RM John Kaminski |
August 7 2005 — Henry David Thoreau — Jiddu Krishnamurti Nobody predicted this one — not Orwell, not Huxley, not H.G. Wells. I couldn’t believe the words that appeared on my screen in an e-mail: What a radical idea! Isn’t that what decent people want? But is that the world we have? We have massive numbers of dead people turning up in strange and suspicious mortality categories. Shall I tell you Americans some of the causes of death inflicted by your sons and daughters on innocent children in Iraq, or will you turn your face away and return silently to your polite political dogma and the cringing ugliness of your own suppressed private nightmares? Hmm? We haven’t had enough radicals. America was founded by radicals (though some were surreptitious scoundrels, too). Jefferson, even Adams, Madison and Franklin were radicals, and we Americans would definitely not have the good deal we have without the intrepid efforts of these intelligent men. Franklin, you remember Franklin, the guy with the kite. “A republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.” And Jefferson, perhaps you recall, said: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." In our lifetimes and in fact ever since World War I, we’ve seen precious few hints of radicalism: left wing radicals like Abbie Hoffman in the ’60s challenged perceptions and changed them enough to stop a war; right wing radical Gordon Kahl had his hands cut off by federal agents; way out radicals like David Koresh got to watch his babies burn because he said the new messiah was from Iran; and, of course, Eugene Debs was the most successful socialist radical in American history; he got 6 percent of the vote in a presidential election (1912) and actually raised the hourly pay rate for many Americans before he wound up in jail. Do you ever wonder who exactly it was who brought the hammer down on these radicals? Or why what they said elicited such disproportionate punishment? Today I guess you could say radicals include Kathy Kelly, the Voices for Peace lady doing time for insisting on assisting victims of America’s Iraq genocide, and some of the honorable soldiers like Kevin Benderman who chose jail over crimes against humanity. Also are the Roman Catholic nuns who doing three-year vacations in a Colorado prison. But the most tragic radicals were all the black people who have been crushed in the dust over two centuries of our bloodthirsty European Protestant genocidal history. Quit blaming Jews and Catholics. Take a long look at the White Anglo Saxon Protestants who pay attention to their church once a week, smile at their neighbors, and then build a gigantic empire on the unpaid backs of black cottonpickers. Of course this came after those refined White Europeans utilized every method possible to exterminate the hapless red man first, and later got rich selling drugs to the Chinese. In my lifetime, a young articulate black man named Fred Hampton sticks in my mind. A charismatic and sincere community organizer as a teen, Fred was gunned down in a fusillade of bullets from murderous COINTELPRO cops — while lying in bed with no weapon. Of course in the newspapers the next day we learned our brave cops removed a dangerous radical from our streets. Another martyr to bogus American justice is Native American inspiration Leonard Peltier, jailed in Leavenworth for more than 30 years now for a crime he didn’t commit. Given the brief glimpse of the abbreviated political trajectory of Fred Hampton I have to think he would have made a wonderful president someday. Same could be said of Leonard. These remarks make America’s nasty white supremacists squirm. Good. For all you effete intellectual snobs (Spiro Agnew’s famous phrase), the radical to beat all was the cantankerous French Situationist Guy Debord, who argued that we were trapped in our own abstractions and had lost all meaningful contact with the world around us, before one sad day he put a bullet in his own head because no one could hear what he was saying. “Imagine there’s no countries,” John Lennon sang shortly before he was taken out by a Bush family religious program mind-trained assassin with six shots to the back of the head, mmm yes, Mossad style. Can you say Hinckley Dinckley? Oh no, that was Chapman. Same school, though. Did I ever tell you about the time Hinckley’s brother had dinner with Bush? Another time, perhaps .... “All you need is love,” Lennon prominently sang. Now how can you argue with that, even as you contemplate that a lot of this good will was generated as a social experiment by (even then) Zionized social scientists in a place called the Tavistock Institute in London, where a bomb went off the other day, incidentally. Isn’t that interesting? What has always interested me about the 9/11 skeptics movement is the almost complete absence of political dogma among its participants. I mean, there are people from all over the political spectrum: the Trap Rock Peace Center to the American Patriot Friends Network. That’s good market coverage, my friend. But in the exact middle of the American heart in this incredible poison: a totally locked down establishment media monster regurgitating the twisted and clumsy lies of sociopathic misanthropes who are butchering and poisoning half the world while hiding behind flags and bibles. No. I take that back. They’ve already destroyed both of them, too. Yes, our president, the one who OKs overnight visits from a well-known homosexual prostitute and then puts him in the press corps to throw