Seventeen Techniques for Truth Suppression: (Originally Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression)

by David Martin, author of America's Dreyfus Affair

Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party.

1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.

2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "how dare you?" gambit.

3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors." (If they tend to believe the "rumors" it must be because they are simply "paranoid" or "hysterical.")

4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.

5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and of course, "rumor monger." Be sure, too, to use heavily loaded verbs and adjectives when characterizing their charges and defending the "more reasonable" government and its defenders. You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned. For insurance, set up your own "skeptics" to shoot down.

6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money (compared to over-compensated adherents to the government line who, presumably, are not).

7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.

8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."

9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hangout route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than- criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall- back position quite different from the one originally taken. With effective damage control, the fall-back position need only be peddled by stooge skeptics to carefully limited markets.

10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.

11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report the leak.

12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. For example: If Vince Foster was murdered, who did it and why?

13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or publicizing distractions.

14. Scantly report incriminating facts, and then make nothing of them. This is sometimes referred to as "bump and run" reporting.

15. Baldly and brazenly lie. A favorite way of doing this is to attribute the "facts" furnished the public to a plausible-sounding, but anonymous, source.

16. Expanding further on numbers 4 and 5, have your own stooges "expose" scandals and champion popular causes. Their job is to pre-empt real opponents and to play 99-yard football. A variation is to pay rich people for the job who will pretend to spend their own money.

17. Flood the Internet with agents. This is the answer to the question, "What could possibly motivate a person to spend hour upon hour on Internet news groups defending the government and/or the press and harassing genuine critics?" Don't the authorities have defenders enough in all the newspapers, magazines, radio, and television? One would think refusing to print critical letters and screening out serious callers or dumping them from radio talk shows would be control enough, but, obviously, it is not.

Comment from Signs of the Times: Boy, have we seen these tactics used against our work! The Pentagon Strike flash is a great example. The first question we get asked (by the sincere) or that gets thrown in our face (by the agents) is what then happened to Flight 77? What happened to everyone on it?

The point is, we may never know. We can make some hypotheses based on the data. But the important point raised in the flash and by 911 researchers is that the evidence is overwhelming that it was not an airplane that hit the Pentagon. And we see that there are numerous agents in the 911 movement who expose scandals like holographic inserts or who accept the official version that a Boeing hit the Pentagon, seeking to lead people astray.

Reasoning backwards is one of the strongest ones when it comes to 911. They begin by saying "It is impossible for an elected government in the US to attack it's own citizens" and therefore all the evidence is dismissed beforehand.

You can go through the list and see how each of these tactics is used, be it on 911 or hyperdimensional realities. The powers that be do not want this information to get out.

LOOK FOR THE MEDIA LABELS

An Examination of the Propaganda of Nomenclature

Tue Apr 12, 7:58 PM ET
By Ted Rall

NEW YORK--If you read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television, you know that the media has assigned Muqtada al-Sadr a peculiar job title: radical cleric. "Gunmen fired on supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on Friday," reports the Associated Press wire service. National Public Radio routinely refers to "radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr." "The protesters were largely supporters of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr," says CNN. Even Agence France-Press refers to him the same way: "Followers of a radical Shiite cleric marched in Baghdad."

I wonder: Does he answer his phone with a chipper "Muqtada al-Sadr, radical cleric!"? Does it say "radical cleric" on his business card?

It's a safe bet that neither al-Sadr nor his Iraqi supporters considers him particularly "radical." And, if you stop to think about it, there's nothing inherently extreme about wanting foreign troops to leave your country. Radical is a highly subjective word that gets thrown around without much reflection. What's more radical, invading another nation without a good excuse or trying to stop someone from doing so? But that's the problem: the media has become so accustomed to absorbing and regurgitating official government propaganda that they never stop to think.

