virus: Paranoid shift

From: Jei (jei@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Sat Jan 10 2004 - 19:11:31 MST

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    I think this is also not going to accomplish anything.

    The same as Germans didn't do anything to get Hitler
    away from power and stop the wars, people prefer to be
    comfortable rather than oppose the government. The pain
    and suffering of non-americans in the end will only
    move a few americans to sympathy, and plain sympathy
    accomplishes really nothing to fix the problem, even
    if they are aware of it.

    The only thing that could "fix things" is if china/russia/
    eu/arabs/africa finally find one voice and speak with it,
    and I don't see that taking place. It's always easy to
    divide and conquer, seed the discord and take them one at
    a time. We just might be seeing the rise of the Thousand
    Year Reich.

    Well, there's actually one way or a "good reason" that
    could bring this opposition to happen... The same way and
    the reasons it happened for the last time. But I would
    rather it did not. Hypocricy and American rule is still
    preferable to millions dying, imho.

    Well, millions are dying, but they are and will be arabs
    and asians, and black americans and mexicans (and other
    "instant americans") for recruited gun-fodder and in the
    end that hasn't stopped Americans...

    Well, let's hope our economies can still make good money
    by selling them weapons before Americans are sent to kill
    them. After all, that's what wars are really about -
    making money. Oh yes, I also bet that the US will resume
    the draft during Bush's second term in the office. It's
    pretty much evident that they need more cheap gun fodder.
    My bets are on Syria, Iran and North Korea in that order.
    After that, perhaps Saudiarabia will be getting it, in
    5-10 or so years, during Bush's third (non-ending) term
    in the office.

    // Jei

    http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

    Paranoid shift
    By Michael Hasty
    Online Journal Contributing Writer

    January 10, 2004-Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary
    chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a
    bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life.
    In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested in
    American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They really only wanted
    "absolute power."

    Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the
    counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit
    "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning
    their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton
    assumed that he would see all his old companions again "in hell."

    The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League
    cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon I
    call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because something
    similar happened to me.

    Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked at the
    CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s. This was at the
    same time I was beginning to question the government's actions in Vietnam.
    In fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began with the
    disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American foreign
    policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than I had
    hitherto been led to believe.

    But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I
    nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power
    ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people got together
    and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.
    What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe this
    to be necessarily true.

    In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower," William
    Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of "conspiracy
    theory" an immediate "object of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever
    having to investigate the many strange interconnections among the ruling
    class-for example, the relationship between the boards of directors of media
    giants, and the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable
    topics are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective
    tool-silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do
    is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too
    frivolous to merit serious attention.

    On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words
    "conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually means
    someone is getting too close to the truth.

    Take September 11-which I identify as the date my paranoia actually shifted,
    though I didn't know it at the time.

    Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all that George W. Bush,
    commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20 minutes after he
    was informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, listening
    to children read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the
    Number 2 man, Dick Cheney-even knowing that "the commander" was on a mission
    in Florida-nevertheless sat at his desk in the White House, watching TV,
    until the Secret Service dragged him out by the armpits.

    Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald
    Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon-well over an hour
    after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking in progress. It
    also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
    sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks took place,
    after leaving explicit instructions that he not be disturbed-which he
    wasn't.

    In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top of the
    chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat at various
    desks, inert. Why weren't they in the "Situation Room?" Don't any of them
    ever watch "West Wing?"

    In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here on this
    side of the paranoid shift, it's business as usual.

    Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American forces
    to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for various
    imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent upon "a
    catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," to gain the
    majority support of the American public to set the plans into motion. When
    the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way . . . and
    presto, the path to global domination was open.

    Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous evidence
    that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored's annual list of
    underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a New American Century
    (now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in
    2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor" quote.

    Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly warned us
    that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the masses?" Did we think
    Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he warned of the extreme "danger" to
    democracy of "the military industrial complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just
    being a quaint old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the Trilateral
    Commission was "David Rockefeller's latest scheme to take over the world, by
    taking over the government of the United States?" Were Teddy and Franklin
    Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy just being class traitors when they talked about
    a small group of wealthy elites who operate as a hidden government behind
    the government? Especially after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we
    believe the late CIA Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA
    "owns everyone of any major significance in the major media?"

