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  1. TopTop #451
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Dr. Fauci’s Double Standards: Polarizing the Nation on Hydroxychloroquine

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by occihoff: View Post
    So why do you think Dr. Fauci has done this apparently crazy and even homicidal thing? And why do so many other experts agree with him?

    A few more points, Richard...

    The “Event 201 Corona-virus Playbook” mandates that the Crisis is to be handled in a specific manner:
    No alternative medical modalities other than Vaccines are to be tolerated in the mainstream media –Or- on the internet. I first learned about “Event 201” from this woman, Dana Ashlie, in this video.

    All throughout, Dana Ashlie makes some very telling points. @ 48:00, she shows footage from within the "Event 201" meeting, where the insiders discuss how they will control & manage the Outbreak, and what new measures must be taken when people spread any information or "cures" that runs counter to the official CDC / WHO / Pharma / Gates Foundation Party-line.

    A few days later, I learned, from this interview of Dr. Francis Boyle by Dr. Joseph Mercola, that “Event 201” was "a table-top exercise” - meaning a War Games exercise.



    Dr. Francis Boyle drafted the Biological Weapons Anti- Terrorism Act (BWATA) of 1989 - and he declares that this virus is a Bio-weapon. Here at WaccoBB - as elsewhere on the internet - the testimony of Dr. Francis Boyle regarding Covid-19 has been shuffled off & categorized as a "conspiracy theory". I posted it in the civil "Coronavirus" category, but our moderator moved it into the "Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories" category.

    = MORE =


    For a Full Tour of the "Table-top Exercise", "Event 201" :

    Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Highlights Reel


    Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 1, Intro and Medical Countermeasures (MCM) Discussion

    Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 2, Trade and Travel Discussion


    Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 3, Finance Discussion


    Event 201 Pandemic Exercise: Segment 4, Communications Discussion and Epilogue Video






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  3. TopTop #452
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"


    Open Letter to Dr. Richard Hoff, aka occihoff

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Mayacaman: View Post
    Quote occihoff wrote:
    Fascinating, Mayacaman! I greatly appreciate this intimate revelation of your extraordinary personal history, and your spiritual earnestness and intensity.

    It has been four months and a week, Dr. Hoff, since you gave me gratitude for the post in which I bared my heart and shared the story of my ‘high school graduation present’ with the world. For the past four months I have been meaning to respond to your kind words, but have put it off until now.

    As an adherent of the school of Wilhelm Reich,
    Dr. Hoff, I think you can appreciate the manner in which the A.M.A. lords it over the field of ‘Medicine’ in Amerika. In truth, we are both heretics; I because I advocate the use of “Electro-therapy” as a modality in dealing with viruses of all sorts – and you because you have an Orgone Chamber in your little ol’ housit.

    My “issues” with the A.M.A. started at the tender age of seventeen, and in the circumstances that I have described.

    If there are any “Amerikan Exceptionalists” out there within the sound of my megaphone who think “It Can’t Happen Here” with regards to the sort of psychiatric persecution of Christians that went on in the old Soviet Union by the men in white smocks armed with drugs and syringes here in Amerika... Well, I’ve got news for them. It was happening here in the good old U.S.A. as long ago as 1967.

    Dr. Eldridge would have let me out of that bloody place after two weeks if I would have signed on to the formula that I was “crazy” when I came in and was “seeing things that don’t exist” ( i.e., LORD Jesus). But I could not do that. He is Real – Beyond the reality of our own little mundane plane.

    You may perceive that seeing LORD Jesus did not turn me into either a religious fanatic or a “right-wing” political reactionary. I still retain a profound respect for the elements that are deep and true in Buddhism and Taoism. My “politics” have remained the same. I was raised a peacenik and I still am one. War is still a Racket. Guns & Cannons & Bombs & Germ warfare, etc., are all “evil inventions” – to borrow a phrase from St. Paul.

    I realize that I have expressed my frustration with the folks in this forum for their tendency to not study or read up on all of the information about this “crisis.” It has occurred to me lately that I should be somewhat more tolerant. After All, one cannot expect other people to live up to ones own standards. And, if I am "extraordinary" - as you put it - I freely admit that I have nothing that I have not received. I encourage you all to be diligent and to study, as I do.

    I also realize that the probable reason why Yahshua Ha’ Messiach appeared to me on Christmas Day in 1966 was most likely because I had put myself through a crash course in comparative religion & had read everything - all of the texts of the six “major religions” : the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah & the Prophets, the Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, the Tao Te Ching, the New Testament, the Koran, the “Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh” & the “Autobiography of a Yogi.”

    My Vision of LORD Jesus was my reward for having had an Open Mind. “Those who seek me early shall find me.” In the same manner, I encourage everyone to be open to information from all sources in this current crisis. That’s the method that Mae Brussell taught her disciples.

    The whole field is like a tapestry or mosaic. One must be willing to study all of the phenomenal world with a magnifying glass like a scholar, and go over it all {the whole open pit} with a trowel and a basting brush, as an archeologist does.




    Last edited by Mayacaman; 08-18-2020 at 11:23 PM.
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  5. TopTop #453
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"




    Open Letter to Sandy Murphey, aka Shandi

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Mayacaman: View Post
    Quote Shandi wrote:
    Thank you for sharing the painfully intimate details of what you suffered while incarcerated in the "Langley-Porter" CIA drug experiment facility. I'm glad you made it out alive and in one piece mentally, if not emotionally. How could anyone go through this, and not be damaged?

    But here you are, trying to share information that's too frightening to be believed. The result is rejection for the "protection" of the status quo.

    Front runners are always a target. Be safe!
    Dear Sandy, as I have shared with Dr. Hoff, It has taken me this long to get back to you on this. I realize that the reason for this is because there is a threshold of pain here – and shame, also - that has not gone away, even after so many years. After all, people reason ‘If his father, who was a Doctor, put him in a Mental Hospital, he must have been crazy.’ I’ve even had ministers tell me as much, after I have shared the details of my story with them.

    I felt compelled to tell the whole story, from the beginning, because someone asked me “Do you believe that a vaccination for the virus will contain a microchip?” I am compelled to explain why I am more than critical of the A.M.A. – which is a corrupt dinosaur of an institution - functionally, an arm of the Rockefeller Empire - and which has, historically co-operated with the C.I.A., another wing of the Rockefeller Syndicate on a number of "Operations" & "Projects” over the years.

    Langley-Porter Neuro-psychiatric Institute in the 1960’s was known on Haight Street as a C.I.A. drug experimentation facility. I was raped in that hospital. Not sexually, but with a syringe. And that is why I post now. I have experienced the cutting edge of brazenly brutal “medical science” in all of its coercive violence, masquerading as “healing.”