A Google News search of the terms "Muqtada al-Sadr" and "radical cleric" brought up 616 news and opinion stories, the latter derived from the former. Despite the prime minister's obvious status as an American-appointed puppet, "Iyad Allawi" and "collaborationist" yielded zero results. The message is clear: al-Sadr, and by extension Iraqis who oppose the U.S. occupation, are marginal wackos. Those who support it are referred to by questionable legitimatizing honorifics--prime minister, in Allawi's case--because the U.S. government called a press conference to announce him as such.

Repetition is key to successful advertising. The American media uses repeated arbitrary labeling in its supposedly impartial coverage in a deliberate campaign to alter public perception. Americans were meant to feel less sympathy for an kidnapped Italian woman shot by U.S. soldiers manning a checkpoint in Iraq after the talking heads repeatedly referred to her as a "communist journalist." A Fox News reporter in the same story would never have been dubbed a "neofascist journalist." John McCain (R-AZ) might become president someday but "maverick senator John McCain" probably won't. Ralph Nader's name rarely appears in print without the unappealing word "gadfly" or a form of "crusading." Why not describe figures in the news using terms that aim for neutrality, like "Italian reporter" or "former Green Party candidate Ralph Nader"?

Labeling bias works to marginalize political outsiders while powerful elites receive their full honorifics. Howard Dean was antiwar firebrand Howard Dean but George W. Bush was never referred to as pro-war crusader George W. Bush. The press calls the founder of the Moral Majority "the Reverend Jerry Falwell," not "radical cleric Jerry Falwell." Even the word "cleric" implies foreignness to a xenophobic public; American religious leaders are the more familiar "ministers" rather than clerics. Instead of telling readers and viewers what to think with cheesy labels, why not let public figures' quotes and actions speak for themselves? Besides, well-known players like al-Sadr and Falwell don't require an introduction.

Loaded labels are commonly used to influence the public's feelings about groups of people as well as individuals. Under Ronald Reagan the Afghan mujahedeen, who received CIA funding and weapons that they used to fight Soviet occupation forces, were called "freedom fighters." Iraqis who take up arms against U.S. occupation troops, on the other hand, are called "insurgents," a word that implies rebellion for its own sake. This was the same term used by the New York Times and other mainstream media to refer to anti-U.S. fighters in Vietnam during the 1960s. Only later, when the Vietnam War became unpopular, did American newspapers begin calling the former "insurgents" members of an infinitely more patriotic-sounding "resistance."

Editors and producers who value balance ought to establish a consistent policy--either negative smears or positive accolades for both sides. Anti-occupation forces should always be called insurgents, guerillas, etc., while pro-occupation troops are dubbed collaborators. Either that, or call them freedom fighters and government loyalists, respectively.

Perhaps the most absurd labeling sin is the media's inconsistent treatment of nations that decide to change their names. When the Khmer Rouge, who went on to kill an estimated four and half million people, renamed their country Kampuchea in 1975, the international media had so little trouble adapting to the new name for Cambodia that they continued using it well into the 1980s, even after Pol Pot had fled into the jungle. Notorious tyrant Mubutu Sese Seko easily convinced the press to start referring to the Congo as Zaire in 1971; his equally despotic successor got them to switch right back. When the SLORC military junta changed the former British colony of Burma to Myanmar in 1989, however, journalists followed the U.S. State Department's refusal to accept the new name. Even "liberal" outlets like NPR still call it Burma or "Myanmar, formerly Burma." We need a consistent rule here, too. Either countries get to call themselves whatever they want or they should be stuck with their current names for eternity.

What hits home hits hardest. I too have been victimized by the idiotic practice of repeat labeling. "Controversial cartoonist Ted Rall" garners no fewer than 58 hits on Google. Care to guess the results for "patriotic cartoonist Ted Rall"?

Comment: [This] article, an Op-Ed piece by Ted Rall, a political cartoonist who has been discriminated against and libeled badly by the propagandist press, has done a SUPERB ANALYSIS of exactly how, and with what words and kinds of phrases, the government's media shills taint every word of information that is available to the American people. This guy has done the BEST "what is being done to our perceptions and how they are doing it" I have yet encountered.

