By
Global Research
For example, a
conservative writer in the June issue of Chronicles uses the
government’s story about the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar and
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to argue against immigration, amnesty for illegals, and
political asylum for Muslims. He writes: “Even the most high-tech security
systems imaginable will inevitably fail as they are overwhelmed by a flood of
often hostile and dangerous immigrants.”
Have
you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains traction?
What
I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the
Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along
with the government’s explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the
government’s account.
The leftwing likes
the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because
it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and
oppressed can fight back against imperialism.
The patriotic
rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for
its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities
and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can’t do anything
right, ignored plentiful warnings.
Whatever the
government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its
traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.
In such a country,
truth has no relevance. Only agendas are important.
A person can see this
everywhere. I could write volumes illustrating how agenda-driven writers across
the spectrum will support the most improbable government stories despite the
absence of any evidence simply because the government’s line can be used to
support their agendas.
The writer accepts
all of the improbable government statements as proof that the brothers were
guilty. The wounded brother who was unable to respond to the boat owner who
discovered him and had to be put on life support somehow managed to write a
confession on the inside of the boat.
As soon as the
authorities have the brother locked up in a hospital on life support, “unnamed
officials” and “authorities who remain anonymous” are planting the story in the
media that the suspect is signing written confessions of his guilt while on
life support. No one has seen any of these written confessions. But we know
that they exist, because the government and media say so.
The conservative
writer knows that Dzhokhar is guilty because he is Muslim and a Chechen.
Therefore, it does not occur to the writer to wonder about the agenda of the
unnamed sources who are busy at work creating belief in the brothers’ guilt.
This insures that no juror would dare vote for acquittal and have to explain it
to family and friends. Innocent until proven guilty in a court has been thrown
out the window. This should disturb the conservative writer, but doesn’t.
The conservative
writer sees Chechen ethnicity as an indication of guilt even though the
brothers grew up in the US as normal Americans, because Chechens are “engaged
in anti-Russian jihad.” But Chechens have no reason for hostility against the
US. As evidence indicates, Washington supports the Chechens in their conflict
with Russia. By supporting Chechen terrorism, Washington violates all of the
laws that it ruthlessly applies to compassionate Americans who give donations
to Palestinian charities that Washington alleges are run by Hamas, a Washington-declared
terrorist organization.
It doesn’t occur to
the conservative writer that something is amiss when martial law is established
over one of America’s main cities and its metropolitan area, 10,000 heavily
armed troops are put on the streets with tanks, and citizens are ordered out of
their homes with their hands over their heads, all of this just to search for
one wounded 19-year old suspect. Instead the writer blames the “surveillance
state” on “the inevitable consequences of suicidal liberalism” which has
embraced “the oldest sin in the world: rebellion against authority.” The writer
is so pleased to use the government’s story line as a way of indulging the
conservative’s romance with authority and striking a blow at liberalism that he
does not notice that he has lined up against the Founding Fathers who signed
the Declaration of Independence and rebelled against authority.
I could just as
easily have used a left-wing writer to illustrate the point that improbable
explanations are acceptable if they fit with predispositions and can be
employed in behalf of an agenda.
Think about it. Do
you not think that it is extraordinary that the only investigations we have of
such events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing are private investigations,
such as this investigation of the backpacks: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/20/official-story-has-odd-wrinkles-a-pack-of-questions-about-the-boston-bombing-backpacks/
[1]
There was no
investigation of 9/11. Indeed, the White House resisted any inquiry at all for
one year despite the insistent demands from the 9/11 families. NIST did not
investigate anything. NIST simply constructed a computer model that was
consistent with the government’s story. The 9/11 Commission simply sat and
listened to the government’s explanation and wrote it down. These are not
investigations.
The only
investigations have come from a physicist who proved that WTC 7 came down at
free fall and was thus the result of controlled demolition, from a team of
scientists who examined dust from the WTC towers and found nano-thermite, from
high-rise architects and structural engineers with decades of experience, and
from first responders and firefighters who were in the towers and experienced
explosions throughout the towers, even in the sub-basements.
