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Why Does Chris Hedges Hedge His Bets?

Edward Curtin

Revelations about the machinations of the so-called “deep state’s” conspiracies often conceal deeper truths that go unmentioned. This is quite common, whether it is done intentionally or not.

Sometimes it is intentional and is directed by the intelligence agencies themselves or their accomplices in the media, who operate a vast propaganda network. In that case, it is because the secret rulers have been caught doing some evil deed, and, not being able to fully deny it, they admit to part of it while concealing deeper secrets.

This is termed “a limited hangout.”

It is described by ex-CIA Deputy Director Victor Marchetti, author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, as follows:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

For the average person, it is very hard to read between the lines and smell a skunk. The subterfuge is often very subtle and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past. After the Church Hearings in the 1970s, and then Carl Bernstein’s limited hangout article in Rolling Stone in 1977, where he named the names and “outed” many major media and individuals for having worked with the CIA, many people breathed deeply and consigned these evil and propagandistic activities to the bad old days.

But these “limited hangouts” have been going on ever since, allowing people to express outrage and feel some sort of redemption is at hand in the naïve belief that the system is reformable.

It is a pipe dream induced by the smallest puff on the media’s latest recreational drug, for which no prescription is needed. The media that more openly and proudly than ever reveal their jobs as stenographers for the intelligence agencies (see my article here).

In The Iceman Cometh, the playwright Eugene O’Neill puts the delusional nature of so much public consciousness thus:

To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It’s irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.

Truth may never have been popular, but if one studies the history of propaganda techniques as they have developed in tandem with technological changes, it becomes apparent that today’s incredibly sophisticated digital technology and the growth of screen culture that has resulted in what Guy Debord has called “the society of the spectacle” has made the manipulation of truth increasingly easier and far trickier.

News in today’s world appears as a pointillistic canvas of thousands of disconnected dots impossible to connect unless one has the desire, time, determination, and ability to connect the points through research, which most people do not have. “As a result,” writes Jacques Ellul in his classic study, Propaganda, “he finds himself in a kind of kaleidoscope in which thousands of unconnected images follow each other rapidly” and “his attention is continually diverted to new matters, new centers of interest, and is dissipated on a thousand things, which disappear from one day to the next.”

This technology is a boon to government propagandists that make sure to be on the cutting edge of new technology and the means to control the flow of its content, often finding that the medium is the message, one that is especially confounding since seemingly liberating – e.g. cell phones and their easy and instantaneous ability to access information and “breaking news.”

Then there are writers, artists, and communicators of all types, whether consciously or not, who contribute to the obfuscating of essential truths even while informing the public of important matters. These people come from across the political spectrum. To know their intentions is impossible, unless they spell them out in public to let their audiences evaluate them, which rarely happens, otherwise one is left to guess, which is a fool’s game. One can, however, point out what they say and what they don’t and wonder why.

A recent article, Our Invisible Government, by the well-known journalist, Chris Hedges, is a typical case in point. As is his habit, he sheds light on much that is avoided by the mainstream press. Very important matters. In this piece, he writes in his passionate style that

The most powerful and important organs in the invisible government are the nation’s bloated and unaccountable intelligence agencies. They are the vanguard of the invisible government. They oversee a vast “black world,” tasked with maintaining the invisible government’s lock on power.

This, of course, is true.

He then goes on to catalogue ways these intelligence agencies, led by the CIA, have overthrown foreign governments and assassinated their leaders, persecuted and besmirched the names of those – Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, et al. – who have opposed government policies, and used propaganda to conceal the real reasons for their evil deeds, such as the wars against Vietnam, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

He condemns such actions.

He spends much of his article referencing Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Poisoner in Chief: Sydney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control and Gottlieb’s heinous exploits during his long CIA career.

Sidney Gottleib

Known as “Dr. Death,” this Bronx born son of Jewish immigrants, ran the CIA’s mind control programs and its depraved medical experiments on unknowing victims, known as MK-ULTRA and Artichoke. He oversaw the development of various poisons and bizarre methods to kill foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba.

He worked closely with Nazi scientists who had been brought to the United States by Allen Dulles in an operation called Operation Paperclip. Gottlieb was responsible for so many deaths and so much human anguish and suffering that it is hard to believe, but believe it we must because it is true. His work on torture and mind control led to Abu Ghraib, CIA black sites, and assorted U.S. atrocities of recent history.

Hedges tells us all this and rightly condemns it as “the moral squalor” and “criminality” that it is. Only a sick or evil person could disagree with his account of Gottlieb via Kinzer’s book. I suspect many good people who have or will read his piece will agree with his denunciations of this evil CIA history. Additionally, he correctly adds:

It would be naive to relegate the behavior of Gottlieb and the CIA to the past, especially since the invisible government has once again shrouded the activities of intelligence agencies from congressional oversight or public scrutiny and installed a proponent of torture, Gina Haspel, as the head of the agency.

This also is very true. All these truths can make you forget what’s not true and what’s missing in his article.

But something is missing, and some wording is quite odd and factually false. It is easy to miss this as one’s indignation rises as one reads Hedges’ cataloguing of Gottlieb’s and the CIA’s obscenities.

He omits mentioning the Clinton administration’s dismantling wars against Yugoslavia, including 78 days of non-stop bombing of Serbia in 1999 that killed thousands of innocent people in the name of “humanitarian intervention,” wars he covered for the New York Times, the paper he has come to castigate and the paper that has a long history of doing the CIA’s bidding.

He claims that Gottlieb and the CIA’s scientists failed in their “vain quest” for mind control drugs or electronic implants that might, among other things, get victims to act against their wills, such as acting as a Manchurian candidate, and as a result, “abandoned” their efforts.

That they failed is not true, and that they abandoned their efforts is unknowable, unless you wish to take the CIA at its word, which is a hilarious thought.

How could Hedges possibly know they abandoned such work? A logical person would assume they would say that and continue their work more secretly.

On one hand, Hedges says, “It would be naive to relegate the behavior of Gottlieb and the CIA to the past,” but then he does just that. Which is it, Chris? By definition, the “invisible” government, the CIA, never reveals their operations, and lying is their modus operandi, especially with their brazen in-your-face biblical motto: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

He says the invisible deep state “failed to foresee…the 9/11 attacks or the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”

This is factually wrong and quite absurd, as is well documented. They simply lied about these matters ex post facto. He suggests such failures were due to “ineptitude,” a coy word used by numerous other writers who find reasons to deny intentionality to the “deep state.”

He therefore is implying that the attacks of September 11, 2001, a subject that he has consistently failed to address over the years even while he has written in detail about so much else, did not involve America’s “invisible government forces.”

The ineptitude explanation fails elementary logical analysis.

Does he think it was intelligence ineptitude that allowed operatives to wire the highly-secure Twin Towers and Building 7 for controlled demolition that brought those buildings down, as the testimony of one’s eyes and that of hundreds of NYC firefighters who reported explosions throughout the buildings affirm?

Ineptitude is another word for avoidance of evidence, gathered over the years by careful scholars and researchers. Ineptitude is another word for the belief “in miracles,” as David Ray Griffin has phrased it.

What does he think Colin Powell was doing at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 with CIA Director George Tenet sitting behind him when he lied repeatedly and fabricated evidence for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction to promote and justify the U.S. war against Iraq? Ineptitude? A failure of intelligence?

Chris Hedges is a very intelligent man, so why does he write such things?

Most importantly, why, when he writes about the past evil deeds of the intelligence operatives – Gottlieb and the CIA’s overseas coups and assassination of foreign leaders, etc. – does he fail to say one word about the CIA’s assassination of domestic leaders, including President John Kennedy in 1963, the foundational event in the invisible government’s takeover of the United States.

Can an act be more evil and in need of moral condemnation?

And how about the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968, or Malcolm X in 1965?

Why does Hedges elide these assassinations as if they are not worthy of attention, but Gottlieb’s sick work for the CIA is? Like the attacks of September 11, 2001, he has avoided these assassinations throughout the years.

I don’t know why. Only he can say. He is a very well-read man, who is constantly quoting from scholars about various important issues. His books are chock full of such quotations and references. But you will look in vain for references to the brilliant, scholarly work of such writers on these assassinations, the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the CIA’s criminal and morally repugnant activities as James Douglass, David Talbot, David Ray Griffin, William Pepper, Graeme MacQueen, Lisa Pease, and so many others.

Is it possible that he has never read their books when he has read so much else? If so, why?

As I said before, Chris Hedges, who has a passionate but mild-mannered style, is not alone in his disregard of these key matters.

Other celebrity names on the left have been especially guilty of the same approach: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Alexander Cockburn, to name just a few (Zinn and Cockburn are dead). They have avoided these issues as if they were toxic. Nor would they logically explain why.

The few times they did respond to those who criticized them for this, it was usually through a dismissive wave of the hand or name calling, a tactic such as the CIA developed with the term “conspiracy theory.”

Cockburn was particularly nasty in this regard, priding himself on dismissing others with words such as kooks, lunatics, and idiots, even when his logic was deplorable. He liked to use ineptitude’s synonym, “incompetence,” to explain away what he considered intelligence agency failures. “Why,” he wrote in one piece attacking September 11 critics while upholding the government’s version, “does the obvious have to be proved?”

“Brillig!” as Humpty Dumpty would say. Absolutely brillig!

The CIA’s mind control operations need to be exposed, as Hedges does to a degree in this latest article. But revealing while concealing is unworthy of one who condemns “creeps who revel in human degradation, dirty tricks, and murder.” It itself is a form of mind control.
Perhaps he will see fit to publicly explain why he has done this.

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Susan
Susan
Nov 13, 2020 11:48 PM

Excellent article, Mr. Curtin. I appreciate this kind of ‘granular’ analysis. I agree that there is something ‘missing’/’wrong’ in Chris Hedges’ analyses, but unlike Chomsky and Bernstein, I am not sure if it is deliberate dissemblance or omission.

I know it is inconceivable to think that anyone who wants to know to the ‘truth’ about 9-11 hasn’t been able to find the ‘truth’ in the last 19 years. However, when I heard George Galloway speak in Vancouver, and he referred to the ’19 Muslim terrorists’ as the perpetrators of 9-11, I was dumb struck (and so was the rest of the audience). I don’t think Galloway is a ‘disinfo agent’. He says his goal in life is to imprison Blair for his crimes against humanity in Iraq, but clearly he has a blind spot on 9-11.

I think it is hard to do what you recommend (read between the lines, and read between the lines again and again), but I strive for it every day. However, I find less and less people who are consistently able to do this. God, that sounds incredibly arrogant, and probably people look at me and think the same about me.

The issue of corruption surrounding the US election has been the latest intellectual challenge for truthseekers. And, ironically, it has been Glenn Greenwald, yes the same GG who was #1 on my disinfo list, who has been the most intellectually honest journalist to report on the corruption surrounding the election. Many people are so blinded with hatred for Trump, they are unable to even open their mind to the notion of election corruption against this loathsome candidate.

Recognizing (or not recognizing) the truth about 9-11 is the absolute acid test of a journalist for me. But beyond that, I am prepared to accept that there are some people who believe in another explanation (e.g. ineptitude) and that it is a genuine misunderstanding, and not deliberate disinformation to attempt to distract from the truth.

Thomas David Stockin
Thomas David Stockin
Dec 13, 2019 12:53 AM

I would say that these topics are so bogged down with Conspiracy theorists that to go near them adds to confusion rather than clarity.

pauleaston34
pauleaston34
Sep 29, 2019 8:40 PM

No one is perfect including Edward Curtin I am sure. Before you decry the mote in the eye of another, take a look at the beam in your own.

Cesca
Cesca
Sep 26, 2019 9:50 PM

I don’t accept Chris and Noam are gate keepers, they both tell too much truth to be such, just are imperfect humans, or just too savvy, to be pushed to the fringe.

Pilger/Hersh types are called conspiracy theorists now, serious journalism like Vanessa, Eva, Whitney are desperately needed, as are ppl who can speak in the msm.

Cesca
Cesca
Sep 26, 2019 9:57 PM
Reply to  Cesca

Sorry Edward, this is just the very occasional article of yours i disagree with, we can’t agree all the time.

All that’s good to you and yours for now =)

Edward Curtin
Edward Curtin
Sep 27, 2019 12:44 AM
Reply to  Cesca

Thanks, Cesca. Of course we can’t. Obviously I don’t agree with Chris Hedges on the issues I addressed, as you don’t agree with me, although I agree with him on many other matters. My hope is that he will respond to my critique, and explain himself. That might clear up a lot. Pax.

Kenneth M Underwood
Kenneth M Underwood
Jan 15, 2021 1:20 AM
Reply to  Cesca

But if they aren’t gatekeepers then they are stupid in some very specific way.
And we know that’s not true.

