FOOD FOR THOUGHT 8:

EXTRA!! EXTRA!! READ
ALL ABOUT IT!! NEWS
TOO FIT TO PRINT!! HEY,
LET'S LIE INSTEAD!!!

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ONE

..........Some things, apparently, are too true to talk about, while others—true merely by merit of existing but otherwise false to their core—are worthy of coverage in the nation's most prominent paper.

..........It's no secret to any who have read "Food for Thought 7" which category—the more greatly false or the more greatly true—I think better suited to the subject of Princeton University's expansion of its black studies program. That story, nevertheless, was prominently covered by The New York Times in its issue of September 29, 2006. As I pointed out in "Food for Thought 7," readers interested in a more thorough and detailed explanation of why I think studies in victimology are intellectually pernicious and politically ruinous can read A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit, in this case, especially its third chapter, "Consumerism, Victimology, and the Disappearance of the Meaningful Self."

..........All of that, however—Princeton University and the abundant fruits that seem to have been bestowed upon it as a result of the hissy fit Cornel West threw after Lawrence Summers disrespected him—all of that we've talked about already, and have read about in the Times. Let's talk about something else—another academic subject, one the Times hasn't mentioned and that yet, it seems to me, is a bigger and more important story than the one about black studies at Princeton.

..........While readers of A Nation Gone Blind know perfectly well that I don't think professors of black studies really are doing what academicians ought to do, this new story is about a professor who clearly has been doing exactly what he ought to be doing—and yet has been, not lauded and rewarded, like the people at Princeton, but punished visibly and publicly. Yet the Times has said nothing about this story.

..........I, on the other hand, grew extremely exercised when the story broke—or, that is, when it broke for me. The university involved is Brigham Young University, and the faculty member involved is one Steven E. Jones, a professor of physics. I found out about the case only on September 17th, though it had been written up by the Deseret Morning News of September 8th. This news of the penalizing of Professor Jones, and of the breach of academic freedom that represented, stirred my sense of the high value of academic traditions and dignities, and my sense of the injustice done to them here, to the point where I sent letters of protest to four people at Brigham Young, the President being one (Cecil O. Samuelson), and the other three being faculty members who were to sit on the panel of "review" of Steven Jones, who had been stripped of his fall semester courses and put on paid leave.

..........The three who were to sit on the panel were Dr. Earl M. Woolley, Dean of the College of Physical and Mathematical Science; Dr. Alan R. Parkinson, Dean of the College of Engineering and Technology; and Dr. Scott Sommerfeldt, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

..........Here's what I wrote:

............................................................September 17, 2006

....................Dear Dr. Woolley (or President Samuelson; or
....................Dr. Parkinson; or Dr. Sommerfeldt):

....................I am a novelist and writer, and also an English
....................professor recently retired after thirty-five years
....................on the faculty of John Jay College of Criminal
....................Justice, City University of New York.

....................For all of my academic life, I have been ded-
....................icated to maintaining the very best aims both
....................of pedagogy and higher education and have
....................written on these subjects often. In fact, my cur-
....................rent book, A Nation Gone Blind: America in an
....................Age of Simplification and Deceit, decries the
....................grave deterioration in higher education that
....................I have seen taking place in the United States
....................over the past forty years. With this deterior-
....................ation goes a loss of intellectual freedom, and
....................with this loss of intellectual freedom—as I
....................make absolutely clear in A Nation Gone Blind
....................—we risk the loss of those freedoms that were
....................once constitutionally guaranteed, thus risking
....................also the loss of freedom itself and of our free
....................democratic republic.

....................My own belief, as my book makes clear, is
....................that we may already have lost that republic.
....................Steven Jones is not a scholar or researcher
....................who should be punished, singled out, or
....................reprimanded—let alone any measure yet
....................more severe—for his empirically-based sci-
....................entific work in studying the probability that
....................the World Trade Centers fell not as a result
....................of airplane crashes but as a result of care-
....................fully planned controlled demolition. One
....................argue that Professor Jones himself says
....................nothing. What speaks, instead, is the empir-
....................ical scientific method itself as we have
....................inherited it from the revolutionary period
....................in the 17th and 18th centuries that brought
....................forth not only that scientific method itself
....................but concurrently our own free American
....................republic.

