This trash isn’t even fit for the Daily Kos. Hell, if GW was posting this shit in a Yahoo Chat room, the Moderator would have to step in…”Ah George, you’re not Yahoo Chat material. Better take your stuff to AOL.”
GW is utterly incapable of an original thought, so there’s not even shock value. [Unless, one finds it shocking that a respected forum like Naked Capitalism green lights this shit, but with the empty disclaimer that “these aren’t necessarily the views of Yves Smith”.]
GW is simply some anonymous dude, writing feeble minded material parroted from FireDogLake under the nom de plume of our 1st president.
The only thing original about GW is the fact the he regularly makes statements like his preface in today’s post: “It’s only my courage that makes me write this!”
Are you kidding me? The delusion! He acts like he’s Thomas Paine, putting his neck on the line with “Common Sense”.
Hey, George: You’re not George and what you write is not courageous. Like millions of people, you’re writing anonymously on someone else’s blog. That is it.
Exactly!
FOX COPS shoot messenger.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
I’m afraid your point got lost in your jingoistic tirade. In your wild-eyed, spittle-flecked tantrum, you did not rebut a single, solitary point that GW made in a very well researched post. Time for a time out.
Exactly. Dan goes on a long tirade, but says absolutely nothing.
The purposes of terrorism are legion – by definition they are acts of violent deception intended to create political outcomes by force. Does bombing a family of 12 Afghans in a hut qualify? (Ans. Only if the bomber flying over has the permission of the President – now that Congress has, since its Gulf of Tonkin resolution, abdicated to the executive branch).
Does political disruption create economic disruption? They are one and the same, each serving the purpose of the other.
My local Social Security Administration office, in a city of 120,000, has a fulltime security service under contract with a daily lobby guard. Our post office/Federal Courthouse has seven fulltime Marshals with x-ray machines and bag searches – just like the county criminal courthouse a block away. The TSA has a budget of billions, paid for by taxes and fees on air travel. Terrorism (and mostly the fear of it) have transformed the US into a declining power with a shattered economy. We guard our fences (sometimes)while the house within crumbles. Osama laughs.
The apt quote, apporppriately attributable to George Santyana, is:
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Obviously 9/11 was a false flag attack, and if another major attack occurs it too will be.
You only have to look at the demolition of building 7 at 5:20pm at the World Trade Center on 9/11 to realize the government was the perpetrator of 9/11.
@taxpayer
The PBS article that you cite is the typical whitewash you see from them.
Take a look instead at the CIA drug running into Mena, Arkansas. There are several videos on Youtube that go deep into the details.
I think the writer of the article just wants us to not be so gullible as people have been in the past, or so quick to accept the official government/mainstream media explanation for a terror attack without critical thought. We should also not be so quick to accept the official explanation for 911, especially with the many inconsistencies in the official story, and 70% of the victims families questions still left unanswered.
The consistent proven pattern of false flag terror attacks by governments in the past, shows that there is a high probability that current and future terror attacks may also be false flag events to facilitate government agendas of the day.
I would have preferred to post the original series of articles from the San Jose Mercury-News by reporter Gary Webb, but I couldn’t find it.
taxpayer,
It’s an open question as to how deeply the US government is involved in the drug trade. One thing is for sure, and that is that the “War on Drugs” is a pretense under which the United States maintains economic, political and military supremacy in many parts of Latin America. All of this is of course done in the name of the US’s hallowed “national security,” drug control being a key element of US national security policy.
One of the difficulties in determining what’s going on is that, once the drugs cross the border to the US, they just disappear into a black box. There’s almost no drug enforcement in the United States, at least for higher-ups in the drug distribution chain. For instance, everyone knows who Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is, plus the heads of the other six major Mexican drug cartels. But, as Carlos Fuentes has queried:
Who in the United States is receiving drugs from Columbia, laundering money, marketing drugs every day to 30 million U.S. citizens, bribing lawyers, the police, the politicians? There must be drug barons far more powerful than any Columbian trafficker.
Fuentes wrote that in 1996, when Columbia was still the biggest cocaine supplier for the US. Mexico has now captured that dubious honor.
When I first arrived in Mexico about 10 years ago, it was estimated the flow of narco dollars from the US was about 20 to 25 billion a year. That figure is now estimated at between 30 and 35 billion. That’s wholesale, so those drugs probably generate five to ten times that much money on the Streets of the United States, or something on the order of $150 to $350 billion per year.
And yet, as Fuentes points out, there are no known drug barons in the United States. None of that money gets laundered into US banks. Police and politicians are not corrupt in the US.
How does one explain that?
Hmmm, it seems we are most effective at perpetuating everlasting war and and intractable quagmires. Homeland Security is the hot new bubble, the sure thing, a growth industry. Sigh…so much for that “hopey-changey” thing, as Sarah called it.
This is an interesting post but a bit misleading since it implies that 9/11 and some other recent terrorist attacks could have actually been orchestrated by our own government. I suppose anything is possible and I don’t doubt it has happened in the past. But the author provides no specific credible evidence for anything recent. Further, false flag attacks are extremely risky. If ever exposed, they would be a death blow to the parties involved. A far more likely explanation is that most, if not all, recent attacks were actually carried out by a bunch of terrorists from one group or another. So what is the intent of this piece? It just seems to feed the paranoid mistrust of government – not unlike the tea partiers, the survivalists, militias and other right-wing nuts have been doing lately. The government does enough bad things right out in the open. We should focus on them rather than paranoid conspiracy theories.
Denial runs deep. Even when presented with admissions of the guilty perpetrators, some posters refuse to accept the reality of false flag attacks or see their importance . Only government employees could be so obtuse.
Funny – at the same time you attribute nearly super human abilities and incompetence to the same government. Which is it – a vast conspiracy or a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats?
I am surprised by the hostility of some of the commenters in response to this post. Not sure why those folks felt it necessary to act so self-righteously superior, but human aggression is innate, despite our many efforts to tame it… which is why we have so much war and violence. Not sure why anyone would try and pretend these sorts of incidents don’t happen, or to minimize their importance, but each to their own agenda.
While I don’t think that military related false flag terrorism is all that directly related to the economy, the larger issue of how much of a national economy is spent on the military is shown to matter to the long term health of a empire. However I’ve been thinking that there is also an economic equivalent to false flag terrorism and disinformation… which I think we’ve been seeing with the whole issue of TARP, the banksters and the gov’t, and Johnson’s “Silent Coup”, etc, etc.
GW, I appreciate your effort to put together this collection of false flag incidents. However I think you are being naive if you think there is any way that humans will stop doing such things. I say this as someone who used to be naive that way as well… until I started studying history (including history of warfare), anthropology, economics, and sociology. I have finally learned that the world is as it is, and not as I would like it to be, and human nature is what it is, and not what I would wish it to be in my ideals either. Now I’ve come to believe that one of the major problems in our country is various forms of naive idealism (Dems and Repubs have different mythis of this). If people better understood the power and money games all around them, they would probably make better choices.
