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More Murder of Iranian Scientists: Still Terrorism?

by Glenn Greenwald

January 11, 2012 Salon" --  Several days ago I referenced a controversy that arose in 2007 when the law professor and right-wing blogger Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds criticized President Bush for not doing enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program and then advocated that the U.S. respond by murdering that nation’s religious leaders and nuclear scientists. “We should be responding quietly, killing radical mullahs and Iranian atomic scientists . . . ,” he argued. The backlash against Reynolds’ suggestion was intense, especially among progressive writers. 
 

Back then, I wrote about Reynolds’ suggestion several times, but I was far from alone. Law Professor Paul Campos wrote a column in the Rocky Mountain News denouncing Reynolds for publicly advocating “murder,” which, he pointed out, is exactly what this would be given that the U.S. is not at war with Iran (he went on to suggest that targeting civilian religious leaders and scientists would still be murder even if the U.S. were at war with Iran); Campos added: “government-sponsored assassinations of the sort Reynolds is advocating are expressly and unambiguously prohibited by the laws of the United States.” Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller documented with absolute clarity that such assassinations would be illegal in the absence of a formal war.

 But the angriest reactions came from progressive bloggers, who widely denounced Reynolds as “contemptible” for suggesting this; one progressive writer, Lindsay Beyerstein, was horrified that one could even suggest such a thing, explaining that she ”despair[s] for our society when it’s necessary to supply a rigorous analytical exposition of why our government shouldn’t have scientists and religious leaders whacked.” Scott Lemieux railed against what he called Reynolds’ “kooky scheme for illegal death squads” as “crackpot,” “dumb” and “nuttier than a Planters factory.” And Kevin Drum, then of Washington Monthly, went the furthest of all — in a post he entitled “Terrorism” — branding the killing of Iran’s scientists as “Terrorism”:

I imagine a lot of people agree with [Reynolds], but his recommendation really demonstrates the moral knot caused by George Bush’s insistence that we’re fighting a “war on terror.” After all, killing civilian scientists and civilian leaders, even if you do it quietly, is unquestionably terrorism. That’s certainly what we’d consider it if Hezbollah fighters tried to kill cabinet undersecretaries and planted bombs at the homes of Los Alamos engineers.
If you think Iran is a mortal enemy that needs to be dealt with via military force, you can certainly make that case. But if you’re going to claim that terrorism is a barbaric tactic that has to be stamped out, you can hardly endorse its use by the United States just because it’s convenient in this particular case.

What is most amazing about all this is that, a mere three years later, some combination of Israel and the U.S. are doing exactly that which Reynolds recommended. Numerous Iranian nuclear scientists are indeed being murdered.

In January, 2010, a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, 50, who “taught neutron physics at Tehran University.” In November, 2010, two separate car bombs exploded within minutes of each other on the same day, one that killed nuclear scientist Majid Shahriar and wounded his wife, and the other which wounded another nuclear scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, along with his wife. Then, in July of last year, Darioush Rezaei, 35, was shot dead and his wife was wounded by two gunmen firing from motorcycles outside of their daughter’s kindergarten; Rezaei “did his doctorate in neutron transport – which lies at the heart of nuclear chain reactions in reactors and bombs” and “was a member of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, the country’s official atomic energy commission.”

And now, yet another Iranian scientist has been killed. According to Iranian media, a 32-year-old university professor, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, died when an assailant riding on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car, which then detonated and killed him. According to The Washington Post‘s Thomas Erdbrink, a conservative news outlet in Iran reported that the young scientist “was believed to be involved in procuring materials for Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz.”

What’s most remarkable here is to compare the boisterous, furious denunciations of the mere suggestion by a blogger on the Internet that Iranian scientists be killed, versus the relative silence in the face of its actually being done in real life, now that the corpses of murdered Iranian scientists are beginning to pile up. Does anyone doubt that some combination of the two nations completely obsessed with Iran’s nuclear program — Israel and the U.S. — are responsible? (U.S. officials deny involvement while pointing the finger at Israel, whose officials will not comment but “smile” when asked; the CIA has “targeted” Iran’s scientists in the past, several of whom have disappeared only to end up in U.S. custody, including one who “resurfaced in the United States after defecting to the CIA in return for a large sum of money”). At the very least, there has been no denunciation from any Obama officials of whoever it might be carrying out such acts.

I have no doubt that Professors Campos and Heller would apply the same legal rationale now that it’s actually being done, but what about the progressives who so stridently denounced Reynolds? Does Lemieux still believe that whoever is responsible — Israel, the U.S., or some combination — is guilty of dispatching “illegal death squads”? 

Does Beyerstein still “despair for our society” that such acts could even be contemplated? Does Drum still believe that whichever political leaders are responsible for these killings are Terrorists; specifically: if, as is widely assumed, the Israelis are responsible, does that mean that Israel is a Terrorist state, and if U.S. agencies are complicit in some way, does that mean President Obama is a Terrorist, a state sponsor of Terrorism or, at the very least, a supporter of Terrorism?

In general, the American covert war against Iran is extraordinarily dangerous and probably illegal (it’s certainly unauthorized), but in particular, the assassination of Iran’s scientists is just reprehensible. Now that it’s actually happening, one wishes the reaction to it were even partially as aggressive as it was when a right-wing blogger suggested it.

* * * * *

Three other brief noteworthy items: (1) yet again, the New York Times’ Public Editor admonishes that newspaper for baseless reporting about Iran that overstates the threat it poses (specifically for overstating the IAEA’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program); FAIR first raised objections to the offending article last week; (2) here is a telling scene from Tom Friedman’s current field trip to Cairo; and (3) a sixth-grader named Wolf writes a nice little school report for his civics class on the presidential race. 