....................It is the duty of the academy not to hinder
....................but to preserve, protect, and nurture the
....................scientific method. For any college, univers-
....................ity, or institution of higher learning to quash
....................research of this traditional empirical sort,
....................whatever the putative political implications
....................of such research may be, deserves to lose
....................its accreditation, its title, its rank, and its
....................very name, for it will have betrayed the
....................freedom of intellectual inquiry the pro-
....................tection of which is its very reason for
....................existing.

....................Yours sincerely,
....................Eric Larsen
....................New York, New York

TWO

..........And with that letter, clearly enough, I've let the cat out of the bag. But there's no harm in that, for here's what the escaped cat makes immediately apparent: The reason that The New York Times hasn't covered and won't cover the extraordinarily important academic freedom story—the story of Steven Jones being put on leave because he performs empirically based laboratory work—is not because the story isn't important but because it touches on the absolutely taboo matter of telling the truth about 9/11!

..........Readers will notice that I used a lot of italics in that sentence, and also that I ended it with an exclamation mark. Both of these things, according to the conventional wisdom, are indulgent shortcuts devoutly to be avoided in serious writing by serious writers. Fair and good. Let me this time, however, break those grand old rules as a means by which to make it clear that I'm concerned here with a seriousness that goes far beyond any mere convention of writing and beyond any conventional seriousness.

..........If our nation is to survive as a free republic (if in fact it remains one now), and if government by the people rather than by the corporations is going to be re-established in order that the pressing matters that have to do both with survival of the nation and of the planet can at last be fruitfully addressed—if these things are going to happen, it's necessary first that the truth about 9/11 be revealed openly and widely once and for all. And the truth is this: That 9/11 was a "false flag operation" brought about and committed not by a half-trained and rag-tag batch of non-devout Muslim young men, or by "al Qaeda," but instead that it was organized, arranged, and executed by central elements of the George W. Bush administration and certain parts of the intelligence agencies with some aid and abetting from elements of the military. The purpose of bringing about this self-inflicted attack was very simple. The purpose was to terrify the American people into believing in the existence of a powerful and merciless anti-American enemy, an enemy vicious enough to bring this "attack" on the United States, an "attack," like a "new Pearl Harbor," that would become the excuse for the massive use of American military power abroad in search not just of global hegemony politically but also as a means to seize the world's major remaining sources of a diminishing supply of oil.

..........I am not here to set out to "prove" the truth of any of the assertions in the paragraph above. Those proofs have already been made by a variety of extraordinarily skilled, courageous, and dedicated scholars who have again and again devoted entire books to them, spoken out about them, and clarified them in virtually any number of conscientious, thorough, and logical ways. The proofs are finished and done, and they would hold up in any court of law were there to be a fair and open trial between the people of the United States of America and those who perpetrated the crimes of 9/11. I will be more than happy to direct interested readers to the sources where they can read these proofs for themselves. Meanwhile, though, permit me to go on writing about The New York Times.

THREE

.................... What would you do, after learning about the Steven Jones case on September 16th or 17th , being reminded of it on September 29th while reading the code-worded and cuddly piece about black studies at Princeton, and finding by a search that the Times did recently mention Steven Jones, but only in a dismissive article about the 9/11 truth movement ("U.S. Counters 9/11 Theories Of Conspiracy," September 2nd , page B1), and that the paper had writer neither, about the collapsed relationship between Brigham Young and Jones nor about the breach of academic tradition there and the penalizing of empirical research.
....................On those subjects, the Times was silent, and has remained so.
....................Well, I don't know what you would do, but I know that I—yes, again—would write a letter, and did.
....................