    My dear departed dad – whom I loved dearly – explained to me, thirteen months before he committed me, the reason for his animus towards my person. He described it as a function of his own “Saturn Complex” – the deep subterranean drive within a father to clip the wings and “level’’ a son who is perceived as being smarter or better in some ways than himself. In a sense, My father gave me a wonderful gift – the awareness of this tendency in the male psyche: the Saturn Complex.

    It explains a whole lot: Why there is continual War, & why each succeeding generation of Males sacrifices the up-and-coming generation. In 1970, the Year of the Kent State massacre, a radical collective in the Art Department at Cal, Berkeley produced a poster in Protest. It read : “Amerika Is Devouring Its Children”* Well, Amerika sure was. And it’s still going on, Denny.


    **********


    Attached Thumbnails (click thumbnail for larger view) Attached Thumbnails (click thumbnail for larger view) Expand  
    Last edited by Mayacaman; 08-31-2020 at 03:58 PM.
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  7. TopTop #454
    occihoff's Avatar
    occihoff
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    Thank you once again, Mark, for baring your soul like this. I feel much closer to you.

    By the way, I must tell you that I am not a "doctor." I am a mere "bachelor." Nor do I have an orgone chamber--much as I respect and have learned from the writings of Wilhelm Reich, plus my experiences undergoing actual body psychotherapy.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Mayacaman: View Post
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  9. TopTop #455
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by occihoff: View Post
    Thank you, also, Richard Hoff. I figured I owed it to you to pick up that thread and say a few more words on the subject. But as I say, there was a threshold of pain that I had to overcome before I could utter them in print, in public. *I did inquire of Judith Iam - who once lived with you and Margaret - if you had an Orgone box in your house, and she said she thought you did. -For what it's worth.

    You may notice, Richard, at the top of this column, that Barry Chertov, our erstwhile moderator, saw fit to move my comments that were made in response to a comment you'd made in a thread I initiated that still remains (miraculously) in the uptown ward,


    Dr. Fauci’s Double Standards: Polarizing the Nation on Hydroxychloroquine


    >>> down into the Ghetto of the Ninth Ward...

    Posted in reply to the post by occihoff:

    A few more points, Richard...

    The “Event 201 Corona-virus Playbook” mandates that the Crisis is to be handled in a specific manner:
    No alternative medical modalities other than Vaccines are to be tolerated in the mainstream media –Or- on the internet. I first learned about “Event 201” from this woman, Dana Ashlie, in this video.

    All throughout, Dana Ashlie makes some very telling points. @ 48:00, she shows footage from within the "Event 201" meeting, where the insiders discuss how they will control & manage the Outbreak, and what new measures must be taken when people spread any information or "cures" that runs counter to the official CDC / WHO / Pharma / Gates Foundation Party-line...

    ...

    And that's totally in Sync with the "Event 201" playbook !

    =
    *go *figure *=

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  10. TopTop #456
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Mayacaman:
    Quote podfish wrote:
    if you're trying to persuade people of something, it helps to know why they may not already accept the ideas you're pushing - to think about what are considered red-flags, that indicate to your audience that the information being presented isn't necessarily credible. It's not hard to figure out what those of us who are resisting your message think, what we find a bit ridiculous or unconvincing, because we're not shy about pointing it out.

    When someone presents a case that challenges the mainstream thinking, has believable explanations for why these challenges aren't necessarily being accepted, and new reasons on why they should, it'll be far better recieved.

    Still, though, there's the need to deal with the limitations of the media: this is the interwebs for people with short attention spans. Information presented here has to be engaging, pithy and leave you eager to learn more
    Seems to me, if I remember correctly Peter, that around about a fortnight ago, you said in passing that you were taking a class in how to open links. How's that coming? Have you done any homework lately? Because -once more- I would present this here link for you-all to Open:
    That's the original, unedited version - from the horses mouth - of what I call the "Event 201 Playbook".

    Now, you may have a short attention span - as podfish confesses he does - but if you can afford to spend thirty-six minutes of your precious time sitting in one place watching a video, I would recommend that you invest in this particular look / see. It may take a bit longer than the thirty-six minutes that it should run, because it stops and pauses while the talking heads are spinning their spiels.

    Watch it anyway - even if it takes an hour. The silent moments are precious learning experiences, while the wheel is in spin, and the dopes are caught in mid-sentences, with those tell-tale looks on their faces.

    This is the War Game "Table Top" exercise that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, John Hopkins University, the CDC, the World Economic Forum, & the UN put on in December of 2019 in anticipation of the "Main Event." At 15:19, Stephen Redd, the Man
    from the C.D.C., comes on, wearing his Naval Intelligence Officer's uniform. He has a few very important things to tell his co-conspirators. Listen.

    If you-all keep coming down here into the Ninth Ward because you feel a little ill-at-ease about the party-line Uptown, and you sometimes wonder if we are being played - Then, Watch this Video ! Stay with it.

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  12. TopTop #457
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    Quote Quote podfish wrote:
    if you're trying to persuade people of something, it helps to know why they may not already accept the ideas you're pushing - to think about what are considered red-flags, that indicate to your audience that the information being presented isn't necessarily credible. It's not hard to figure out what those of us who are resisting your message think, what we find a bit ridiculous or unconvincing, because we're not shy about pointing it out.

    When someone presents a case that challenges the mainstream thinking, has believable explanations for why these challenges aren't necessarily being accepted, and new reasons on why they should, it'll be far better recieved.

    Still, though, there's the need to deal with the limitations of the media: this is the interwebs for people with short attention spans. Information presented here has to be engaging, pithy and leave you eager to learn more

    This is perhaps one reason why you "may not already accept the ideas [I'm] pushing" podfish. You are not willing to Question the Sacrosanct position in the Dialectic of so-called "Liberal" Media pundits like Amy Goodman, who hosted the talking head Dr. Peter Daszak at the very beginning of the Pandemic, and established his Spin on the Origin of the Virus.


    Name:  Two_Charts_Mixed.png
Views: 410
Size:  807.5 KB


    Sorry, but the so-called "Left" is Quite Kept.
    = And = We Are Being Continually Played.