UPDATE: This morning, Haaretz has a timeline of what it calls “Mysterious deaths and blasts linked to Iran’s nuclear program” — and by “linked to,” they mean: “aimed at” (h/t James Carter). It includes the murder of these scientists as well as various explosions killing many people. If you removed the proper nouns from this timeline (Iran, Ahmadinejad, Natanz), very few people would have any doubt that this is Terrorism. 

UPDATE II: The right-wing religious extremist Rick Santorum said previously: ”On occasion scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly”; he added: “I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.” This is how he justified all that:

If people say, “well, you can’t go out and assassinate people” — well, tell that to Awlaki. OK, we’ve done it. We’ve done it to an American citizen, so we can certainly do it to someone who’s producing a nuclear bomb that can be dropped on the state of Israel . . . .

We better hope and pray Rick Santorum never becomes President or else the legal prohibitions against assassinations will simply be ignored and that will become standard American policy — oh, wait. Meanwhile, long-time commenter DCLaw1 poses this question:

Even for people who don’t believe the US has anything to do with the assassination of Iranian scientists, just flip the scenario: how would they react to news that Israeli scientists were being systematically murdered, and Iranian officials just smiled and acted coy when asked about it? What would they say about that, and what would they say the US and Israel would be justified to do in response?

To answer that, just consider the consensus outrage that spewed forth when it was claimed (ridiculously) that Iran was sponsoring a Terror plot on U.S. soil to have a failed Texan used car salesman to hire Mexican drug cartels to kill the Saudi ambassador: Terrorism!

Glenn Greenwald (email: GGreenwald@salon.com) is a former Constitutional and civil rights litigator and is the author of two New York Times Bestselling books on the Bush administration’s executive power and foreign policy abuses. His just-released book, With Liberty and Justice for Some