............................................................September 20, 2006
....................
....................To the Editor:
........................................The gods of Academia are showering
....................generosity on Princeton University's scholarly
....................program in black studies ("Princeton Plans Ex-
....................pansion Of Black Studies Program," Sept. 19).
....................Princeton may be able to appoint as many as
....................eleven new faculty members to join nationally
....................known figures already there, including Profes-
....................sors Cornel West and Kwama Anthony Appiah.
....................At the same time, things are looking as bad
....................at Brigham Young University as they are good
....................at Princeton. At Brigham Young, Professor
....................Steven E. Jones has been relieved of his
....................courses and put on forced leave for doing pre-
....................what he's supposed to do as a professor in
....................chemistry-physics: working on empirical re-
....................search in his university laboratories. His re-
....................search recently has been in the area of ther-
....................mite reactions, which Jones demonstrates
....................as capable of severing heavy steel beams
....................almost instantaneously. Research is research,
....................however, and truth truth. Why does Prince-
....................ton's good luck become newsworthy while
....................Brigham Young's extraordinary and ominous
....................breach of academic and professional ethics
....................goes entirely unnoticed?
....................
....................Eric Larsen
....................New York, New York

..........I alluded, as you see, only most indirectly to 9/11 and the applicability of Jones's research to the now-scientifically inescapable conclusion that the towers—all three—WTC 1, WTC 2, and WTC 7—were brought down by controlled demolition. (If you'd like to read Jone's paper on the subject, it's here.)

..........Still, subtle in its allusion or not, my letter wasn't run by the Times. That it wasn't makes no personal difference to me. But what's significant is how much the rejection reveals about the Times itself.

..........Consider the situation carefully:

1)
..........In order to remain silent about (that is,
..........in order to suppress) a certain truth that the Times,
..........or the Times Corporation, or the Times's owners
..........have concluded to be "taboo," the newspaper is forced

2)
..........also to remain silent about (that is, to suppress)
..........a known truth that neither the Times nor the Times
..........Corporation nor the Times's owners have ever before
..........now been known to abandon, suppress, silence,
..........or to do anything other than celebrate, defend,
..........and protect.

Now, since I know that those phrasings, in their effort to be precise, seem abstract, let's fill in the blanks with things more concrete. Thus:

1)

..........In order to remain silent about (that is, in order to suppress),
..........the truth that the WTC towers were brought down by
..........controlled demolition using thermite reactions, this being
..........a matter that the Times, or the Times Corporation,
..........or the Times's owners have concluded to be
.........."taboo," the newspaper is forced

2)

..........also to remain silent about (that is, to suppress)
..........a known truth that neither theTimes nor the Times
..........Corporation nor the Times's owners have ever before
..........now been known to abandon, suppress, silence, or
..........to do anything other than celebrate, defend, and protect,
..........that being the validity of academic freedom as a high
..........value, and the concomitant freedom of research in
..........academia as based on the empirical, or scientific,
..........method as it came down to us and to our nation from
..........the period of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century.

And, more specific still:

1)
..........In order to remain silent about (that is, in order to
..........suppress) the fact that the WTC towers were brought
..........down by controlled demolition using thermite reactions,
..........this being a fact that the Times, or the Times Corporation,
..........or the Times's owners have concluded to be "taboo,"
..........the newspaper is forced

2)
..........also to remain silent about (that is, to suppress) an
..........obviously important incursion on academic freedom
..........and, a corollary, an important occasion of an institu-
..........tion of higher learning raising politics above truth.
..........That kind of intimidation, or that kind of arbitrary
..........switching of powers, of course, is the kind of thing
..........done regularly in nations or republics that are not
..........free. Ours is thought to be free. And yet the Times
..........will not—because it can not—report either on the
..........matter of academic freedom per se, or on the matter
..........of politics trumping intellectual truth.

..........The Times, in short, in its present condition, has devolved into a lying machine. I say this advisedly, but I mean it literally, and most seriously, as I will now explain.