FrankSpeaker
FrankSpeaker
Sep 25, 2019 6:01 AM

To write a whole article attempting to destroy a journalist’s reputation, especially by criticising what they HAVEN’T written about speaks huge volumes about Curtin and OffG.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Sep 24, 2019 9:14 PM

Excuse me, Off-Graun: did I get modded for posting a comment here about Julian Assange? Two days later, it still has yet to appear. What’s going on? Should I post it again? Thanks …

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Sep 24, 2019 10:59 PM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

Hmmm. Now, suddenly, I see the missing the comment above this one! I’m not sure what happened there–probably just a technical glitch. Whatever it was, thanks for your help, Off-Graun.

Seamus Padraig
Seamus Padraig
Sep 25, 2019 11:35 AM
Reply to  Seamus Padraig

Whoa! Now that I’ve logged out and logged back in, it’s gone again. What gives?

Deschutes
Deschutes
Sep 24, 2019 5:47 PM

YES! This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time. Hedges is a lefty gatekeeper, just like Chomsky as the article points out. I get tired of his hackneyed lectures from the podium. Always the same schtick. He has that the lame-ass ‘ineptitude’ explanation of how 9-11 happened, that Chomsky, St Clair, Cockburn and so many other gatekeeper of the left pundits recite, of course safely within the official 9-11 government narrative. The best quote from this article is near the end:

“Ineptitude is another word for avoidance of evidence, gathered over the years by careful scholars and researchers. Ineptitude is another word for the belief “in miracles,” as David Ray Griffin has phrased it.”

Jerry Alatalo
Jerry Alatalo
Sep 23, 2019 9:17 PM

After unarguable evidence has become revealed in over 18 years since that day and PROVEN 9/11 the greatest false flag deception in world history, any men or women on Earth still supporting/publicly asserting the “Official Whitewash and Coverup” – unless having a legitimate excuse such as terminal idiocy, being born without a brain, etc. – MUST be viewed as suspect.

#911Justice – NOW!

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Sep 25, 2019 2:04 PM
Reply to  Jerry Alatalo

It is not in the least proven that 9/11 was a false flag. It was not a psyop of the false flag type but just a straight-out psyop. There is no default carryover of any kind of the alleged crimes to the committed crimes.

The alleged crimes have nothing to do with the committed crimes.

Alleged crimes
Hijacking terrorists took planes into buildings.
Result: incidental collapses of the twin towers and WTC-7, damage to Pentagon and death to 3,000.

Committed crimes
Faking crime story and bringing down WTC buildings or damaging them as well as damaging Pentagon using controlled means.

There is NO carryover of the “murder” crime by default.

There were no planes which means right off the bat that 265 deaths were faked.

So, they lied about the terrorists, the buildings, the planes and the 265 deaths on the planes.

You’re going to believe that they killed the 2,735, that they, the PERPS, SAID were killed. You’re going to believe that?

It is utterly preposterous and ludicrous that the power elite would carry out a psyop where they killed 3,000 people for real they had no desire to kill, whose loved ones would massively fuck up their control of the story and which they could so very easily fake. And who had to be involved here? The power elite didn’t do it themselves. They had agency staff, media and regular people involved. These people would be AOK with the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens? I am so tired of being treated like a lunatic when the lunacy is in the idea that the perps would conduct a PSYOP – the term is PSYOP – by killing 3,000 of their citizens when controlled demolition is so obvious just for starters. It is insanity.

Petra Liverani
Petra Liverani
Feb 21, 2020 7:16 AM
Reply to  Editor

I didn’t see this response, Editor, until now when I happened to come across it. When someone refers to 9/11 as a false flag then my comment is extremely pertinent and I’ll repeat it until people start to see the sense of it. But this takes time, Editor, doesn’t it, it takes so very much time. Admittedly, it took me four years of study to wake up myself but once I got the concept of “truther-targeted propaganda” it was as quick as flash … others just don’t catch on in the same way no matter whichever way you explain it.

I wonder what will come first:
— a move from your fossilised idea that 9/11 was a false flag to that it was a psyop
— some evidence that it was, in fact, a false flag where people were killed and injured

I’m not holding my breath for either one. The persistence of people’s beliefs in something they have no evidence for never ceases to amaze me. I know it shouldn’t as it’s such a common phenomenon but nevertheless it does.

And, oh dear, 9 upvotes. So many like-minded persisting in their fossilised and unreasoned views … but then that’s exactly what the power elite anticipated and intended to happen. Yes, they understand us so very well – better than we understand ourselves, in fact – which is why they keep us right under the thumb. Been doing it for millennia.

Oliver
Oliver
Sep 23, 2019 8:10 PM

The British Secret Intelligence Service had huge input into the creation of the forerunner of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services.
Anyone interested should examine the attachment of Commander Ian Fleming, PA to the Director of (Royal) Naval Intelligence to the US Office of Naval Intelligence in the 1940s. That what became the Manhattan Project (Tube Alloys in UK) was a Royal Navy Project c. 1936 should also be examined.

    the pair
    the pair
    Sep 23, 2019 7:41 PM

    oh my god AGAIN with this “look at me, ma! imma going after a sacred cow!” nonsense. more nitpicking, more “perfectionism” expected from people who only agree with you 99.999%

    HOW DARE THEY!!!

    i’m sure hedges regrets that he only reported from yugoslavia on the ground and only got shot at by snipers and only has PTSD from the dozens of actual corpses he saw during his career. i’m sure he wishes he spent 20 hours a day going down the inane rabbit hole of 9/11 theories instead of giving well written lectures and producing a weekly column that blows away even the most refined ivy league yuppies of the MSM without breaking a sweat.

    i’m going to do everyone a favor on the 9/11 thing – a reverse intervention where one person tells a few hundred thousand they’re not helping themselves. chomsky (sacred cow alert!) tried to do it and you all soiled your collective diapers so i’m not going to be as polite and “linguistic” about it.

    you will ALL be long dead before ANY of the actual facts of 9/11 come out. DEAD. gone. worm food. anyone who knows (or knew) anything pertinent – any “smoking gun” evidence – is either dead or enjoying their immunity by obscurity. think serial killers. think how long the green river killer got to relax. think about how the zodiac killer – who admitted what he did and taunted the police with forensic gold mines in the form of written letters – who lived out his years with the confidence he would never see the inside of a cell. and these were just dumb doughy losers with a taste for dead hookers. not a clandestine agency with billions of dollars and decades of history.

    here’s a tl;dr version: people are still debating the damn KENNEDY ASSASSINATIONS. in 2019.

    hedges and anyone else with a brain knows 1. we’ll never know and 2. why waste the time and energy when there are plenty of things out in the open. i’d add 3. no one will care. a few people who read sites like this, sure. but the vast majority of westerners who love bending over and grabbing their ankles for any authority figure? HA. good luck with that.

    Deschutes
    Deschutes
    Sep 24, 2019 5:54 PM
    Reply to  the pair

    Maybe you can get a job as Bill Maher’s intern, or secretary on Real Time? Just a suggestion. You sound just like Bill does. Doubt you’ve done jack shit to look into any of the massive amount of research done by David Ray Griffin, for example. Go read about the Univ. Alaska paper just published about Bldg 7. But on second thought no, you’d better not. You need to stay safely within the confines of media propriety bubble.

    Justin
    Justin
    Sep 23, 2019 4:58 PM

    September 11 attacks are so big and the official story so embedded that you cannot say the opposite for fear of being labelled and thus having your speaking platform destroyed. Alex Jones found a way but became a cartoon and eventually was censored. As someone who makes their living as a cultural critic or what have you begins to tow the line, their career starts to take off. They are thinking the correct way. 2+2=5.

    Steve Hayes
    Steve Hayes
    Sep 23, 2019 3:54 PM

    The collapse of WTC building 7 was reported by the BBC before it happened. One could see the building over the reporter’s shoulder. https://youtu.be/9GcjP9KVR7E

    Petra Liverani
    Petra Liverani
    Sep 25, 2019 2:12 PM
    Reply to  Steve Hayes

    They always give us the clues, Steve. They had the nose cone pop out the other side of the South tower, the terrorists pop up alive and these interesting scripted snippets. You’ll find them in these two songs done by AE9/11Truth:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71fwKA9Udso

    Dan Rather, CBS News Anchor asks Jerome Hauer, WTC Security Contractor about the cause of collapse of the twin towers:
    “Is it possible that just a plane crash could have collapsed these buildings? Or would it have required the prior positioning of other explosives in the building? What do you think?”
    “No my sense is just the velocity of the plane and the fact that you have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building and I think it was simply the planes hitting the buildings and causing the collapse.”

    Conversation between Brian Williams, MSNBC News Anchor and David Restuccio, FDNY EMS Lieutenant about WTC-7, the third building to collapse at the WTC on 9/11, after its collapse:
    “Can you confirm that it was No 7 that just went in?” [“Went in” is a term used in controlled demolition that comes from the fact that the buildings fall in on themselves.]
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you guys knew this was comin’ all day.”
    “We had heard reports that the building was unstable and that eventually it would either come down on its own or it would be taken down.”

    Dan Rather reporting on the collapse of WTC-7:
    “For the third time today, it’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen too much of on television, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.”

    For more on their clear signals: https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/they-tell-us-clearly.html

    Martin Elvemo
    Martin Elvemo
    Dec 1, 2019 9:46 PM
    Reply to  Steve Hayes

    So the BBC was in on it, too?

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 23, 2019 10:50 AM
    andyoldlabour
    andyoldlabour
    Sep 23, 2019 9:16 AM

    If we start to criticise people such as Hedges, Pilger, Chomsky etc. who I consider to be very good, balanced journalists/writers then when and where do we stop?
    I would add that around 500 people, not thousands were killed in the NATO air strikes on Serbia, too many to be sure, but on a scale of things, loooking at what is happening in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria it is just a tiny ripple in a huge ocean of death and destruction.

    Harry Stotle
    Harry Stotle
    Sep 23, 2019 10:11 AM
    Reply to  andyoldlabour

    Sorry, I disagree – those on the left should not be defended from constructive criticism if they fail on key issues (in the way Hedges and Chomsky do on 9/11).

    Additinally criticism of NATOs actions must not be reduced to a simple body count – their involvement in the former Yugoslavia proved;
    Spurious claims about protecting human rights because the level of human rights abuses escalated significantly after the bombing began (as vengeful factions laid into each other in Kosovo and elsewhere) – in other words NATO made a bad situation much worse.
    A covert campaign to create markets in central-eastern Europe that would be under the sphere of western control rather than ceding to Russia.
    A campaign by the media to report selectively and in line with the phoney narrative developed by western military powers rationalising the terrible harms they had inflicted.
    That NATO could claim the moral high ground while ignoring even more serious abuses that were occuring around the same period in countries like Indonesia and Rwanda.

    the pair
    the pair
    Sep 23, 2019 7:51 PM
    Reply to  Harry Stotle

    i love this mental disorder – i call it “Joe Roganophenia” – where people who disagree with your 100% personal and subjective view of things in the slightest and most microscopic way have “failed”. especially when chomsky has pointed out for literally decades the exact lies about yugoslavia you mention. with footnotes. and details.

    but hey, better to attack people who differ marginally than those who are diametrically opposed and psychotic and have actual power). i’m sure the neera tandens and ben shapiros of the world don’t love that AT ALL.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 23, 2019 6:26 PM
    Reply to  andyoldlabour

    A quick google&wiki with “Serbian Death Toll” reveals more than a tiny ripple:
    NATZO open warfare with air strikes on civilian targets, 2500. NATZO proxy warfare with destabilization along ethnic lines a la Syria, at least 130,000 dead with 2.4 million refugees and 2 million IDP (Internally Displaced Persons). NATZO can be satisfied that the scale of their trial run in Yugoslavia compares favourably with their later campaigns in Libya and in Syria ( 1 million dead, 7 million refugees and 3 million IDP. True NATZO killed fewer people in Yugoslavia, but in compensation they accomplished NATZO’s mission: a Euro-pipeline was built through Albania (shares: BP 20%, Sna Milan 20%, Fluxys Belgium 19%, Enagas Spain 16%, Axpo Baden 5%).

    FrankSpeaker
    FrankSpeaker
    Sep 25, 2019 6:07 AM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Have you also done a body count on all the other innocent Yugoslavs who died courtesy of ethnic Serbian murderers?

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 25, 2019 6:46 AM
    Reply to  FrankSpeaker

    No. Has anyone?

    We only have NATZO’s word — the Loaded Word “genocide” as a pretext for armed invasion and civil destabilization that killed more than a hundred thousand Yugoslavs — Serbs, Croats and other ethnicity all engulfed in the general slaughter; like Colin Powell waving a little vial of talcum powder labelled “Iraqi bioweapon” at the UN; like Charlie MaCarthy holding up a briefcase and shouting ‘Communist list’ in U$ Congre$$; like NATZO using the loaded word “gassing” as a pretext to invade Syria and accomplish even more multi-ethnic slaughter than NATZO accomplished in Yugoslavia. “We don’t do body counts” — a U$ general; no, we just tell the sheeple what will make them stampede in the direction we want them to move.