    Last edited by Mayacaman; 09-03-2020 at 03:39 PM.
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  14. TopTop #458
    Barry's Avatar
    Barry
    Founder & Moderator

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"


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  16. TopTop #459
    infojockey's Avatar
    infojockey
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Barry: View Post
    You might benefit from an accurate perception of actual conspiracy. You do realize that various bits of nefarious business conducted on this planet are done in secret, yes? Have been for maybe 10,000 years, right? And you realize that things can be kept secret by the use of camouflage - lying, deception, deflection of attention. This is not esoteric arcana, this is how things are done in govt., business and CRIME. How many criminals do you imagine announce their plans? No brainer. So it becomes a matter of detecting which conspiracy theories are actual descriptions of chains of command, tactics, false flag operations, character assassination, propaganda, etc. I mean, there are serious military and political analysts, very bright men and women, who spend their entire careers trying to suss who is doing what to whom invisibly.

    So start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee, with a Senate investigation into CIA funded and staffed experiments on human cognition with the aim of a) getting a spy to confess, b) getting a spy to change sides and work for the CIA, c) discovering a personality type that is easy to manipulate d) putting a manipulable personality type into a hypnotized state. What is your take on the "Manchurian Candidate" phenomenon? The Church Committee hearings uncovered several programs designed to use drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation in order to get someone to do something at a particular time and place. You understand that hypnotism is a real phenomenon, I'm sure. So here we are with a govt investigation that reveals a world of persuasive techniques being studied, invented invented and employed, for real, by a govt. agency, in secret, for a hidden agenda.

    Why do you think that this secret world does not exist? Why do you denigrate the topic when without the data that is revealed by a Snowden or an Assange or a Manning, we face the machinations of a rampant clandestine fascism that should be as much a worry to the average citizen as global warming or the fate of baby harp seals? Refusal to admit that conspiracy exists is a form of naivete that can destroy a culture, a nation, a tribe, a belief system. So let's not assume that all conspiracy is crap. Doing that when the data is at hand makes one into a co-conspirator, an ally, a participant with those who require secrecy and stupidity by a dumbed down public. Let's not be dumb about certain political realities or we will get what we deserve, ja?
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  18. TopTop #460
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"


    A Few Observations on the Incidence of
    “Conspiracy Theories” in “Reality”



    One of the first times I became aware of the strange bi-partisan use of the term “conspiracy theory” was in the year 1991, in the course of listening to the radio. It was the second incidence of the use of the term that brought the catharsis.

    I remember hearing Phillip Maldari on KPFA taking calls after he had played a tape of Doug Dowd holding forth on the Subject of Economics. Doug Dowd had mentioned the subject of the National Debt.

    I called in to say that the “National Debt” was owned by the Prime Banks – which had acquired the “Debt” and made it grow through the systemic function of the Wall Street branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.

    -Furthermore, I stated that the stockholders of the “Class A” (the “preferred”) stock of the prime banks are the ones who collect the Interest on the “National Debt.”

    Well, Phillip Maldari didn’t bother to dialog on that subject. Instead, he just cut me of (Click!) and shouted “That’s a conspiracy theory !” and went on to the next caller. I was stung, a bit puzzled by the vehemence of the man, but took it in stride.

    Shortly after that, in the scheme of things, I was playing with the A.M. radio dial one night, and happened to come across Rush Limbaugh, holding forth on the subject of Economics. Rush is a person that I have always loathed - on general principles. Still, for some reason or other, I let the dial linger on that spot. He was taking calls.

    No sooner had I tuned in to good ol’ Rush, some Mid-Westerner (from the Southern Mid-West, judging by his accent) called in to say that the Federal Reserve Bank is a “Privately owned Joint Stock Company.” –And what did good ol’ (10-4, ditto, good buddy) Rush do? He immediately hung up on that caller (Click !) and decried, with vehemence and considerable contempt, “That’s a conspiracy theory!” Bingo.

    Bingo. That was the moment in time when I realized that the Institution known as the “Federal Reserve Bank” was a hot potato. For, Lo & Behold, “left-wing” talking heads @ Pacifica & “right-wing” talk jocks @ Clear Channel were reacting in exactly the same manner at the mere mention of any suggestion that the Fed might be a privately owned Money-Cartel.

    It was as if a red light in the studio began to flash as soon as any caller mentioned the "Federal Reserve Bank" in a critical manner. Whether it was @ Clear Channel or @ Pacifica, the response was the same : [Click !] followed by the exclamation : “That’s a conspiracy theory!”

    Not many people in the general public were aware of the birth of the phrase. The term – the juxtaposition of the words “conspiracy” with the word “theory” - was first coined by the philosopher Karl Popper in the 1950’s. It was in the wake of the first critical appraisals of the paperback “abridged” version of the Warren Commission Report in 1964 that the term took on a life of its own.

    The actual, full transcripts of the Warren Commission Hearings filled twenty-five (25) volumes of single-spaced, dense text. Each volume was folio-sized (8 ½” x 11”) and three inches thick.

    I happen to know this because the late Mae Brussell (1922-1988) who purchased the whole shebang (she had both the money and the interest to make the purchase) spoke on her radio program on KAZU (Pacific Grove) about the day the sizeable wooden crate from Washington, D.C., arrived at the doorstep of her home in Carmel Valley.

    To her surprise, when she unpacked all twenty-five folio-sized 3-inch thick volumes, she found that there was no Index. From that moment, Mae Brussell resolved to dedicate herself to producing an Index for the exhaustive twenty-five volumes of the Complete Warren Commission Hearings.

    She had seen both Kennedy and Oswald assassinated - live on television. She had heard Oswald say, before he was offed "I'm just a patsy." She was certain Oswald had been silenced because he knew too much. Mae Brussell was a single, divorced mother with two daughters to raise, but she dedicated as much time as she could to the project.


    Seven years later – without the aid of a personal computer – and using only index cards, she produced the Index: also folio-sized, single-spaced, and three inches thick. She had it bound. Being a daughter of the I. Magnin family, she could afford to do that.

    By that time (1971) Mae Brussell knew who had killed John Fitzgerald Kennedy & why. It was all in the transcripts of the Warren Commission Hearings. Through a tangled web of un- pursued leads and dangling threads of testimony that begged questions of the Commissioners - Questions that were never asked - the evidence of whodunit and why was all contained in the exhaustive transcripts themselves.

    From 1971 until shortly before her death from a fast-acting cancer in 1988, Mae Brussell had a good run for seventeen years on her weekly radio show -at first on KLRB- and then on KAZU, during which time she exposed the details of the networks behind the assassination of Kennedy and made a full disclosure of the many things she learned in the course of her continuing research.


    The paperback, condensed version of the “Warren Commission Report” was produced and released to the public in 1964 with the express – and deceitful - prior intention of blaming the assassination of John Kennedy on a “lone nut / lone assassin.”