FOUR

..........For whatever reasons—though none can realistically doubt but that they're political—the Times, like almost all other mainstream papers, magazines, and publishers, has effectively created or subscribed to an ironclad rule that it will not describe, keep up with, follow up on, take seriously, explore, or diligently and responsibly cover any aspect whatsoever of what has come to be known as the 9/11 Truth Movement—a major and significant national phenomenon more likely to be referred to by the paper, if at all, as "9/11 conspiracy theories." I find this policy in the mainstream press to be lamentable, disastrous, extraordinarily dangerous to the commonweal and to the welfare of the nation—in two additional words, heinous and indefensible.

..........Yet, even so, and whatever the strength of my own feelings about that aspect of things, it's not what needs to be talked about right now. What needs to be talked about right now is not that the Times does lie, but that it has, as I said, become a lying machine.

..........That is, once the decision is made to suppress certain things, the necessity will arise to suppress certain other things that may be inextricably combined with those first things to be suppressed. And this second requirement is purely mechanical. It may well be that the paper, its owners and editors, are in control of the first suppression. But they are not in control of the second, suppression. The second suppression, because those at the paper must follow the mechanics that make it a necessity—the second suppression controls them.

..........It's as simple as A + B = C. If "A" must be suppressed by having been made taboo or forbidden, then the remainder of the equation must also be suppressed. If a paper wanted to cover the equation but was required to suppress "A," it would be impossible to cover any of the equation at all. To say just "B" would a lie, since that would not be reporting on the equation, and, outside of the equation, "B" is not anything at all like what it is inside the equation, because its designated relationships are missing. Even to say "B = C" would be a lie, for the very obvious reason that it isn't true.

..........Now let's take a look at a real case. Let "A" stand for Professor Steven Jones. Let "B" stand for his laboratory research on thermite reactions and on their ability to cut through heavy steel beams instantaneously (a contributing circumstance to "B" is that "the presence of sulfur" was found on a steel beam from WTC 7 and "from one of the towers," and sulfur intensifies thermite reactions). It follows logically that we must let "C," therefore, stand for the conclusions reached by Jones through his empirically based research, namely, that thermite reactions could, by empirical evidence, have brought the towers down.

..........But since "C" is taboo, then so must "B" and "A" be sacrificed, suppressed, kept hidden, and left unacknowledged. This means that The New York Times cannot do other than fail to report on the suppression of free thought, the compromise of open scientific inquiry, and the breach of academic freedom that are all represented by Brigham Young University's penalizing of Professor Jones for doing precisely those things—looking for the truth—that universities should and must protect and reward their faculties for doing, not punish or calumniate them, and not cast them under suspicion of wrongdoing.

..........This example of corruption in American higher education, of the politicizing of free inquiry even inside the academy, and of punishment and misprision being brought upon a scholar for pursuing intellectual truth through intellectually sound and valid means—this highly significant news story has gone unreported by The New York Times and will continue to go unreported by The New York Times for whatever length of time that newspaper remains victimized and manacled by its own acceptance—or invention—of a taboo placed upon certain aspects of our national public life.

..........Oh, horrible, Oh, horrible, most horrible.

..........To bring down even the greatest of trees, the first small chip must be made by the swinging ax. That first cut may seem a small thing. Yet—the precedent of the first swing allowing more of its kind to follow—it may end up indeed being of very great importance.

..........I want to suggest an exercise that readers might find interesting. I invite them to go back to Food for Thought 6, to think it over again for a moment, and then to do this: Come up with, let's say, two good reasons why Professor Steven E. Jones would not or could not be declared an enemy of the state, stripped of his right of habeas corpus, and sent away somewhere—for keeps.

..........If they like, I invite readers interested in this exercise to email me their conclusions. Remember, though, that I'm an old English prof. Therefore, the two reasons, in order to be acceptable, must be logical, convincing, and intellectually sound.

