There are magicians among us.
Somewhere along the line, they turned "pollution" into "climate change." Swapped one word for another and thus turned irrefutable fact (that pollution is unhealthy for human beings) into a debate (is climate change occurring because of human beings or would it be happening if we weren't here at all?).
To a certain extent, we can thank Frank Luntz for this.
Another hocus pocus expression is "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorist."
The words instantly evoke "crazy", "irrational", "questionable", "unbalanced", "not serious".
The expression is used, almost exclusively, in a derisive, dismissive manner. To say someone is a "conspiracy theorist" is to dismiss, virtually, their entire being.
Who needs bullets and bombs when we have words that not only vaporize people, but entire narratives or lines of question?
This afternoon I heard Jonathan Kay on the Diane Rehm Show discussing his new book Among the Truthers, referring to people who don't believe President Obama is an American citizen.
[Full disclosure: Inside the Hotdog Factory believes that President Obama is a United States citizen and accusations that he is not are racially and politically motivated, and ultimately, unfounded.]
Jon Kay performed the requisite disparagement of "conspiracy theorists" and "conspiracy theory", lumping together UFOs with the 9/11 truth movement with those who believe the Apollo moon landing was faked, with those who don't believe President Obama was born in America.
It seems, the first duty of any member of the North American corporate media is to generalize all potential points of debate into a single, fused mass of junk.
Nobody speaks about "pollution" any longer. We now engage in the pointless debate about whether the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting because of the number of SUVs being driven in Miami.
There is no point to that debate.
A discussion about pollution, however, might actually go somewhere. Hence, it's never discussed in the corporate media.
Likewise, you will not hear anyone in the corporate media talking about the anomalies -- the gaping holes -- in the official narrative about the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York City, Washington, D.C., or Pennsylvania.
Somewhere along the line "er" was attached to any movement that questions an official narrative. Giving us 9/11 "truthers." Those who question President Obama's citizenship are "birthers." Those questioning the ever-changing narrative about Osama Bin Laden's alleged assassination on May 2nd are being called "deathers."
People who engage in such name-bestowing are, in my book, "lamers."
It all begins and ends with labels. The more ludicrous and stupid, the better. Who in the world would take someone serious who's labeled a "deather"?
One of the listener calls to the Diane Rehm Show asked Jon Kay if he was familiar with "Operation Northwoods," the now-notorious plan originating in the early 1960s by President Kennedy's Joint Chiefs of Staff to blow up an American aircraft near Cuban air space in order to blame the attack on Cuba and thus laying the foundation for an invasion of Cuba. Otherwise known as a "false flag" operation -- where a country attacks itself in order to blame another country, thus establishing a pretext for the first nation to attack the second.
Adolf Hitler perpetrated this by having the German Reichstag burned down.
Jon Kay acknowledged "Operation Northwoods" and quickly pointed out that it was never implemented.
When asked about Watergate and the Iran/Contra scandals, Kay used each as an example of how limited actual conspiracies are.
This proved to me that Kay is either entirely compromised or has no idea what he's talking about.
Watergate and Iran/Contra were limited conspiracies?
Watergate led to the fall of an American president. To this day, no one even knows what issues lay at the heart of Watergate; why the Plumbers were sent to bug the Democratic headquarters. We have surface details, none of which satisfactorily explain why President Nixon, who had the 1972 election all wrapped up, undertook such a stupid, clumsy, risky operation. Those details are, presumably, in the "Nixon Tapes", which Nixon resigned the presidency to protect (while he remained president, they were public property. When Nixon resigned, the tapes became his personal property). Something tells me those tapes contain more than his favorite drink recipes.
And Iran/Contra. Jon Kay believes the crack epidemic of the 1980s in America constitutes a limited conspiracy?
It's a well-documented fact that a glaring part of the Iran/Contra narrative was left out of the corporate media when the scandal first broke. Namely, the importation of narcotics by Oliver North and his crew into the US in order to fund the Contras in El Salvador and to purchase the weapons he was funneling to Iran.
Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance maps it out pretty clearly, and there are other works by Peter Dale Scott that detail the depth and breadth of the Iran/Contra conspiracy.
The fact that Jon Kay hasn't done his reading does not make Watergate or Iran/Contra "limited" conspiracies.
Kay defended his point about limited conspiracies by saying "people just can't keep secrets." Inferring: if an actual conspiracy existed, we'd know about it because people invariably blab!
Has Jon Kay ever read about the dozens of material witnesses to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy who were murdered within a few years of the event?
Kay was merely perpetuating the myth that there's an open and honest media that would report details of a conspiracy if one actually existed.
Such thinking in a working journalist is naive to the point of negligence.
There is ample evidence that President Kennedy was assassinated by elements of the Central Intelligence Agency, but when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison raised these points while building his case against conspirator Clay Shaw, the media landed on him with both feet. Coverage of the trial was overwhelmingly negative -- often laughably biased against Garrison.
Which isn't surprising given the existence of Operation Mockingbird and the CIA's infiltration of American media.
But back to this myth or misdirection: "people just can't keep secrets."
To a certain extent, I agree with Jon Kay: People can't keep secrets.
And they don't.
Numerous people came forward following the assassination of President Kennedy and there were countless tales of them being bullied and brow-beaten by authorities, and even more stories of them being bribed, threatened and murdered in order to ensure their silence.
Countless 9/11 witnesses have come forward talking about bombs going off inside the WTC towers before the buildings fell. Authorities refuse to release transcripts of firefighter radio transmissions from within the WTC that document the number and frequency of explosions heard within the buildings before they fell in what many people agree looked just like a controlled demolition.
Among the many 9/11 witnesses who can't keep secrets is William Rodriguez, who's regarded as the "last person to exit the North Tower alive."
There was also evidence of thermite at Ground Zero following the buildings coming down. Thermite is used in controlled demolitions. Witnesses have come forward to talk about this point and others, but find themselves entirely shut out of the corporate media, which Jon Kay asserts is such a powerful "check" in our democratic society.
The corporate media is a check against all viewpoints that conflict with the established, official narrative of such events.
Another myth in our culture is that of the "investigative reporter." One of the few that actually exists, Greg Palast, wrote in the Foreword of his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were such anomalies that a movie had to be made about them.
And it's true.
The myth that "If only the people knew, things would change" is just that -- a myth.
We saw at the end of Three Days of the Condor, when Robert Redford's character brought damning evidence to The New York Times about the CIA meddling in the middle east to ensure America's access to oil.
Sure, the Times published the Pentagon Papers, but that was in 1971. Bob Woodward -- author of the shameful, epic poem to George W. Bush, Bush at War -- of today would never publish the writings of Bob Woodward from 1972.
The idea of "the people's right to know" and an objective press willing to publish it is all a myth.
So, Jon Kay performed admirably on the Diane Rehm Show, bolstering all official narratives, reassuring the uninformed public that "conspiracy theories" and "conspiracy theorists" remain at the outer fringe of respectable discourse. Order was maintained. The tranquility of mass ignorance was not disturbed.
Mission accomplished.
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