U.S. government planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media

BBC News
By Tom Carver
Wednesday, 20 February, 2002
Washington correspondent

The Pentagon is toying with the idea of black propaganda.

As part of George Bush's war on terrorism, the military is thinking of planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media.

A new department has been set up inside the Pentagon with the Orwellian title of the Office of Strategic Influence.

It is well funded, is being run by a general and its aim is to influence public opinion abroad.

Black and white

It has been canvassing opinion within the Pentagon on what it should do. [...]

Iran: Putting on the Heat

By Grady Hawkins

As we go to press, prime minister Ariel Sharon of Israel is meeting with President George Bush at the latter’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. Reportedly, Mr. Sharon shared with the president a series of secret satellite photos that revealed exactly how advanced Iranian nuclear technology has become, and how the Iranians are rapidly becoming a threat to the State of Israel. Sharon told President Bush that the Iranian nuclear enrichment program has reached a “point of no return.”

Tehran has not backed off. It has reinforced its determination to maintain its nuclear program regardless of what the United States, Israel, or the European Union demand. The United States continues to be “The Great Satan’ as far as the Iranians are concerned, and the destruction of the State of Israel still appears to be one of the goals of Iranian hard liners. Washington has described Iran as part of the ‘Axis of evil”. Clearly, another regime change is on the table.

The pressure is on. Who will blink first? The Bush administration and the Israelis are going to make sure that the Iranians attack first.

The Iranian noose is getting tighter and tighter. Tehran is being backed into a corner. Washington and Tel Aviv are upping the ante.

A look at the map shows that Iran is surrounded on four sides. The Americans are building permanent bases in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and can now launch air strikes from both east and west. To the south lies the Persian Gulf, occupied and controlled by the U.S. 5th fleet. The so-called “Petrostans” lie to the north. Bought off by Washington, they will allow temporary bases and fly over rights as the need arises and the cash comes in. Reports have surfaced that the United States Air Force has been routinely violating Iranian air space. Unmanned Aerial vehicles have been reported on recon missions inside Iran. American fighter aircraft have been reported flying in from both Iraq and Afghanistan. Their mission is to try to get the Iranians to turn on their radar so the sites can be mapped. The Iranian air defenses forces have been ordered to shoot down any aircraft entering their airspace. Wishful thinking on the part of the Iranians perhaps, but it shows they are willing to pull the trigger if they get the chance

Sources claim that both American and Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commandos have actually crossed the border and have engaged in recon missions, spying on military installations and the like. Kurdish special- forces have been reported to be helping the Americans and IDF. No contact with the Iranians has not been reported, but then there are probably no reporters embedded with these units.

More indirect threats against Tehran are also in the news. The Israeli Air Force has admitted to the Israeli press that it has modified a squadron of American F-15 eagle fighters with special long- range fuel tanks. It has also admitted to the purchase of a number of GBU-27 or GBU-28 bunker busting bombs. These are laser or satellite guided once launched from newly renamed F-15I (I for Israel) jet fighters and can penetrate at least 10 meters of earth and concrete. These aircraft have been formed into a special unit called squadron 69. A spokesman for the Israeli Air Force in an interview with Ha’aretz magazine also admitted the squadron was practicing long range bombing missions. The Times of London reported in March that the cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has given ‘initial authorization” for an attack during a private meeting at his ranch.

The Sunday Times of London last month broke the story that a battalion of very secret and very elite Israeli commandos are rehearsing an attack on the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz. Most of the men were from the Shaldag (kingfisher) battalion and working with Mossad agents. The full size mock up is located in the Negev desert. These special ops troops practice attacking from helicopters, marking targets for air strikes, and planting high-explosives on underground targets.