FIVE

..........Lord Acton's observation that power corrupts can be observed also in a natural corollary regarding deceit—that is, deceit corrupts, and the liar will be corrupted by lying.

..........We've seen this process of corruption already in the case of Steven Jones and the Times. The same evidence of corruption also comes up regularly in the Times's actual writing, both in news articles and, more shockingly, in pieces of opinion—as for example, it did recently in a truly egregious—and revealing—example from Frank Rich.

..........On Sunday, September 17th, Rich's op ed column was entitled "The Longer the War, the Larger the Lies," a subject sure to whet the appetite of Rich followers, of which I'm one, though always with my alert systems set at high. On this occasion, Rich opened by observing that "Rarely has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush's 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC's 'Path to 9/11' so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: 'For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.'"

..........So far, so good. This is fine writing, the chosen material acutely observed, its grim ironies crisply exposed and expressed, making the reader look forward to what it may be that'll come next, following so sure a first step.

..........And that next step goes well enough. "No kidding," says Rich, "'The Path to 9/11' was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways)." And Rich then goes on to recite an appropriately parallel—and familiar—bit of hypocrisy and deceit from our President.

..........But then the trouble—real trouble—begins. To see with greatest accuracy and clarity what's going on, a somewhat lengthy quote is best:


..............................You'd think that after having been caught con-
....................cocting the scenario that took the nation to war in
....................Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now.
....................But this administration understands our culture
....................all too well. This is a country where a cable news
....................network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about
....................one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-
....................time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts
....................have created a cottage industry of books and DVD's
....................by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11
....................and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The
....................fictionalied "Path to 9/11," supposedly based on
....................the commission's report, only advanced the nuts'
....................case.) If you're a White House stuck in a quagmire
....................in an election year, what's the percentage in starting
....................to tell the truth now? It's better to game the system.

And the next paragraph begins: "The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job."

..........This, unlike Rich's opening, is awful, awful stuff, filled to the brim with the very "untruths" Rich himself laments, mingling information with disinformation, replacing penetration with the cheapest of easy cynicism ("better to game the system"), and descending to the use of schoolyard slurs and ad hominem mud-slinging to boot.

..........This is the work of one of the Times's highest-profile writers? This is the work of arguably one of the nation's most influential commentators in print? This, if truth be told, is junk. This, if truth be told, is corruption. And this, if truth be told, whatever it may seek to claim, is itself a pack of lies.

SIX

..........Let's have a look.

..........True enough, MSNBC's airing the purest froth as if it were significant (nothing the Times could ever be guilty of) is lamentable, degrading, and clearly revelatory of our nation's popular state of awareness and judgment (though maybe it's just that MSNBC, like Bush, "understands our culture all too well"). All right. But what about Rich's juxtaposition of the MSNBC tale with his remarks about "conspiracy nuts"? What's the logic of that relationship? And why the sudden use of cheap pejorative slang, followed by another cheap pejorative standby, "cottage industry"? What is Rich trying to say?

..........Well, he's in a sense not trying to say anything. What he's busy doing is maintaining the Times's own taboo on, its own cover-up of, any and all serious things having to do with 9/11 truth research.

..........What he's involved in doing, in other words, is lying. And furthermore he's doing a butcher's job of it.

..........First, the simple fact, already mentioned, of the broad smear and infantile name-calling of and in the phrases "conspiracy nuts," these followed by "cottage industry of books and DVD's," as though Rich, inanely, is encouraging us to think that all books and all DVD's are instruments of the demonic and insane, innately evil, bad, and wrong. I believe that Rich himself has just written and published a book. Ah, he must be a "nut."

..........More on these absurdities in a moment, but first another matter. Look carefully at what Rich writes here, saying that the "nuts" err "by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up." He then adds, parenthetically: ("The fictionalized 'Path to 9/11,' supposedly based on the commission's report, only advanced the nuts' case.")