@Chris M.
Most people have blinders on about 9/11, but the facts are easy to come by and they show very clearly, 9/11 was an inside job. Did the US government do it? To an extent. Most likely it was a wider conspiracy including Israel and orchestrated by the Bilderberg group.
Watch the documentary 9/11 Mysteries.
It was bound to happen that the 9/11-conspiracy nut cases will be triggered by GW’s post.
rc
Are you saying you actually believe the OFFICIAL conspiracy story?
Maybe you did no homework at all and don’t know what is in the official conspiracy story your government asks you to accept. It wouldn’t fool a bright 12 year old with access to a search engine.
Apocalyptic Millennialism.
It happened in 1000AD and at the end of the 19th century.
People looking for the second coming or the 12th Imam or whatever have taken extreem stands in support of “the last day” and what it means for them. Islamic terrorism and Christians blowing their wad on one last binge of high living before the end of the world. They have been putting of seeing the truth of their foolishness as long as they can. 2000, 2003, 2007 and now they await December 21, 2012 as the last stand for the end of the world.
See you in 2013!
Thanks for the post, very informative. Nice to see some hard truths discussed on a respected site like this. Bravo, Yves!
I read all of the preceeding stuff. Now I wonder why I bothered.
I do conclude, however, that GW is not worthy of my time.
Given the rant presented, it occurs to me that Alcoa and Reynolds Metals should enjoy steady and consistent growth in sales. This post also helps me to understand why my local supermarket has such a hard time keeping aluminum foil in stock.
Actually, this historical essay does have some direct bearing on this site. When the Nazis came to power, they immediately started sending people to concentration camps. However, they didn’t start with the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally or physically handicapped, any of their artificial enemies.
They started by imprisoning the Social Democrats, the leaders of the labor unions, and intellectuals identified with the Left. Card-carrying members of the Communist party were given automatic membership in the Nazi party – the far ends do meet. They used their government power to get rid of decency, reason, and fairness.
Criminals know who their enemies are; and we’re living in a kleptocracy. Is this a reason to worry?
Not only the Maine, but many now accept that the Lusitania, which was the immediate cause of the U.S. entry into WWI, was carrying contraband military supplies as the Germans claimed at the time.
I didn’t see reference to the U.S.S. Maine in the prior discussion, but I think it is the most famous possible ‘false flag’ event in history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(ACR-1)
PLEASE include a George Washington byline at the top of these posts. It’s annoying to have to scroll to the end to find the “posted by” note.
George Washington. Great post, with the exception of making the oblique apologies for it. None should be required.
All of life is politics!
Those that limit their thinking to the little boxes, like economics, that are so neatly set out for them by others to confine and channel their thinking, only express their ignorance of the fact that we live in an inter coupled world with many interlocking multidimensional spheres of influence.
Some of those influences have greater impact and range than others. The scam ‘rule of law’ tops the list. I would put false flag operations and targeted assassinations that emanate from that scam rule of law very high on that list.
When false flag operations and targeted assassinations are carried out by governments they only serve to create anxiety, fear, and mistrust in that government, and its citizens, and, worse, they encourage that same vile behavior from those who are targeted. They also bring up the question of should those same false flag operations and targeted assassinations be used against scamerican citizens, like the patriot act is now being applied to scamericans. If its OK to off a dissenting foreign ‘political’ opponent why not a domestic ‘political’ opponent? Should targeted assassinations be used against dissenting scamericans that are pissed off by the machinations of their government?
If so, will that escalate into political figures and corporate heads being targeted by aggrieved scamericans?
• Will Alcoa and Reynolds Metals enjoy steady and consistent growth in sales if some pissed off nut job pops their CEOs?
• Or will that job you have agreed to relocate for be there if some disgruntled wacko flies a plane into its corporate headquarters?
• Will Dan Duncan be able to post on this blog if Yves is offed?
Dumb questions? No, not really. It is a real bitch to put the bit in the mouth of a horse that has escaped the barn. It is better to maintain an escape proof barn.
Yes human nature is cannibalistic, but history shows that we can regulate that process through the formation of cooperative domestic and foreign governmental alliances. The best, and most lasting alliances, are made in the sunlight with the participation and agreement of the greater majority of citizens. When those alliances are hijacked by a wealthy ruling elite few and they are turned against their own citizens within the alliance we are all threatened. History also shows that there are discrete windows of opportunity to take action and that once those windows of opportunity are closed no remedial action is possible.
No balls! No brains! No Freedom!
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Hi i on the bp,
with you all the way right up until human nature being cannibalistic. Were that true we wouldn’t have made it this far. I know we’re in a mess, but things like language, art, community, hell even tribalism would be impossible were we pure beast (whatever that means). This from the wonderful “The Spirit Level”:
“For a species which thrives on friendship and enjoys co-operation and trust, which has a strong sense of fairness, which is equipped with mirror neurons allowing us to learn our way of life through a process of identification, it is clear that social structures which create relationships based on inequality, inferiority and social exclusion must inflict a great deal of social pain.”
Check out “Mutual Aid” by Peter Kropotkin too (if you haven’t already). There’s a wealth of material in there about us humans. We are a complex animal. There’s way more to us than deception, cannibalism, and folly. We learn primarily from what is going on around us, and not all that much from those juices and steams given off by the blind clockwork of our genes. Without any societal input, without language and culture to take our cues from, what would we be? What would a human be, kept magically alive yet away from all other signs of life, in a sealed room with no light? Nothing.
Hi Toby, regarding this;
“Hi i on the bp, with you all the way right up until human nature being cannibalistic. Were that true we wouldn’t have made it this far.”
It is precisely because we are cannibalistic that we have made it this far. Even cannibals, the brighter ones especially, realize the value of saving seed corn and forming solid workable alliances with other cannibals in order to get needs met to sustain life.
Toby said – “I know we’re in a mess, but things like language, art, community, hell even tribalism would be impossible were we pure beast (whatever that means).”
We are human organisms in competition with all other organisms, human and not, on the planet. Our continued survival depends on getting needs met to sustain life. We humans are the dominant species on earth because we best ‘externalize’ our organism’s superior abilities. All of those externalizations — language, art, law, guns, butter, computers, space ships, etc., — are made to get needs met and sustain life, and, because they all are created to cannibalize others, are in fact deceptions, Externalizations and deceptions can also be referred to as ‘tools of dominance’. There is a long time scale of aggregate generational corruption that goes back to the very first externalizations or deceptive tools of dominance created by humans that is still with us today. It is mostly existential in nature, predominantly self deceptive, and facilitates, for humans, staying sane in the insane conditions of life we are thrust into. It also prevents us (protects us) from the horrendous reality that we are cannibals and must cannibalize other organisms in order to survive. Altruism is a deception. Kind acts are made to get the needs met of the organism that makes them. Similarly an artist creates a deception. The art created serves to get the needs met of the artist; as an escapist venture into self that satisfies the need to explore self, or as a salable externalization that causes another organism to give the artist money to satisfy the need for the art, etc.