The Israeli Navy has not been idle, or able to keep secrets. The Israeli Navy has three Dolphin class submarines in its inventory. Built in Germany, these boats are small, fast, crewed by only 45 sailors, carry the latest electronics and are armed with torpedoes and cruise missiles. They are diesel-electric boats with a range of over 4,500 nautical miles and an endurance of more than 30 days. Operating in the relatively shallow Persian Gulf under the noses of the Iranian navy would be no problem. And there is no target inside Iran they cannot strike. The Israeli navy has been operating out of a forward operating base in the Dalak archipelago just past the Gulf of Aden in the Red Sea off the coast of Eritrea.

Just a few months ago Tel Aviv announced that it wanted to acquire two more Dolphin class submarines to add to the fleet, adding to the threat against Iran.

Former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter and New Yorker investigative reporter Seymour Hersch have both reported that there may be an air strike on Iran as soon as this June.

The United States and Israel can certainly attack Iran when they feel ready. The Iranian s have a handful of F-14 Tom Cats and some front line M-29’s. After the fall of the Shah, the Mullahs purged all western influence from Iran’s military. All western trained pilots were retired, as well as some western technology. American and Israeli losses during a series of air strikes would be minimal.

Clearly, Washington and Tel Aviv want to stampede Tehran into attacking first. This Iranian preemptive attack would be just the excuse the Bush administration needs to launch an all out counter attack, designed to topple the Mullahs and encourage the formation of a pro-western government with no interest in changing to the euro dollar for oil transactions. Stopping Moscow from expanding its sphere of influence is another added bonus.

And the fact that Iran holds the second largest oil reserves on the planet doesn’t hurt.

Conversation and the theory of relativity

John Darkin:
27.04.05

Professor Ron Carter, of the University of Nottingham, a guru of spoken English, has mixed views on the outcome of a survey of British peopleís communication skills.

The art of small talk - spoken, by text or by email - is, he says, clearly thriving. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot less "big talk".

What he means is that we are failing to engage the milkman or the lady in the dairy at 7am in conversation about the moral justification of building a high concrete wall in East Jerusalem, or whether the new Pope should have been a woman.

Of course, he is right to be concerned. At the crack of dawn my brain should be primed and ready to face the rigours of intellectual cut and thrust.

Even while suffering the consequences of reckless self-abuse from the night before, I should be mentally prepared to toss around ideological banter with my bus driver on whether Einstein was really a clever sod or just a silly old man who liked mowing his lawn.

By grunting my request for a $3 ticket and receiving a grunt in reply, both the driver and I have failed to better ourselves.

By our reticence we have wasted an opportunity for our minds to meet on a higher plane and to exchange ideas which, had they been expressed, would have left us each with two ideas and the day already showing an information profit. Donít letís worry about the bus running late.

Professor Carter explains that "big talk" means discussing our ideas and having them challenged so that we may refine them, extend them or elaborate our first thoughts.

He argues there are serious long-term consequences to losing the art of conversation. We risk becoming inflexible and stereotyped in our thinking.

Samuel Johnson said: "When two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather." New Zealanders have not been exempt from this generality.

According to Carter, though, modern small talk has shifted in emphasis from the weather to last nightís telly, and weíre good at it. If this is true, the goings-on in TV soaps and reality shows occupy our thinking more than the latest atrocities in Sudan or Iraq. As a society we have television in common, and the drama and romance it provides sits comfortably outside our own lives and doesnít threaten us.

We can deal with make-believe and itís easy to provide an opinion about it, knowing what we say will not be held against us and will, in all probability, not be listened to anyway.

Likewise, we readily engage in trivial gossip about celebrities whose images form some unworldly backdrop to our ordinary lives.

Professor Carter suggests that when we mingle with our friends and colleagues we are not engaging in enough big-issue conversations. Why? Are we afraid that giving our opinion may reflect badly on us? Will people whisper behind our backs that we are a clever clogs and too serious to be fun company?

Itís hard to know where a big-issue talk might start. "Now look here, driver. Iíve been meaning to ask your opinion on what differences there would be in the world had Einstein been a watchmaker rather than a mathematical physicist?"

"Good one, interesting passenger. Perhaps this bus would always run on time."

Small talk has a place in relationships. It helps to break the ice with strangers and enables us to touch base with acquaintances.