gopher ball questions at him, yes, that president, says he gets his orders from God! This is the best news I’ve heard about religion in years. It tells you all exactly what religion is. Remember: the best Bible passage is Deuteronomy 28:56-58. Look it up. It says everything. Thanks to George Bush and Tom Brokaw. And Charles F****** Krauthammer (the perfect Jewish name). American politics has evolved to Howdy Doody meets Bride of Chucky, and the most astounding thing is — obviously we can’t seem to figure it out — is that the American people have ACCEPTED IT!!! They’ve accepted the destruction of the Constitution, the routine use of torture, the total falsification of elections, and the needless mass murders of hundreds of thousands of South Asians in the past two years alone. So needless to say, I’ve looked for signs of hope that there were still actual human beings on this planet, and certainly have found that and more in both the 9/11 skeptics movement, and especially in the wonderful people I’ve met on the Internet, many of whom are much smarter than me and just as concerned about the apparently imminent destruction of most of the things we hold dear. But the most amazing thing I have found is that virtually all of the people rising up and being willing to consider the frightening reality that 9/11 was an operation executed by our government ... ... wanna buy an Arab terrorist? They’re for sale, you know, and the CIA uses a lot of them; you occasionally see their case files on TV for a few weeks; then a new one is chosen as this week’s excuse for continuing the carnage by our multi-trillion dollar war machine .... ... the most amazing thing is that all these people, upset about government lies and needless killing, ARE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM. Most are not really political at all. And their issues are not about godless communists or soulless capitalists. Their issues are not about foreign intrigues or Washington sexcapades. Their issue is about living a good life and not having their money stolen by criminal demagogues posing as sanctimonious philosophers. Their issue is honesty. The middle of the American political spectrum, totally ignored by the corporate spin machine under the assumption that “to go along to get along” is the political philosophy of choice for most of its listeners, is becoming radicalized over the issue of honesty. Under the media’s very noses. That’s delicious. Look under that rock in the middle of the road. Why it’s Bill Moyers, sonafagun, and he’s saying the president should be in jail. Naw, I must not have heard that right. Mothers with sons dead in Iraq are at the center of this community cyclone. They are surrounded by many millions of thoughtful Americans who question why President Bush didn’t permit a thoroughly and openly professional investigation — just what they’d do for any routine airplane crash in which people were killed — on September 11, 2001. Who question why the evidence was carted away unexamined, and why New York firemen were told to clam up, or they would lose their jobs. Who question why the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to have been planned BEFORE 9/11 — yet later explained away as being conducted BECAUSE of 9/11. Who question why their sons and daughters conducted the most horribly demented sexual experiments on their Iraqi prisoners, including little boys, some of whom were raped and killed. Did you see where Donald Rumsfeld testified before Congress that the new pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, where U.S. troops torture Iraqi captives with electrical wires in their anuses, were simply too terrible to look at, and we should just forget the whole thing? Who question why Donald Rumsfeld created his own terror squads to go into Iraq and foment violence, in order, he said, to identify who the REAL TERRORISTS really are. The imbedded press, of course, forgot to keep of track of what they were doing. How many American adolescents have been killed by Rumsfeld’s special fomenting squads, trying to draw those rascally terrorists out of their hideouts? That’s exactly how the Fallujah massacre began. Who question why Fallujah, the most hellacious and despicable war crime of the new century, was allowed to happen, and then the American people were prevented from seeing it or from hearing about it. We got to see Michael Jackson instead. The people asking the right questions are ordinary people, with no particular political persuasion except live and let live. I’ve been waiting for a long time for someone to come along and produce what I call (and the phrase is an important one to remember, in this age of spin) a COHERENT MEME about 9/11, which is the key to really understanding America’s role in the devolution of society and its plundering of the planet. A coherent meme. And wouldn’t you know, two average citizens — one a retired Bush administration official, for God’s sake; and the other, a shy professor of theology at an obscure West Coast college — were, amid the American public’s terrified silence during 2002 and the following years, able to logically and dispassionately ferret out the significant facts from among the panicky shrieks and emotional invective of the first wave of 9/11 skeptics, and state clearly and unambiguously to the general public that — well, I hope this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, because it surely will not be the last — 9/11 was an inside job. Same story with 7/7 and all those terror bombings in