Regarding this:; “For a species which thrives on friendship and enjoys co-operation and trust, which has a strong sense of fairness, which is equipped with mirror neurons allowing us to learn our way of life through a process of identification, it is clear that social structures which create relationships based on inequality, inferiority and social exclusion must inflict a great deal of social pain.”
The conditions that we are unwillingly thrust into by evolution do not allow us all to be equal. We all arrive with uniquely different genetic wiring and each in a unique matchless environment. The best we can hope for is to regulate the cannibalistic alliances (the social structures) so that access to resources — now including all past tools of dominance — is as equal as realistically possible for all human organisms, and, the pain of each organism is made as minimal as possible. The present social structures are way out of whack and I believe we could all proceed nicely down the evolutionary trail with lesser earnings and asset spreads and a more equal access to the deceptive externalizations, the tools of dominance.
As for complexity, yes we are extremely complex, but the complexity created by humans as externalizations, as deceptions, as tools of dominance, are what are the real complexity, or greater complexity problem. There are now many tools of dominance, some that are far more powerful than others, with the more powerful ones centered in the hands of a wealthy few. This asymmetrical distribution of the tools of dominance will allow some humans, like Lloyd Blankfein at GS, with powerful computers (yes, they are a tool of dominance) that make millions of more perceptions per second than a single human could possibly make (including Lloyd Blankfein himself), to then create ever greater deceptions.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
I disagree with the thrust of what you are saying, which seems to be that everything we do or feel which is not aggressive/greedy/competitive is a self-deception to hide from ourselves the truth of our aggressive/greedy/competitive nature.
Why do we so need to deceive ourselves? Why would naked dog-eat-dog-style living be unpalatable? What is it about us which wants to think we might be nice after all? Do I care about others because I am too afraid/dishonest to admit that I don’t?
And why do you care enough to post here about deception? Is it an ego thing only? Don’t you too long for the famous “something better?” It certainly seems to me like you do.
Whence this longing?
If we all fell in the kool-aid cauldron when we were babies by virtue of being born into a society created as a deception to hide our cannibalism from ourselves, became addicted to “niceness” in our formative years, that would suggest a level of deliberate planning and control on our parts, at some collective level, I cannot imagine possible. Were the cooperative spirit I am denoting mere phantasm, one of the elements of a web of deception designed to hide us from the brutal truth about ourselves, it wouldn’t stick, would not find fertile ground in us and wither away. The Freudian idea of a seething nest of powerful drives for sex and control burning beneath the surface, which must be hidden from public view, is an important and useful discovery, but to call the mechanisms which bring about a socialization of our behaviours pure deception is to place too much importance on the inner drives, and not enough on the cooperation-reciprocation components of what we are.
I’m not arguing that there is no aggression, no greed, no ruthlessness etc., only that there is also cooperation, care, concern, and a desire for fairness. Were that not true, there would be no need for the deceptions you rightly campaign against, nor would societies have emerged and grown larger, nor would friendship and trust be such pleasures, and such sources of pain when they go wrong.
Toby said; “II disagree with the thrust of what you are saying, which seems to be that everything we do or feel which is not aggressive/greedy/competitive is a self-deception to hide from ourselves the truth of our aggressive/greedy/competitive nature.”
Toby I said “predominantly self deceptive”, not all of us are self deceptive.
Let me repeat what I said above;
“There is a long time scale of aggregate generational corruption that goes back to the very first externalizations or deceptive tools of dominance created by humans that is still with us today. It is mostly existential in nature, predominantly self deceptive, and facilitates, for humans, staying sane in the insane conditions of life we are thrust into. It also prevents us (protects us) from the horrendous reality that we are cannibals and must cannibalize other organisms in order to survive.”
So … All organisms act to get needs met and sustain life by deceiving other organisms. But all organisms are NOT self deceptive about the cannibalistic process that demands that behavior. Those few that see the cannibalization process clearly, and accept it, have greater control over those that do not. They have done so since the very beginning of human externalizations by co-opting those externalizations and using them for that control and cannibalization of others. It is aggregate generational transmission of corruption that maintains the smooth, and sometimes not so smooth, pecking order of have and have not in human societies.
As an example; all generations of humans search for meaning in life. What’s it all about? One of the answers to that question (that helps to keep people sane), in all societies has been the formation of religious beliefs. The question was never of course answered, but the tendered beliefs were co-opted by those more in tune with the cannibalistic process because they realized it was a great way to get their own needs met by controlling others. And so they proclaimed those beliefs as true and formalized those different religious beliefs into religious dogma and religious tracts. The deceived, ‘promised eternal life at the right hand of god'(could be any other construct I am not signaling out any particular religion), were happy, and went back to work, but the price of their happiness (their deception) was to pay the high priests a piece of their labors and subject themselves to an ever growing set of bullshit rules and regulations.
Now, through aggregate generational transmission of this corruption, which has carried those ‘beliefs’ into the present. [And it is not just religion; think rule of law, government, usury, banking, etc. Any striving of humanity for good and order in the cannibalization process is always hijacked by the few who see clearly the cannibalization process and turn it against those who do not, e.g., loaning someone something, a good thing, had usury tacked on to the process.] The result is that we are thrust into a situation where a lot of us are operating with out a full sea bag. A lot of us, through the aggregate generational transmission of those past corruptions, accept, like dysfunctional children born into an abusive family, the abusive conditions we are born into.
So … and further … we do not need to deceive ourselves, we need to accept the reality of the cannibalization process that we have been thrust into …
Regarding this;
“And why do you care enough to post here about deception? Is it an ego thing only? Don’t you too long for the famous “something better?” It certainly seems to me like you do.”
It has always been my belief that perception of reality is the key to the famous “something better” you speak of. It is an almost intuitive thing with me and I have fought the shackles of deception all of my life and have done quite a bit of deprogramming in myself. My posting about deception is a selfish act made to get my own needs met — in that sense — yes, it is an ‘ego thing’. My externalizations, my deceptions, are meant to make others understand the cannibalization process, especially the POWER of externalizations, which are the common property of all of humanity, and how they are transmitted in the aggregate through generations. I do that because I believe that understanding and acceptance of the cannibalization reality is key to better regulating that reality by involving a greater majority of us in that process and making people realize that only very transparent regulation will work (by using the externalizations concept it is also possible to get a clearer picture of where humanity is rapidly headed, but that is another story).
I also know that creating general acceptance of the cannibalization reality (that “seething nest” of powerful drives to get needs met and sustain life burning beneath the surface controls us all) as a means for positive social change — and deprogramming from the past effects of it — is a formidable task. But big ships are turned with small forces on the rudder.
When all is said and done Toby, I believe that you make your own realities (deceptions) in life, through choice, dependent upon your perceptions, within your own sphere of influence. If you don’t, others (like Lloyd Blankfein, who now has greater perceptive powers than you or I do through control of our common externalizations) will make them for you.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
I can’t reply directly to your post iotbp, so I’ve replied to mine.