But Professor Carter is right to raise the issue. Think how much more we could achieve if we were all practised at analytical thought and articulate expression. If the words used up on trivia were used instead to inquire, discover and share wisdom, the problems besetting the world may be fewer.

But the reality lies in dealing with the challenges present in everyday life. Surviving the nitty-gritty of home, family, work and friends hardly leaves time to contemplate our navels, let alone find the words to bring out the inner philosopher.

In the meantime we are happy to gossip and small-talk soaps which, as Einstein might have said, are relative to our lives. But we could try giving big talk a go.

CIA’s final report: No WMD found in Iraq

The Associated Press
Updated: 9:24 p.m. ET April 25, 2005

WASHINGTON - In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion.

“After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.

“As matters now stand, the WMD investigation has gone as far as feasible.”

In 92 pages posted online Monday evening, Duelfer provides a final look at an investigation that occupied over 1,000 military and civilian translators, weapons specialists and other experts at its peak. His latest addenda conclude a roughly 1,500-page report released last fall.

On Monday, Duelfer said there is no purpose in keeping many of the detainees who are in custody because of their knowledge on Iraq’s weapons, although he did not provide any details about the current number. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ultimate decision on their release will be made by the Iraqi authorities.

Warnings about Saddam’s experts

The survey group also provided warnings.

The addenda conclude that Saddam’s programs created a pool of experts now available to develop and produce weapons and many will be seeking work. While most will probably turn to the “benign civil sector,” the danger remains that “hostile foreign governments, terrorists or insurgents may seek Iraqi expertise.”

“Because a single individual can advance certain WMD activities, it remains an important concern,” one addendum said.

Another addendum also noted that military forces in Iraq may continue to find small numbers of degraded chemical weapons — most likely misplaced or improperly destroyed before the 1991 Gulf War. In an insurgent’s hands, “the use of a single even ineffectual chemical weapon would likely cause more terror than deadlier conventional explosives,” another addendum said.

And still another said the survey group found some potential nuclear-related equipment was “missing from heavily damaged and looted sites.” Yet, because of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the survey group was unable to determine what happened to the equipment, which also had alternate civilian uses.

“Some of it probably has been sold for its scrap value. Other pieces might have been disassembled” and converted into motors or condensers, an addendum said. “Still others could have been taken intact to preserve their function.”

Small team still in place

Leaving the door to the investigation open just a crack, the U.S. official said a small team still operates under the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq, although the survey group officially disbanded earlier this month. Those staying on continue to examine documents and follow up on any reports of weapons of mass destruction.

In a statement accompanying the final installment, Duelfer said a surprise discovery would most likely be in the biological weapons area because clues, such as the size of the facilities used to develop them, would be comparatively small.

Among unanswered questions, Duelfer said a group formed to investigate whether WMD-related material was shipped out of Iraq before the invasion wasn’t able to reach firm conclusions because the security situation limited and later halted their work. Investigators were focusing on transfers from Iraq to Syria.

No information gleaned from questioning Iraqis supported the possibility, one addendum said. The Iraq Survey Group believes “it was unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However, ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.”

Secret Service records raise new questions about discredited conservative reporter

By John Byrne| RAW STORY Editor

Updated: Day discovered with two check-ins but no check outs; Other events found on some days without press briefings

READ THE DOCUMENTS

In what is unlikely to stem the controversy surrounding disgraced White House correspondent James Guckert, the Secret Service has furnished logs of the writer’s access to the White House after requests by two Democratic congressmembers.

The documents, obtained by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveal Guckert had remarkable access to the White House. Though he wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, the records show that he applied with his real name.

Gannon’s ready access to President Bush and his work for a news agency that frequently plagiarized content from other reporters and tailored it to serve a conservative message may raise new questions about the White House’s attempts to seed favorable news coverage. Democrats have sought to paint Guckert in the context of other efforts by the Administration to “plant” positive spin by paying for video news releases and columnists to espouse their views.