Words of Wisdom from Eric Larsen, R.T., and The Oliver Arts & Open Press

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER: ONLY TRUTH MUST BE THE FOUNDATION OF  POLITICAL POLICY

December 19, 2011 For the past several days the National Defense Authorization Act has been in the news, and understandably so. Drafted by senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), the bill changes the nature of national life by aiming to declare all United States national territory a part of the "battlefield" in the War on Terror.  If the bill is passed, in other words, every place and every thing within the nation's boundaries--your front lawn, your dog run, your kitchen hallway, your stamp collection, the closet you keep your clothes in, the bed you lie down to sleep in--will be part of the battlefield--the battlefield where the so-called war on terror is being waged.    Now, if a person is on or in a battlefield, it follows that that person is on or in a place where the rules of battle pertain, that is, where military law pertains.   Suppose that the rules of battle were in place, say, at the intersection of 77th Street and Broadway in New York City. Would the rules of civil law also still pertain? Does anyone know? And does anyone know just exactly who would have the authority to make such a decision--the decision as to whether military law pertained or civil law pertained?    We at Oliver have been discussing questions like this one quite energetically, feeling them to be of immeasurable importance. None of us believes for a moment that the drafters of the bill themselves thought such questions all the way through, or that those drafters were fully conscious of them in the first place. The bill, after all, is not based on political or historical knowledge, or on responsible socio-cultural thinking, or on the desire of patriots or men of conscience to do what is best for a free democratic republic dedicated to liberty and governed under Constitutional law.     No, this is a bill born of and dedicated to the perpetuation of an enormous, obscene, and absolutely ruinous lie--the lie of 9/11 and all the subsequent lies that that lie has led to--and it is a bill therefore dedicated only to the well-being of those people and institutions that  can benefit from that lie, and, concomitantly, to the destruction of all other people and institutions. It is dedicated, that is, to the ever-growing profit of the military and corporate state while, as far as the nation's people are concerned, it is dedicated not only to crushing their political freedoms of every kind but also to destroying  the freedoms of conscience and of spirit without which any nation will die or, one way or another, eventually be destroyed.     Knowing the bill to be this destructive and pernicious, some on the Oliver staff were surprised and encouraged to learn that Congressman Jerrold Nadler (Dem., NY), in an interview with Keith Olbermann (see it here), had spoken publically and with conviction in opposition to it. This was a greatly interesting development. Some proposed that a meeting be arranged with Representative Nadler in order that a group could convey its support for his opposition to the bill. Who knew? Maybe even, given his thinking in this case, he would be open to looking at some of the major new scholarship on 9/11, like Dr. Judy Wood's Where Did the Towers Go-the Evidence of Directed Free-Energy Technology on 9/11, the all-important , paradigm-changing book that The Oliver Arts & Open Press has promoted--with good reason--fervently.    In short, Jerry Nadler had created a breath of hope--hope that maybe, conceivably, possibly, the right thing still could be achieved through the otherwise calcified, ossified, petrified, bought-and-paid-for institution of national elected leadership. And so, what happened?   What happened was that another staff member, Oliver's greatly valued assistant editor, "R.T.," who had been quiet (but obviously thoughtful) up to this point, spoke out.    He wrote an email and sent it to the rest of the Oliver staff. Here it is, for those interested; and, with it, this communication will come to a close: I smell a rat [R.T. wrote]. I watched Carl Levin announce on the Senate floor that those two amendments [asking that the bill be written so that arrestees not be treated as war criminals, since then they would be protected by the Geneva Conventions, but that they be treated instead as "enemy combatants," since then they would be protected by nothing whatsoever] were requested by the White House. After a time, I came to think of only three likely possibilities about this request: 1) it's an election year, and O'bomba [sic] wants to look like a hero and veto this bill because of these amendments (hoping that no one lets the cat out of the bag about the fact that he requested them), or 2) he's lying about vetoing it, or 3) he's delaying the bill via a threatened veto, because he's against it, but for the reasons Ron Paul stressed: he wants every last shred of citizen protection out of the bill before he signs it.    White House officials are now saying that they will recommend he sign it, because: 1) either those protections will be removed when the two bills go to committee to be blended together as the final bill, or 2) his handlers can live with the bill the way it's written, because it fulfills the mandate they wanted, or 3) enough justices on the Supreme Court have secretly seen the final bill and a majority are on board to either refuse to hear a challenge or have agreed to side with the White House lawyers' interpretation of it, should it come before them. In fact, this is where it could actually get more damaging. If the White House lawyers make an argument that expands the provisions to include even more dangerous language, and if the court agrees with the bill, and if that language changes, becoming even more clearly Constitution-shredding,  then we could get even more screwed. We have to get real. These black robed devils are now our Inquisitors in the American Toledo led by our own Torquemada. What the Pope says is law, and their jobs are to enforce Papal doctrines.    My guess is that this Congressman from NY [Nadler] is trying to look clean by protesting this bill. Then why didn't he filibuster it? Why didn't any of them filibuster it? Why did Rand Paul in the Senate fight the bill and then vote for it? I don't know enough about how these houses run, but I would have made a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington scene. None of these "patriots" has ever done that in the last thirty years. What Congressman or Senator has openly called anyone that votes for this kind of Enabling Act stuff traitors? Where is the word "treason"  mentioned in Congress? Where? Where are the red faces, the righteous outrage, the body-tensing anger, the screaming rage? Politeness is a virtue? It's death. I read once that a Dutch Jew forgot to lock his house when he was rounded up and got permission to go back and lock it. This is the kind of delusion that surrounds us on all sides.     The American political class are all frauds, all of them. What would it take for one of them to finally use the word "traitor": the allowing of the military to shoot to kill suspects on the streets? Allowing  the rape of small children of "terror" suspects as a message for other would-be terrorists? Where is the fight against this? There isn't any because they don't give a damn. I think, personally, that this guy [Nadler] wouldn't pay you any attention about anything you brought to him. I don't trust him. I don't trust any of them. Why should I? What ground is there for trust? Even the quality of his suit [the suit he was wearing on the Olbermann interview] tells me he's been at the trough too long. He doesn't buy his suits at the "buy one get one free" Men's Warehouse. I guarantee it. Why didn't Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich filibuster this bill in Congress? They're all full of purest baloney. This bill is likely the end for people like us. This is obviously the biggest danger since Woodrow Wilson jailed anti-war protesters during WWI. Eugene Debs simply made a speech against entry into WWI and was jailed under the Espionage Act of 1917. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. Lucky for him, Harding pardoned him after three. Wilson was a weakling. Ten years? Ha, that's nothing. We won't make that mistake today. A measly ten years. No, we want them to rot and die, so just keep 'em in there forever. Where are the anti-SB 1867 Congressmen or Senators in their home states? Why aren't they going on the big network television stations in their states and organizing rallies against Obama's signing the bill, and why aren't they asking the citizens to organize as to which eligible traitors in "government" are to be recalled? But not a peep, only silence for us all, only silence as we get sold into militarism and tyranny. Where are the Stop Obama protesters? Forget about Wall Street. This new anti-Wall Street game is a fake, it's a set up. They should have been sitting in at both Houses and the White House where the real danger is located. Congress enabled these criminal protest-activities on Wall Street. The state is the source of our trouble. This Occupy bowel movement came along at just the right time to point the crowd in the wrong direction. Is it an accident that politicians are supporting the Occupy movement? Of course, they want them focusing away from themselves. It's perfect. "Don't look at us making Nuremburg Laws, look over there at those new suits with the leather briefcases. They're the guilty ones!" Where are the blind Democratic Party supporters? My big fat tub-of-lard cousin, if she's still alive, would totally ignore this outrage. I can hear her now, "Oh, he's such a nice black man. I worked for his campaign here. We need a black president. A black man will follow through on his promises. Black folks just need a chance to show us how good they are." Yeah, just like women are more gentle and peace-generating than men, except for Hitlery Clinton, Margaret Thatc.... Where's this Soros-funded "MoveOn?" They are as silent as death after the echo of the bullet fades out on Gunsmoke. A vote of 93 to 7. It's unstoppable. You don't get in the way of a juggernaut or you will get crushed to death. We're on our own, spectators inside a movie that someone else has written, a nightmare from which we can't wake. The Grimm Brothers and Iron John can't give us advice. You can't warn the captain of the iceberg-ship when his boat is already sinking, settling down toward its final grave. It's an old story, a story repeated down the ages. We're just the latest evolution of it. We're harboring a delusion if we think that we're different from those older generations. We aren't. Scientists tell us the 5,000 year-old iceman in the Alps was just like us. Maybe his name was Cain, and he had a brother named Abel who shot him in the back with an arrow. Nothing has changed in all those years. What did the indigenous people on this continent do? They survived. That is our job, our mission, our religion, our guiding star. To stay alive, to survive, even this, when the light is fading like a guttering lamp. RT

The Day America Died

by Paul Craig Roberts

October 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House"

September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.

Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from “patriots” who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.

In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president’s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences.

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a “threat,” without due process of law.

In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.

On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington’s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington’s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama’s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion. Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

Having murdered its critic, the Obama Regime is working hard to posthumously promote Awlaki to a leadership position in Al Qaeda. The presstitutes and the worshippers of America’s First Black President have fallen in line and regurgitated the assertions that Awlaki was a high-level dangerous Al Qaeda terrorist. If Al Qaeda sees value in Awlaki as a martyr, the organization will give credence to these claims. However, so far no one has provided any evidence. Keep in mind that all we know about Awlaki is what Washington claims and that the US has been at war for a decade based on false claims.