..........Not only is he lying and smearing to beat the band, but he's getting confused while doing it and going majorly contradictory. Let's take the lost-at-sea element first. We know the "nuts" are wrong, crazy, and stupid. We know, because in this case Rich specifically told us, that they believe that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up." So far, so good. We also know, first, that "Path to 9/11" was also wrong, crazy and stupid, and we know, second, that it was "supposedly based on the [9/11] commission's report."

..........Voilà! Some deductive logic suddenly comes in handy. Ganges is a dog, for example. All dogs have four legs. Therefore, Ganges has four legs. Now try it this way. The "nuts" believe the commission was a cover-up. The flick was based on the commission report. Ergo, says Rich, the flick "only [advances] the nuts' case."

..........Lost in the fog that's apparently settled over his little name-calling sea, Rich has just admitted that 1) the commission was indeed a cover-up and 2) that the "nuts" are right to believe so, since the movie, dumb because based on the commission report, corroborates their view by being dumb the way the commission was dumb.

..........Bad writing. But let it go, since there are more important matters to address, namely Rich's own (or someone's) smear and cover-up. The sentence that's the worst in the piece and that reveals the greatest extent of what at this point looks like Rich's own ignorance, first, and, second, his perfect, insouciant contentedness with the use of gutter-level smear tactics is this one:

....................This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC)
....................offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker
....................Carlson) losing a prime-time dance content and where
....................conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books
....................and DVD's by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11
....................and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up.

..........I need to take a few deep breaths. I hope you'll excuse me for a moment.

SEVEN

1)
..........Rich's pairing of the "nuts'" presumed ideas that "no airplanes" were used on 9/11 and that the commission was "a cover-up" shows one of two things, and maybe both: First, that Rich is lying through his teeth, and/or second, that he is quite, quite, quite utterly ignorant of what he's talking about. I don't know which is or would be worse. Both are iniquitous and shameful.

..........Except possibly for Michael C. Ruppert's By the Light of a Burning Bridge," his farewell to his homeland forever, I know of few pieces of 9/11 truth-movement writing more moving than Emanuel Sferios' "9/11 Five Years Later: What Have We Accomplished?" The powerfully dedicated Sferios writes:

....................We began this movement to convince the American
....................public and the world that the official story of 9/11
....................was a lie, and that ruling factions within our own
....................government were the real perpetrators. This we
....................accomplished. Opinion polls conducted over the
....................last two years show that the majority of Americans
....................believe the US government was complicit. . . Com-
....................pared to just two years ago, when people would
....................look at us like we were crazy for suggesting such
....................a thing, this is an amazing success. Or so it seems.
....................For at the same time, not a single perpetrator of
....................9/11 has been prosecuted, and the War on Terror
....................continues unabated, as does the endless stream
....................of lies and propaganda designed to keep us fearful
....................and compliant. . . In other words, why, in the midst
....................of total success, have we failed?

And Sferios' answer:

....................Here is my assessment. The reason for the discrepancy
....................between what people know about 9/11 and what they
....................are willing to do to stop the War on Terror; the reason
....................we have ultimately failed, in other words, has to do
....................with the scope and sophistication of the political and
....................social control mechanisms used against us; namely, dis-
....................ruption and disinformation. I have been an activist for
....................20 years, and I have seen and experienced COINTELPRO
....................-style disruption many times in the past. Yet never before
....................have I witnessed it used on such a scale and with such
....................precision as I have within the 9/11 Truth Movement.
....................There are thousands of examples, but let me give you
....................just a few.

..........Readers are entirely free to read Sferios' examples, but right here and right now we have an example of our own—whether witting or unwitting we don't yet know—in the Frank Rich piece that we've been looking at. Clearly, again, Rich is either lying about or is ignorant of the disinformation programs that Sferios and many others are intensely familiar with—a classic example being the one of there having been "no airplanes" used on 9/11. Rich himself has either done so little—or no—homework in 9/11 history that he can't tell the difference between information and disinformation, or—yet again—he's himself purposely using disinformation, making both of himself and of his newspaper a liar.