Guckert made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.

Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance, however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits.

Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings. On many of these days, the Press Office held press gaggles aboard Air Force One—which raises questions about what Guckert was doing at the White House. On other days, the president held photo opportunities.

On at least fourteen occasions, Secret Service records show either the entry or exit time missing. Generally, the existing entry or exit times correlate with press conferences; on most of these days, the records show that Guckert checked in but was never processed out.

In March, 2003, Guckert left the White House twice on days he had never checked in with the Secret Service. Over the next 22 months, Guckert failed to check out with the Service on fourteen days. On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one. On one of these days, no briefing was held; on another, he checked in twice but failed to check out.

“I’d be worried if I was the White House and I knew that a reporter with a day pass never left,” one White House reporter told RAW STORY. “I’d wonder, where is he hiding? It seems like a security risk.”

Others who have covered the White House say not checking in or out with the Secret Service is unusual, especially in the wake of Sept. 11. The Secret Service declined to comment.

“We responded to the FOIA request and can provide no further information,” Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry said.

Guckert declined to comment, directing all questions to the Service.

The records furnished by the Service are unlikely to finally answer who approved Gannon’s “temporary” day passes into the presidential residence. The Service keeps a record of who approved passes only for the last sixty days; previous records are kept by the White House.

Since December 2004, all but one of Gannon’s forty-eight temporary appointments were requested by Lois Cassano, a White House Press Office media assistant. One additional request was made by Peter Watkins, a press assistant who now works as deputy press secretary to First Lady Laura Bush.

Guckert sometimes stayed for an extended period of time before and after press conferences, particularly early in his tenure. This was especially common during his first few months, when he might be in the White House for as long as six hours.

A White House reporter dismissed this as insignificant, noting that sometimes reporters stay between events.

“You could probably find people who stayed there for nine hours,” the reporter said.

Occasionally, the former Talon News reporter visited the White House twice on the same day. This was also most common in the early months.

The Secret Service furnished the records after a Freedom of Information Act request from Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Louise Slaughter (D-NY).

Guckert drew fire from liberals after asking a question of President Bush earlier this year in which he misquoted the Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Investigative bloggers at Daily Kos and AmericaBlog.org discovered that Guckert owned male escort sites, and was himself a male prostitute.

The now-blogger has also been accused of lifting copy from press releases and other reporters.

A Massachusetts editor and reporter have accused Guckert of plagiarism, which RAW STORY reported in March. The watchdog Media Matters for America has also found that many of Guckert’s stories lifted directly from White House press releases.

Talon News, which shut down after the fracas over Gannon erupted, was self-avowedly Republican. Bobby Eberle, the site's founder, told the Washington Post, "We make no bones about it: It's a partisan site."

In a February letter to President Bush, several Senate Democrats raised concern about Gannon in connection with what they believe is an attempt to “buy” coverage.

“The Gannon/Guckert affair is disturbing because of what we have recently learned about apparent efforts by some in your Administration to try to "buy" favorable news coverage,” the Democrats wrote. “These other efforts include paying news personalities … large sums of money to promote your Administration's education and marriage initiatives, and using taxpayer dollars to produce video news releases promoting the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare beneficiaries and other policies the Administration regards as accomplishments.”

The Administration has defended such efforts, and has sought to downplay their significance.

9/11 Cointelpro: Robinowitz and Ruppert on the same team?

It seems the "powers that be" have gone into high gear trying to do some damage control over the Pentagon Strike video that has been making the rounds over the internet.

According to a recent entry on Catalytic Coverter, Mark Robinowitz of oilempire.us may be sending out mass emails to anyone who features the Pentagon Strike Video (see sidebar) on their blog. He seems to be doing this deliberately in order to quell the massive interest that this little video has been generating over the last year.

Although I personally have yet to receive this mailing from Robinowitz, I do wonder if it will show up after I post this entry.

Anyway, part of his email critique goes like this;

Stumbled upon your site -

the "Pentagon Strike" video has been debunked by many of the best
writers on 9/11 complicity issues - such as the author of the
911research site you list. [...]