    FrankSpeaker
    FrankSpeaker
    Sep 25, 2019 6:05 AM
    Reply to  andyoldlabour

    Well said Andy

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 6:36 AM

    This is why one’s position on 9/11 is the litmus test of our time — mostly of rationality, moral courage, and emotional fortitude. I’m leaving it out as a test of intelligence because of the overwhelming preponderance of concordant evidence that is such that an average high school kid could get it in an afternoon. That is, as long as that high school kid has the required rationality, moral courage and emotional fortitude required to dig into that mountain of evidence. Croy’s recent article here, “Existential Stupidity, The Moron Meme” addresses this.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 7:10 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    High school kids like Greta Thunberg? No thanks. Some of these will swallow like you the lack of motive for an internal 9/11 conspiracy plus the non discovery of it before or after.
    To attack Irak (again) some fake WMD stories were needed, 9/11 didn’t suffice.

    Blowing up the WTC just for insurance money doesn’t cut adult mustard.

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 23, 2019 7:41 AM
    Reply to  Antonym

    Apparently, you failed the litmus test.

    Any moderately perceptive person can see that the 9/11 event is the essential pretext for the entire ruling-class program, not the least of which is the destruction of Iraq as an independent country.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 8:23 AM
    Reply to  milosevic

    In 2001, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 US Deep state was at its apex; that event trumped anything – even a WTC attack.
    Motive – fail.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 8:26 AM
    Reply to  Antonym

    two =a few. in 1991 both the USSR and the Warsaw pact dissolved.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 4:12 AM

    Don’t declare the CIA un-failable: as much as they can’t defy the law of Gravity they can’t avoid Murphy’s law.
    I believe 9/11 was one of their failures and many should have been sacked for that one.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 6:27 AM
    Reply to  Antonym

    @Antonym so you appear to believe the Twin Towers and Building 7 defied the laws of physics, for that is surely what they did if they collapsed the way they did from fire. And just why do you think no one was sacked for this purported collection of massive failures? On the contrary, many were promoted for this stunning success. For God’s sake, don’t be so daft; watch videos of Building 7 collapsing and see the study by Hulsey of UAF. It’s on their website. For the Twins, watch a short video on YouTube called “ North Tower Exploding” by David Chandler. Will you believe what you can see with your own eyes or will you believe what you’re told?

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 7:00 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    Even building 7 fell downwards, so that law was not violated. Do you agree that US defense heads should have rolled for the 9/11 debacle?

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 23, 2019 8:14 AM
    Reply to  Antonym

    “Even building 7 fell downwards”?????

    Well, everything falls downwards. The question is: Why did it not remain upright?

    And the fact that no “heads rolled” for the 9/11 “debacle” suggests that it wasn’t a “debacle”.

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 23, 2019 7:51 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 8:16 AM
    Reply to  milosevic

    Chomsky says a US government conspiracy would have leaked: 9/11 would have been prevented.
    He also point out he one of a few on the left to disbelieve a 9/11 set up.

    Harry Stotle
    Harry Stotle
    Sep 23, 2019 10:31 AM
    Reply to  Antonym

    Which only proves not even intellectuals are exempt from the occasional logic fail.

    In other words Chomsky is asking the wrong question.

    Look, its very simple – 9/11, the Pentagon and Shansville are all crime scenes that have never been properly investigated.
    Is it too much to expect basic investigative work to be required after mass murder?

    If these events were to be properly investigated it may well unearth a network of collaborators but trying to identify them without any investigation seems to be a daft argument to put forward (because assertions are based on belief rather than evidence).
    It seems astonishing that clever-cloggs like Hedges and Chomsky don’t understand this rudimentary principle.

    Here’s an interesting fact: the US authorities spent >$60 million trying to establish if Bill spunked on Monica’s skirt – while the budget for the Commission to investigate the most significant ‘terrorist attack’ in recent history was only a quarter of that (i.e.$15 million).

    In other words from an official point of view it might be argued that the US authorities viewed the mating habits of the lesser-spotted Clinton as four times more important than the deaths of 3,000+ citizens and counting if we include those murdered on the day or suffering from subsequent health complications.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 12:27 PM
    Reply to  Harry Stotle

    Why would US deep state seriously investigate or publish their own failings? Four airlines hijacked and some torpedoed into landmarks is a colossal security laps for fortress America. Better shush it up plus divert.
    Also the dollar floats on Saudi oil, so the Feds presses can only print unlimited as long as the Gulf Sheiks are kept out of the lime light.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 23, 2019 2:58 PM
    Reply to  Editor

    *What was the motive for controlled demolition of most of the WTC on 9/11?
    *Did any planes hit the towers or not?

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 23, 2019 6:22 PM
    Reply to  Antonym

    “What was the motive for controlled demolition of most of the WTC on 9/11?”

    To create the spectacle of a catastrophic attack.

    “Did any planes hit the towers or not?”

    Ah – that is the question!

    ThomPrentice
    ThomPrentice
    Sep 23, 2019 10:44 PM
    Reply to  George Mc

    This is the sort of stupid statement that finally betrays triumph of faith-based belief in wild conspiracy over reason, logic, evidence and fact.

    Of COURSE the planes flew into the two towers for crissakes. Of COURSE!

    Denial of such a self-evident TRUTH is the recourse of one who wishes to swift boat the clear and convincing evidence of planes crashing into the towers (film, anybody? anybody? Anybody?!) through Merchants of Doubt (book, film) strategeries to try to make people believe the opposite of what is clearly seen.

    PLUS it DISTRACTS from the issue of whether the towers were INDEED wired with explosive devices that would do to the buildings what the aircraft had and their too cool to melt steel girders jet fuel had not done: Demolition.

    So who benefits? Follow the money so to speak.

    The only nation to benefit from the Kennedy Assassination ***AND*** 9/11 was … wait for it … ISRAEL! Kennedy spent his entire three years trying to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Israeli government because he considered that it would be DESTABILKIING for Israel to have them.

    Then LBJ turned a blind eye to the gift to Israel fissionable material and voila we have the massive Nazi holocaust today in Gaza and the West Bank.

    The CARTER stupidly either outright permitted the Israelis actually TEST a nuclear weapon in the South Atlantic on September 22, 1979 to totally destabilise the Levant from then on. Carter was in on the deal with his big pal Menachem Begin or he and the CIA heard no evil and saw no evil and they spoke no evil, right?

    And 9/11, how did IT benefit Israel.

    So read Deuteronomy. Not even very far. To Chp. 10 or so. EVERYTHING FUNDAMENTAL to ISRAELI foreign and domestic policy RIGHT THIS MINUTE is in Deuteronomy. READ IT for crissakes!

    The Chosen People were Promise Land by their God between the Nile and the Euphrates. So why did the US lay down the lived of 5000 soldiers in Iraq, subvert Syria and destabilize Lebanon and make Jordan a client of Israel. THEIR LAND IS WHAT WAS PROMISED TO THE CHOSEN PEOPLE BY THEIR GOD! And SYRIA is RIGHT IN THE FUCKING WAY!

    So 9/11 got the US to shed American blood for Israeli purposes outlined in Deuteronomy. Plus Israel wants that oil in the Golan and the water from the headwaters of the Jordan.

    WHO BENEFITS from the Kennedy assassination and from 9/11?

    ISRAEL.

    And the military surveillance security banking deep state profiteering industrial and extractio industry conspiracy. I mean COMPLEX. Not conspiracy, right? Complex.

    God night and God Bless.

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 24, 2019 8:36 AM
    Reply to  ThomPrentice

    Well I would have thought all that no-plane stuff was rubbish. And then I saw this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c5_g7UTuGM

    The true scientific approach is that, on finding we have been lied to about almost everything, to take and extremely sceptical view about “established facts”. The no-plane theory actually makes a lot of sense. And may I add that to scream “OF COURSE” sounds a bit like an Old Testament prophet. And I see you are exhorting me to read The Bible? For Christssakes!

    ThomPrentice
    ThomPrentice
    Sep 24, 2019 10:17 PM
    Reply to  ThomPrentice

    Friend, there is tape from dozens of different angles of aircraft crashing into the towers. Wake up.

    The aircraft could have been a distraction to coverup what clearly seems to be explosive bursts of a building demolition type that would surely collapse the buildings faster than jet fuel which by def cannot melt steel girders. Maybe. Maybe not.

    Whether there were aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania or at the Pentagon seems an open question. The Pentagon damage looks more like a missile in my view. However, raising doubt about aircraft in PA and the Pentagon THEN puts the BURDEN OF PROOF ON YOU, friend, to show us where the fuck those two aircraft are along with their passengers. Area 51 maybe?

    Your lack of scientific credibility is evident in your leap from the towers to your fear of being proselytized about the Bible. Take it to a shrink.

    It is people like you who make conspiracy hypothesizing based on evidence turn into wacko nut job conspiracy theorists, falling right into the trap of the CIA 1967 memo which created the term in the first place to discredit criticism of the Warren Commission coverup of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 27, 2019 10:36 PM
    Reply to  ThomPrentice

    “Maybe. Maybe not.”

    Well – thank God for a bit of modesty.

    “… raising doubt about aircraft in PA and the Pentagon THEN puts the BURDEN OF PROOF ON YOU, friend, to show us where the fuck those two aircraft are along with their passengers. Area 51 maybe?”

    Seriously? I have seen not one iota of proof of a plane in either case and yet it is up to me to provide proof that they DIDN’T crash?

    “your fear of being proselytized about the Bible.”

    Yes I’m so terrified of people talking about the Bible. Can’t get a wink of sleep!

    And to talk about “wacko nut job conspiracy theorists” at all falls right into the hands of the conspiracy-phobic media.

    Brion
    Brion
    Sep 27, 2019 9:47 PM
    Reply to  George Mc

    Real planes could not cause a collapse! Your right, a spectacle, trauma, 9/11 forever lodged in the psyche. Us Brits got the 7/7 red buses and underground stations- even tho the terrorist train to arrive in London was cancelled. I’ve seen the photoshop theory but think more likely a new technology displaying a plane, then explosive from inside. If you listen to some of the witnesses on the ground- no plane! Just an explosion!

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 29, 2019 5:57 PM
    Reply to  Brion

    Ah yes. “Outright Terror, Bold and Brilliant” on the side of the bus which somehow detached its roof in Tavistock Square 7 July 2005. The film/TV business (the quote was in an advertisement for a horror film about being trapped underground) is very much involved in what’s going on. Britain’s celebration of being awarded the 2012 Olympics in Beijing 2008 involved a red London bus suddenly detaching its roof; this at the Paralympic closing ceremony. Stratford, Olympic site, in East London seems to celebrate the 9/11 event. Curious buildings and memorial there.

    Brion
    Brion
    Sep 29, 2019 6:14 PM
    Reply to  Oliver

    The whole ceremony seems to be what Hoffman calls a mass ritual- Pheonix from the flames, strange all seeing eyes looking down and 33.3 miles from the centre of London!

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 30, 2019 4:03 PM
    Reply to  Brion

    Westfield in Stratford formerly owned by recently knighted Sir Frank Lowy, co-lessor of the WTC with Larry Silverstein. I bet that insurance money came in handy for building an enormous shopping centre in London. Manhattan Loft Gardens building in Stratford built by same (SOM) contractor/architects that built the replacement for the twin towers. 9/11 memorial made from 9/11 steel moved from Battersea Park to Stratford.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 5:09 PM
    Reply to  Editor

    Israelis, IMO, are the most plausible culprits in the rigging of the towers for demolition. I think the Saudis were mostly complicit in loaning themselves out as the patsies.

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 23, 2019 6:23 PM
    Reply to  Ken

    Patsies do not “loan themselves out”. Patsies are the unwitting fall guys.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 7:45 PM
    Reply to  George Mc

    George, I meant in a symbolic way by those Saudis whose pay grade is far above that of the, yes, quite likely unwitting, failed Cessna pilots who supposedly so expertly guided those planes into their targets.

    Brion
    Brion
    Sep 27, 2019 9:42 PM
    Reply to  Editor

    Do you think they might best serve the left and remain relevant by playing dumb? Most academics get the shove! I know Curtain and Griffin remain in posts. I guess i’m Hoping they’re not gatekeepers after enjoying so much of their work.

    Gary Weglarz
    Gary Weglarz
    Sep 23, 2019 2:44 PM
    Reply to  Antonym

    “Chomsky says a US government conspiracy would have leaked: 9/11 would have been prevented.” – thus proving the author’s point rather nicely.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 5:02 PM
    Reply to  milosevic

    How someone can see this video and still believe those towers fell without the help of explosives is testament to the human being’s immense capacity for self deception.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 23, 2019 6:36 PM
    Reply to  milosevic

    Can anybody point to a Link with soundtrack? I want to listen for something that a distinguished U$ MI general said you always hear at a controlled demolition: the pop! pop! pop! of a chain or wave of explosive charges being set off, one floor after another.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 6:52 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    The progression of explosions as they raced down the faces of the buildings was so rapid that the sound, as described by many witnesses, was more of a constant roar than discreet “pops.” That notwithstanding, the explosions are quite obvious to the sense of sight.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 24, 2019 11:08 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    Thanks for that info, Ken. If those explosions were heard as a continuous roar rather than a series of pops then they were much bigger than in usual military demolition.