You said: “Toby I said “predominantly self deceptive”, not all of us are self deceptive.”
This is an unfair correction. I said that, in those cases where cannibalism is not recognised as the true state, self-deception occurs. This does not mean there is only self-deception. But actually I could argue — since you flagged that point — considering the equipment we are born with and the culture we are born into, that there is only self-deception. However, this is a separate point to the one you are making about cannibalism, it in your thesis being the principal reason for self-deception.
There seem to be two parts to what you are asserting which need further clarification in my opinion:
1. Cannibalism as you use it in your argument
2. Deception itself
Until I’m clear on those, I can’t be sure we are not talking at cross purposes.
To me cannibalism is not, e.g. devouring an apple I plucked from a tree — an apple being an organism — nor is it slaughtering a cow and eating its meat. Is it in the context of this discussion acts of survival by humans that kill/harm other humans? You seem to have a far broader meaning in mind, one I have not come across before, but for now I will work with my crude definition.
Deception is a tricky one, because it, at least in part, assumes there is a “truth” to be concealed/exposed. For you this truth seems to be cannibalistic human nature, which of course assumes this is a truth which has been correctly surmised by you.
Nevertheless, there are indeed purposeful deceptions, regardless of any horrendous cannibalism to be shielded from, and also unconscious self-deceptions, and then there are benign and malign deceptions too. For example, somewhat against my will I joined my wife in purposefully deceiving our daughters into believing in Father Christmas. Was that benign?? On the unconscious side, a body in shock after a nasty accident can conceal from itself the enormity of the pain it is in. That might be considered a benign self-deception.
Which deceptions are “good” and which “bad?”
You said: “It has always been my belief that perception of reality is the key to the famous “something better” you speak of. It is an almost intuitive thing with me and I have fought the shackles of deception all of my life and have done quite a bit of deprogramming in myself.”
This seems the crux of it. The insurmountable difficulty with this though lies in “perception of reality”, which requires deploying the senses in combination with reason, reason itself requiring language, education, culture and so on. Interpreting reality as deeply as I can with imperfect equipment is something I enjoy too, but I feel it wise to be very careful about drawing hard and fast conclusions about what reality is at base. In the end we can only make interpretations, which I would argue can only be a kind of self-deception, since we construct them and they conceal, by virtue of their inevitable imperfection, the truth from us. Admitting this to ourselves is the most honest we can be.
You said: “The question was never of course answered, but the tendered beliefs were co-opted by those more in tune with the cannibalistic process because they realized it was a great way to get their own needs met by controlling others. And so they proclaimed those beliefs as true and formalized those different religious beliefs into religious dogma and religious tracts. The deceived, ‘promised eternal life at the right hand of god’(could be any other construct I am not signaling out any particular religion), were happy, and went back to work, but the price of their happiness (their deception) was to pay the high priests a piece of their labors and subject themselves to an ever growing set of bullshit rules and regulations.”
This seems to be a conflation. On the victim side you have an ordinary Joe unaware that life is brutal, on the other a member of some elite who is quite happy with life’s brutality. The victim is a victim because he wants to be reassured by someone in power (already a social construct affecting the equation) that life is not actually horrendous, and even though he must toil and sweat his life away his reward will be in heaven. But surely the punter’s unhappiness is born of his toil rather than a dim awareness that he is at heart a cannibal. The ruse is to keep him toiling, not to conceal from him his inner wolf. Were that the case he might have wanted to know why he always dreams of rape and pillage, or why he feels that all human efforts are self-serving and destructive of others, and seek solace from this horror. (Here again the question from me as to why anyone should interpret selfishness and surviving at the cost of others as horrible, if that’s what we are at base.) Surely the simple reason our poor victim subjects himself to toil is he would otherwise be destitute, lacking the power and wealth to live his life otherwise. His being a cannibal (or not) is not needed to explain the dynamic. Yes there is a deception keeping him in his place, but the deception’s raison d’etre need only be the preservation of the status quo, which is nice for the elite, grotty for everyone else.
Of course deception is a part of the process of establishing hierarchy and maintaining it, but this dynamic need not arise from some unpalatable truth about the horror of human nature, or nature generally. There can be various reasons for it.
(I’ve been interrupted so many times writing this … I hope it makes sense.)
Hi Toby, I can appreciate the interruptions problem, I have been dealing with it myself …
Toby said; “This is an unfair correction. I said that, in those cases where cannibalism is not recognized as the true state, self-deception occurs. This does not mean there is only self-deception. But actually I could argue — since you flagged that point — considering the equipment we are born with and the culture we are born into, that there is only self-deception. However, this is a separate point to the one you are making about cannibalism, it in your thesis being the principal reason for self-deception.”
Sorry for the “unfair” correction, sloppy on my part with the use of ‘self’ deception which really does not exist. Let me say this more directly now …
… you are a cannibalistic organism whether you recognize it as the true state of your being or not, regardless of the degree of awareness of the deceptions imposed on you by others, or, the degree of your allowing those deceptions to be imposed on you. There is no self deception in an organism. It either perceives or it deceives dependent upon its ability to do both.
Deception and perception are polar opposite forces that are reflective of the mystery of life itself. They are also complementary forces that when combined form a whole. Like the Chinese yin yang, deception and perception also mutually transform and they are in dynamic equilibrium within interlocking or coupled multidimensional spheres of influence. As one increases the other decreases. These forces have been with us since the beginning of time and, I believe, are the prime regulatory forces of all organisms. From the division of simple cell organisms to control of the lives of multi cell complex human beings, these two forces are always present and regulate the behavior, for better or for worse, of all of them.
Single celled organisms or more complex multi-cell animals always contain networks that perceive and respond to the external environment; closed feedback loops, light sensitive cells, gene triggers, cascade control genes, etc., are all examples of an endless array of perception mechanisms that ‘choose’ (ah-ha the mystery of life) to either deploy, or not deploy, the organism’s associated deceptive tools of dominance.
In all organisms there is always a choice mechanism that perceives the terrain and instructs the organism to take action or no action. The aggregate passive force is perception and the aggregate active force is deception. If the perceptive force is successful it will trigger the deceptive force into a successful action that will propel the organism further through the evolutionary process. If the perceptive force is unsuccessful it will either cause the organism to mark time, be exploited, or perish.
Definitions; again, sorry, but I thought we had gone through this in a past post …
• Deception – 1 a: the act of deceiving b: the fact or condition of being deceived 2: something that deceives
• Perception – 1 a: a result of perceiving : observation b: a mental image : concept 2 obsolete : consciousness 3 a: awareness of the elements of environment through physical sensation b: physical sensation interpreted in the light of experience 4 a: quick, acute, and intuitive cognition : appreciation b: a capacity for comprehension
• Cannibalization is the killing or partially arresting of the spirit, or life force, of another organism. It is possible to partially extinguish another organism’s life force by partially arresting the growth potential of that other organism’s life force through some manner of exploitation or oppression. That other organism is said to be cannibalized.