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama’s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama’s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America’s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution’s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates’ acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki’s assassination terminated the Constitution’s restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.

Before some readers write to declare that Awlaki’s murder is no big deal because the US government has always had people murdered, keep in mind that CIA assassinations were of foreign opponents and were not publicly proclaimed events, much less a claim by the president to be above the law. Indeed, such assassinations were denied, not claimed as legitimate actions of the President of the United States.

The Ohio National Guardsmen who shot Kent State students as they protested the US invasion of Cambodia in 1970 made no claim to be carrying out an executive branch decision. Eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury. The guardsmen entered a self-defense plea. Most Americans were angry at war protestors and blamed the students. The judiciary got the message, and the criminal case was eventually dismissed. The civil case (wrongful death and injury) was settled for $675,000 and a statement of regret by the defendants
.
The point isn’t that the government killed people. The point is that never prior to President Obama has a President asserted the power to murder citizens.

Over the last 20 years, the United States has had its own Mein Kampf transformation.

Terry Eastland’s book, Energy in the Executive: The Case for the Strong Presidency, presented ideas associated with the Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers that works to reduce legislative and judicial restraints on executive power. Under the cover of wartime emergencies (the war on terror), the Bush/Cheney regime employed these arguments to free the president from accountability to law and to liberate Americans from their civil liberties. War and national security provided the opening for the asserted new powers, and a mixture of fear and desire for revenge for 9/11 led Congress, the judiciary, and the people to go along with the dangerous precedents.

As civilian and military leaders have been telling us for years, the war on terror is a 30-year project. After such time has passed, the presidency will have completed its transformation into Caesarism, and there will be no going back.

Indeed, as the neoconservative “Project For A New American Century” makes clear, the war on terror is only an opening for the neoconservative imperial ambition to establish US hegemony over the world.

As wars of aggression or imperial ambition are war crimes under international law, such wars require doctrines that elevate the leader above the law and the Geneva Conventions, as Bush was elevated by his Justice (sic) Department with minimal judicial and legislative interference.

Illegal and unconstitutional actions also require a silencing of critics and punishment of those who reveal government crimes. Thus Bradley Manning has been held for a year, mainly in solitary confinement under abusive conditions, without any charges being presented against him. A federal grand jury is at work concocting spy charges against Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange. Another federal grand jury is at work concocting terrorists charges against antiwar activists.

“Terrorist” and “giving aid to terrorists” are increasingly elastic concepts. Homeland Security has declared that the vast federal police bureaucracy has shifted its focus from terrorists to “domestic extremists.”

It is possible that Awlaki was assassinated because he was an effective critic of the US government. Police states do not originate fully fledged. Initially, they justify their illegal acts by demonizing their targets and in this way create the precedents for unaccountable power. Once the government equates critics with giving “aid and comfort” to terrorists, as they are doing with antiwar activists and Assange, or with terrorism itself, as Obama did with Awlaki, it will only be a short step to bringing accusations against Glenn Greenwald and the ACLU.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, is a regime that does not want to be constrained by law. And neither will its successor. Those fighting to uphold the rule of law, humanity’s greatest achievement, will find themselves lumped together with the regime’s opponents and be treated as such.

This great danger that hovers over America is unrecognized by the majority of the people. When Obama announced before a military gathering his success in assassinating an American citizen, cheers erupted. The Obama regime and the media played the event as a repeat of the (claimed) killing of Osama bin Laden. Two “enemies of the people” have been triumphantly dispatched. That the President of the United States was proudly proclaiming to a cheering audience sworn to defend the Constitution that he was a murderer and that he had also assassinated the US Constitution is extraordinary evidence that Americans are incapable of recognizing the threat to their liberty.

Emotionally, the people have accepted the new powers of the president. If the president can have American citizens assassinated, there is no big deal about torturing them. Amnesty International has sent out an alert that the US Senate is poised to pass legislation that would keep Guantanamo Prison open indefinitely and that Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) might introduce a provision that would legalize “enhanced interrogation techniques,” an euphemism for torture.

Instead of seeing the danger, most Americans will merely conclude that the government is getting tough on terrorists, and it will meet with their approval. Smiling with satisfaction over the demise of their enemies, Americans are being led down the garden path to rule by government unrestrained by law and armed with the weapons of the medieval dungeon.

Americans have overwhelming evidence from news reports and YouTube videos of US police brutally abusing women, children, and the elderly, of brutal treatment and murder of prisoners not only in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and secret CIA prisons abroad, but also in state and federal prisons in the US. Power over the defenseless attracts people of a brutal and evil disposition.

A brutal disposition now infects the US military. The leaked video of US soldiers delighting, as their words and actions reveal, in their murder from the air of civilians and news service camera men walking innocently along a city street shows soldiers and officers devoid of humanity and military discipline. Excited by the thrill of murder, our troops repeated their crime when a father with two small children stopped to give aid to the wounded and were machine-gunned.

So many instances: the rape of a young girl and murder of her entire family; innocent civilians murdered and AK-47s placed by their side as “evidence” of insurgency; the enjoyment experienced not only by high school dropouts from torturing they-knew-not- who in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but also by educated CIA operatives and Ph.D. psychologists. And no one held accountable for these crimes except two lowly soldiers prominently featured in some of the torture photographs.

What do Americans think will be their fate now that the “war on terror” has destroyed the protection once afforded them by the US Constitution? If Awlaki really needed to be assassinated, why did not President Obama protect American citizens from the precedent that their deaths can be ordered without due process of law by first stripping Awlaki of his US citizenship? If the government can strip Awlaki of his life, it certainly can strip him of citizenship. The implication is hard to avoid that the executive branch desires the power to terminate citizens without due process of law.