..........The irony is only deepened, and the mystery tightened, by the second half of Rich's pairing, that the "nuts" also believe "that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up." Ironic why? Well, because it was a cover-up. Rich either knows this or he doesn't know it. Again, he's either lying, on the one hand, or saying things out of a degree of sheer ignorance so great that it ought to preclude—in an honest world—the opening of his mouth on the subject at all.

2)
..........Now, let's take care of the smear for one last time and move toward a close. The question is the same: Is Rich ignorant, or is he deceitful? Just over five years have passed since 9/11, and however plentiful the supply of deceit, lies, hallucinatory fantasies, and disinformation may have been, it's out-weighed by a half-decade's worth of indisputably honest, thorough, learned, careful, principled, and exacting scholarship, writing, and research.

..........Just who on earth does Rich think he's smearing with his one tarry brush in his phrase "conspiracy nuts" and his two-words-for-all, "the nuts"?

..........Does he include, for example, and has he even heard of, and has he read the foundational 9/11 Truth Movement work, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, written by one who has dedicated his entire life to reform, Michael C. Ruppert?

..........Does he include, do you suppose, and has he even heard of, and has he read the powerful and powerfully researched and historically based The War on Truth, 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism by the British scholar and researcher Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development in Brighton, England, and winner of the 2003 Naples Prize?

..........Does he include, do you suppose, and has he even heard of, and has he read the three major and immeasurably influential books The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, and Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action , not to mention 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out , co-edited with Peter Dale Scott, of David Ray Griffin?

..........Does he include, do you suppose, and has he even heard of, and has he read the powerful and powerfully researched America's 'War on Terror' (in either its 1st or its 2nd editions) of the Canadian Michel Chossudovsky?

..........Does he include, do you suppose, and has he even heard of, Barrie Zwicker, and has he seen Zwicker's 2002 documentary The Great Deception, or his 2004 DVD The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw, or has he read Zwicker's new book, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11?

..........Not to mention websites of clear merit like fromthewilderness.com, or globalresearch.ca, mujca.com (Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Coalition for 9/11 Truth), or st911.org (Scholars for 9/11 Truth), or septembereleventh.org (the 9/11 Visibility Project), justacitizen.com (about Sibel Edmonds and other persecuted whistle-blowers), or nafeez.blogspot.com (The Cutting Edge, Nafeez Adhmed's blog) or . . . ?

..........But enough. Let us—as if we will ever be able to—conclude.

EIGHT

..........The poison—whether it comes out of ignorance or deceit we'll never know unless Rich tells us himself—that seeps into and arises from Frank Rich's piece is cankerous, vile, destructive, dis-informing, hateful, and very possibly considerably worse, if a person considers its effects on thousands and thousands and thousands of readers. If it is representative—as we know it is, at least to some obviously identifiable extent—of actual policy at the Times,, then all the more greatly compounded must be the ills brought to bear by such policy upon readers, upon honesty, upon freedom of expression and thought, upon democracy, and conceivably above all, upon the inspiration and encouragement of free thought.

..........Out of suppression, as we've seen, can come only more suppression, very likely of a kind worse than its parent. Out of deceit can come only more deceit. Worse, deceit will corrupt the deceiver, as we've seen in the case of Frank Rich, and as we might very well find to be true equally of the Times itself if we were to pursue the matter with care, thoroughness, honesty, and with freedom of conscience.

..........In another piece, I remarked that an "understanding can come," referring to the question of how "the 'Military Commissions Act of 2006' could. . . [possibly have been] made the law of the land." The same assertion can be posited about the generalized and rigorous suppression of 9/11 truth throughout the mainstream media, not excepting The New York Times.