Now compare this with the following BBC story that appeared on Wednesday, 20 February, 2002 which essentially states that the U.S. has been active deliberately planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media.

Could it be that Mr. Robinowitz is a conscious agent of this American propaganda black-ops program?

What could it be about the Pentagon Strike video that has the PTB so upset that they would hire or engage the help of useful idiots to go around debunking all the sites that deal with the "no plane hit the pentagon" theory?

Perhaps it is because misleading 9/11 researchers like Robinowitz and Ruppert know that the attack on the Pentagon is the weakest link of the official verison and any serious investigation into this area suggests with a high degree of probability that 9/11 was an inside job.

Consider this interesting piece of information from an article entitled; David Beckham and Flight 77 in Paris...

Another interesting event in this timeline was the creation of a website with the domain name oilempire.us. This site lists what it calls "Bogus 9-11 Websites" saying:

The three biggest stories used to alienate the public from 9/11 truth

1. No Planes on 9/11 (Pentagon, North Tower WTC, "pod plane" at South Tower, Pennsylvania)

2. The Jews Did It (Israel had foreknowledge and possibly played a role, but that doesn't justify anti-semitism and Holocaust Denial)

3. The Victims' Phone Calls Were Faked (a way to keep the 9/11 families and the skeptics from working together)

why are there bogus 9/11 websites? a mix of malice and incompetence, but both make real evidence harder to find

Considering the very good case for the involvement of MOSSAD in 9-11, the very good case that the victims phone calls WERE faked, not to mention what I have discovered about satellite photos on 9-11, it sure does look like the Oil Empire Website is a "plant," so to say. So I did a whois lookup. Here's what I found: [...]

The site is claimed by a Mark Rabinowitz even if it was "prepared for use" as early as February of 2003. That, in itself, is rather suspicious. Seems that this was right about the time that the Meyssan book was making a splash.

Robinowitz was posting on usenet as far back as 1994 in regards to an auto free DC. He's on a few dc.biking threads on usenet.

Rabinowitz then did some reporting for the Institute of Global Communications based in MD.
[See: http://www.igc.apc.org/]

He then moved to Eugene, Oregon by the looks of things and is into permaculture. He appears to be coming from a "green" perspective. He got into the Y2K hysteria for a bit and now it appears he's onto the "Peak Oil deal" via Ruppert.

Do a Ruppert- Robinowitz search on google and you'll see what I mean in regards to the Ruppert promotion.

So it DOES look like Ruppert - who has been quoted as promoting the "no plane theory" but has now advised everybody to just "forget 9-11 and concentrate on Peak Oil" - has a strange bedfellow with Rabinowitz.

Shades of COINTELPRO!

So, it seems that because of the popularity and effectiveness of the short but very important message contained in the Pentagon Strike video, the powers that be have pulled out all the stops in order to ridicule and debunk anyone who dares share this link showing that it was NOT a 757 that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept 11th, 2001.

So, if I may impart the tiniest bit of advice; please do yourself, your friends and the world a huge favour by spreading the link to the Pentagon Strike video far and wide. The more people see it, the more chance the truth will come out.

Or so it seems to me.

A taste of my own medicine

Being that this blog is primarily concerned with the dissemination of harmful propaganda to the world at large, I must come clean about my role in this exact same practice last week, as I endeavoured to help out a friend and generate some income at the same time.

According to Webster's dictionary, propaganda is defined as; the systematic or widespread promotion of a particular doctrine or idea. The doctrine in this case could be classified as that of western medicine in general, and the practice of pharmacy in particular.

Now, it's been about two years since I gave up the profession of pharmacy in order to manage a small esoteric bookstore. The pay ain't great, but the fringe benefits of setting my own hours and actually doing something that I love far outweighs the burden of hawking dangerous poisons for some faceless corporation. Anyway, after two years of not practicing, my license was set to expire permanently, and in the spirit of keeping all my options open, I considered taking a part-time pharmacy job. In these days of impending economic apocalypse, I figured it was best not to burn any bridges as far as income is concerned. So, when my friend who owns a small local pharmacy needed someone to do some relief work and asked me help, my fate was sealed.