between. What is the coherent meme in all this, you ask? Well, let’s listen to what these two unprepossessing men, both accomplished professionals recognized in their fields with what you might say are national reputations, or at least as respectable high-achievers in their jobs, actually had to say. They are Morgan Reynolds and David Ray Griffin. Reynolds is so Republican he was chief economist in the Bush the Lamer’s first term. But we should never make the mistake of thinking everybody in the government is a money grubbing perv — even though the topmost leaders all may be that, and worse. Listen to Reynolds .... It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis will not likely prove to be sound. Revised engineering and construction practices, for example, based on the belief that the twin towers collapsed through airplane damage and subsequent fires is premature, to say the least. More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an "inside job" and a government attack on America would be compelling. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right, "though heaven should fall." Unfortunately, getting it right in today’s "security state" demands daring because explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11. If you’re really interested in what really happened on 9/11/2001, you should savor Reynolds’ entire latest take on the subject at http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds12.html So what is the coherent meme that ordinary people can whisper to their neighbors that was stated unequivocally by this retired professor from Texas A&M? This radical! Erroneous engineering analysis. Experts intimidated. Planes and fires couldn’t have knocked down the towers. Likely conclusion? Inside job. Maybe the paranoid and corrupt U.S. government should begin targeting respectable white-haired college professors instead of innocent Muslim men, because Griffin, another retired professor (from Claremont School of Theology) has done more damage to the criminal syndicate in Washington than any Islamic enthusiast could ever hope to do. Griffin’s book .... The New Pearl Harbor reported evidence that at least six of the alleged hijackers are still alive. David Harrison of the Telegraph interviewed two of the men who supposedly died on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, one of whom said that he "had never even heard of Pennsylvania," let alone died there. The Associated Press reported that Waleed al-Shehri, supposedly on Flight 11, contacted the U.S. embassy in Morocco about two weeks after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report, nevertheless, suggested that al-Shehri was responsible for stabbing one of the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. The New Pearl Harbor cited reports that although Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader, had been portrayed as a devout Muslim ready to meet his maker, he actually loved alcohol, pork, and lap dances. Zelikow’s commission, however, said that Atta had become "fanatically" religious. They also claimed that they could find no credible explanation as to why Atta and the other hijackers went to Las Vegas. The mainstream press has let the Commission get away with these obvious contradictions .... Another big question created by the official story is how the hijackers, by crashing planes into the Twin Towers, caused them and Building 7 to collapse. One problem is that Building 7 was not struck by an airplane, and steel-frame buildings had never before been caused to collapse by fire alone, even when the fires had been much bigger, hotter, and longer-lasting. The Commission avoided this problem by simply not mentioning this fact or even, incredibly, that Building 7 collapsed. The 9/11 Commission Report failed to mention that WTC7 collapsed. Hmm. Another problem, which I mentioned earlier, is that the collapses had all the standard features of controlled demolitions. For example, all three buildings came down at virtually free-fall speed. The Commission even alluded to this feature, saying that the "South Tower collapsed in 10 seconds." But it never explained how fire plus the impact of an airplane could have produced such a collapse. Controlled demolition was also suggested by the fact that the collapses were total, with the 110-story Twin Towers collapsing into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. The core of each tower had consisted of 47 massive steel columns, which extended from the basements through the roofs. Even if we ignore all the other problems in the official "pancake" theory of the collapses, those massive steel columns should have still been sticking up a thousand feet in the air. Zelikow’s commission handled this problem with the audacious claim that "[t]he interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft." The Commission said the WTC cores were hollow. Hmm. Another example: Breaking those massive steel columns would have required very powerful explosives. Many survivors of the towers have reported hearing and feeling explosions. But the 9/11 Commission failed to mention any of these reports. William Rodriguez told the 9/11 Commission behind closed doors about feeling and hearing a huge explosion in the sub-basement of the North Tower, then rescuing people from its effects, but neither his name nor any of his testimony is found in Zelikow’s final report In any case, as these illustrations show, the 9/11 Commission, which had the opportunity to rebut the prima facie case against the