    Why can't we believe James Jesus Angleton-a man staring eternal judgment in
    the face-when he says that the founders of the Cold War national security
    state were only interested in "absolute power?" Especially when the
    descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in the
    White House.

    Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and
    grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen Dulles,
    CIA director, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and
    international business lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles' law firm. As
    such, he was the beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous ability to scrub the
    story of Bush's treasonous investments in the Third Reich out of the news
    media, where it might have interfered with Bush's political career . . . not
    to mention the presidential careers of his son and grandson.

    Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October by
    investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette, reveal
    that Prescott Bush's involvement in financing and arming the Nazis was more
    extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing director of the
    Union Banking Corporation, the American branch of Hitler's chief financier's
    banking network; but among the other companies where Bush was a director-and
    which were seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading With
    the Enemy Act-were a shipping line which imported German spies; an energy
    company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl fuel; and a steel
    company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz concentration
    camp.

    Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug in the
    privatized censorship of the corporate media, these revelations have been
    largely ignored, with the exception of a single article in the Associated
    Press. And there are those, even on the left, who question the current
    relevance of this information.

    But Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a family
    pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering-from George Senior's sale of
    TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling biological and chemical
    weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany misadventures in crony
    capitalism in present-day Iraq.

    More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph Hitler
    and George W. Bush:

    A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in military
    uniform (which no previous American president has ever done while in
    office). Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception. Open assaults on
    labor unions and workers' rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism.
    Contempt for international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient
    "terrorist" attacks, to justify a police state and the suspension of
    liberties. A carefully manufactured image of "The Leader," who's still just
    a "regular guy" and a "moderate." "Freedom" as the rationale for every
    action. Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented budget deficits and
    massive military spending.

    And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism-including the violent suppression
    of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture, assassination and
    concentration camps; and most important, Benito Mussolini's preferred
    definition of "fascism" as "corporatism, because it binds together the
    interests of corporations and the state."

    By their fruits, you shall know them.

    What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most
    paranoics: why don't other people see these connections?

    Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like Online
    Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research, and the
    Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing conspiracists
    and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd at the
    Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we are only a
    furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod people in the live-action,
    21st-century version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

    And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits into our
    system, why more people don't see the connections we do. Fortunately, there
    are a number of possible explanations.

    First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the "cave art
    of the electronic age:" advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Karl Rove,
    gave credit for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass opinion to
    American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science of "public
    relations." But the public relations universe available to the corporate
    empire that rules the world today makes the Goebbels operation look
    primitive. The precision of communications technology and graphics; the
    century of research on human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely
    centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly capitalism, have
    combined to the point where "the manufacture of consent" can be set on
    automatic pilot.

    A second major reason people won't make the paranoid shift is that they are
    too fundamentally decent. They can't believe that the elected leaders of our
    country, the people they've been taught through 12 years of public school to
    admire and trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers to their
    deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, just to
    satisfy their greed-especially when they're so rich in the first place.
    Besides, America is good, and the media are liberal and overly critical.

    Third, people don't want to look like fools. Being a "conspiracy theorist"
    is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of eminent experts on
    every TV and radio network is that any discussion of "oil" being a
    motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who
    thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." We can trust the integrity of
    our 'no-bid" contracting in Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a
    "conspiracy theorist." Of course, people sometimes make mistakes, but our
    military and intelligence community did the best they could on and before
    September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."
    Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who thinks
    otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."

    Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the paranoid shift is
    that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner circle
    of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful military and
    intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls the
    most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls all
    three branches of government in the world's only superpower; and controls
    the technology that counts the people's votes, we might be then forced to
    conclude that we don't live in a particularly democratic system. And then
    voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't be
    enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a
    loyal opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"-like the Republicans in
    the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to fascism
    would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the government; and
    a violent insurgency would not only play into the empire's hands, it would
    be doomed from the start.

    Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean
    forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a lot of
    work. It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature of the
    truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the most basic
    neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust in the empire's
    technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines and transcending
    single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing data and names and
    strategies, and applying energy at every level of government, local to
    global. It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the
    Bush regime is starting to classify that action as "terrorism." In the end,
    it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern ourselves, just
    as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress. It would mean
    being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

    It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A paradigm
    shift.

    But as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main reason is
    I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a "theory."

    That the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations
    concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was "probably" the
    result of "a conspiracy,"-and that 70 percent of Americans agree with this
    conclusion, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That the Bay of Pigs fiasco, "Operation Zapata," was organized by members of
    Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret society at Yale University
    whose membership also included Prescott, George Herbert Walker and George W
    Bush; that two of the ships that carried the Cuban counterrevolutionaries to
    their appointment with absurdity were named the "Barbara" and the
    "Houston"-George HW Bush's city of residence at the time-and that the oil
    company Bush owned, then operating in the Caribbean area, was named
    "Zapata," is not "theory." It's fact.

    That George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what were
    estimated to be hundreds of American journalists, considered to be CIA
    "assets," from the Church Committee, the US Senate Intelligence Committe
    chaired by Senator Frank Church that investigated the CIA in the 1970s; that
    a 1971 University of Michigan study concluded that, in America, the more TV
    you watched, the less you knew; and that a recent survey by international
    scholars found that Americans were the most "ignorant" of world affairs out
    of all the populations they studied, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on official
    US government foreign policy; that the protection of US supplies of Middle
    East oil has been a central element of American foreign policy since the
    Second World War; and that global oil production has been in decline since
    its peak year, 2000, is not "theory." It's fact.

    That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral Commission published a
    report which recommended that, in order for "globalization" to succeed,
    American manufacturing jobs had to be exported, and American wages had to
    decline, which is exactly what happened over the next three decades; and
    that, during that same period, the richest one percent of Americans doubled
    their share of the national wealth, is not "theory." It's fact.

    That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the US Treasury
    Department, the Federal Reserve Banks are profit-making corporations, whose
    beneficiaries include some of America's wealthiest families; and that the
    United States has a virtual controlling interest in the World Bank, the
    International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, the three
    dominant global financial institutions, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That-whether it's heroin from Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, or
    cocaine from Central America and heroin from Afghanistan in the '80s, or
    cocaine from Colombia in the '90s, or heroin from Afghanistan today-no major
    CIA covert operation has ever lacked a drug smuggling component and that the
    CIA has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers, arms smugglers, mass murderers,
    perverts, sadists, terrorists and the Mafia, is not "theory." It's fact.

    That the international oil industry is the dominant player in the global
    economy; that the Bush family has a decades-long business relationship with
    the Saudi royal family, Saudi oil money, and the family of Osama bin Laden;
    that, as president, both George Bushes have favored the interests of oil
    companies over the public interest; that both George Bushes have personally
    profited financially from Middle East oil; and that American oil companies
    doubled their records for quarterly profits in the months just preceding the
    invasion of Iraq, is not "theory." It's fact.

    That the 2000 presidential election was deliberately stolen; that the
    pro-Bush/anti-Gore bias in the corporate media had spiked markedly in the
    last three weeks of the campaign; that corporate media were then virtually
    silent about the Florida recount; and that the Bush 2000 team had planned to
    challenge the legitimacy of the election if George W had won the popular,
    but lost the electoral vote-exactly what happened to Gore-is not "theory."
    It's fact.

    That the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was
    deceptively "cooked" by the Bush administration; that anybody paying
    attention to people like former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, knew
    before the invasion that the weapons were a hoax; and that American forces
    in Iraq today are applying the same brutal counterinsurgency tactics
    pioneered in Central America in the 1980s, under the direct supervision of
    then-Vice President George HW Bush, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New American
    Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a book published a few
    years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski, both
    recommended a more robust and imperial US military presence in the oil basin
    of the Middle East and the Caspian region; and that both also suggested that
    American public support for this energy crusade would depend on public
    response to a new "Pearl Harbor," is not "theory." It's fact.