Yes, I am coming from a much broader viewpoint that encompasses all cannibalization of all organisms, both past and present. This is necessary to set out the concept of externalizations as deceptions, and as common property, and again, to show how the interrelationships of those externalizations affect the entire planet. Nothing happens in the isolation of all of the little boxes of life that does not affect all of the other little boxes of life that we all exist in.
Yes, when you kill (deprive of life) and eat a cow you are cannibalizing it to get your own needs met and sustain your life.
Yes, when you eat an apple you are cannibalizing all of the organisms within it to get your own needs met and sustain your life.
Yes, when you buy an iphone you are cannibalizing a whole string of other organisms, human and otherwise, found in the complex chain of its production so that you can get your own needs met (and here, it is worthwhile to consider that needs, in terms of sustaining your life, may or may not be actual). You could live very well without fulfilling a number of the needs instilled in you by others through deceptions that mess with your process of perception.
Yes, when you deceive your kids with the Father Christmas meme you are cannibalizing their perceptive abilities so that you and your wife can get your own needs met to sustain your lives. You impose a false belief in them so that they will have a burst of joy when Father Christmas drops the goodies on them, a burst of joy that will get you and your wife’s needs to feel good as parents met, and, you also create memories in them that they will cherish and that will serve to strengthen the alliance of your family unit’s cannibalization efforts. You are also being cannibalized by those who have created the deceptive meme in the first place, to sell you otherwise unnecessary products created through the cannibalization of others and to cannibalize your pocket book in the process, leaving fewer resources for your family alliance.
As to whether or not your cannibalization is benign, for you, and your children, and those others you cannibalize in the chain of cannibalization, that is up to you to decide (and your wife in the case of joint decisions to cannibalize), but in all cases some other organism will willingly or unwillingly be deceptively cannibalized in the process. Again; when all is said and done Toby, I believe that you make your own realities (deceptions) in life, through choice, dependent upon your perceptions, within your own sphere of influence. If you don’t, others will make them for you. In choosing your own reality you can choose to label your; deceptions, your externalizations, or, your tools of dominance, what ever you want, but it all boils down to a cannibalization process regulated by perception and perception.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Toby, correction to the above posted comment. I copied in my rephrasing to you regarding; There is no self deception in an organism. It should not have been there.
Here is the corrected with that line deleted …
Sorry for the “unfair” correction, sloppy on my part with the use of ‘self’ deception which really does not exist. Let me say this more directly now …
… you are a cannibalistic organism whether you recognize it as the true state of your being or not, regardless of the degree of awareness of the deceptions imposed on you by others, or, the degree of your allowing those deceptions to be imposed on you. An organism either perceives or it deceives dependent upon its ability to do both.
Power Rangers Unite!
Dan, you are really in FOX bully mode.
What’s up with that?
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
GW has a valid point here regarding our civil liberties.
It is relatively easy for an unethical government to manipulate public opinion until they beg for a “strong man”. In my view, we are on this path in the United States thanks to massive overspending and an extremely weak bank sector that attempts to hide its frailties.
http://whatisthatwhistlingsound.blogspot.com/2010/02/coming-bank-runs.html
The post certainly was useful as an introduction to the truth of Clausewitz’ maxim that War is the continuation of political relations through other means. That continuation necessarily implies a continuum that expands internally as well as externally. The upside of this post for the site is it also generates traffic and much uproar and commentary, all to the fiancial good of the site owner.
Dear ones,
While I may be appreciate some of your opinions, the truth is the truth and we must all repect it and research it with total intellectual honesty.
Your statement regarding Italy (supposedly coming from a former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism)is completely false. No Italian government, no former Italian Prime Minister, no Italian judge (in an official capacity through a verdict)and no former head of Italian counterintelligence has ever made such admissions. It’s not clear either to which bombings in ’50 you refer to since there weren’t many in that period and there was no bombing terror campaign either at that time.
Even for the later events of the seventies – when there really were anarchist/leftwing and fascist bombimgs – there has never been any such declarations as you claim.
You cite Wikipedia. However even the always incensed Wikepedia is full of material errors and intentional deceits (as in this case) by biased writers. You should cite, if you wish to confirm your accusations, an official transcript of the Italian parliamentary acts, which are public documents, not Wikipedia. As I happen to be an Italian and I lived in the country until recently, I know it first hand.
Finally be also assured that I am not by all means an employee of the Italian government: as a matter of fact I do not even stand for the Republic of Italy.
Did you read the Guardian article?
“US intelligence services instigated and abetted rightwing terrorism in Italy during the 1970s, a former Italian secret service general has claimed.”
Did you read Dr. Ganser’s essay on this?
Hi Sergio,
I’m wondering if you are denying the existence of a program called Operation Gladio? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
It’s existence seems to be quite well documented and accepted as truth. Even a mainstream source such as the BBC created a documentary on the subject. http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=16921
What you say about the right wing not engaging in false flag operations as part of the “Stay Behind” CIA operations during the 1950s is most likely correct. So says Danielle Ganser in his authoritative text on “Nato’s Secret Armies”
http://books.google.com/books?id=VAbkogswOmEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=nato%27s+secret+armies&cd=1#v=onepage&q=&f=false
More: http://www.voltairenet.org/article144748.html
However, such a statement is misleading, since most of the false flag terrorism perpetrated by the right wing associates of the Stay Behind program have been documented as being a perversion of the original Operation Gladio program that came to be in the 1970s.
Readers might wish to ask themselves what agenda is being served by the upstream denial of well established facts regarding Operation Gladio and the multiple instances of false flag terror that its operatives engaged in for at least two decades.
Dear ones,
We may all agree that the current regime based on financial fraud is doomed and due to imminent self inflicted collapse. However a lie or a collection of lies which fit so fine in a story and pretend to depict the backstage darker than the darkest midnight won’t advance the cause by any degree. They may rather unduly discredit and cast doubts on the given overall main point made: false flag operations have been actually performed (also) by Western governments.
To George Washington, Ray Duray and Thomas Barton my question is: do you realise that at this very moment in history unnecessary lies will just serve as a support to an agonising system ? Are you, by chance, yourself part of a false flag plan ? Your “truths” are so false to anyone like myself who lived in Italy at the time and who has ever since been reading on the issue that my question is authentic and not by any means provocative.
Yes, I have read what you stated as well “established facts”, the Guardian, the Wikipedia, and I repeat nowhere you can documental proof of the assertions made in the part of the post I commented. Also Dr Daniele Ganser’s work is full of unsupported statements, half-truths and distortions: they all compose a frame of lies with a clear political agenda.
For instance Mr. Felice Casson is described as “an Italian judge”, while he has been a prosecutor (and let me add a rather discredited one, just intended to advance his political career). There could be many other factually incorrect statements on Gladio I could cite in Dr Ganser’s work, and one would need to write an entire confutation book to have a complete case. Nonetheless even he fails short to provide support for what you call “established facts”. Let me repeat: no former Italian Prime Minister, no Italian judge, no former head of Italian counterintelligence admitted that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.