Governments escape the accountability of law in stages. Washington understands that its justifications for its wars are contrived and indefensible. President Obama even went so far as to declare that the military assault that he authorized on Libya without consulting Congress was not a war, and, therefore, he could ignore the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a federal law intended to check the power of the President to commit the US to an armed conflict without the consent of Congress.

Americans are beginning to unwrap themselves from the flag. Some are beginning to grasp that initially they were led into Afghanistan for revenge for 9/11. From there they were led into Iraq for reasons that turned out to be false. They see more and more US military interventions: Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan and now calls for invasion of Pakistan and continued saber rattling for attacks on Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. The financial cost of a decade of the “war against terror” is starting to come home. Exploding annual federal budget deficits and national debt threaten Medicare and Social Security. Debt ceiling limits threaten government shut-downs.

War critics are beginning to have an audience. The government cannot begin its silencing of critics by bringing charges against US Representatives Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It begins with antiwar protestors, who are elevated into “antiwar activists,” perhaps a step below “domestic extremists.” Washington begins with citizens who are demonized Muslim clerics radicalized by Washington’s wars on Muslims. In this way, Washington establishes the precedent that war protestors give encouragement and, thus, aid, to terrorists. It establishes the precedent that those Americans deemed a threat are not protected by law. This is the slippery slope on which we now find ourselves.

Last year the Obama Regime tested the prospects of its strategy when Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced that the government had a list of American citizens that it was going to assassinate abroad. This announcement, had it been made in earlier times by, for example, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, would have produced a national uproar and calls for impeachment. However, Blair’s announcement caused hardly a ripple. All that remained for the regime to do was to establish the policy by exercising it.

Readers ask me what they can do. Americans not only feel powerless, they are powerless. They cannot do anything. The highly concentrated, corporate-owned, government-subservient print and TV media are useless and no longer capable of performing the historic role of protecting our rights and holding government accountable. Even many antiwar Internet sites shield the government from 9/11 skepticism, and most defend the government’s “righteous intent” in its war on terror. Acceptable criticism has to be couched in words such as “it doesn’t serve our interests.”

Voting has no effect. President “Change” is worse than Bush/Cheney. As Jonathan Turley suggests, Obama is “the most disastrous president in our history.” Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who stands up for the Constitution, but the majority of Americans are too unconcerned with the Constitution to appreciate him.

To expect salvation from an election is delusional. All you can do, if you are young enough, is to leave the country. The only future for Americans is a nightmare.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

What’s behind the scorn for the Wall Street protests?

by Glenn Greenwald

A few hundred demonstrators protesting against corporations march from nearby Zucotti park to Wall Street, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2011, in the Manhattan borough of New York. The demonstrators, who have been camping overnight in the park since Saturday, have been surrounded by police officers around the clock with at least 12 protestors arrested in recent days. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) (Credit: AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Topics:Wall Street

(updated below w/correction)

It’s unsurprising that establishment media outlets have been condescending, dismissive and scornful of the ongoing protests on Wall Street.  Any entity that declares itself an adversary of prevailing institutional power is going to be viewed with hostility by establishment-serving institutions and their loyalists.  That’s just the nature of protests that take place outside approved channels, an inevitable by-product of disruptive dissent: those who are most vested in safeguarding and legitimizing establishment prerogatives (which, by definition, includes establishment media outlets) are going to be hostile to those challenges.  As the virtually universal disdain in these same circles for WikiLeaks (and, before that, for the Iraq War protests) demonstrated: the more effectively adversarial it is, the more establishment hostility it’s going to provoke.

Nor is it surprising that much of the most vocal criticisms of the Wall Street protests has come from some self-identified progressives, who one might think would be instinctively sympathetic to the substantive message of the protesters.  In an excellent analysis entitled “Why Establishment Media & the Power Elite Loathe Occupy Wall Street,” Kevin Gosztola chronicles how many of the most scornful criticisms have come from Democratic partisans who — like the politicians to whom they devote their fealty — feign populist opposition to Wall Street for political gain.

Some of this anti-protest posturing is just the all-too-familiar New-Republic-ish eagerness to prove one’s own Seriousness by castigating anyone to the left of, say, Dianne Feinstein or John Kerry; for such individuals, multi-term, pro-Iraq-War Democratic Senator-plutocrats define the outermost left-wing limit of respectability.  Also at play is the jingoistic notion that street protests are valid in Those Bad Countries but not in free, democratic America.

A siginificant aspect of this progressive disdain is grounded in the belief that the only valid form of political activism is support for Democratic Party candidates, and a corresponding desire to undermine anything that distracts from that goal.  Indeed, the loyalists of both parties have an interest in marginalizing anything that might serve as a vehicle for activism outside of fealty to one of the two parties (Fox News‘ firing of Glenn Beck was almost certainly motivated by his frequent deviation from the GOP party-line orthodoxy which Fox exists to foster).

The very idea that one can effectively battle Wall Street’s corruption and control by working for the Democratic Party is absurd on its face: Wall Street’s favorite candidate in 2008 was Barack Obama, whose administration — led by a Wall Street White House Chief of Staff and Wall-Street-subservient Treasury Secretary and filled to the brim with Goldman Sachs officials — is now working hard to protect bankers from meaningful accountability (and though he’s behind Wall Street’s own Mitt Romney in the Wall Street cash sweepstakes this year, Obama is still doing well); one of Wall Street’s most faithful servants is Chuck Schumer, the money man of the Democratic Party; and the second-ranking Senate Democrat acknowledged — when Democrats controlled the Congress — that the owners of Congress are bankers.  There are individuals who impressively rail against the crony capitalism and corporatism that sustains Wall Street’s power, but they’re no match for the party apparatus that remains fully owned and controlled by it.