Bush administration, failed to do so. This means that the publication of The 9/11 Commission Report needs to be recognized as a decisive event, because it was the moment at which the prima facie case against the Bush administration became a conclusive case. What we need now is a press that will let the American people in on this development---which is most important, given the fact that the official story about 9/11 has provided the pretext for virtually every other horrible thing this administration has done. Do I hear a coherent meme? The government and corporate media are covering up the truth. The so-called hijackers remain unidentified and unconfirmed. The Commission didn’t conduct a real investigation. Why do you think that was? Hmm. Reynolds and Griffin. Old guys. Members of the establishment. These guys are radicals, and you know why? They’re trying to tell you the truth, and most of you refuse to hear it. You’re so enamored of your so-called security, and so terrified of losing your meager income, that you will permit all manner of depravity and false witness. You will go to sleep at night counting your money, but you won’t count the innocent dead bodies who have been murdered in your name. That’s about the size of it. Except for one more quintessential, sterling example of radical. Of people we should emulate. Cindy Sheehan. Whose son Casey died in Iraq. Who has been at the forefront of trying to alert the American people that her son died for a lie, for a whole series of lies, and people are still dying for these lies. Once she was just an ordinary mom. Then Bush’s lies took her son away, along with the lives of some 10,000 Americans and 140,000 Iraqi women and children in only two years. Plus ruining countless other lives. That’s Dubya’s legacy, along with a host of other barbaric and inhumane deeds, including the theft of trillions of dollars stolen from you and me and funneled to his corrupt corporate cronies. (It really is an effective formula for radicalizing the middle class.) At this moment as I write, Cindy Sheehan is standing by the side of the road in Crawford, Texas, demanding to speak to President Bush. I just saw her on CNN, interviewed by Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s Israeli anchorman. She told Blitzer about the first meeting she had with Bush, when the jovial president came into the room telling jokes and then consoling Cindy for the loss of “her loved one.” “He didn’t even know my son’s name,” Cindy told the squirming Blitzer. “And I’m here until he comes out and talks to me.” Sheehan told CNN that Bush’s “misguided policy” is going to cost a lot more mothers their sons unless the war is stopped now. The call has gone out around the world for ordinary people, musicians, and the news media to converge on Crawford to hear Cindy’s story and witness Bush’s response. For more information check out http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7418 and check the other stories on that delightful site while you’re there. So ... now you know that Homeland Security should be concentrating on suppressing American mothers who have lost their sons to lies in Iraq. White-haired college professors and ordinary middle-class mothers .... these are the new radicals. Will Bush and his criminal sycophants come up with a new policy to make corporate America safe from them, because they are the real threat to the people in power? Ah, the new America. Imprisoned minds exploited by unscrupulous killers. But the middle class radicals are emerging. And their single overriding issue is honesty. So I looked at that bizarre e-mail again ... Overthrow all the governments all at once International criminal syndicate has taken control of world’s money; honest citizens must prevent them from destroying the world; Lennon was right: all borders are bogus. Is there any reason we can’t have an honest world? ... and suddenly it didn’t seem so radical to me anymore. Oh, I know, it’s presumptuous of me to speak for people in other nations of the world, yammering Yankee dog that I am. And for sure Americans seem to be unable to clean up their own act, their unstoppable murder machine sweeping around the world. But Bush, repulsive and without redeeming social value as he is, is still only a symptom. The real disease is systemic. And until that truth is addressed, Cindy will be left crying on the side of the road, principled white-haired grandfathers and grandmothers will become the new targets of persecution, and young boys and girls will keep dying needlessly. Unless, of course, we take the advice of that strange e-mail, and stop this self-destructive foolishness right now. Any chance you can honestly respond, or are you too scared? Remember the coherent memes. It’s up to you now. As I said almost two years ago John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida. He is the author of two collections of essays, America's Autopsy Report and The Perfect Enemy, many of which have been published individually on hundreds of websites around the world. In addition, he has written The Day America Died: Why You Shouldn’t Believe the Official Story of What Happened on September 11, 2001, a 48-page booklet aimed at those who still believe the government’s highly questionable version of events. Due out soon are a third collection of essays, titled “Recipe for Extinction,” and a new chapbook on belief systems, titled “The Prison of God.” For more information and announcement of release dates, keep track on http://www.johnkaminski.com/ |
|
|