Let’s, please, concentrate on the real issues as, for instance, thermite and nano-thermite particles in 9/11 debris, or the real beneficiaries of the financial support given to banks and investment banks or the true overall cost to all US and European common people of serial bailouts or the slavery work conditions of migrant labourers in China !!!
Please believe me incorrect details are counterproductive. Only the truth may set us free.
Love to you all
Sergio Borrelli
Mr. Borelli, would a more trenchant Mediterranean example have been the US government activities in Greece in the 1960’s and early 1970’s ?
Is the timing of this post intended to comment on the Dubai assassination? If so, what is the implication?
This is a genuine question, not rhetorical.
….So the US government’s going to kill 3000 innocent people, excepting, of course for the Jews (hey, I’m just being a good 911 Conspiracy Soldier)…
Ah, for the sake of clarity, let me rephrase:
So the US government’s going to kill 2200 innocent people…
But somehow, you dorks are safe to idle your day away “revealing the secrets THEY don’t want you to know about.”
Yeah, OK.
I am absolutely sure that the truth lay somewhere in between.. One’s complicity in this scenario doesn’t necessarily mean you have the right to deny its existence.
The name-calling, disdain, and derision says something about you but doesn’t add much to your argument. Do you have one? BTW, steroids will shrink your testicles.
Very few have suggested that the US government killed anyone in 9/11. There is strong evidence however that the US government or its agents were complicit in allowing it to happen. Has there been an investigation of all the outsourced workers in the buildings prior to the demolition of 3 buildings, one of which was not even attacked?
Proof that an entire population can be brain washed or too frightened by authorities to raise any real opposition.
The refusal to investigate the incident is cheeky beyond words and consistent with behavior since then like so much happening in the “unthinkable” category including the present POTUS representing one thing, getting elected and then, repeatedly, unbelievably continuing the policies and people of the destructive previous administration. We have had a political and financial coup d’tete, and the dictator will be appearing shortly.
All dissension, reminders and comparisons to the Nazi enterprise are relevant and welcome.
“There is strong evidence however that the US government or its agents were complicit in allowing it to happen.”
Ah.
“Has there been an investigation of all the outsourced workers in the buildings prior to the demolition of 3 buildings, one of which was not even attacked?”
And here we have what is presented as the “strong evidence”. Some suggestive question.
rc
Indeed. Those attacking this this post protest too loudly and with very little ‘reason’, much like fearful cultists stopping their ears and shouting insults.
Dude–get help or take your meds.
Dan,
Seriously, get some help. What is with the name calling and hostility?
“So the US government’s going to kill 2200 innocent people…”
What’s war, Dan?
During the period of FLQ action in Quebec, Canada the RCMP (Canada’s version of the FBI) firebombed rural barns and sought to blame this on the FLQ. These actions on the part of the RCMP lead to creation of a Canadian Security Service.
Great work GW. All of it backed up to well known accounts and actual admissions by perpetrators. This is informative and should surprise nobody that can fog a mirror. Having some down time I am for the first time posting comments to this fine blog. I am reminded of the late ann richards when she left the office governor of texas. She was asked if she were interested in hosting a radio call in show. She said no because she would have to listen to the type of people who call into radio call in shows. Reviewing the comments here make me thing of dear ol ann. Some comments here are great and the product of thoughtful people who read your article. A few are clearly dangerous and or cognitively impaired. Some are shocked that some have divergent views and some are clearly autistic and very disconcerted that you swayed from direct economic reporting. Odd collection and well, if some of the comments (such as Dan who likes to hurl ad-hominen insults) are represeantive in any way of people who read the better blogs–we are doomed and extinction is over due.
I am surprised about the lack of meaningful discussion you get here when you move just slightly beyond useful intel for tactical advantages in making money. You finance types really are like some scifi robot nightmare. Well, after surveying the sound and the fury, here is something I believe everyone can agree actually happened, at least. Manuel Noriega: Contract CIA agent, drug cartel leader and first narco/cleptocracy of the Americas. So bad, we even had to invade his canal zone, I mean country, to put him in jail where he sits today, in communicado. Of course, he was a strong anti communist ally, personally groomed by the Pentagon, the CIA as our bastard in central America, one in a series by the way, collect all of them for complete anti communist hegemony. He was supposed to be the legitimate leader of the strategically important Panama Canal, a trusted ally and we just let him, deliberately turn into a shockingly corrupt state sponsor of world wide drug dealing and money laundering. I mean, there must be somebody out there that dealt some bearer bonds or something with this guy, please, enlighten us. I will come up with more glaringly obvious examples of state sponsored murder and mayhem, as the deafening silence continues on some memorable episodes of unspeakable sovereign cruelty. By the way, does the British Crown’s terrorism of N Ireland count? Just wondering.
VIEW
The Secret War Machine
The missing link between the Contras and al Qaeda.
By Bruce Sterling
It may come as a shock that Vice Admiral John Poindexter has popped up as a visionary cyberguru for Darpa. Until recently, the former national security adviser was best known as a convicted conspirator in the late-’80s Iran-Contra scandal. Poindexter’s career move makes sense, though, when you consider the astonishing prescience of his scheme to fund covert operations in Central America. The visionary spirit of Iran-Contra never died, and today it’s alive and well and fueling the War on Terror.
People born during Iran-Contra are now nearly old enough to drink, so a quick review is in order. In the mid-’80s, the Republican Reagan administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress differed on how to deal with the menace of the leftist government in Nicaragua. Anticommunist Reaganites favored the classic communist tactic of secretly arming opposition movements (“contra-revolutionaries”), while Congress considered this strategy sneaky, illegal, and destabilizing to the international order. Congress prevailed, cutting off the CIA’s funding for a proxy war in Central America.
But Congress was merely a local outfit. The anticommunist faction both privatized and globalized, replacing vanished public subsidies with private funds from right-wing charities like the National Defense Council, the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund, and the Western Goals Foundation, as well as from supportive Muslims with oil money to burn. The conspirators secretly acquired weapons from Israel and sold them to Iran at a hefty profit, which they turned over to guerrillas fighting the Nicaraguan regime.
Admiral Poindexter’s PROF interoffice email system (powered by an IBM mainframe) seems pretty backward nowadays, but there was an unmistakable Enron-style genius in routing charity money and Saudi profits through Israeli arms contractors to buy munitions for Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar: These legendary innovators created something truly new and brilliant – an offshore, autonomous, self-financing, global, anticommunist venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign nation. Lieutenant Colonel North liked to call it Project Democracy. It ran loops around Congress the way offshore Internet porn rings dodge the US Customs Service.