One of the main reasons for my overwhelming distaste of the profession was the constant need to push dangerous and unnecessary medicines onto people who being sick, were sincerely asking for help. Pharmacy is not really about helping people get better per se, it is more concerned with masking the symptoms of disease by propagating corporate pharmaceutical dogma.

Take the common cold for example. In every pharmacy there are literally hundreds of different products, rows and rows of shelves with different coloured boxes, each claiming to be the one quick cure for whatever symptoms one may have. In reality, each product consists of combinations of not more than FIVE different classes of medicines, none of which do anything to help a person get over the common cold.

Analgesics, antihistamines, decongestants, anti-tussives and expectorants, that's about it. The entire cough and cold section is one big marketing lie. And as a pharmacist, it becomes my professional duty to propagate this lie onto the consumer, all the while pretending that one product is better or more suitable than the other.

That's what got me into so much trouble in my last job, because I continuously refused to play this game and rather than tell people what the bosses wanted me to in order to increase the bottom line, I would instead tell the truth about what products they were buying. So, when someone with a cold came in and asked me which cough syrup was best for them, I would often say jokingly; "close your eyes and pick one". When questioned further, I would explain that all these different cold medicines were pretty much the same, and if they were serious about getting well, it would be best if they took a week off of work, sat in bed with a cup of lemon and honey tea, drank loads of water and waited for the disease to run it's course.

Good advice it seems, for that is exactly what I needed to do after my first shift behind the counter in two years. As a result of my reentry into the pharmaceutical game, I must have picked up some kind of bug from one of the patients because I just spent the last week in bed with a fever and serious chest infection, coughing up great gobs of green goo. Normally pharmacists develop quite a sturdy immune system from being exposed to so many pathogens day after day. It seems fitting, in an ironic kind of way, that I should become bedridden with a cold after only one shift. However, a week has gone by, and now that my illness has reached it's peak, I'm feeling much better. Not only did I take a week off work to let my body heal, I also went back to the pharamcy and purchased a few cough and cold products in order to lessen the symptoms of my illness. A taste of my own medicine indeed.

Alas, I digress. The cough and cold section is but one small example of the hypocrisies of western medicine, that focuses on the symptoms of the disease, and not the underlying cause. Unfortunately, as in life and in pharmacy, oftentimes people don't want to be told the truth, only want they want to hear. So, in my previous job, whenever a customer insisted that I recommend a certain product, like a conditioned corporate propagandist, I would obediently launch into a professional spiel, extolling the virtues of one type of pill over another.

And this is where I found myself last Monday, determined not to repeat the same mistakes with my friend's business as I had in the past. With as much sincerity as I could muster, I played the role of the wise professional, dispensing advice and mostly unnecessary medicines to people who have been conditioned to trust the words of anyone in a position of authority with a white coat. The whole day went surprisingly well, as I really concentrated on listening to what patients were asking me and endeavoured to give them only what they were asking for and no more.

I realized that it is not my job to enlighten the world about the dangers and hypocrisies of western medicine, and that people may come to these conclusions on their own, in their own time, when they are ready and really asking. In the meantime, I now have the opportunity twice a month to practice external considering in the practice pharmacy, and by extension the world in general.

Relic

Great Gobs of Green Goo

Hello Readers,

It has been almost three weeks since my last entry into this blog. Major renovations to my house combined with being sidelined with a major respiratory infection has left me with little time or energy to update my blog on a regular basis.

Fortunately, it seems the course of my sickness has reached it's zenith yesterday, and after a good night's sleep, I feel well enough to continue with this project. There has been a lot of interesting things happening in the world as of late, and hopefully over the next few weeks, you will be able to read about them here.

So, my apologies to all.

It's good to be back.

Relic