    During the seven years after 1964, while Mae Brussell and other correspondents & researchers in the field of the Kennedy Assassination were studying the issue of ‘Who killed Kennedy and Why’, the C.I.A. was also busy. After the first wave of critical assessments of the “street” paperback version of the Warren Commission Report were published, and the ‘cat was out of the bag’ the C.I.A. itself set up a little cottage industry churning out paperback after paperback of “conspiracy theories” about who killed Kennedy – all of which were black propaganda and disinformation.

    The upshot of that flood of C.I.A.-engendered paperbacks & disinformation on WKK? (Who Killed Kennedy?) was that a score of critics & hack journalists with C.I.A. ties in the kept press decreed each new essay in the stream to be “just another conspiracy theory.” It was a very deft inside / outside job with the obvious intent of keeping the lid on the Subject. This is called, in C.I.A. parlance, “containment.”

    Another Chapter in the ongoing brainwashing of Amerikans, teaching them to react in a Pavlovian manner at the mention or even the inference of “conspiracy theory”, & further, to think that they discern “conspiracy thinking” in the presence of data that may merely be old-fashioned muckraking, took place in 1991, in the aftermath of the release of Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK”.


    This Operation – which in retrospect had all the earmarks of a Psy-Op - took place in left-wing journals like “Z Magazine”, “The Nation” & “The Progressive”. It was framed in terms of a debate between the “Systems Analysis” folks (the school fostered by Noam Chomsky & M.I.T.) and the remnant of the “left” who held that there had been a conspiracy involved in the Kennedy assassination.

    Roughly a year and a half after this debate in the left-wing journals began – and as it tended to subside – some pollsters did an exit poll among “progressives” and compared the findings with a similar exit poll which had been taken of progressives who had been waylaid while leaving the movie theaters where “JFK” had been playing a year or more before.

    To the surprise of many, after all the “debating” was over, the numbers of the progressives who still believed that there had been a “conspiracy to kill Kennedy” had diminished, significantly. A significant percentage of Amerikan "leftists" had been won over to the "Systems Analysis" approach of Noam Chomsky. In my humble opinion, this is unfortunate. -I am not a advocate of "conspiracy thinking" - I just think that one should have a balanced approached that allows for the existence of conspiracies in politics.

    I would suggest that in the present reality – of the Covid-19 Pandemic and president Trump’s reaction to it - that it would do well for all Americans (& denizens of the Earth) to consider all of the angles – among which are:

    A. The relationship of the CDC & the WHO to the Pharmaceutical Industry (the Medical-Industrial Complex)

    B. The strong likelihood that SARS-CoV-2 is a Lab-created pathogen, and as such, a Bio-Weapon.

    C. The long-term Plan of the power elite to depopulate the “useless eaters” of the earth and implement the final phases of their long-heralded “New World Order.”


    Last edited by Mayacaman; 09-13-2020 at 10:05 AM.
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  20. TopTop #461
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"


    from the article:

    The Deceptions and Disguises of Noam Chomsky


    IV

    Before centering on the issues of Kennedy’s assassination and his presidency, it is important to discuss briefly the general issue of the Cold War, if only to place those subjects in historical context. As with many leftist polemicists, Chomsky usually does not do this. And when he does, he almost exclusively centers on what western powers did to cause the Cold War and continue it.Yet it would seem to most people to be important to review objectively these matters in any historical discussion of American foreign policy from 1945-1991—the obvious reason being that it was the most powerful influence on American foreign policy and world events in that time period. Every president from Harry Truman to George H.W. Bush was strongly influenced by it, to the point that almost every major foreign policy issue was colored by it. Therefore, if one is writing the history of this period, or a part of it, one has to factor this into the discussion. If not, then one can be accused of ignoring, or discounting, the historical backdrop.

    For to deprive these events of their context is to sap them of some of their meaning. Related to this, another problem with Chomsky—as noted above—is imbalance. The policy of aiding foreign countries in their resistance to communism was spelled out way back in 1947 with the Truman Doctrine. This was then endorsed by Congress, and legislation was passed to carry out the policy. One can argue whether or not the Cold War was exaggerated, whether it was too covert, even whether or not it was justified. But one cannot act as if it did not exist. Or that the communist side had no provocations to it, or had no atrocities done in its name. For how else can one explain the Korean War, Hungary in 1956, or the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968? We can continue in this vein with the Chinese usurpation of Tibet or the crimes of Fidel Castro, or those of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, the latter of which are both mind-boggling.

    But as with Pol Pot in Cambodia, these things are minimized, discounted or ignored by people like Chomsky, and the late Alexander Cockburn. Almost all of the critical analysis was and is of the USA. But if things like balance and historical context are left out, then what is this kind of writing really worth?

    Which is another way of saying the following: A theoretical approach is only as good as the person who uses it. If that writer is too biased one way or the other, the result will suffer greatly.
    To make a point of comparison: Michael Parenti is also an advocate of the aforementioned style of analysis we have called “structural” or “systemic”. Yet he understands that there are men and women who occasionally manage to rise above the system and do some good for a great number of people. And Parenti also understands that political conspiracies do exist, and have been proven to exist. To use just one example, the heist of the 2000 election in Florida by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris.

    Even though this crime was done in broad daylight—what with roadblocks set up to hinder people from voting—no person was even interviewed by any law enforcement arm, let alone indicted. The political result of this was horrendous: George W. Bush created a totally unjustified war in Iraq. A war that Al Gore would not have started. Not only do political conspiracies exist, if not addressed, prosecuted, and stopped, they can have terrible results for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people. So to deny they occur is to deny reality. And as Parenti has said, reality is sometimes radical.

    A second problem with using this system-oriented approach is that—as we have seen with Cambodia—it tends to sweep all contrary facts or evidence into an ideological whirlpool. That is, facts get discounted, data gets warped, and key events are sometimes omitted. What is important is keeping the model of that oppressive structure intact. If facts or data collide with that model, it’s the facts or data that get discarded or discounted. The theoretical underpinnings of Chomsky and Edward Herman’s writings on Cambodia were to show that American and western media was distorting a communist revolution. Therefore, they repeatedly used phrases like “the alleged genocide in Cambodia”, or they wrote that “executions have numbered at most in the thousands”. (See this article) This last comment was written in 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime had fallen and some reporters had visited the country to actually see the horrible devastation with their own eyes. At times Chomsky and Herman used Khmer Rouge sources and endorsed books that extensively sourced footnotes to Pol Pot’s government releases. This approach is a serious problem for people who actually care about things like accuracy, fairness, and completeness.