    That, in the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously approved a plan
    called "Operation Northwoods," to stage terrorist attacks on American soil
    that could be used to justify an invasion of Cuba; and that there is
    currently an office in the Pentagon whose function is to instigate terrorist
    attacks that could be used to justify future strategically-desired military
    responses, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That neither the accusation by former British Environmental Minister Michael
    Meacham, Tony Blair's longest-serving cabinet minister, that George W Bush
    allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to justify an oil war in the Middle East;
    nor the RICO lawsuit filed by 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani against Bush, Cheney,
    Rumsfeld and the Council on Foreign Relations (among others), on the grounds
    that they conspired to let the attacks happen to cash in on the ensuing war
    profiteering, has captured the slightest attention from American corporate
    media is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That the FBI has completely exonerated-though never identified-the
    speculators who purchased, a few days before the attacks (through a bank
    whose previous director is now the CIA director), an unusual number of "put"
    options, and who made millions betting that the stocks in American and
    United Airlines would crash, is not a "theory." It's fact.

    That the US intelligence community received numerous warnings, from multiple
    sources, throughout the summer of 2001, that a major terrorist attack on
    American interests was imminent; that, according to the chair of the
    "independent" 9/11 commission, the attacks "could have and should have been
    prevented," and according to a Senate Intelligence Committee member, "All
    the dots were connected;" that the White House has verified George W Bush's
    personal knowledge, as of August 6, 2001, that these terrorist attacks might
    be domestic and might involve hijacked airliners; that, in the summer of
    2001, at the insistence of the American Secret Service, anti-aircraft
    ordnance was installed around the city of Genoa, Italy, to defend against a
    possible terrorist suicide attack, by aircraft, against George W Bush, who
    was attending the economic summit there; and that George W Bush has
    nevertheless regaled audiences with his first thought upon seeing the
    "first" plane hit the World Trade Center, which was: "What a terrible
    pilot," is not "theory." It's fact.

    That, on the morning of September 11, 2001: standard procedures and policies
    at the nation's air defense and aviation bureaucracies were ignored, and
    communications were delayed; the black boxes of the planes that hit the WTC
    were destroyed, but hijacker Mohammed Atta's passport was found in pristine
    condition; high-ranking Pentagon officers had cancelled their commercial
    flight plans for that morning; George H.W. Bush was meeting in Washington
    with representatives of Osama bin Laden's family, and other investors in the
    world's largest private equity firm, the Carlyle Group; the CIA was
    conducting a previously-scheduled mock exercise of an airliner hitting the
    Pentagon; the chairs of both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees
    were having breakfast with the chief of Pakistan's intelligence agency, who
    resigned a week later on suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 attacks; and
    the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States sat in a
    second grade classroom for 20 minutes after hearing that a second plane had
    struck the towers, listening to children read a story about a goat, is not
    "theoretical." These are facts.

    That the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt to
    independently investigate the events of 9/11, is not a "theory."

    Nor, finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single name that can
    be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial complex,
    Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol' boys, the Illuminati, Big
    Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK
    assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican National
    Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the
    Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters, the October
    Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute, Manuel
    Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads, Iraqgate, Saddam
    Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of innocents, the savings
    and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the
    "Octopus," the "Enterprise," the Afghan mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena
    (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle Group, Osama bin Laden
    and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the
    presidency and vice-presidency of the United States, is: George Herbert
    Walker Bush.

    "Theory?" To the contrary.

    It is a well-documented, tragic and-especially if you're paranoid-terrifying
    fact.

    Michael Hasty is a writer, activist, musician, carpenter and farmer. His
    award-winning column, "Thinking Locally," appeared for seven years in the
    Hampshire Review, West Virginia's oldest newspaper. His writing has also
    appeared in the Highlands Voice, the Washington Peace Letter, the Takoma
    Park Newsletter, the German magazine Generational Justice, and the
    Washington Post; and at the websites Common Dreams and Democrats.com. In
    January 1989, he was the media spokesperson for the counter-inaugural
    coalition at George Bush's Counter-Inaugural Banquet, which fed hundreds of
    DC's homeless in front of Union Station, where the official inaugural dinner
    was being held.

    Permission to reprint is granted, provided it includes this autobiographical
    note, and credit for first publication to Online Journal.

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