Hezbollah, the Islamist terror network that still thrives in the ghastly politics of the Middle East, may have triggered the operation’s demise. Iran, which had bought hundreds of small rockets through Oliver North, leaned on Hezbollah to release seven American hostages, a cause close to President Reagan’s heart. Somebody, quite likely a Hezbollah terrorist, leaked the truth about arms-for-hostages to Al Shiraa, a Lebanese newsweekly. The leak set in motion a stumbling series of revelations and attempted stonewalls that ended the short, inventive life of Project Democracy.
Considering the audacity of the scheme’s challenge to Constitutional authority, its principals have done surprisingly well in the years since. Oliver North gave up his uniform to become what he always had been at heart: a right-wing political agitator. Elliot Abrams now manages Venezuelan revolution, counterrevolution, and counter-counterrevolution for the State Department. And, of course, John Poindexter is in charge of the Department of Defense’s Total Information Awareness program.
But the real success story is the Contras, or rather their modern successor: al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden’s crew is a band of government-funded anticommunist counterrevolutionaries who grew up and cut the apron strings. These new-model Contras don’t need state support from Washington, Moscow, or any Accessory of Evil. Like Project Democracy, they’ve got independent financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley. Instead of merely ignoring and subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tries to destroy them outright. Suicide bombers blew the Chechnyan provisional puppet government sky high. Cars packed with explosives nearly leveled the Indian Parliament. We all know what happened to the Pentagon.
The next Iran-Contra is waiting, because the contradictions that created the first have never been resolved. Iran-Contra wasn’t about eager American intelligence networks spreading dirty money in distant lands; it was about the gap between old, legitimate, land-based governments ruled by voters and the new, stateless, globalized predation. The next scandal will erupt when someone as molten, self-righteous, and frustrated as John Poindexter uses stateless power for domestic advantage. That’s the breaking point in American politics: not when you call in the plumbers, but when you turn them loose on the opposition party. Then the Empire roils in a lather of sudden, indignant fury and strikes back against its own.
Email Bruce Sterling at Bruces@well.com.
Courtesy of Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.04/view.html?pg=4
1993 WTC bombing ?
‘Remember the Maine’ ?
Gulf of Tonkin ?
Anthrax 2001 ?
USS LIBERTY ?
It is astonishing, how far the paranoid lunacy, once unleashed, can go in seeking conspiracy in every act of violent terrorism. In its world of fantasy, there are no fanatic terrorists and the only bad guys are the governments and their security agencies. Of course, there have been many clandestine operations in the history, some of them very unsavoury, but not all of them have been unjustifiable. Once the conspirative mind is set free, the sky is the limit. For example, one of the antisemitic rants in the postwar 50es had it, that Hitler was in fact a puppet in the hands of international clique of plutocrats, most of them Jewish, whose task was to provoke Germany into a war in which it would be completely destroyed. As another example I would suggest to the conspiration wackoes a theory claiming, that the Pearl Harbour attack was actually perpetrated by US planes disguised as Japanese. Of course, in a democratic and free society, all questions shold be raised and legitimate doubts fully aired, as long as a minimum of common sense and mental sanity are present.
“It is astonishing, how far the paranoid lunacy, once unleashed, can go…” just brings me back to the well-put observation above:
“Conspiracy theory has been a very effective meme to silence anyone who questions the official version in this country.”
The game can be played many ways. This one —
“… in seeking conspiracy in every act of violent terrorism. In its world of fantasy, there are no fanatic terrorists and the only bad guys are the governments and their security agencies” –
pretends that anyone who doesn’t buy the official theory, flimsy and unbelievable on its face, is incapable of evaluating alternatives and coming up with likelier scenarios as to what actually happened.
No, we either take the official government issue version of events or we are PARANOID LUNATICS.
I think this kind of logic (?) reminds us why it is a good ideea to keep in mind that, well, sometimes governments tell lies. Sometimes they tell really significant, terrible lies. Like when they want to start wars. Like when they want an excuse to take our freedoms away. They want us too scared to say no to their war. They want us indignant with some “enemy” they have picked out.
When some powerful people wanted the USA Patriot act passed, Anthrax mysteriously became a threat to those who were dithering too long wanting to, oh, read what it said. When some powerful people wnted TARP passed, they threatened some of the same foot-dragging senators with the prosped to violence in the streets and “martial law.”
In fact the recent financial coup has many elements in common with some of the military lies and their objectives. Take away our freedoms and divert our resources where the big boys want them to go.
Or is that more paranoia?
Dear Evelyn
I am afraid you misunderstood my comment in saying:
“…anyone who doesn’t buy the official theory… is uncapable of evaluating alternatives and coming up with with likelier scenarios…”
Writing this you probably missed my last sentence:
“… in a democratic and free society all questions should be raised and legitimate doubts fully aired, as long as a minimum of common sense and mental sanity are present”
This basic condition of applying sane logic by no means precludes any critical scrutiny of the official version in describing the events and the situation issuing. However it definitely rejects 2 absurd and dogmatic assumptions made automatically on this blogsite:
1) All official statements, anywhere and anytime, are always based on purposeful lies, designed to mislead the public. Of course, there have been historical examples of such lies, (one of them Neville Chamberlain’s claim in 1938 about achieving enduring peace, lulling Britons into dangerous tranquility) but this does not imply, that all statements should automatically be viewed as false without probing such allegation.
2)There are absolutely no terrorist regimes or organizations existing on our planet. They are merely a mind creation of CIA and other security agencies invented to scare the public, or even worse, they have been established by those agencies, who are using them as their puppets to perpetrate acts of violence creating general panic and feeling of unsafety.
An outstanding example of insane and absurd conclusions based on these dogmatic assumptions is the claim, that the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by the CIA and the Mossad. You Evelyn yourself are scoffing at “Americans who will tell you with a straight face that Sadam attacked the US on 9/11”. You may be right on that, but why not apply the same measure to those thinking it was the CIA and the Mossad? Are you not applying a double standard?
A simple test of an assumption’s validity is the “reductio ad absurdum”, tryng to proof it under various extreme conditions. If it holds under these conditions, the validity has been established, if not, it should be discarded. Therefore I suggested the “Pearl Harbour” test to probe the assumption, that all government statements are false and the only place where evil perpetrators can be found, is in your country’s defense and security organs. I presume, nobody with a sane mind would accept the idea, that Pearl Harbour attack was perpetrated by US planes in disguise, in ordrer to drag the nation into WWII.
Yes, governments sometimes tell lies but not always. And yes, the lies are somtimes told to drag nations into war as it was in 1914 when WWI started. But sometimes the lies are told to lull a nation into complacency as shown by Neville Chamberlain. BTW 70 years ago it was Winston Churchill, who was denounced as a warmonger, trying to whipe up anti-Nazi histeria and fear from Htler’s sinister intentions. I am afraid, that a great part of the bloggers, if they would be alive then, would take part with the wrong side applauding Chamberlain.