    In the wake of Oliver Stone’s JFK, what was so odd about the Chomsky/Cockburn allegiance to a point of view which privileges the critique of institutions as systems is that it disappeared upon their inquiry into Kennedy’s murder. That is, in both men’s comments on the Warren Commission and its presentation of evidence, you will nowhere find any discussion of the lives and careers of the persons who controlled that investigative body. Men like Allen Dulles, John McCloy, Gerald Ford, and J. Edgar Hoover. Yet, those four men dominated the Commission proceedings. (See Walt Brown’s book, The Warren Omission, especially pp. 84-87).

    This is odd—in two respects. First, it was these men, not Kennedy, who had played large parts in being ‘Present at the Creation’—that is, in forming and then supporting the Eastern Establishment, which was responsible for setting up and maintaining the structure of American government in the 20th century. Any critic of the way institutions of power function would surely be concerned with this detail, because in presenting that particular case, one does not have to juggle, manipulate, and distort the evidence. There are books on these men in which tons of evidence exist to make that demonstration. These four were clearly responsible for some of the worst American crimes of the 20th century. (See James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, second edition, pp. 234-40, 321-40.)

    Secondly, to somehow suppose that those four would not manipulate the evidence in a murder case is simply to ignore the reality of who they were. Yet this is the concept that both Chomsky and Cockburn supported. For instance, as mentioned earlier, Cockburn actually interviewed a junior counsel for the Warren Commission in the pages of The Nation. He never asked him one challenging question. Which is incredible considering the record of that Commission.

    Regarding Chomsky, consider an incident from 1994. Two subscribers to Probe Magazine, Steve Jones and Bob Dean, went to a meeting of the Democratic Socialist Club of Reading, Pennsylvania. Chomsky was the guest speaker. Both Jones and Dean were surprised when Chomsky seemed to veer off topic to go into a tirade against President Kennedy. When Jones and Dean tried to approach and talk to Chomsky about Kennedy afterwards, he became “very defensive and dismissive of us, brushing us off by saying that he’d seen all of the evidence.” Apparently, this meant the declassified record, and therefore there was nothing to address. (e-mail communication with Jones, 6/19/2017)

    Again, this tells us much about Chomsky’s respect—or lack of—for scholarly practice. Because, at that time, the Assassination Records Review Board had just begun declassifying two million pages of records that had previously been kept secret from the public on the JFK case. Hence no one had seen them prior to this time. Including Chomsky. So what was he talking about? The evidence the ARRB declassified concerning the actual circumstances of Kennedy’s murder make the case against Oswald pretty much insupportable. And in just about every way: concerning Oswald, Kennedy’s autopsy, the ballistics evidence, and Oswald’s alibi. (For the last, see Barry Ernest’s book, The Girl on the Stairs.)

    Further, neither Cockburn nor Chomsky seemed to be aware of the transcript of the final executive session of the Warren Commission. Sen. Richard Russell, Representative Hale Boggs, and Senator John Sherman Cooper—who I have previously called the Southern Wing—had planned on expressing their reservations at this meeting about the Single Bullet Theory. The idea that one bullet, CE 399, had gone through both Kennedy and Governor John Connally, smashing two bones, making seven wounds, emerging almost entirely unscathed, and losing almost no volume from its mass. Russell, especially, wanted his objections expressed in the record of this final meeting. Today, we have the record of that meeting. There is no trace of his, or anyone else’s, reservations about the Single Bullet Theory. For the simple reason that there was no stenographic record of that final meeting. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 284)

    In other words, the Eastern Establishment figures—Dulles, McCloy, and Ford, likely coopted Chief Justice Earl Warren and chief counsel J. Lee Rankin into tricking the other members into believing there would be such a record. In fact, a woman was there masquerading as a stenographer. But the Commission’s contract with the stenographic company had expired three days prior. (ibid, p. 295) As Gerald McKnight writes about this matter, the obvious reason for this charade was to keep the strenuous objections of the Southern Wing out of the transcribed record, and thereby maintain the illusion that the Commission had been unanimous in its verdict on the case.
    In other words, here was an almost textbook case of the way institutions tend to ensure the survival of belief in the status quo, one made to order for critics on the Left.

    But in an unexplained inconsistency, both Chomsky and Cockburn dropped the structural approach in their analysis of the Commission. Even though it would seem to be perfectly suited for that type of analysis. Why? Because if one did explain who these men were and what they did with the evidence, then one could conclude that they covered up the true circumstances of Kennedy’s death, for the simple reason he was not a member of their club. Which is a direction they do not want to go in.

    Yet, David Talbot demonstrates this at length in his analysis of the conflicts between President Kennedy and Allen Dulles during 1961. These were centered on Kennedy’s Congo policy, Dulles’ backing of the revolt of the Algerian generals against French President Charles DeGaulle, and ultimately how Dulles lied to Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs operation. (Talbot, pp. 382-417) In other words, in just one year, the CIA Director had come into conflict with Kennedy over three important areas and events. Finally, Kennedy felt he had to terminate Dulles, along with both his Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Director of Plans Richard Bissell.

    The first and only time in 70 years that has been done at the CIA. As Talbot also points out, after Kennedy was killed, Dulles lobbied for a position on the Warren Commission (ibid, pp. 573-74)—something that no one else did. As previously referred to, Walt Brown has shown that Dulles then became the single most active member of the Warren Commission.
    During a meeting with Commission critic David Lifton at UCLA in 1965, Dulles showed utter disdain for any of the evidence that the Commission had ignored or misrepresented to the public, e.g., the Zapruder film frames. (Talbot, p. 591)

    Let us use just one other example. Robert Kennedy was the first Attorney General who actually exercised some degree of control over FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The enmity between the two has been well chronicled by more than one author. After JFK was killed, Hoover had Bobby Kennedy’s private line to his office removed. (Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 315) The Warren Report itself says that Hoover and the FBI were responsible for the vast majority of the investigation. (See, p. xii) Therefore, why would such men—Dulles and Hoover—who clearly had no love for JFK, bend over backwards to find out the truth about his death? The fact is they did not. For example, the day after the murder, Hoover was so concerned about who killed President Kennedy that he was at the racetrack. (Summers, op. cit.) To leave out things like this, and much more, is not writing history. And it is not honest scholarship. It is depriving the reader of important information.