But much of this progressive criticism consists of relatively (ostensibly) well-intentioned tactical and organizational critiques of the protests: there wasn’t a clear unified message; it lacked a coherent media strategy; the neo-hippie participants were too off-putting to Middle America; the resulting police brutality overwhelmed the message, etc. etc.  That’s the high-minded form which most progressive scorn for the protests took: it’s just not professionally organized or effective.

Some of these critiques are ludicrous.  Does anyone really not know what the basic message is of this protest: that Wall Street is oozing corruption and criminality and its unrestrained political power — in the form of crony capitalism and ownership of political institutions — is destroying financial security for everyone else?  Beyond that, criticizing protesters for the prominence of police brutality stories is pure victim-blaming (and, independently, having police brutality highlighted is its own benefit).

Most importantly, very few protest movements enjoy perfect clarity about tactics or command widespread support when they begin; they’re designed to spark conversation, raise awareness, attract others to the cause, and build those structural planks as they grow and develop.  Dismissing these incipient protests because they lack fully developed, sophisticated professionalization is akin to pronouncing a three-year-old child worthless because he can’t read Schopenhauer: those who are actually interested in helping it develop will work toward improving those deficiencies, not harp on them in order to belittle its worth.

That said, some of these organizational/tactical critiques are valid enough as far as they go; the protests could probably be more effective with some more imaginative, concerted and savvy organizational strategies. The problem is these criticisms don’t go very far — at all.

* * * * *

There’s a vast and growing apparatus of intimidation designed to deter and control citizen protests.  The most that’s allowed is to assemble with the permission of state authorities and remain roped off in sequestered, out-of-the-way areas: the Orwellian-named free speech zones.  Anything that is even remotely disruptive or threatening is going to be met with aggressive force: pepper spray, mass arrests by highly militarized urban police forces, and aggressive prosecutions.  Recall the wild excesses of force in connection with the 2008 RNC Convention in Minneapolis (I reported on those firsthand); the overzealous prosecutions of civil disobedience activists like Aaron Swartz, environmentalist Tim DeChristopher, and Dan Choi; the war being waged on whistleblowers for the crime of exposing high-level wrongdoing; or the treatment of these Wall Street protesters.

Financial elites and their political servants are well aware that exploding wealth inequality, pervasive economic anxiety, and increasing hostility toward institutions of authority (and corresponding realization that voting fixes very little of this) are likely to bring London-style unrest — and worse — to American soil; it was just two weeks ago that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned that the unemployment crisis could trigger “riots.”  Even the complacent American citizenry — well-trained in learned impotence and acquiescence to (even reverence for) those most responsible for their plight — is going to reach a tipping point of unrest.  There are numerous weapons of surveillance and coercion that have been developed over the last decade in anticipation of that unrest: most of it justified in the name of Terrorism, but all of it featuring decidedly dual-use domestic capability (illustrating what I mean is this chart showing how extensively the Patriot Act has been used in non-Terrorist cases, and how rarely it has been used for Terrorism).

In sum, there is a sprawling apparatus of federal and local militarized police forces and private corporate security designed to send this message: if you participate in protests or other forms of dissent outside of harmless approved channels, you’re going to be harmed in numerous ways.  As Yves Smith put it this week:

I’m beginning to wonder whether the right to assemble is effectively dead in the US. No one who is a wage slave (which is the overwhelming majority of the population) can afford to have an arrest record, even a misdemeanor, in this age of short job tenures and rising use of background checks.

This is all designed to deter any meaningful challenges to the government and corporate institutions which are suffocating them, to bully those who consider such challenges into accepting its futility.  And it works.  In an excellent essay on the Wall Street protests, Dennis Perrin writes:

The dissident children were easily, roughly swept aside. Their hearts are in a good place. Their bodies a minor nuisance. They’ll stream back to prove their resolve. And they’ll get pepper sprayed and beaten down again. And again.

I admire these kids. They’re off their asses. Agitating. Arguing. Providing a living example. There’s passion and feeling in their dissent. They’re willing to be punished. It’s easy to mock them, but how many of you would take their place? . . . .

Yet I have doubts. The class war from above demoralizes as much as it incites. Countless people have surrendered. Faded from view. To demonstrate or occupy corporate turf doesn’t seem like a wise option. You’ll get beaten and arrested. For what? Making mortgage payments is tough enough.

Given the costs and risks one incurs from participating in protests like this — to say nothing of the widespread mockery one receives –  it’s natural that most of the participants will be young and not yet desperate to cling to institutional stability.  It’s also natural that this cohort won’t be well-versed (or even interested) in the high arts of media messaging and leadership structures.  Democratic Party precinct captains, MBA students in management theory and corporate communications, and campaign media strategists aren’t the ones who will fuel protests like this; it takes a mindset of passionate dissent and a willingness to remove oneself from the safe confines of institutional respectability.

So, yes, the people willing to engage in protests like these at the start may lack (or reject the need for) media strategies, organizational hierarchies, and messaging theories.  But they’re among the very few people trying to channel widespread anger into activism rather than resignation, and thus deserve support and encouragement — and help — from anyone claiming to be sympathetic to their underlying message.  As Perrin put it:

This part of Michigan [where I live] was once militant. From organized labor to student agitation. Now there’s nothing. Shop after shop goes under. Strip malls abandoned. Legalized loan shark parlors spread. Dollar stores hang on. Parking lots riots of weeds. Roads in serious disrepair. Those with jobs feel lucky to be employed. Everyone else is on their own. A general resignation prevails. Life limps by.

Personally, I think there’s substantial value even in those protests that lack “exit goals” and “messaging strategies” and the rest of the platitudes from Power Point presentations by mid-level functionaries at corporate conferences.  Some injustices simply need anger and dissent expressed for its own sake, to make clear that there are citizens who are aware of it and do not accept it.