    Any estimates of how many tons of military grade thermite are must be requisitioned for such a high tower? I ask because this is not only a criminal case of Follow the Money but also a case of Follow the Thermite.

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 24, 2019 4:53 PM
    Reply to  Editor

    Calling WTC aluminum / iron dust “micro thermite” is petty loaded: sky scrapers are made of those materials.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 24, 2019 7:46 PM
    Reply to  Editor

    Ed, thanks for reminding me of the Harrit paper on OffG
    https://off-guardian.org/2016/09/25/jones-harrit-mohr-millette-the-red-gray-chips/

    From it I read measured samples from 1.5 to 7.5 kJ/gm with an average about the accepted value for Bog Standard TNT (4.2 kJ/g). So my figures above stand: 2000-3000 tons of Nano Thermite to be traced on their way from Lawrence Livermore Labs to WTC. The path leads through the US Army, probably the most highly documented army on Earth. Shouldn’t be hard to work out a few leads: for instance who requisitioned a couple of kilotons in toto but gave no documented report on their final use? Which foreign armies did the USA supply with such a big lot of NanoThermite? Could those armies account for its final use?

    Antonym
    Antonym
    Sep 26, 2019 2:11 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Comedy gold: 2 to 3 metric ton of thermite was supposingly smuggled and installed into 3 WTC buildings without anybody getting suspicious. Next “they” kill a few thousand Americans and wound thousands more but are not found out even after ~20 years. Airliners were torpedoed as distraction. What next?

    EditorAccording to a peer-reviewed study that has not yet been rebutted (Harrit et al 2009) nanothermite, reacted and unreacted, WAS present in the WTC dust. Arguments from incredulity therefore are meaningless. It was there, therefore it was placed there, regardless of how hard you find that to believe

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 24, 2019 4:24 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    The usual explosive energy metric is tons of TNT (trinitrotoluene) equivalent. So the official Chinese line on the largest explosion in Tianjin on August 12 2015 was 22 tons of TNT equivalent (hint : it was hundreds of times more powerful than this, in reality a 3 – 5 kiloton blast).

    The energies witnessed at Manhattan 11/9/01 suggest around a kiloton for each tower. That is 1000 tons of TNT equivalent energy.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 24, 2019 5:46 PM
    Reply to  Oliver

    Oliver, many thanks for quantitative info: 1,000 tons of TNT to bring down a 500,000 ton tower. Assuming the energy in 1 gram of NanoThermite is roughly equivalent to 1 gram of TNT (4 kJ/g) then 1,000 tons of TNT translates into roughly 1 kiloton of NanoThermite. To bring down 3 towers would need roughly 3,000 tons of explosive to be installed. That’s a lot of tons.

    Follow the Thermite. Three clues off the top of my head:

    1. A Bush family firm was working for months, day and night, on the towers under armed guard. OffG has testimony BTL from a couple who saw men carrying sacks into a part of the building which had never been shut off from visitors before.

    2. The Mossad agents who were caught dancing and cheering when the buildings came down drove an unregistered van which carried explosives: what sort of explosives?

    3. NanoThermite is manufactured by Lawrence Livermore in the U$A and passed to the U$ Army. How would 3,000 tons of NanoThermite be requisitioned from either organization for a civilian demolition job? Where did that 3kilotons of highly specialized explosive come from?

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 25, 2019 6:43 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Lawrence Livermore primarily a nuclear research facility. Pyroclastic clouds exist in nature; in vulcanism. Volcanoes are powered by non-chemical means, known for centuries, pre nuclear or electrical discoveries. No chemical reaction I am aware of can take steel above its boiling point, thermite or whatever other chemical methodology suggested. The concept of nanothermite is only finely minced thermite, aluminum and ferrous oxide – rust -the reaction energy remains the same. Niels Bohr was at Copenhagen.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 25, 2019 7:20 PM
    Reply to  Oliver

    Oliver, to which post was your own post (above) replying? re pyroclastic clouds, volcanoes, boiling steel and Niels Bohr?

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 25, 2019 8:28 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Vexarb: I was replying to your post specifically but with a general readership in mind. Chemical energies alone cannot possibly explain physical phenomena observed WTC 2001 and 1993. Look to the Manhattan Project and its (murky) history.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 26, 2019 6:46 AM
    Reply to  Oliver

    Oliver, thermite was found in the dust; so, Follow the Thermite, it’s a solid fact a leads along a narrow trail with a good chance of tracking the quarry. Other explosives may well have been used but they have not been found (so far). According to Wikipedia thermite is a specialty explosive not manufactured in great quantity so a couple of thousand tons are more easily traced than regular Army munitions.

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 26, 2019 12:43 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Wikipedia? Thermite? There may be an -ite on the end, like dynamite but it’s news to me that thermite is even an explosive. It is just ferrous oxide and aluminum powder. There’s a vigorous and hot reaction when it’s ignited which reaches temperatures that can melt steel, but not take it above its boiling point. WTC dust contained condensed iron vapour. Also the entire spectrum of the decay elements one would expect to see from the fission of Uranium 235, in the exact proportions one would expect to see from the fission of Uranium 235.

    Editor: According to the study ‘Extremely High Temperatures During WTC Destruction’ (Jones et al 2008) the spheres of molten iron in the dust are entirely consistent with a thermitic reaction. Other studies have ruled out fission bombs or fission/fusion bombs due to absence of residues.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 26, 2019 1:29 PM
    Reply to  Oliver

    Oliver, what Harrit et al observed in their microscopes and measured with their calorimeter was _nano_ thermite ie, a mixture so _very_ finely divided that it explodes and can be used as a Shaped Charge (aka Directed Energy Weapon) in controlled demolition.

    If isotopes from a mini-nuclear DEW have been documented with the same experimental detail as Harrit et al, I should very much like to see that Link added to OffG’s valuable archive on 911 Truth.

    But let me add, the thermite evidence alone is sufficient to send a Criminal Justice Department sniffing out suspects and tracing clues. The fact that, 18 years after the greatest terrorist atrocity in history, no such criminal case has been set in motion — that suspicious fact is itself a criminal case!

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 26, 2019 5:51 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Any explosive can be formed into a shaped charge. Solid fuel rocket motors are an example; fireworks if you like. The main event that destroyed the twin towers in 2001 was fired upwards through them. What happened to the WTC can be deduced using mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic and, most importantly, psychology. This involved, and still involves, heads of state.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 27, 2019 8:46 AM
    Reply to  Oliver

    @Oliver: “What happened to the WTC can be deduced using mathematics, physics, chemistry, logic and, most importantly, psychology. ”

    Even more important than psychology, it can be deduced from the _fact_ that 3 scientists _found_ and confirmed in a peer reviewed paper the _actual_ presence of Nano-Thermite in dust from the explosion. Which is why I am looking forward to your adding here in the archives of OffG, a Link to a peer-review paper on the discovery of nuclear explosive residues, of similar depth to the paper by Harrit et al which confirms the discovery of chemical explosive residues.

    Re psychology as a Sherlock Holmes “significant event”: the dismissal of Prof Harrit from his academic University post is “the significant event” which suggests that Harrit’s discovery of Nano-Thermite explosive was true.

    Oliver
    Oliver
    Sep 28, 2019 6:47 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    I don’t set a great deal of store by peer-reviewed papers; we can work it out for ourselves. My own induction into all this was the 2008 banking collapse, which must have been engineered, as it was mathematically certain to happen, no risk at all.

    So I suggest you look at the USGS WTC dust sample analysis and ponder where the uranium, strontium, barium, yttrium and so on came from.

    The university of Copenhagen, with physicist Niels Bohr, was heavily involved in initial work on the Manhattan Project. Harritt must know this. Carlsberg were sponsors of Bohr, and still, of CERN.

    Editor: You’re playing word games & hoping your audience hasn’t read the USGS report and doesn’t know NONE of the elements you name were present in unusual amounts & nothing found in the dust indicated a nuclear bomb had been detonated or any form of nuclear reaction had taken place.

    This flagrant dishonesty entirely destroys any credibility you may have retained after admitting you reject peer reviewed analysis in favour if your own untutored ‘judgment’ in these matters.

    Your asinine attempt to link Niels Harrit with the Manhattan project (that took place before he was born) based simply on the fact he taught at Copenhagen is unworthy of further remark.

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 25, 2019 4:57 AM
    Reply to  vexarb

    @vexarb, Here is a video that offers at least some idea of how the rigging and demolition of the Twins might have been done. It also shows how fast the sequential explosions can be triggered with some mining explosion footage (think Twin Towers horizontally). Harrit once answered the question, “How would you get tons of thermite into the buildings?” with, “On pallets NOT marked ‘explosives'”

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 25, 2019 4:58 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    Sorry, here is the link.
    https://youtu.be/E3EQV223Y-M

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 25, 2019 7:16 AM
    Reply to  Ken

    Ken, your video Link is a “gem of purest ray serene”. I have copied it into my diary so that people might view it when I am long gone. Make it viral.

    Re quantitation: the video estimates about 250-550 “toolboxes” per tower (5-10 boxes placed on every second floor). Suppose each toolbox contains 10-20 kg of explosive (with WiFi trigger) that makes about 250-1,000 tons of explosive per tower — and an easy way for Mossad “performance artists” to assist the Bush company install their “performance art”.

    Garl
    Garl
    Sep 23, 2019 3:11 AM

    MKULTRA really was a failure though, drugs aren’t any good for mind control except as an adjunct to traditional techniques; ideology and violence are far more effective tools of mind control. Too bad they tortured and broke people’s brains to figure that out

    Hugh Turley
    Hugh Turley
    Sep 23, 2019 1:53 AM

    Thomas Merton wrote, “The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this house cleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media. How?” Merton was another victim of assassination in 1968.

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 23, 2019 11:16 AM
    Reply to  Hugh Turley

    Merton may or may not have been assaassinated, but his ‘cleaning out of the mind’ was akin to the content of one of BigB’s more yogic sermons rather than to any of the ruminations of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

    Hugh Turley
    Hugh Turley
    Sep 23, 2019 11:50 AM
    Reply to  Robbobbobin

    There is no longer any “may not have been” about the murder of Thomas Merton, who was wise to our war promoting press when he wrote, “The hardest people to propagandize are those who are not interested in the news…”
    https://www.irishamericannews.com/irishamericannews/arts/books/7576-the-martyrdom-of-thomas-merton-an-investigation-reviewed-by-sabina-clarke

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 26, 2019 8:24 AM
    Reply to  Hugh Turley

    ‘There is no longer any “may not have been” about the murder of Thomas Merton…”

    I chose my words specifically to facilitate or ignore any interpretation anyone wants to put on Merton’s death, as it is of no relevance to the value of his spiritual insight and the life and work that that guided, which you had chosen to omit and which omission I chose to mention by way of briefly rebalancing the account. Do you have a problem with that?

    Bob Taylor
    Bob Taylor
    Sep 23, 2019 1:50 AM

    I am so sick of the nuttery which manifests itself in statements such as his don’t – we – all – know – this? assertion that the C.I.A killed JFK. It’s not to late to learn something: read “Reclaiming History,” by Vincent Bugliosi. Or, continue as an idiot.

    Wazdo
    Wazdo
    Sep 23, 2019 2:36 PM
    Reply to  Bob Taylor

    “Reclaiming History” has been comprehensively debunked by Dr James Fetzer. He found one page with 10 lies and mistakes on it.

    Bob Taylor
    Bob Taylor
    Sep 23, 2019 8:08 PM
    Reply to  Wazdo

    Okay, well, a cursory Amazon check shows me he’s one of the nuts, or perhaps charlatans, who thinks 9/11 was an inside job. I lose interest, always, when I find that out about someone. I must admire the person’s ability to make a buck, of course, but then, this is a nation filled with people who think the moon landings were a hoax. It’s a nation filled with people who can’t figure out that 2/3 of a pound of hamburger would equal .66. Bugliosi, on the other hand, prosecuted the Manson family case, and Alan Dershowitz called him the best prosecutor in the United States. I’m surprised you didn’t cite Jim Marrs, King of All Charlatans.

    Wazdo
    Wazdo
    Sep 23, 2019 8:58 PM
    Reply to  Bob Taylor

    With regard to 911: may I respectfully suggest that you aquaint yourself with Newton’s laws of motion and then look at the collaps of building 7. Of course, most people now no longer believe in Newton’s laws and so it would seem that the re-medievelisation of the world is almost complete. Mr Bugliosi may indeed have been a first class prosecuter; that does not mean that he was a great investigator.

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 24, 2019 8:28 AM
    Reply to  Wazdo

    Of course, most people now no longer believe in Newton’s laws…”

    As far as they go, Einstein certainly did, and approximately 157 billion post-Einsteinian quantum physicists continue to do so at the ‘macro’ level so, given that that exceeds the population of the planet multifold (get it?), who and where are these “most people” of whom you speak?