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  21. TopTop #462
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    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"

    from the article:

    The Deceptions and Disguises of Noam Chomsky


    Chomsky operates his views of both Kennedy and his murder via inductive, closed-system reasoning. It is both banal and simplistic: since the USA operates in a sick political and economic system, no one can rise above it. Therefore, Kennedy was really no different than Nixon, Johnson, and Eisenhower. The underlying problem—as writers like Donald Gibson and Richard Mahoney have demonstrated—is that when one actually studies the record, Kennedy was not part of the Power Elite, and did not aspire to be part of it. This is why, as Donald Gibson has shown, Kennedy and David Rockefeller—the acknowledged leader of the Eastern Establishment at the time—had no time or sympathy for each other. (See Gibson’s Battling Wall Street throughout, but especially pp. 73-76) The reason Kennedy made his historic 1957 Senate speech on the impending doom of French colonialism in Algeria was because he had been in Vietnam when the French empire there was collapsing. He understood that the Vietnam conflict had not really been about communism, but about nationalism. And he said this many times, and took considerable heat for it. (See Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal In Africa, pp. 14-23)

    When Oliver Stone’s JFK came out, Chomsky made numerous statements questioning Stone’s thesis about Kennedy’s intent to withdraw from Vietnam. He eventually wrote an essay in Z Magazine on the topic. In essence, he denied all the withdrawal evidence as outlined by Fletcher Prouty and John Newman, who advised Stone on that subject. The problem for Chomsky today is that other scholars decided that Prouty and Newman were on to something. After all, Prouty actually worked on Kennedy’s withdrawal plan in September of 1963. John Newman was writing a revolutionary book on the subject entitled JFK and Vietnam, which was published in January of 1992.

    Seriously considering that evidence, these scholars then went to work. And today, a small shelf of books exists on the subject. These authors agree with the Stone/Prouty/Newman withdrawal thesis, e.g., David Kaiser’s American Tragedy, James Blight’s Virtual JFK, Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster. One reason these new books are there is that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) declassified many pages of documents that support the withdrawal thesis. This declassification process occurred in 1997. Any serious scholar has to consider new evidence when it is declassified. Chomsky did not. In 2000, in a book called Hopes and Prospects, in relation to this issue, he wrote: “On these matters see my Rethinking Camelot ... . Much more material has appeared since, but while adding some interesting nuances, it leaves the basic picture intact.” (pp. 123, 295)

    In other words, the scores of pages of new ARRB documents released on the subject, the recorded tapes in the White House, and the new essays and books published, these amount to “nuances.” The “nuances” include President Johnson confessing in February of 1964 that he himself knows he is breaking with Kennedy’s policy. They include the transcripts of the May 1963 Sec/Def meeting in Hawaii where McNamara is actually executing that withdrawal plan—with no reference to a contingency upon victory. (These and other documents are included in this presentation)

    In 1997, that last piece of evidence convinced some MSM outlets, like The New York Times, that Kennedy was planning on withdrawing from Vietnam at the time of his assassination. We can go on and on. But the point is made. To any objective person, these are not “nuances”. They are integral.

    To show Chomsky's bizarreness on this point, let us use two other instances of just how intent he is to disguise the facts and evidence of Kennedy’s withdrawal plan. One of his older excuses was to say that Kennedy’s advisors fabricated the withdrawal plan after the Tet offensive. (Z Magazine, September, 1992) Even for Chomsky, this is ridiculous. What is he saying? That Kennedy’s advisors falsified the then classified record while it was in the National Archives? That they also managed to get a voice impressionist to impersonate Johnson, McGeorge Bundy and McNamara discussing this withdrawal plan?

    Chomsky’s latest position is a sort of rear action retreat. He now admits that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara offered up a withdrawal plan. In other words, it was McNamara’s plan, not Kennedy’s. Not so, and let us illustrate why.

    In November of 1961, a two-week long debate took place in the White House. The subject was whether or not to commit combat troops into Vietnam. Advisors Max Taylor and Walt Rostow had returned from Vietnam and made that recommendation. From all the accounts we have, Kennedy was virtually the only person arguing against that proposal. (James Blight, Virtual JFK, pp. 275-83) At its conclusion he signed off on NSAM 111 which sent 15,000 more advisors instead.

    Kennedy was disturbed that he had to carry the argument virtually alone. So he decided to ask someone who he knew agreed with him to write his own report on the subject. This was Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith did visit Saigon, and he did write a report recommending no combat troops in theater and a gradual American distancing. (Cable of November 20, 1961, which was followed by a longer report; Blight, p. 72, see also David Kaiser, American Tragedy, pp. 131-32) Kennedy later had this report forwarded to Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara in April of 1962. This was the beginning of the withdrawal plan. We know this because on his trip to Vietnam in May, McNamara told General Paul Harkins to begin a training program for the army of South Vietnam so America could begin reducing its forces there. Harkins was the supreme military commander in Saigon. (Kaiser, pp. 132-34) Also, McNamara’s deputy Roswell Gilpatric revealed in an oral history that his boss had told him that he had instructions from Kennedy to begin to wind down the war. (Blight, p. 371) This culminated with the aforementioned declassified Sec/Def conference in Hawaii in May of 1963. At this meeting, McNamara requested from all departments—State, Pentagon, CIA—specific schedules beginning a withdrawal in December of 1963 and ending in the early fall of 1965. (James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 126)

    The idea that this plan was McNamara’s is another fanciful Chomsky invention. In addition to the evidence stated above—cables, oral history—there is another undeniable fact. In the November, 1961 debates described above, McNamara was asking for the insertion of combat troops into Vietnam. In fact, his proposal was the largest request of all. He told Kennedy to commit upward of six divisions, or about 205,000 men. And he framed the request in pure Cold War terms. If this was not done, it would lead to communist control over all of Indochina and also Indonesia. (Blight, pp. 276-77) The idea that afterwards McNamara had a personal epiphany and reversed himself on his own is simply not credible. Especially when combined with the above evidence. Plus the fact that it was Kennedy alone who was holding out against combat troops in November. And as with Kennedy, there is no mention by McNamara on any tape or any of the Sec/Def documents, or in NSAM 263, that the withdrawal plan would only be completed as the circumstances on the battlefield improve. Chomsky’s arguments against Kennedy’s withdrawal plan exist in a vacuum created by him and his acolytes.

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  22. TopTop #463
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  23. TopTop #464
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    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"



    A very interesting mini-documentary cum-animated-film narrated by Amy Goodman, the Fairy Godmother of the "New Left". Noam Chomsky and his pal Amy Goodman know what they are talking about when they speak of "Manufacturing Consent". They should; they practice the same trade on the so-called "Left".
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  24. TopTop #465
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    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"


    @ the top of this thread, on March 24, 2020, I wrote:


    Lo & Behold


    Those busy Canadian "conspiracy theorists" at GlobalResearch.ca have been busy, busy, busy.
    I just thought I would spin the word "Covid-19" in the Search box at that lovely, prolific site, and
    guess what? To date, there are "about 1, 090 articles" on the Subject - and daily growing, growing,
    growing - just like the number of infected & the dead & dying. O Well, What is this World coming to?