We have reached the
point where evidence is no longer required. The government’s statements
suffice. Only conspiracy kooks produce real evidence.
In America,
government statements have a unique authority. This authority comes from the
white hat that the US wore in World War II and in the subsequent Cold War. It
was easy to demonize Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism and Maoist China. Even
today when Russian publications interview me about the perilous state of civil
liberty in the US and Washington’s endless illegal military attacks abroad, I
sometimes receive reports that some Russians believe that it was an impostor
who was interviewed, not the real Paul Craig Roberts.
There are Russians
who believe that it was President Reagan who brought freedom to Russia, and as
I served in the Reagan administration these Russians associate me with their
vision of America as a light unto the world. Some Russians actually believe
that Washington’s wars are truly wars of liberation.
The same illusions
reign among Chinese dissidents. Chen Guangcheng is the Chinese dissident who
sought refuge in the US Embassy in China. Recently he was interviewed by the
BBC World Service. Chen Guangcheng believes that the US protects human rights
while China suppresses human rights. He complained to the BBC that in China
police can arrest citizens and detain them for as long as six months without
accounting for their detainment. He thought that the US and UK should publicly
protest this violation of due process, a human right. Apparently, Chen
Guangcheng is unaware that US citizens are subject to indefinite
detention without due process and even to assassination without due process.
The Chinese
government allowed Chen Guangcheng safe passage to leave China and live in the
US. Chen Guangcheng is so dazzled by his illusions of America as a human rights
beacon that it has never occurred to him that the oppressive, human
rights-violating Chinese government gave him safe passage, but that Julian
Assange, after being given political asylum by Ecuador is still confined to the
Ecuadoran embassy in London, because Washington will not allow its UK puppet
state to permit his safe passage to Ecuador.
Perhaps Chen
Guangcheng and the Chinese and Russian dissidents who are so enamored of the US
could gain some needed perspective if they were to read US soldier Terry
Holdbrooks’ book about the treatment given to the Guantanamo prisoners.
Holdbrooks was there on the scene, part of the process, and this is what he
told RT: “The torture and information extraction methods that we used certainly
created a great deal of doubt and questions in my mind to whether or not this
was my America. But when I thought about what we were doing there and how we go
about doing it, it did not seem like the America I signed up to defend. It did
not seem like the America I grew up in. And that in itself was a very
disillusioning experience.” http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-guard-islam-torture-608/
[2]
In a May 17 Wall
Street Journal.com article, Peggy
Noonan wrote that President Obama has lost his patina of high-mindedness. What
did Obama do that brought this loss upon himself? Is it because he sits in the
Oval Office approving lists of US citizens to be assassinated without due
process of law? Is it because he detains US citizens indefinitely in violation
of habeas corpus? Is it because he has kept open the torture prison at
Guantanamo? Is it because he continued the war that the neoconservatives
started, despite his promise to end it, and started new wars?
Is it because he
attacks with drones people in their homes, medical centers, and work places in
countries with which the US is not at war? Is it because his corrupt
administration spies on American citizens without warrants and without cause?
No. It is none of
these reasons. In Noonan’s view these are not offenses for which presidents,
even Democratic ones, lose their high-minded patina. Obama can no longer be
trusted, because the IRS hassled some conservative political activists.
Noonan is a
Republican, and what Obama did wrong was to use the IRS against some
Republicans. Apparently, it has not occurred to Noonan that if Obama–or any
president–can use the IRS against opponents, he can use Homeland Security and
the police state against them. He can use indefinite detention against them. He
can use drones against them.
All of these are much
more drastic measures. Why isn’t Peggy Noonan concerned?
Because she thinks
these measures will only be used against terrorists, just as the IRS is only
supposed to be used against tax evaders.
When a public and the
commentators who inform it accept the collapse of the Constitution’s authority
and the demise of their civil liberties, to complain about the IRS is
pointless.
Copyright © 2013
Global Research
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