    Wazdo
    Wazdo
    Sep 24, 2019 10:41 AM
    Reply to  Robbobbobin

    The “Newton” thing was meant to say that anyone, I think we can agree that’s most people, who believe in the Official Conspiracy Theory concerning 911 cannot, at the same time, assert that Newtons law is correct, because one contradicts the other.

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 24, 2019 7:54 AM
    Reply to  Wazdo

    Fetzer will be learning next month just how much he has to cough up for defaming one of the Sandy Hook families with his assertion that the nobody died in the mass shooting there.

    Wazdo
    Wazdo
    Sep 24, 2019 10:43 AM
    Reply to  Robbobbobin

    Have you looked at all the evidence?

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 24, 2019 2:58 PM
    Reply to  Wazdo

    Are you stupid enough to direct that question to me rather than to the court who found for the plaintiffs against Fetzer, or are you just too lazy to look up the judge’s email address and expect me to find the same and foward it for you?

    Wazdo
    Wazdo
    Sep 25, 2019 10:49 PM
    Reply to  Robbobbobin

    Have you read “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook”?

    Dimly Glimpsed
    Dimly Glimpsed
    Sep 23, 2019 1:43 AM

    The left eating their own. I had thought it rather odd when Jeffrey St. Clair, Joshua Frank, Eric Draitser, Yoav Livin were so zealous in attacking Catlin Johnstone for daring to violate leftist dogma. As I do here, reading Mr. Curtin’s suggestion that Chris Hedges lack of encyclopedic completeness implies a lack of sincerity or candor. Among the pure left, there are no grey areas.

    crank
    crank
    Sep 23, 2019 9:48 AM
    Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

    encyclopedic completeness

    Yeah, 9/11 is just a side issue, no real impact on development of 21st century politics, no big effect on societal psyche, truth irrelevant, nothing to see here /s

    Ken
    Ken
    Sep 23, 2019 7:37 PM
    Reply to  crank

    @crank Excellent point. Indeed, it’s only the watershed event of the 21st century, so far. Silly us, for wanting those whose voices carry to pipe up about it.

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 24, 2019 3:15 PM
    Reply to  Ken

    “Silly us, for wanting those whose voices carry to pipe up about [the alleged WTC big lie].”

    Oh, poor little sicky wicky nobodies us. Please Chrissyissy, please JulyWuly, please NoamyWoamy, please drop whatever irrelevancies you were pursuing before 9/11 to speak out the truth to our nasty big oppressors and their zombified millions on our behalf about all our shocked and awed PTSDness, exactly as we would if we could and we were you but we’re not so we can’t.

    Dimly Glimpsed
    Dimly Glimpsed
    Sep 24, 2019 3:37 AM
    Reply to  crank

    I once had a very short email discussion with Robert Parry, asking why Consortium News ignored 9/11 and the mountain of evidence surrounding 9/11 which pointed to an “inside job” along with Israel and Saudi Arabia. As I recall, he wrote something like, “that’s a subject I don’t want to touch”. Perhaps Hedges holds a similar view. Chomsky certainly does. Yet they all agree that 9/11 was used to sharpen the talons of the police state and justify permanwar. It is a mystery to me why these writers studiously ignore the obvious reality that official 9/11 narrative is a lie. Yet I admire and respect their work. No one is perfect. Not even Ed Curtin.

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 24, 2019 2:49 PM
    Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

    “[ignoring 9/11]’s a subject [the late Robert Parry of Consortium News][did]n’t want to touch”.

    Too short an email discussion to say why?

    “Perhaps Hedges holds a similar view. Chomsky certainly does. Yet they all agree that 9/11 was used to sharpen the talons of the police state and justify permanwar. It is a mystery to me why these writers studiously ignore the obvious reality that official 9/11 narrative is a lie.”

    Both Chomsky and Assange have explicitly stated that it’s not a central feature of the bases of their dissent and Hedges implicitly said the same thing when, in an Amy Goodman interview on the 10th (?) anniversary of the WTC event, he almost completely ignored both Goodman’s WTC-explicit segment introduction and her WTC-explicit opening question to move the entire discussion onto the societal depredations of the ‘resultant’ War on Terror’.

    I suspect that 9/11 as a catalyst for an awareness of the depravity of ruling classes in general, and in that case the US political and economic ‘elite’ in particular, is far more likely to be a “litmus test” or other such binary divider for those who were until then (not very self-flatteringly) unaware of the underlying nature of the ‘American Dream’ than it was for those long-term dissenters who were more likely to see it as just another manifestation–if significantly more extreme than most–of the conduct of civilized society in general, as usual. A kind of ‘ressentiment’ on the part of the newly disabused, as Kierkegaard and many others since him might say.

    Seamus Padraig
    Seamus Padraig
    Sep 23, 2019 6:01 PM
    Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

    Caity Johnstone was actually totally deplatformed from CounterPurge for her ‘heresy’. Tell me: who’s calling for a deplatforming Chris Hedges here?

    Dimly Glimpsed
    Dimly Glimpsed
    Sep 24, 2019 3:26 AM
    Reply to  Seamus Padraig

    Johhnstone had never written for Counterpunch.

    Seamus Padraig
    Seamus Padraig
    Sep 24, 2019 11:03 PM
    Reply to  Dimly Glimpsed

    Had her confused with Diana Johnstone there for a minute. Sorry for the error.

    Fair dinkum
    Fair dinkum
    Sep 23, 2019 12:27 AM

    Conspiracies heaped upon conspiracies, or distractions heaped upon distractions?
    What are the major problems facing the majority of the human race?
    1.Malnutrition (hunger, obesity and ill health).
    2. Climate change.
    3. Income equality.
    4. The disease of rabid consumerism.
    5. The spiritual void (depression).
    6. Overworking.
    7. The exploitation of billions of animals.
    8. Corrupt politicians and corporations.
    9. Access to affordable healthcare.
    10. Inter family violence.

    These are the some of the things Chris Hedges write about.
    FFS, isn’t that enough?

    Willem
    Willem
    Sep 23, 2019 6:17 AM
    Reply to  Fair dinkum

    They also write about that in the MSM. But they do it with a bias. Chris Hedges also writes about these issues with bias (always ending up that you should fight the unidentifiable deep state and get yourself peppersprayed when clashing with the police) and that is what this article from Curtin is about

    Fair dinkum
    Fair dinkum
    Sep 23, 2019 7:14 AM
    Reply to  Willem

    Difference being Chris walks the talk.

    nomad
    nomad
    Sep 23, 2019 1:38 PM
    Reply to  Fair dinkum

    in a word, no. if he avoids the single most critical event of the 21st century, no.

    Igor
    Igor
    Sep 22, 2019 11:34 PM

    Chomsky is controlled opposition.

    george
    george
    Sep 22, 2019 11:22 PM

    It is impossible to list more than two researchers into 9/11 without also mentioning the super-rational and comprehensive technical review by Judy Wood, in her book “Where Did The Towers Go?”. Indeed the omission by the author of this article could reasonably be viewed as a probable limited hangout.

    Russian dolls of deceit.

    Stuart Davies
    Stuart Davies
    Sep 22, 2019 8:40 PM

    Superb essay, Edward. I have been pointing this out about Hedges for some time now. Let’s all bear in mind that whether Hedges has sold his soul to the powers that be – or is simply avoiding certain unpleasant truths due to a fear of the price he would pay for speaking honestly of them – nonetheless the CIA has very definitely been cultivating writers and and journalists across the political spectrum to insinuate their narratives into the public consciousness fro the better part of the last century.

    “The detailed and engrossing 2008 book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, by Hugh Wilford, investigates the CIA’s ideological struggle from 1947 to 1967 to win “hearts and minds” for US capitalism and prosecute the Cold War.

    It was a dirty business. The CIA devised schemes to create or utilize existing social organizations, phony pass-through entities, universities, various media, artist groups, foundations and charities to service its propaganda wars—attempting to place a “progressive” and even “humanitarian” veneer upon America’s expanding grip.

    Despite the passage of time since the book’s release, it remains a pertinent read for its exposure of the modus operandi of the CIA’s ideological campaigns and the role of a section of the liberal intelligentsia in supporting it. It is an eye-opener, particularly for a younger generation that has been subjected to a decades-long, non-stop attempt to whitewash the CIA and US militarism. One gets a picture of the ferociously antidemocratic and reactionary operations of US imperialism and its intelligence apparatus, a clear demonstration of the thoroughly criminal and deceitful nature of American capitalism.

    Most important of all, the reader comes away with a sense of the immense significance attributed by the American ruling elite to the ideological struggle against socialism.

    The author correctly emphasizes, “If anything, these practices have intensified in recent years, with the ‘war on terror’ recreating the conditions of total mobilization that prevailed in the first years of the Cold War.” He adds that the agency is “a growing force on campus.”[3]

    The metaphor—a “Mighty Wurlitzer”—was coined by Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a paramilitary and psychological operations group created in 1948, which was folded into the CIA in 1951. He prided himself on directing the network of organizations to play any propaganda tune on demand, likening it to the world-famous theater organ.

    The agency sought out those who might be predisposed in a socialistic direction, targeting constituencies that had grievances with the status quo. It selected representatives from ethnic groups, women, African-Americans, labor, intellectuals and academics, students, Catholics, and artists and organized them into various front groups to promote anticommunism. These links, in turn, provided the agency with the cover it needed to influence strategically important sectors of foreign populations.

    Ironically, as the federal government was conducting its House Un-American Activities witch-hunts and assembling the attorney general’s List of Subversive Organizations, supposedly to ferret out Communist Party “front groups,” the CIA was busy doing precisely that—creating front groups of thousands of unwitting Americans for covert political operations.

    The book exposes how “radical” and “ex-radical,” labor, artistic and middle class people, a section of the American liberal intelligentsia, found themselves part of this “Wurlitzer.” [4] Significantly, this included a layer of former Communist Party members and fellow-travelers, such as novelist Richard Wright, who were disillusioned by their experience with the reactionary Stalinized party, did not find their way into the Trotskyist movement, and tragically ended up in the arms of the American intelligence apparatus.

    The agency exerted its control over these widely disparate and sometimes rancorous groups primarily through two methods. The first was the dispensation of large sums of cash—funneled either through corporations such as ITT, wealthy individuals or foundations. The second means was the vetting and grooming of the leaderships of these front groups, with the chosen individuals subjected to secrecy oaths.

    Wilford explains how secrecy oaths were implemented in the case of the CIA-controlled National Student Association (NSA). “When the CIA judged it necessary to have an unwitting [uninformed of CIA control] officer made aware of the true source of the organization’s funds, a meeting would be arranged between the individual concerned, a witting colleague and a former NSA officer who had gone on to join the Agency. At a prearranged signal, the witting staffer would leave the room. The CIA operative (still identified only as ex-NSA) would explain that the unwitting officer had to swear a secrecy oath before being apprised of some vital secret, and after getting the officer to sign a formal pledge, the operative would then reveal the Agency’s hand in the Association’s affairs.”

    Oaths were not just for effect. Violation carried a possible 20-year prison sentence. In later years, some of the witting later denounced the operation as entrapment and complained that they were “duped into a relationship with the CIA.” Others were in political agreement and/or saw working with the agency as a solid career move.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/17/wur1-a17.html

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 9:51 PM
    Reply to  Stuart Davies

    The agency exerted its control over these widely disparate and sometimes rancorous groups primarily through two methods. The first was the dispensation of large sums of cash — funneled either through corporations such as ITT, wealthy individuals or foundations.

    9/11 Review — The Left Gatekeepers Phenomenon

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 10:02 PM
    Reply to  Stuart Davies

    Thank you for posting this historiography. Excellently articulated stuff that I appreciate very much.

    MOU

    Alex
    Alex
    Sep 22, 2019 10:10 PM
    Reply to  Stuart Davies

    With the CIA stuff again? Chris Hedges doesn’t focus on that single agency to start with. He is a generalist, which you obviously ignored despite the many books he has written.

    I didn’t even care to check Chris’ article mentioned here because from the very beginning he clearly stated that this ruling organizations are alive and kicking. He gave gross examples of what they did in the past and therefore all likely to keep on doing but we just can’t learn about, just ask real journalists like Julian Asante. So, if Chris did indeed say the CIA stopped or failed on anything it didn’t matter because he’s telling us that this agency and others beyond the public knowledge are criminals with a badge, at the perfect level of Mexican drug cartels, Salvatorian gangs, Muslim extremists and more.

    Worrying about 9/11 is way past its time and I’m sorry local folks out there, but the masses did swallow the official version. I’m sure of it because talking about conspiracies is normally look down. Most people didn’t really care and went on with their lives. A few others did bother to read the official version and still were able to believe claims like that the twin towers were designed for neat destruction when they were built.

    Why wouldn’t people really care about 9/11? Because life has become hell in the USA! This is not a developed nation anymore! I can tell many in here enjoy cozy middle class lives. You are as much as the problem as the being powers and such. Even one of the magazines of these freaking powers, The Atlantic, admits that middle classers are just as much to blame.

    deda Stanko
    deda Stanko
    Sep 24, 2019 7:54 AM
    Reply to  Stuart Davies

    Hedges, like Chomsky and many others could indeed be “controlled opposition”. Staying away from 9/11 or Israel subjects is perhaps the best litmus test to determine who is and who isn’t controlled opposition (Alex Jones springs to mind). I started reading his articles with caution when he, more or less, followed NATO narrative against the Serbs, as a New York Times war correspondent. I dismissed the “intellectual logic fail” possibility and cemented my view with 9/11.