Let me conclude with a paraphrase on your comment (applying the same token as you did, under the somehow presumptuous attitude, that all the truth rests exlusively on your side and there is no middle course possible):
The game of discrediting anything the government says or does can be played in many ways. This one –
“Conspiracy theory has been a very effective meme to silence anyone who questions the official version of this country” –
pretends that anyone who doesn’t buy blindly every fantastic narrative created by a feverish conspirative mind, flimsy and unbelievable on its face, is incapable of analytic thinking and evaluating alternatives, in order to come up with plausible scenarios as to what actually happened.
Aristoteles,
If you believe this site is rife with absurdity and insanity, why do you spend time here?
You assert there are “2 absurd and dogmatic assumptions made automatically on this blogsite.” You then assemble a couple of very silly strawmen to knock the stuffing out of.
1) All official statements, anywhere and anytime, are always based on purposeful lies, designed to mislead the public.
2)There are absolutely no terrorist regimes or organizations existing on our planet.
I wonder if there is anyone on the planet who believes either of these things.
So you can pretty safely denounce any examples of “insane and absurd conclusions” you come up with because only loonies believe things bases on your “assumptions” as stated above.
You seem to think you can imply, then, that any thinking showing any “symptoms” of contamination falls automatically off the edge off rationality.
No shades of grey?
Are ALL assertions of CIA and Mossad involvement in nefarious activities banished to your loony bin? What business do you think those organizations are in,anyway?
“ …Evelyn yourself are scoffing at “Americans who will tell you with a straight face that Sadam attacked the US on 9/11″. You may be right on that, but why not apply the same measure to those thinking it was the CIA and the Mossad? Are you not applying a double standard?”
No. I can offer you a mountain of evidence supporting claims that Sadam was not involved in 9/11.
You need to study up a bit on logic. Please do not insist on this:
‘A simple test of an assumption’s validity is the “reductio ad absurdum”, tryng to proof it under various extreme conditions. If it holds under these conditions, the validity has been established, if not, it should be discarded.’
You misunderstand the concept.
Your understanding is more like the “slippery slope” argument that recognizes there is a huge gradient of gray areas between black and white, becomes terrified of the uncertainty, and concludes that, as white is the first step down the slippery slope to black, we must ban all white!
So you set up another straw cerature (‘“Pearl Harbour” test to probe the assumption, that all government statements are false and the only place where evil perpetrators can be found, is in your country’s defense and security organs.’)
From your capacity to use complete sentences and spell I gather you’re an adult, but I was doing better at rational arguments when I was 14. Go look up “straw man arguments” and come back when you have wrestled with the ideea that other people can see through them (unless they are very slow of mind), and perhaps swear off ‘cleverly’ creating them.
If you ask why do I spend time on this site abundant with weird ideas, the reason is my curiosity about the pathology of the conspiracy believers’ minds. I am eager to understand what makes those minds tick, leading them to their bizarre conclusions and what are their view of the world in which we live. I must tell you, that this site and especially your pathetic reactions (not only to my comments)to the opinions which you dislike, provide a clear picture of the mental universe of your species.
Nevertheless,during our discourse I attempted to be civil and regard you with respect, as I always do, especially with those holding different views. Unfortunately, as soon as you ran short of arguments that could be uphold by a minimum of sane mind and common sense you resorted to infantile personal insults. This being the case, I feel no longer to be obliged by etiquette and take off my gloves in responding appropriately.
First of all, you attempt to provide me with a condescending pseudo-scholarly lesson on rational argumentation, accusing me of various fallacies, such as straw man and slippery slope arguments. You have conveniently forgotten that you are using them freely in your own comments. When you say that “sometimes governments say lies” you are afraid to accept to admit explicitly “that at times they tell also the truth” being afraid, this will lead you further on the slippery slope to an illogical conclusion that governments always say the truth. Contrary to you, I for my part fully agreed, that governments sometimes tell lies, so it is obviously you being blind to the various shades of grey.
Also please, don’t preach to me on the concept of “reductio ad absurdum”. Although you are bragging that you were better at logical arguments when you were 14 (why exactly 14, is this the age when your education ceased?), this subject appears to be utterly beyond yor grasp and mental capability.
Worse of all, accusing others of fallacies, you are trespassing the basic laws of a rational discussion by using ad hominem argumentation, wild generalizations and irrelevant conclusions. One outstanding example of your “logical” reasoning:
Proposition a): Some assertions of CIA and Mossad involvement should be considered seriously.
Proposition b): There is a mountain of evidence supporting claims that Sadam (clearly a non-nefarious person)was not involved in 9/11
Ergo: The allegations that CIA and/or the Mossad have perpetrated the 9/11 attacks should be taken seriously and should not be ridiculed.
Never mind that there is much more evidence rendering as absurd the canard about the 9/11 tragedy being an inside job. The simultaneous attack on Pentagon (being one of the sanctuaries of evil), Osama bin Ladens confession etc. are all irrelevant trifles and you will not allow them to spoil your conspiration theory.
Since I do not intend to waste any more time trying to convince you that the earth is not flat I bid you farewell, leaving you to wallow in your hallucinatory world of conspiration theories. May you enjoy your nightmares about vile CIA, MI5 and Mossad agents chasing you, until the happy-end of finding a safe refuge in the cave of the sage with the long white beard, and his gang of AK toting jihad fighters. They are waiting eagerly to meet the 72 virgins, promised in paradise by Allah to every martyr, but maybe that after a long waiting they will be satisfied with a substitute.
Conspiracy theories just another religion. There must be something or someone controlling us because it’s too scary to think otherwise.
Someone must be in control. It all must have some deeper meaning.
“Conspiracy theories just another religion. There must be something or someone controlling us because it’s too scary to think otherwise. Someone must be in control.” –
Oooh, I get it. Like that one about the spooky guy with the long white beard hiding out in a cave somewhere with his dialysis machine, masterminding the thwarting of all the air defenses of the mightiest nation on the planet Earth?
He’s like, God.
He’s so powerful even Dick Cheney can’t stop him. His magic flying henchmen have magic fireproof pasports that miraculously fall out of the sky where the FBI can find them, just so the evil Saudi’s can thumb their noses at us — despit the inferno that burned up ALL the black boxes on all the planes. He’s so powerful he forced the US to round up all the members of his family that were in the US at the time and whisk them to safety, away from prying (FBI) busybodies. He’s so amazingly powerful that he made the US attack and kill hundreds of thousands of people who had absolutelynothing to do with 9/11, in countries that weren’t even Saudi Arabia, as he FOOLED the US government and military into beliving that – look over there! Sadam has WMD’s! He’s evil! Go get him! – and we did.
There are still Americans to this day who will tell you with a straight face that Sadam attacked the US on 9/11 (and that we have to get the US govmint out of Medicare). That is one mind-bendingly powerful dude.
Me, I believe in the power of US propaganda to befuddle an awful lot of its own citizens, but then that’s just my theory.
It’s sad to see NC becoming so much of an echo chamber for conspiracy-minded political thinking.
One can decry numerous aspects of the GFC without going all-in with GW.