    But, lest I be bested by Barry for directing Y'all to a subversive site, I'll pre-empt him by posting
    the inevitable Barry rejoinder, i.e., the spiel from Wikipedia about those darned conspiracy-minded
    (& subversive) Cannucks:


    Wikipedia Sez:
    {un-snipped}

    Centre for Research on Globalization

    "Globalresearch.ca" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Global News or GlobalSecurity.org.
    In 2001, Chossudovsky founded the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), becoming its editor and director. Located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, it describes itself as an "independent research and media organization" that provides "analysis on issues which are barely covered by the mainstream media".[20]


    The Centre for Research on Globalization promotes a variety of conspiracy theories and falsehoods.[26] It has reported that the 11 September attacks were a false flag attack planned by the CIA,[2] that the United States and its allies fund al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, and that sarin gas was not used in the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, which globalresearch.ca articles characterized as a false flag operation orchestrated by terrorists opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.[6][21] Other articles published on the site have asserted that the 7 July 2005 London bombings were perpetrated by the United States, Israel, and United Kingdom.[13] Chossudovsky has himself posted articles on the site which suggested that Osama bin Laden was a CIA asset, and accusing the United States, Israel and Britain of plotting to conquer the world.[13] The Centre has also promoted the Irish slavery myth, prompting a letter by more than 80 scholars debunking the myth.[25]

    According to PolitiFact, the Centre "has advanced specious conspiracy theories on topics like 9/11, vaccines and global warming."[8] Foreign Policy notes that the Centre "sells books and videos that 'expose' how the September 11 terrorist attacks were 'most likely a special covert action' to 'further the goals of corporate globalization.'"[22] A 2010 study categorized the website as a source of anti-vaccine misinformation.[23] The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab described it as "pro-Putin and anti-NATO".[27] The Jewish Tribune described the Centre as being "rife with anti-Jewish conspiracy theory and Holocaust denial."[28] Writing for the New Republic, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Lecturer in Digital journalism at the University of Stirling, describes the Centre's website as a "conspiracy site".[24]

    ...pick your poison...


    ( It's called "free will" )


    Yes, It is a matter of free will whether you choose to believe the subsidized & kept "fact-checkers" or consider alternative information that runs counter to the narratives promoted by the Main Stream Media - All of which, indeed, do have interlocking Boards of Directors with the Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex. It's your choice, Dear WaccoBBians.

    But should you choose, on today, to spin the word
    "Covid-19" in the Search box at GlobalResearch.ca, you would find that there are now 7,620 articles that contain that novel term. So, Research is being done - and is still being published - outside of the Globalist / Corporate box, and you may tap into it.

    Nevertheless, if you choose to believe that everything that is posted on GlobalResearch.ca is all "conspiracy theory", that also, is your option. How convenient for the oligarchy, that a simple phrase like "conspiracy theory" could negate million of words, in the minds of millions of people. But then, people are not all that different from lemmings.


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  25. TopTop #466
    Mayacaman's Avatar
    Mayacaman
     

    Re: Coronavirus: "Reality" & "Conspiracy Theory"



    Given the fact that the initial spin on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 was spun by
    Dr. Peter Daszak on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now," the so-called "Liberal / Left" has, in general, swallowed the kool-aid and gone along with Daszak & Fauci for the ride.

    I suppose the hardest thing for left / liberals to grasp in this scenario, is that their heroine, Amy Goodman, could be either a dupe or a shill. That, I know, is hard to grasp. But the fact is that since at least as early as 2002, Amy Goodman has been compromised. When, in the aftermath of 9/11, and the mounting evidence that the
    radicals @ WBAI in New York were assembling - regarding the reality that the destruction of the World Trade Center was an inside job - Amy Goodman, in the midst of a serious crisis of conscience, opted to take the Chompskyite tack that all such talk was '"conspiracy theory."

    Rumor has it {skuttlebut on the street} that the Big Boys let Amy Goodman know in no uncertain terms {the old horse's head in the bed routine} that if she came out with the Story about the
    Bush Family connection to the Event of September 11, 2001, she would become the proverbial "dead meat." Given her stature and credibility as a journalist, it was not expedient to THEM, Inc. that Amy should take that position on that critical issue. O well. You makes your choices and you takes your consequences.

    Since then, Amy has chosen to take the path of -shall we say- 'lesser' resistance, and interviews the talking heads that are sent to her by way of Central Casting. These she breezily shepherds through fawning interviews, fielding them softball -and scripted- Questions. Dr. Peter Daszak being a case in point. O well. I'm not the only one who sees through the
    façade. Case in Point :



    “Democracy Now” and the “Progressive” Alternative
    Media: Valued Cheerleaders For Imperialism and War

    By Finian Cunningham
    Global Research, July 13, 2012


    The major Western mainstream media outlets have been running a “shock and awe” propaganda offensive against the Syrian government of President Bashar Al Assad for nearly 16 months. The misinformation has been unrelenting, monolithic, unverified, one-sided and, frankly, increasingly preposterous.

    With the suppression of mounting facts that Western governments are waging a covert war of aggression in Syria, the Western public is right to treat the conventional media sources with skepticism and outright contempt. Such media are seen as “politicized” and “unreliable”, serving a naked imperialist agenda for Western regime change. In a word, they are damaged goods.

    This is where a segment of the so-called alternative media can play a valuable propaganda function for Western powers. Because such media are supposed to be independent, critical, non-corporate, the public tends to consider their reports as objective and unbiased. One such “alternative” news service is “Democracy Now” hosted by Amy Goodman. Goodman is seen as something of a campaigning critical journalist shedding the light of truth on the depredations of the US government, corporations and the Pentagon. But a closer look at what Goodman’s “Democracy Now” is reporting on Syria shows that the purported critical broadcaster has become a purveyor of Western government propaganda. While the mainstream media’s propaganda function is obvious to the informed public, Goodman’s “Democracy Now” plays a more subtle role. Camouflaged with the trappings of critical, independent journalism, “Democracy Now” serves to sow powerful seeds of misinformation in a way that the “compromised” mainstream media cannot.

    This misinformation from “Democracy Now” is valuable to the ruling elite because to many of its readers it is not seen as misinformation.