    Alex
    Alex
    Sep 22, 2019 6:59 PM

    This article is actually very likely (to say the least) a media plot divertion by the invisible government by slandering Chris Hedges and his website truthdig, some of the best exposers of deep state or whatever you want to call it. Some bloggers also complained truthdig has ignored Israel’s abuses, which is a flat out lie, making me think deep state also manipulates that content, which is not surprising at all. Small businesses do it in Amazon’s reviews.

    Nobody could report all the atrocities in the world in a small column, such as Chris Hedges’ was totally expected to. For this matter this author, Edward Curtain, has definitely failed to mention too many as well. Moreover, Ed only seems to bother with Democrats in power, not the real beasts, the Republicans.

    But Chris has indeed exposed Clinton, his political party and corrupt Liberals in detail in at least two books, “Death of the Liberal Class” and “Empire of Illusion” because these are the people who should have stopped or opposed all the atrocities. And no, Chris couldn’t have exposed all atrocities in all of his books either. Yet, about 10 out of 10 average folks will not be able to get through half a single one of his books without being overwhelmed.

    This situation has doomed Chris to get ignored by the masses because most people only want to be entertained. Chris is famous only in these very small places. YOU, whoever you are, find it yourself: get out of this website and start asking your friends, family, acquaintances and else about Chris Hedges.

    Edward also fails to use proper examples, like Clinton’s bombing in ex-Yugoslavia because this whole context is about secrecy and those bombing were public from the beginning. Clinton also bombed (=murdered) Iraq publicly to boost his popularity.

    Maybe neither Edward Curtain nor this site, off-guardian, are controlled by the deep state, but they are causing problems by bringing division and attacking the reputation of the few journalists worth supporting, like those in truthdig. Do yourself and everyone a big favor and ditch this site and this Curtain. I wish to see him a single day covering war crimes like Chris did for years.

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 22, 2019 10:14 PM
    Reply to  Alex

    “Moreover, Ed only seems to bother with Democrats in power, not the real beasts, the Republicans.”

    …and we’re back to the little controlled ball game. Actually the worst offenders in this little showbiz spectacle are always the “left” or “dissenting” side. These are the ones who are happy to provide a progressive veneer to the compulsive and unchanging machinations of the deep state.

    Igor
    Igor
    Sep 22, 2019 11:44 PM
    Reply to  George Mc

    Both of the two approved mainstream US political parties are owned and operated by the ultra wealthy. The USA has always been this way.
    Equally corrupt and uninterested in changing the system to better life for the “little” People.

    MichaelK
    MichaelK
    Sep 22, 2019 6:52 PM

    Reading many of the comments here, I’m shocked by the number of people who think that Chris Hedges is a CIA agent sent out to confuse and divert people from understanding the Truth!

    nomad
    nomad
    Sep 22, 2019 7:03 PM
    Reply to  MichaelK

    i missed that. which comment says hes a cia agent? id like to read it.

    Paul Damascene
    Paul Damascene
    Sep 22, 2019 6:48 PM

    No voice or perspective should be above scrutiny, including those of Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky. That said, I think that scrutiny should be well reasoned and avoid the ad Hominem fallacy. Both men can be assumed to have their blind spots, and may indeed be guilty of bad faith, but I would prefer that we work to exhaust other possibilities before reverting to ill intention.

    In this regard, I think the author has sailed close to that line without crossing it, unlike some of the comments to this piece. I think challenging Mr. Hedges to respond is fair, and I would want to hold Hedges to the standard of offering a fair-minded response.

    Without excusing man’s failings, I might note that there seems a widespread tendency–a form of unspoken negotiation, if you will–to concede certain positions in order to be deemed reasonable in one’s criticism of other issues. People with elite educations may even be more susceptible to this, in some sense recognizing where the heaviest flak will come and where their own positions are best fortified.

    9/11 and the Kennedy assignation(s) are arguably the preeminent examples of the former. Silence and evasion on the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia do not rise to that level, and would not be so convincingly explained by the “unspoken bargaining” gambit. Unspoken, and, at least potentially, unconscious.

    Alex
    Alex
    Sep 22, 2019 6:03 PM

    Test only

    mrbump
    mrbump
    Sep 24, 2019 11:48 AM
    Reply to  Alex

    test2

    mrbump
    mrbump
    Sep 24, 2019 11:49 AM
    Reply to  mrbump

    test3

    Gary Weglarz
    Gary Weglarz
    Sep 22, 2019 5:35 PM

    I, and I’m sure many others, have shared Ed Curtain’s concerns, questions and observations about Chris over the years. He does an excellent job expressing those questions and concerns in this piece.

    Chomsky is a particularly interesting case I must say. He continues to ignore massive amounts of information freely available to all of us that points to the complete and utter fraudulence of the Warren Commission findings – (even at the tender age of 13 I was loath to believe in a “magic bullet).” Not the least of which evidence is the reality that multiple witnesses about to testify to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970’s, if we are again to believe the “official story,” decided to commit suicide rather than testify only days or weeks before they were to appear. Such, apparently, is the amazing power long deceased – “lone assassin” – Lee Harvey Oswald exercises from the grave. That the Committee on Assassinations found that a “second shooter” was present (on it’s own evidence of a “conspiracy”) is of course on no interest to Chomsky as he never references this fact.

    In utter amazement I have watched video of Chomsky transform from the uber-rational critical thinking style he is noted for, into essentially a blabbering irrational Glenn Beck impersonator, with the mere audience member suggestion that the official 9/11 story may not be accurate. One gains a rather different perspective on the New York Time’s designation of Chomsky as the West’s “most important dissident,” when we see him function as a quite obvious gatekeeper on the most important events impacting the American republic. Having a very important “dissident” who evidence-free supports the Warren Commission AND the 9/11 Commission is no doubt quite very “important” to not only the paper of record, but to all other servants of the empire.

    Of course the good old boys network over at CounterPunch ridicule and renounce any and all such challenges to the official stories regarding these events with the CIA constructed and approved designation of – “conspiracy theories.”

    The concept of the “limited hangout” is as critical to understanding American and Western State propaganda operations (including those involving individuals identifying as “leftists”) as is understanding how “false flag” operations function.

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 7:58 PM
    Reply to  Gary Weglarz
    Ash
    Ash
    Sep 22, 2019 8:06 PM
    Reply to  Gary Weglarz

    > In utter amazement I have watched video of Chomsky transform
    > from the uber-rational critical thinking style he is noted for, into
    > essentially a blabbering irrational Glenn Beck impersonator, with
    > the mere audience member suggestion that the official 9/11 story
    > may not be accurate.

    Yep, I’ve seen that too. Very instructive to see THE professor of linguistics snidely sputtering out obvious logical fallacies. That told me everything I needed to know about him, despite his intellect and accomplishments.

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 8:23 PM
    Reply to  Ash

    AnneR
    AnneR
    Sep 22, 2019 4:34 PM

    Hedges article had gaps, for certain. I am in no position to know why, albeit that their absence is disturbing (especially the Clinton ordered NATO bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia, let alone the fact that the MSM, including of course the BBC World Service, never mentioned, at the time nor now, the fact that the ICJ exonerated Milosevic of war crimes).

    However, it is even more disturbing – but unsurprising given the focus of Hedges’ article – that Truthdig has indeed buried somewhere this very recent article. Perhaps the fact that Truthdig’s editor Robert Scheer is Jewish (perhaps he is, more importantly, a Zionist) and the main focus of Hedges’ article is Sidney Gottlieb a man, a scientist, who did the same sorts of things and was as untroubled by them as the Nazi scientists who happily used other humans (untermenschen – Slavs, Jews, Roma, the mentally and physically handicapped) as guinea pigs (not that I agree with using guinea pigs, either).

    Truthdig rarely if ever has any article which seriously criticizes Israel and its 70+ year ongoing brutal, violent, criminal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Or, another example, any article that digs into the Venezuelan Ricardo Haussmann and his less than honorable actions (you have to go to MintPressNews or The Grayzone Project for that sort of honest, deep investigative expose).

    I check out Truthdig to see what the bourgeois, “progressive,” identitarian wing of the dual headed party followers are “talking” about just as I listen (well, sort of listen) to the BBC World Service and NPR to learn what the propaganda of the day, month is (or isn’t): what they ignore, what they push, how they “report” on things, and so on. Then to get a more honest, serious, unbiased (or differently biased) perspective if check out Consortium News, MintPressNews, The American Herald, The Vineyard of the Saker, OffGuardian, RT, Sputnik etc…..

    Willem
    Willem
    Sep 22, 2019 4:02 PM

    I use to hold Chris Hedges in high esteem, and then somehow lost interest. His exposés on ‘the Deep state’ seemed always the same, ending in an advice for revolution, but how: Chris never was too clear about. I mean, how can you fight a system that is only known as ‘deep state’? If it cannot be materialized, it cannot be fought against. How convenient…

    And Chris his revolutionary ways, always are the same: demonstrate on the Street, where you will be pepper sprayed, arrested, sentenced. Well, thanks, but no thanks Chris. And that is where I lost Chris Hedges.

    Also his publishing on truthdig, as mentioned by others raises some suspicions. His writing there is among the best, but that is because all the other writing there is very close to mainstream, like Robert Fisk who writes for the independent. This is what one can expect when Chris Hedges is just a limited hangout for ‘truth’. And of course it is great for traffic to Truthdig when you have Chris Hedges amongst your writers.

    There is another nice essay on the usual truthtellers, like Chris Hedges, by Tarzie. It is called ‘passing Noam on my way out’. I think that is the perfect title for those (like me), who used to read and believe most that was reported in the mainstream, got some doubts about the narrative, and then were led to some enlightenment (you can Chris Hedges give credit to that), but not too much, and when taken seriously will lead you to a dead end street.

    Here is Tarzie’s essay on Chomsky

    https://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/passing-noam-on-my-way-out-part-1/

    And thank you, Edward Curtin, for writing this essay on Chris Hedges.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 5:02 PM
    Reply to  Willem

    No need to take down the ‘deep state’ as I already fucked them good enough not to worry about their sorry asses anymore, ever. The so-called ‘deep state’ is fully under my control and they are far too uneducated to ever figure it out.

    Sincerely, MOU

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 8:26 PM

    I don’t think your job as a disinfo troll has been properly explained to you. Maybe you should ask your handlers for a better script.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 8:44 PM
    Reply to  milosevic

    I am not now, or have ever been, a disinformation troll. I speak from experience and not via script. I am not employed in the intel community, nor have I ever been employed by the intel agency. I handle the entire Western empire of Intelligence all on my own with no help whatsoever from anyone.

    Nor have I ever written any scripts for plays or movies but I would like to do that some day if I can ever improve my writing skills enough to pull it off appropriately. And if I could write scripts I would start with a Christmas movie first because I believe one can make quite a bit of money by writing a solid script in that genre if one can get the script published & produced into a full length flick.

    There is cash in them there hills, Milosevic. The intelligence agencies don’t pay well at all and one has to conform to intel dictates that emanate from on high in the intelligence community that is incompetent. The brass of intelligence is an embarrassment writ large across all domains of intelligence in the Western empire.

    MOU

    Robbobbobin
    Robbobbobin
    Sep 23, 2019 12:29 AM
    Reply to  Willem

    “I use to hold Chris Hedges in high esteem, and then somehow lost interest. His exposés on ‘the Deep state’ seemed always the same, ending in an advice for revolution, but how: Chris never was too clear about.”

    That’s called “the wsws template”.

    tonyopmoc
    tonyopmoc
    Sep 22, 2019 4:01 PM

    This is brilliant too, by the same author. I understand completely. She survived too, but was actually there in the building when it was hit. She phoned home to England, and then the phone went dead.

    http://edwardcurtin.com/why-i-dont-speak-of-the-fake-news-of-9-11-anymore/

    Thank You,

    Tony

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 22, 2019 3:56 PM

    Mailman here. Case for the Defense, by a poster I respect BTL SyrPer:

    anti_republocrat BTL SyrianPerspective #301580

    I’ve been critical in the past of people who don’t challenge official propaganda narratives, because it’s those narratives that form the underlying basis for the evil the US does with its foreign/military policy. We’ve all noticed that Tulsi Gabbard often does not challenge those official narratives, but aside from the obvious fact that refusing to accept those narratives would destroy not only her presidential campaign but even her ability to speak out and be heard on the policies she’s opposing, I’ve come to realize that she’s using a type of mental judo to turn those narratives back on the warmongers and ultimately defeat them. I’ve mentioned before, that accepting the “brutal dictator” narrative regarding Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi while pointing out the utter failure of those regime change efforts, allows her to defeat the use of that narrative on Syria and all future regime change projects without challenging the “Assad is brutal” narrative.

