From: Erik Aronesty (erik@zoneedit.com)
Date: Wed Mar 10 2004 - 07:48:22 MST
Paranoid ShiftOK, I know the thread of comparing Bush's regime to Hitler's regime has been been beaten over and over.... but this one is fun:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html
Paranoid Shift
by Michael Hasty
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 20minutes after he was informed that a
second plane had hit the World
Trade Center, listening to children read a story about a goat. Nordoes
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 Servicedragged 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, forvarious 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
voluminousevidence that the media play along. Number
one on Project Censored'sannual 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, bytaking 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
paranoiacs: 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 Meacher, 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 executive 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.
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