..........About that suppression of truth, too, "understanding can come." But, as I said in the earlier piece, "it may well come only after a very great deal of time and effort have been put into it, a number of books read, and a considerable amount of history either learned or seriously boned up on." The task of understanding 9/11 truth, as well as the diabolic reasons for its suppression, may be inordinately difficult, but unless we make the effort to gain that understanding, and create the ability to act upon it, we will be doomed not only in our freedoms of thought but doomed, too, as a free republic.

..........I quoted in that earlier piece and will quote here again from the closing pages of one of the recent books that I suspect Frank Rich has not read, namely, 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. The following passages come from that book's closing pages:

.............................. The events over the past couple of decades and
....................especially the first five years of this century suggest
....................that fascism has taken root in the United States,
....................and there is little indication that a reversal is evident.
....................Vice President Wallace wrote in the New York Times
....................on April 9, 1944:

........................................The really dangerous American fascist. . .
........................................[ellipsis in original] is the man who wants to
........................................do in the United States in an American way
........................................what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.
........................................The American fascist would prefer not to use
........................................violence. His method is to poison the channels
........................................of public information. With a fascist the prob-
........................................lem is never how best to present the truth to
........................................the public but how best to use the news
........................................to deceive the public into giving the fascist
........................................and his group more money or more power.

..............................Wallace then added:

........................................They claim to be super-patriots, but they
........................................would destroy every liberty guaranteed by
........................................the Constitution. They demand free enter-
........................................prise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly
........................................and vested interest. Their final objective
........................................toward which all their deceit is directed
........................................is to capture political power so that, using
........................................the power of the state and the power of the
........................................market simultaneously, they may keep the
........................................common man in eternal subjection. ..........

....................We are past the brink of totalitarian fascist-corporatism.
....................Challenging the neocons and the GDG [Global Dominance
....................Group] agenda is only the beginning of reversing the
....................long-term conservative reactions to the gains of the 1960s.
....................Re-addressing poverty, the UN Declaration of Human
....................Rights, and our own weapons of mass destruction is
....................a long-term agenda for progressive scholars and citizen
....................democrats.¹


..........If indeed, as I can't help but believe, "We are past the brink of totalitarian fascist-corporatism," then, yes, certainly it is a high and powerful necessity that "progressive scholars and citizen democrats" work harder than ever for the truth and for the commonweal. One may have thought that Frank Rich was a "progressive scholar," or that The New York Times was a paper that might have been said to serve, and serve the true interests of, "citizen democrats." I no longer, however, believe either to be the case. I wish I were wrong.

..........Two last things. None who have read or come to know Hamlet well are likely to forget the Prince's lines near the end of Act IV, when he is about to sail for England and stops to ask one of Fortinbras's captains where he and his army are marching and why. They're going, says the captain, "to some part of Poland," adding, when Hamlet asks the worth of the land they're about to fight for, that "We go to gain a little patch of ground / That hath in it no profit but the name."

..........Hamlet replies:

..............................Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats
..............................Will not debate the question of this straw:
..............................This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace,
..............................That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
..............................Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.²

Never has play been written that more deeply addresses not only hypocrisy and deceit, but also the pitiful and plenteous ruin, bringing down all and everything, and preventable by no man, that the poison they create inevitably brings about. In our own situation, now, today, living in a world every bit as dishonest, despicable, and ruinous as the world that surrounded Hamlet, we might alter three of his lines to read thus:

..............................This is the imposthume of much falsehood and lying,
..............................That inward breaks, and shows no cause without
..............................Why the man dies. I humbly thank you, sir.


..........Pray that it be not so. Let us appeal to truth. Without it, there will follow only war, broad desolation, inward disease, and death.

......................................................................Eric Larsen
......................................................................October 11, 2006
............................................................
................................................................................
¹ "Parameters of Power in the Global Dominance Group: 9/11 & Election Irregularities in Context," Peter Phillips with Bridget Thornton and Celeste Vogler, in 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton, MA, 2007), p.188.

² IV, ii, 18-19.

³ IV, ii, 25-29.
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