    There’s an argument that one must always be faithful to Truth, and I respect that point of view.

    But what if, by insisting on some truthful detail, we impair our ability to convince others of a greater, more transcendent truth? A first step might be to point out how a narrative has been used to justify evil, which is what Tulsi does when she talks about the Iraq and Libya disasters and applies those lessons to Syria. We can do our part by citing Truth-tellers like Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett or Janice Kortkamp, who have actually been to and reported from Syria. We can talk about videos of Assad driving himself around with no obvious security measures.

    It’s important for all voters to have red lines which, if crossed, disqualify a candidate for our support or even vote. That becomes clear when we consider where “lesser evil” voting has led us. So far, Tulsi has not crossed a red line for me and I see her as the the only truly anti-war Democrat and our best hope for reining in the military or getting herself killed trying, which would also open some eyes.

    In the following 5 min video, Tulsi uses her mental judo on the official 9-11 narrative, questioning why we allow Saudi Arabia to sponsor al-Qaeda and spread terror all over the world:

    Hope Kesselring
    Hope Kesselring
    Sep 22, 2019 3:30 PM

    This is really good.

    Signed,
    Tired of Pretending

    jimbo
    jimbo
    Sep 22, 2019 3:04 PM

    As I read and read I was hoping that Curtin would at last reveal why many lefty writers don’t address 9/11. And then wah wah wah wah … “Perhaps he will see fit to publicly explain why he has done this.” Oh well.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 3:03 PM

    Dr. Hedges is indeed a paid intel operative that works as a respected American Journalist but he writes for Dr. Robert Scheer on Truthdig and if you know Truthdig at all you would know that the entire roster of journalists are entirely working right under the institutional boot of CENTCOM & the ever popular human torture amalgam of intelligence miscreants housed under the roof of the Central Intelligence Agency.

    CENTCOM & the Pentagon own Dr. Hedges et al. and they are the puppet class of journalists that are fully under the spell of the CIA & sundry fuck ups like CENTCOM.

    The real Public Enemy #1 throughout the USA is Truthdig & Dr. Hedges boss Dr. Robert Scheer who actually banned me from posting on Truthdig when I pointed all of this out to Truthdig readership.

    The truth is that Dr. Hedges is practiced at concealment & he enjoys his status as a respected writer/Journalist under CIA umbrella guidance.

    Dr. Robert Scheer & Dr. Chris Hedges are in no uncertain terms useful idiots employed by the Pentagon/CENTCOM/CIA to mindfuck the masses with their pedestal pontificate Truthdig.

    Frankly, I must admit my bias vis-a-vis getting barred from Truthdig comments section but I still write long missives to Dr. Scheer periodically calling him out for being a toady for the CIA.

    MOU

    nottheonly1
    nottheonly1
    Sep 22, 2019 4:53 PM

    It took me a bit longer to arrive at that conclusion, but have only started to visit truthdig (which I now understand to be a euphemism to dig a hole and bury it) a few month ago. Now though, the pieces have fallen into place and it makes also sense now that disqus is what others alleged for some time – a tool for the unintelligence agencies, phising for dissenters.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 6:56 PM
    Reply to  nottheonly1

    After the big institutional push to shut down alternative news on Internet most of the dissidents like myself were forced onto Discus given that we could not post anywhere else.
    I agree with you that Discus is a means of “kettle-ing’ [see Wall Street response to Occupy Wall Street demonstrators] that the intel agencies use.

    Five Eyes intelligence gathering is networked buffoonery as you know. Personally, I don’t really care if the intel agencies monitor my love for them en masse. They all know how much I truly admire their lack of knowledge & keystone cop ways.

    When it comes to national security threats they don’t get how much of a threat they really are either. When they are employed by governments they adopt an immediate Alice in Wonderland perspective and then they end up stuck in through-the-looking-glass Alice in Wonderland ideas which always seem to blow up in their collective faces every time.

    Always read the pap & swill offered up by the MSM & Internet as though it all emanated out of Langley or ‘the farm’.

    Cheers, MOU

    tonyopmoc
    tonyopmoc
    Sep 22, 2019 1:35 PM

    Edward Curtin, Brilliant article. As I was reading it, I wanted you to say so much more, and then you did. I have had to put up with this crap, for the last 20 years, starting with the bombing of Yugoslavia, where my first serious girlfriend’s family came from. Why the hell are we bombing some of the nicest people in the world?

    Then we had 9/11. I smelled a rat on day one, but like everyone, I too was a victim of a psycholgical operation – on a massive worldwide scale. It took me 18 months, until early 2003, before The latest Iraq war started, to become 100% convinced that the Official Story of 9/11 was impossible, because it did not comply with the most fundamental laws of physics and maths.

    I realised this in an instant when I was at work. I told all my colleagues, and they were all extremely well educated. I showed them the evidence. I told my family and friends. Almost everyone thought I was having a nervous breakdown, whilst I was simply telling everyone that the official story of 9/11 was impossible.

    This did not go down at all well, either at work, or socially. I realised that in order to stay sane, I could not discuss 9/11 with anyone, except anonymously on the internet.

    Mabe Chris Hedges has the same problem. I do however worry about Julian Assange, cos he appears to have the same problem too (never told the truth about 9/11). Yet its never done him any good. I do believe the current “truth” about him, in that he is being effectively tortured to death in Belmarsh Prison only 20 miles away from where I live in England.

    I honestly thought that such evil could never happen in my own country in my lifetime, but it has and is happenning.

    Tony

    nottheonly1
    nottheonly1
    Sep 22, 2019 4:36 PM
    Reply to  tonyopmoc

    I showed them the evidence.

    There is no evidence that would suffice to convince those who are thoroughly brain washed and conditioned to obediently believe what their ‘leaders’ tell them. None whatsoever. To the contrary. There is no shred of a doubt that passports will be found from people that allegedly flew with an airplane into a building – which exploded in a fierce, super hot fire that would subsequently bring down the entire building – in a nearby street that was covered with inches of the pulver previously known as World Trade Center. No Sir, not a shred of a doubt.

    The regime had lots of time to remove important evidence and to continue to brainwash its sheeple. As someone having lived on Hawai’i, I became a hobby-seismologist. There are earthquakes any day of the week, especially on the Big Island. While I never needed any evidence for the buildings to have come down through a controlled demolition – because that’s what they were – I wish that the assholes that insulted, ridiculed and harrassed me for pointing to the obvious, are remembering how they treated me then. But I sincerely doubt that. Stupid people do not turn out to be intelligent by actually being exposed to the evidence. See above. But I had the evidence all along, because I entered the seismic monitor stations manually, one by one on September 11th, 2001. All the way up to Canada you would find the signals from the WTC. SSPA was just the one that was most looked at afterwards. You see, these are RECORDERS. They are not screens. They are for the earth, what the printout of an ECG is for humans. You can see each arrythmia on your printout. Likewise, you can see printed out on paper the magnitude, duration and time of every tremor that reaches the station – down to someone blowing out rocks in a quarry many miles away.

    There were two earthquakes on these recorders. One with a magnitude of 2.1 and another one with 2.3. The third was not as prominent with 0.9. However, the peculiar thing about these signals were, that they appeared on the drum recorder BEFORE the buildings collapsed. Needless to say that I had downloaded the raw data of all monitors to my hard drive. My main hard drive that failed miraculously a short time later. This was at a time when only rich people had enough money for backup drives, because external hard drives were painfully expensive then. So, all of my data was gone (and with it other irretrievable information). Now I have so many clones that I don’t care how many drives are failing. There will always be a clone left – somewhere.

    The main point was, that the recorders showed that the buildings were demolished with a single charge below them and supporting charges throughout the buildings. The charges below removed the cores of the towers/7 and the above charges gave the impression that airplanes had caused the detonations at the top. When I asked people that insulted me what they believed had transformed the buildings’ structure into pulver above the alleged impact of airplanes, they said “Leave me the fuck alone!”

    Whoever posts a comment in support of the official fairy tale is only either of two possibilities (as pointed out in another piece here on offGuardian): a paid by the regime’s unintelligence agencies, or pathologically dumb. No more excuses for that. No middle after the revelation about WTC 7. Either dumb as f., or paid to disturb, distract and destroy the natural process of minds on their way to accept the truth.

    Your description of what happened to you when you discussed the Manhattan Conspiracy with others warranted my reply. You, too never needed any evidence – as the evidence was what you saw. It also reinforce/d/s the need of the regime to manipulate people’s minds into NOT believing what they saw – by all means necessary.

    Last but not least just one more thing. When it comes to the truth, it’s very close to what Bush said:

    You are either with the truth – or with the terrorists.

    There is no wiggle room. Not for a Chris Hedges, nor for anybody else.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 5:43 PM
    Reply to  nottheonly1

    Actually, there is wiggle room if you know government & politicians well enough to convince them of their fiduciary duty to understand objective assessment & empirical rule.

    Mathematics does not lie, but Mathematicians do, eh. Empiricists have been kicking the absolute shit out of ‘the truth’ for decades, man.

    Cheers, MOU

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 8:38 PM
    Reply to  nottheonly1

    Jack_Garbo
    Jack_Garbo
    Sep 22, 2019 1:25 PM

    Hedges has worried me, too. Though obviously well-informed, he misses the obvious, as in 9/11, a self admitted demolition of at least WTC7 by WTC lessee Larry Silverstein – on TV! No appropriate aircraft parts found at the 4 crash sites. No forensic investigation. Witnesses killed, or ignored.
    Is he, like Chomsky, a shill, a poodle, a well groomed spokesman of “respect” to calm the curious “intellectuals” who dare to ask questions? Is his reward continual “bestsellers” that nip at the heels of the Deep State but never seem to bite the hand…?
    Do they know what happens to real critics, such as Assange, Gary Webb, the Company’s own (Colby), if the curtain is drawn back too far? I understand their fear of losing status, tenure, sales, and even life. But wouldn’t a solemn silence be more condemning than a poodle’s yapping?

    Seamus Padraig
    Seamus Padraig
    Sep 22, 2019 1:20 PM

    Other celebrity names on the left have been especially guilty of the same approach: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and Alexander Cockburn, to name just a few (Zinn and Cockburn are dead). They have avoided these issues as if they were toxic. Nor would they logically explain why.

    Along those lines, I just discovered something earlier today that I find very disturbing: apparently, Julian Assange does not think 9/11 was “particularly important”! Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG23AyiIObk&feature=youtu.be

    He really seems incredibly uncomfortable with the question there–just plain shifty and evasive. To be sure, I wouldn’t hold it against Assange so much if it were just that he weren’t a truther. But how can he maintain that 9/11 wasn’t even important!? This has shaken my faith in him. I can’t believe I didn’t know about this sooner. I was really a huge fan of Assange. (Snowden, on the hand, never really impressed me much.)

    Did anyone else here know about this? Mind blowing!

    nottheonly1
    nottheonly1
    Sep 22, 2019 1:40 PM
    Reply to  Seamus Padraig

    Too much to watch – so little time. But I would say that his statement about the Manhattan Conspiracy might well be the reason for his Karma. Or – a most discomforting view – he is actually part of the conspiracy. Who knows how far the reach of the regime goes? He published proof for war crimes that were never tried at any court. The manipulation of the minds includes aspects of our ‘reality’ that go under “they would never do that to us!”.
    But they do. ‘They’ = the handlers of the owners of the world.

    SharonM
    SharonM
    Sep 22, 2019 3:19 PM
    Reply to  Seamus Padraig

    Well done, Seamus Padraig, welcome to the world of just not being so worshiping over Assange. People won’t like it at all. Julian Assange dismissed 9/11 journalists as crazy conspiracy theorists. No support for them whatsoever. Like Snowden, Assange showed us what we already knew–the government is spying on us? No shit. The U.S. is committing war crimes in Iraq? Thanks captain obvious. Hillary Clinton is a disgusting war-mongering liar? Wow, what a revelation! Rich people are hiding their money so they don’t have to pay taxes? Amazing!
    But when journalists look into the conspiracy that has led to tens of millions displaced, tortured, and murdered, Mr. Assange thought they’re just cuckoo;)

    nottheonly1
    nottheonly1
    Sep 22, 2019 12:32 PM

    When I was reading this brilliant critique last night, I felt once more vindicated. To make my point, I am doing something I never did before – due to lack of opportunity. It’s pretty easy to follow ‘nottheonly1’ through the interwebs. It will become apparent that my comments are not spread like oil on water. There are few sites I frequent. One of them is ‘Truthdig’ – on which Chris Hedges publishes as ‘TD-Originals’.

    A few odd things have happened after this, his last opinion piece there. It has been disappeared from the main page and transported to the dept of the site. You have to search for it, or won’t find it otherwise. That, inspite of the fact that it is only seven days old today and has received the most comments in this period. There is a window on the right in which a reader can look at three tabs: ‘Most Popular’, Latest News’, ‘Most Comments’ and ‘Most Shared’. Until Friday, Hedges piece was visible in all these teaser tabs. His piece has been removed from there and a blank space is to be seen instead.