In Vancouver yesterday, Dick Cheney was met by angry protests chanting “war criminal” at him while he tried to hawk his book, which prompted arrests and an ugly-for-Canada police battle that then became part of the story of his visit.  Is that likely to result in Cheney’s arrest or sway huge numbers of people to change how they think?  No.  But it’s vastly preferable to allowing him to traipse around the world as though he’s a respectable figure unaccompanied by anger over his crimes — anger necessarily expressed outside of the institutions that have failed to check or punish (but rather have shielded and legitimized) those crimes.  And the same is true of Wall Street’s rampant criminality.

But for those who believe that protests are only worthwhile if they translate into quantifiable impact: the lack of organizational sophistication or messaging efficacy on the part of the Wall Street protest is a reason to support it and get involved in it, not turn one’s nose up at it and join in the media demonization.  That’s what one actually sympathetic to its messaging (rather than pretending to be in order more effectively to discredit it) would do.  Anyone who looks at mostly young citizens marching in the street protesting the corruption of Wall Street and the harm it spawns, and decides that what is warranted is mockery and scorn rather than support, is either not seeing things clearly or is motivated by objectives other than the ones being presented.

UPDATE:  In the first paragraph , I mistakenly linked to a post discussing a New York Times article by Colin Moynihan as an example of a “condescending” media report about the protest.  There was nothing condescending or otherwise worthy of criticism in Moynihan’s article; I meant to reference this NYT article by Ginia Bellafante.  My apologies to Moynihan, who rightly objected by email, for the mistake.

Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: @ggreenwald.More Glenn Greenwald

9/11 came from above, not from below

by Rand Clifford

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Rand Clifford

An innocent bystander exposed to mainstream corporate media (CorpoMedia) during the lead-up to 9/11/11 would likely conclude that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that nineteen Arab boys armed with box cutters achieved the horrendous destruction of 9/11/01, despite the best efforts of the entire American security apparatus.

Innocent faith in the dignity of American leadership might shield the bystander from knowing that, despite successful suicide missions, many of those Arab boys are alive and well. Faith strong enough could also shield them from knowing that a scientific opinion poll taken in October of 2006 by the New York Times/CBS News revealed that 84 percent of American do not believe the official government explanation of the September 11, 2001 “terror attacks” (apparently, They soon put a damper on any more independent polls).

Blind faith might render the bystander clueless about the whole diabolical nightmare that set in motion “the long war” of greed trickling down from the pinnacles of “humanity,” rather than hatred bubbling up from below.

By allowing Them to get away with 9/11, have we virtually guaranteed another, possibly even more fiendish false flag “terrorist attack”? As George W. Bush said, “Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you . . . you fool me—can’t get fooled again.” Whatever he really meant, the bottom line seems to be: We’re begging to be fooled, again.

Arguably, it might seem that the Bush crime family has done more damage to the USA—at least more damage to the commonwealth, or common good of America—than any other agent of damage. George H. W. Bush described, with uncharacteristic eloquence, the malignant mantra: “The continuous consolidation of wealth and power into higher, tighter and righter hands.”

But the Bushes, despite their tenacious and smarmy inhumanity are way down in the bush leagues compared to the owners of the ultimate—yes, the highest, tightest and rightest hands. They, you might say, have the world in their hands.

Who is Them . . . Who are They?

They have been around a long time . . . as long as “money.”

President Woodrow Wilson touched on who They are:

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States—in the fields of commerce and manufacturing—are afraid of somebody. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

President Wilson again:

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world—no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.

Of course They are masters of low profile, with a footprint not easy to identify because it’s so huge.
They are somebody to whom this quote by Nelson Rockefeller really means something:

The secret to success is to own nothing, but control everything.

But, well, control often demands ownership. And They are the ultimate owners of the “Federal Reserve” as well as Earth’s other private “central banks” currently bleeding virtually every nation. In the words of Niall Ferguson (from The House of Rothschild):

There are now only 5 nations on the world left without a Rothschild controlled central bank: Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya.”

They are who benefited most from America’s recent $23.7 trillion bankster bailout, and who keep so many gullible millions believing it was only $800 billion. More on Bankula in a moment.

America’s president is someone They allow to be president, as They allowed Bush Junior two terms, and will probably allow Obama two terms—but hang on, 2012 might seem like a close one.

And if a president gets headstrong enough to imagine he might actually do something about private “central bank” bloodsucking, They assassinate them—even their brother, if need be.

Mick Jagger sang, in the Rolling Stone’s song Sympathy For The Devil: “I shout it out, who killed the Kennedys? When after all, it was you and me.”

Brilliant, because after all, who’s most to blame for letting Them amass ever greater power year after year? The same timid, faithful, sheepish you and me, generation after generation. And it wasn’t just Kennedy; see what all four assassinated US presidents had in common regarding private “central banking.”

They decide what will be “news”—and perhaps more importantly, what will not be news. Their seamless “neural neutralizer” network is already tightening its tentacles throughout the Internet, choking off the People’s final access to widespread truth. But soon, it might not matter. . . .

Martial law

Bankster bailouts . . . the last round of unprecedented bloodletting did nothing about the core problems, simply postponed criticality. Well, the sun is going down, and Bankula, Prince of Darkness, needs another fix; endless casino greed to cover mountains of toxic waste on the books. Problem is, the People have been bled so much already they are pasty, really watching their throats, and unlikely to gush more blood unless the scat is scared out of them, again. Well, perhaps you’ve noticed that They have increased their softening-up of us lately, serving more heaping portions of al Qaeda-flavored “ . . . credible, though unconfirmed” reports of impending “terror attacks.”