    Rather, the “news” on “Democracy Now” is viewed as reliable and representing the views of the anti-war, anti-imperialist constituency. In this way, Goodman is a valuable asset to Washington and Wall Street because her broadcasts can serve to disorient and undermine a constituency that is normally opposed to Western warmongering and imperialism. Many of the subscribers to “Democracy Now” may see through the misinformation. Many, though, may not, and therefore will become embedded with the imperialist agenda. The fact that Democracy Now ratings appear to be holding up would indicate that a lot of its followers are oblivious to the insidious effect of such misinformation. As such, Democracy Now is more valuable to the powers-that-be than, say, the New York Times or the Financial Times. “Democracy Now” ensures that the agenda of the powerful becomes infiltrated in a constituency that would otherwise be opposed to that agenda.

    First, let’s recap on the mainstream propaganda offensive against Syria.

    Since mid-March 2011, when violence was initially reported in that country, the Western mainstream television, radio and press studiously ignored the evidence of covert foreign-backed subversion and terrorism. Instead these outlets have sought to portray the protests as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring popular movements that were seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. The mainstream media have run saturation coverage to demonise the government in Damascus as a “brutal, authoritarian regime” that is cracking down mercilessly on its civilian population demanding democratic reforms. The narrative is monolithic in the major media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Le Monde, BBC, ITN, the Irish national broadcaster RTE or the Middle East’s much-vaunted Al Jazeera – the “story” on Syria is uncannily uniform. A noble, civilian mass-based movement is being savagely crushed by a tin-eared dictator, so the story goes.

    Every possible smear campaign against the Assad government has been indulged in and indeed fabricated. From the alleged killing of innocent civilians by the national armed forces, to the perpetration of massacres by pro-government militias, to self-inflicted car bombs in urban centres by Assad secret services, to the feckless shopping habits of the president’s wife. Russia Today, Press TV, Der Spiegel, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Vatican News Service (Agenzia Fides), to name a few, have been honorable exceptions in mainstream media journalism for conveying a more accurate picture of what is really happening inside Syria – showing that “protesters” are far from peaceful civilians, and much of the violence is actually stemming from Western, Turkish and Arab-backed mercenaries that have infiltrated the country. As the facts of US and NATO-backed violence in Syria become more transparent and harder to conceal owing to the sheer volume of covert involvement, the Western public has rightly become more skeptical about what the mainstream media outlets are telling them. Indeed, the blatant misinformation and lies that are being sold as journalism is increasingly seen as contemptible.

    The Houla massacre on 24 May is a case in point. The BBC and other mainstream media outlets have been shown to be outrageously wrong in their initial rush to blame the atrocity on Syrian government forces when the evidence has slowly emerged that it was most likely the grisly work of Western-backed mercenaries.

    It is all the more disquieting when a supposedly informed, alternative news service, Democracy Now, peddles such blatant misinformation – more than six weeks after the massacre occurred and after evidence has been reported that points convincingly to Western-backed perpetrators. On 9 July, Goodman broadcast an interview with Rafif Jouejati, a spokesperson for a Syrian opposition group called the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, based in Washington DC. Despite the mounting evidence of Western, Turkish and Saudi/Qatari covert operations, Goodman gave her guest a free rein to regurgitate the litany of mainstream media calumnies on Syria. Without a hint of scepticism from Goodman, her guest said:

    “The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity… We have mountains of evidence indicating that [Assad’s] armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country.”


    Really? The majority of the country engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, democracy and dignity? That sounds more like the fanciful imagination of someone safely based in Washington DC. By contrast, sources in Syria have confirmed that people are terrified by Western-armed gangs running amok in their communities, kidnapping, murdering, evicting families from their homes and burning down business premises. According to the leaked Arab League Observer Mission Report, which had initially been commissioned by the Arab League at Washington’s request:

    In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed. “

    “Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.” (League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012, Ironically, these fact-finding observations of the AL Observer Mission , went against the interests of its Western sponsors. It was barely reported by the mainstream media)

    According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ):

    “Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.” (Neue Erkenntnisse zu Getöteten von Hula.Abermals Massaker in Syrien, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 7, 2012 translated from the German,

    http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-abermals-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html
    )

    The FAZ report quoted above echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

    Also of significance is the report of Der Spiegel (March 29, 2012) entitled “An Executioner for Syria’s Rebels Tells His Story”. A system of “burial brigades” for those executed confirms an organized process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings. This single “burial brigade”, according to the executioner’s testimony, was responsible for the arbitrary execution of 350-400 people including “prisoners” and “traitors”. The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the occupied urban and rural areas, who express their opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

    “Since last summer, we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,”
    says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 29, 2012)

    The Vatican News Service Agenzia Fides largely confirms that the Western backed “opposition forces” rather than the Al Assad government were responsible for countless atrocities:

    In Homs, called the “martyred city”, “opposition forces have occupied two areas, Diwan Al Bustan and Hamidieh, where there are all the churches and bishoprics,” the Archimandrite told Fides. “The picture for us – he continues – is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.

    The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks. “The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.” (Agenzia Fides, Vatican News Service, 4 June 2012)

    These reports were known to the alternative media. “Democracy Now” chose to ignore them.


    Overblown Casualty Figures, Blamed on the Government

    Goodman also indulged in the overblown casualty figures from dubious Syrian opposition sources as if they were verifiable accurate data. She even sounded like Hillary Clinton in talking up the “defection” of the hapless former Syrian Brigadier General Manaf Tlass as “significant” when informed sources discount that news as a minor irrelevance.

    In the interview between Goodman and her guest (whom sources describe as belonging to a family formerly aligned with the Syrian government), Bashar Al Assad was portrayed as an unhinged leader who is in denial over massacres – massacres, as we have noted, that have most likely been carried out by Western-backed death squads as confirmed by numerous reports.

    Preposterously, Assad was described as guilty of much worse crimes than former Egyptian and Libyan rulers Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. Then the “alternative” Democracy Now broadcast this statement from the supposed opposition spokesperson as if it were normal discourse:

    “I would like to think that we will proceed with full prosecution in the International Criminal Court. I think the longer this issue goes on and the more violence he [Assad] commits, the more likely he will wish to have a fate such as Gaddafi’s.”


    Recall that the Libyan leader was lynched on a roadside by a NATO-directed mob, and sodomised with a knife before being shot dead. It may also be recalled that “Democracy Now” gave prominent broadcasts supporting NATO’s intervention in Libya and justifying the criminal subversion of that country. Going by the latest coverage on Syria, Democracy Now is acting once again under a “progressive” cloak as a propaganda tool for US-led imperialist intervention. Given the misplaced respect among many of the public seeking independent, alternative, accurate news and analysis, this insidious role of Democracy Now is reprehensible. May it be suggested, in the name of media transparency, that the programme be aptly renamed “Imperialism Now”.


    Finian Cunningham is Global Research’s Middle East and East Africa Correspondent [email protected]


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