Evidence seems to be mounting that They will pull off another 9/11—satanic enough this time for declaration of martial law to “ . . . protect public safety.” But one might wonder, 10 years after 9/11 and still no justice for Them, only reward, what good is evidence?

They pulled off 9/11 right in our faces. All the evidence—what happened before our eyes directly contradicts the “official story.” Can you think of ANY evidence that actually supports the “official story”? Ever notice how the less someone knows about what actually happened on 9/11 the more ardently they support the “official story” . . . and vice versa?

Shrill CorpoMedia talking heads jabbering about things they know nothing about, raving “conspiracy theory!” and spewing ad hominem attacks at “truthers”—that is NOT evidence.

Larry Silverstein, the New York real estate magnate who became the WTC leaseholder several months before 9/11 even admitted in a PBS documentary that “ . . . they made the decision to pull” WTC 7, and they “ . . . watched the building collapse” (more than 20 minutes after the BBC reported on a live feed that WTC 7 had already collapsed)!

WTC 7, a rock-solid 47-story steel-frame building was made ready to “pull” before 9/11. Why? Wouldn’t a discerning mind consider this fact irrefutable evidence of foreknowledge?

Foreknowledge . . . from certain special people being warned not to fly on 9/11 to the “lucky joke” that saved all Odigo employees, to put options on airline stocks, foreknowledge is very detailed and widespread. And rigging WTC 7 to be pulled before 9/11 is as solid as it gets—especially with Silverstein’s “confession.” Foreknowledge is what blows the “official story” to smithereens since the entire fairytale is based on 9/11 being a surprise attack.

To say the least, evidence of foreknowledge of 9/11 has such extensive scope and depth it’s hard to keep track of it all. Foreknowledge is there for all to see . . . or choose not to see . . .

While Silverstein profited enormously, check out who benefited most from official documentation destroyed by the pulling of WTC 7.(12) Yes, ultimately, it was Them. But of course They have done a superlative job of ensuring that most Americans who might actually believe the “official story” have never even heard of WTC 7; They’re good at that, and frankly, so are Americans.

Despite decently trustworthy polls and other indicators, the whole recent 9/11/11 pageant of propaganda and deceit was a spectacle predicated not only on the illusion that very few people question the “official story,” but that anyone one who does is a rabid lunatic needing to be waterboarded until confessing that they are terrorists. In all, it was a fantastically transparent example of just how far removed from reality CorpoMedia has become, as well as an example of the Prime Directive of CorpoMedia as a vehicle not to disseminate information, but to tell Americans strictly, exactly, what They want Americans to believe—truth be damned. Also, the sheer power of distraction, indirection and misdirection is immense and They use it shamelessly.

The truth . . . 9/11 is a cancer metastasizing for 10 years; a cancer that, if left untreated will consume us all. Until an actual, thorough investigation, as with most major crimes, instead of a simple whitewash, as with 9/11—until a genuine truth-seeking, “official” exposé, 9/11 will remain a horrible, lethal precedent.

How many people do you know who think for themselves, and, believe the “official story”? How many of them do you think actually know the official story, or at least the latest version of it?

If you think it’s far-fetched to believe They might pull off false flag evil even more sinister than 9/11 just for another round of massive record-breaking upward transfer of wealth, please learn as much as you can about what actually happened on 9/11—what all of the evidence says (at least evidence They weren’t able to have quickly destroyed). And, well, there is another reason . . . one even older than money. . . .

War

Perpetual war gets difficult to justify, or even explain, without periodic, ever-increasing doses of fear.

9/11 ushered in the Global War on Terror . . . continuous war without a real adversary that, in the words of Dick Cheney, “Will likely last beyond our lifetimes.”

The war with no possibility of ever being won because there is nobody to surrender. Permanent war. Nothing produces more debt (profit) for Them, than war. Who wins a war became largely irrelevant after They started profiting from funding (indebting) both sides (oh, that magic of compound interest!). Permanent war is Their ticket to final total consolidation of Their control.

Remember that quaint old notion of peace? For Them, peace is simply a profit opportunity lost.

And it hardly matters who the new false flag atrocity is blamed on . . . Iran, Syria, Pakistan . . . the only thing that really matters is more war. War is job one.

Throughout his ministry, Jesus used force only one time.

At least the only record we have of Him using force: Jesus used a whip to drive the “money changers” from the temple (John 2:14–17). If our temple, Earth, is to continue supporting intelligent life, We! . . . all of us except Them, must follow the example set for us by Jesus.

For splendid reading about Them, please see The History of Money.

Rand Clifford’s novel Castling, the classic “Story of the Power of Hemp,” and the sequel, Timing, are published by StarChief Press. The novels, Priest Lake Cathedral, and Voices of Vires will be available soon.

The Critics of 9/11 Truth: Do They Have A Case?

by Paul Craig Roberts

September 13, 2011 "Information Clearing House" --  The short answer to the question in the title is no.

The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.

Let’s examine the case against the truthers presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.

But first let’s define who the truthers are.

The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.

Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories. 9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.

For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.

The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.

The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings. It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones. It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes. It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.

The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists. When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.

When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.

When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel--and their testimony is backed up with photographs--in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there. When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.

When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.

It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.

That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.

What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29113.htm

Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?

Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.

Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here. http://barnhardt.biz/

Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.” Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.

Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.

Now we come to Alex Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.

Alex avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents--scores of them--methodically planted demolition charges.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/02/the-911-conspiracists-vindicated-after-all-these-years/

Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”

Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.

Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Alex does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Alex writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon--they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both--stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”

If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.

I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometimes. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.

Alex’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.

Alex’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.

Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.

Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?

They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.

Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.

There is no 9/11 debate. On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks. The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.