    Although he still holds the ‘Most Comments’ (420), he does not appear in this tab. Other pieces do, with less comments and also older than his. So, the time does not seem to play a role in this tab. But the amount of comments does. He is missing there. He is also missing from the other tabs, even though his article should be noted there as well. However, there is a blank space, where another recommendation should be based on the tab header. I do have screen captures for all these irregularities. On the side, I also have screen caps for the fact that Truthdig is an Associated Press limited hangout. With the exception of a few re-publications from other sites, it’s all AP stuff. AP does have a history in U.S. journalism and one can look back at what part they played on various occasions. Like the Manhattan Conspiracy, the Iraq war, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, to name but a few. AP is not known to rock the boat of the owner class.

    Reading Chris Hedges “Our Invisible Government” created a certain discomfort that I traced back to the various ommissions – especially the one that WTC 7 has been outed as controlled demolition just prior to his piece – but also what Edward Curtin describes so well in his critique: the content between the lines is rather disturbing and therefore I wrote this comment on Truthdig:

    Very disturbing in so many ways. However, most disturbing in the way of this obvious mental assault that has its origin in ‘good cop – bad cop’ practice. It has been refined and includes now ‘good president – bad president’ (Trump), and most recently ‘good writer – bad writer’.

    This article is a prime example for this practice. Although it has been popular knowledge for 70 years, ‘Operation Paperclip’ is presented as something that just came out. Furthermore, the end of ‘MK Ultra’ is accepted as having been factually ended by the people who are above the law and without any moral compass.

    Last but not least, please stop calling it ‘9/11 attacks’. There were no attacks. The closest to the truth would be to call them ‘9/11 fake attacks’. Because a number of those who were allegedly flying the planes are still alive and the draft of the study by the University of Alaska came to the conclusion that WTC 7 was ‘pulled’ (Silverstein) by a controlled demolition. Now you can keep writing back and forth, good and bad, but whoever believes now that WTC 1 + WTC 2 turned into powder by ways of kerosine fires and as the ‘Harley Guy’ so convincingly stated “due to structural failure” (which is factually true, as they were demolished in a controlled fashion) is outing themselves as being part of the big problem.

    And writing about the myriad ways in which fascists abuse, torture, and sadistically exterminate human beings they deem ‘expendable’ and ‘sub-human’ will in no way change the practice of these criminally insane psychopaths. This is reminiscent of a doctor that just explains me in great detail what kind of tumors and cancer I have in my body. Then he tells me that I can go now.

    You need to provide ways and methods as to what must be done to bring this insanity to an end. Otherwise is will just be more of the ‘pessimist writer – optimist writer’ practice. The minds of the people are already messed up. It is time to be firm in resolve and to bring that about in writing as well.

    After having read Edward Curtin’s critique, it dawned upon me that there are even more disturbing aspects in this Chris Hedges piece. But knowing that they have not gone unnoticed, I leave it at that and recommend to look at it from a more ‘controlled opposition’ point of view.

    Thank you, Edward Curtin, for another time really digging for the truth.

    crispy
    crispy
    Sep 22, 2019 11:44 AM

    with all due respect to the editor please don’t tell people what they can think

    you can’t show absolute clear evidence of the twin tower’s demolition from explosives

    who did the wiring?,who placed the explosives?how long did it take?how come nobody noticed?

    nobody,absolutely nobody has come forward to say they personally had involvement in such a conspiracy

    its simple,a bunch of terrorists chanced their arm and blasted 2 large office blocks,buildings of a questionable design,forget all this nonsense by architects who claim these buildings where some how “aircraft” proof, they weren’t flak towers!

    Editor: With all due respect to the anon supporter of the official conspiracy theory, people can think anything they like and here we tolerate almost all shades of opinion. But facts really SHOULD be sacred and we prefer people respect them. This comment of yours is pure propagandist fiction.

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 22, 2019 12:30 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    @ crispy (fried brains): “you can’t show absolute clear evidence of the twin tower’s demolition from explosives”.

    Oh yes we can.

    crispy
    crispy
    Sep 22, 2019 12:38 PM
    Reply to  vexarb

    Show it then!

    Jack_Garbo
    Jack_Garbo
    Sep 22, 2019 1:32 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    Larry Silverstein, WTC lessee, spoke on TV that he ordered WTC7 “pulled”, ie demolished, late on 9/11. It takes at least one month to prepare a demolition. How did Silverstein know to prepare WTC7 one month before 9/11? Watch it:
    https://youtu.be/-ZlmHvd_RZU

    ChrisG
    ChrisG
    Sep 22, 2019 10:14 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    @Crispy: Tons of steel stuck in the Deutsche Bank building proves conclusively that controlled explosives were used. Not that there’s any point in telling you that!

    Seamus Padraig
    Seamus Padraig
    Sep 22, 2019 12:50 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    nobody,absolutely nobody has come forward to say they personally had involvement in such a conspiracy

    Actually, the owner (lessee) of WTC Building 7, a man named Larry Silverstein, once admitted on television that he had to “pull” the building on 9/11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jPzAakHPpk&feature=youtu.be

    His excuse, of course, is absurd: that Bldg. 7 was beyond salvage, so–while it was still ablaze!–demolitions experts wired it with explosives in order to cause an orderly implosion. But still, he admitted pulling it. So there’s one person for you …

    nottheonly1
    nottheonly1
    Sep 22, 2019 1:22 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    Are you wearing a Harley shirt, too? Sounds like it. Whoever pays you should ask for their money back or demote you. Here is some truth for you:

    Gary Weglarz
    Gary Weglarz
    Sep 22, 2019 5:32 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    Here is the link to the recently published four year study by the architecture department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks demolishing the “official story” of the Building 7 collapse. For those who can think for themselves science and the laws of physics will always trump the “official story.”

    Gary Weglarz
    Gary Weglarz
    Sep 22, 2019 5:39 PM
    Reply to  Gary Weglarz

    Sorry, this is the link I intended to post with my previous comment.

    https://www.ae911truth.org/wtc7

    Graft
    Graft
    Sep 22, 2019 11:32 AM

    Hedges outed himself as a shill with his anti Lenin tweet

    Harry Stotle
    Harry Stotle
    Sep 22, 2019 11:29 AM

    As well as nearly 3,000 citizens killed on 9/11 it feels like the left also died that day (and by that I mean as a serious political entity capable of challenging right wing hegenomy).

    The acceptance of Bush’s infantile conspiracy theory served as a green light to neocons who escalated their murderous agenda once they understood leftist intellectuals were prepared to swallow any old tripe even though what they were being asked to believe flew in the face of logic or scientific facts.

    9/11 is the litmus test that simply cannot accommodate fence sitters.

    When neocons are murdering civilians in dangerous and distant parts of the world like Libya, Syria and Iraq it can sometimes be difficult to gather evidence that can then be subject to meaningful scrutiny but when it is happening right under your nose in places like Kosova or New York then there is simply no excuse for not calling a spade a spade.

    If Hedges is not troubled by the fact the 9/11 commissioners themselves said they were ‘set up to fail’ then it seems he has a very selective view about what is important, and what needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency (from 9:18).

    crispy
    crispy
    Sep 22, 2019 11:28 AM

    Edward Curtin is indulging in his own form of mind control otherwise known as 9/11 conspiracy theory

    Jack_Garbo
    Jack_Garbo
    Sep 22, 2019 1:40 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    Pick up your silver at the door…

    Rhisiart Gwilym
    Rhisiart Gwilym
    Sep 22, 2019 3:47 PM
    Reply to  Jack_Garbo

    Silver? Used bus tickets more like. All that crap’s worth.

    MASTER OF UNIVE
    MASTER OF UNIVE
    Sep 22, 2019 3:10 PM
    Reply to  crispy

    We know you work for the CIA as a minimum wage part timer when you write, crispy.
    Not being adept enough to write a complete sentence with the requisite grammar is a dead giveaway.

    MOU

    UreKismet
    UreKismet
    Sep 22, 2019 11:25 AM

    While I too decry the suggestion that everyone who opposes the elites control & oppression must think and talk in lockstep, all prioritizing the exact same issues, I do have problems with Hedges’ approach. Not because he doesn’t see the world exactly as I do, but because he has such an unrealistic view of it.

    Hedges appears to believe revolution is necessary to bring about change yet his weird superstition based personal philosophy causes him to speak and act against ‘violent’ revolution.

    There is no other type. Either people get pushed by elite greed & its concomitant injustice to the point where they decide they are not going to take it any more – a stance that will surely bring the iron fist of the oppressor out of its velvet glove, or they sit quietly enduring the oppression, hoping (or in Hedge’s case praying) that somehow by way of serendipity, things will change. Which of course they will not.

    There is no 3rd way. If change comes it will not be down to us the few who see through the furtive, fraudulent devices of the oppressor, no it will be many thousands of Joe/Jo Blows who have truly had enough and refuse to take any more. Such a circumstance is always violent and it is either deceitful or just plain stupid to believe otherwise.

    Hedges is self deluded, the same as every other so-called christian socialist I have met.
    He means no real harm, can be useful when someone innocuous is needed to get the message out, but could never be trusted when push comes to shove since I doubt even he knows which way he would jump.

    crank
    crank
    Sep 22, 2019 11:23 AM

    I’ll say it again. One plausible reason why progressives like Hedges don’t open the box on things like 9/11 and JFK is that the threads which spring out lead to Israel. Left writers are aware of the undercurrent of suspicion about Jewish power in the world amongst gentiles, and could well self censor so as to avoid giving this any fuller expression. They legitimise such a course to themselves by limitting their work to systemic elements of corruption and power abuse within the capitalism system – ones exploited by all groups. However, given time and enough information, truth comes home to roost. Honest investigation reveals that Israel and pro-Israel citizens within the US are prime suspects for these two crimes and also for promulgating the false narratives that have covered up the crimes. Then people might ask about those at the helm of the financial crimes around 2008. Consideration of such leads one to read the Talmud and ponder the teachings of Rabbis and ask how these might have influenced a Gottlieb, a Zelikow or a Silverstein. I speculate that seeing as Hedges is a learned man, he realises this and steers clear for that very reason.

    Seamus Padraig
    Seamus Padraig
    Sep 22, 2019 1:02 PM
    Reply to  crank
    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 22, 2019 10:47 AM

    On the topic of MK-ULTRA, it seems to me that the methods explored there – e.g. chemical experimentation, direct behavioural programming – are very crude and therefore ineffective. It’s far easier to have various degrees of propaganda that will eventuate in a compliant population who sincerely believe they are free. I would say that Chris Hedges is perfectly sincere and may well censor himself at an unconscious level – like most who appear on the mainstream media. We would all do it when delivering a speech – especially one being televised, But that is where the conditioning comes in. Privately, people can think whatever they like. Publicly they know there are limits. I can type what I like here but I hold myself back in my workplace because I know, first, that most around me (if not all) would back away and second, that I may be in danger of losing my job since my views “give the wrong impression” about the organisation I am working for.

    George Mc
    George Mc
    Sep 22, 2019 10:13 AM

    Hedges finds himself facing the same dilemma as other celebrity dissenters. They all know there is a boundary beyond which they cannot pass if they want to stay “responsible” i.e. compliant to the mainstream. The observation about limited hangout is the main matter. The MSM will eventually – reluctantly – admit to something dodgy when it becomes no longer tenable to deny it. But very sharp limitations must be drawn. The celebrity dissenters can then play their role – and with gusto – denouncing the evils of the deep state etc. But these “rebel stars” know that they have a line they cannot cross. Should they cross it, they will not be assassinated (that would be crude and risky as an indication the dissenter was right) but they will be relegated to the “lunatic fringe”. This could be unbearable for them – not only because it would deny them access to mainstream channels – but also because it may have a severe impact on their reputation and therefore livelihood.

    milosevic
    milosevic
    Sep 22, 2019 8:55 PM
    Reply to  George Mc

    The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

    Noam Chomsky

    crank
    crank
    Sep 22, 2019 9:06 PM
    Reply to  milosevic

    funny that

    vexarb
    vexarb
    Sep 22, 2019 9:44 AM

    In rebuttal of vague exculpations by MichaelK and Eric Blair (below) here are 2 clips from the above article, which specifically back up what is important in the headline, namely: why readers should be aware that the accused is misinforming the public about recent misdeeds of the U$ regime by admitting only to what can no longer be hidden about some past misdeeds:

    1. He omits mentioning the Clinton wars against Yugoslavia, including 78 days of non-stop bombing of Serbia in 1999 that killed thousands of innocent people in the name of “humanitarian intervention”; wars he covered for the New York Times — the paper he has come to castigate ….On one hand, Hedges says, “It would be naive to relegate the behavior of Gottlieb and the CIA to the past,” but then he does just that.

    2. He says the invisible deep state “failed to foresee…the 9/11 attacks or the absence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.” This is factually wrong and quite absurd, as is well documented. They simply lied about these matters. He suggests such failures were due to “ineptitude,” _a coy word used by numerous other writers who find reasons to deny intentionality_ . He therefore _is_ implying that the attacks of September 11, 2001, a subject that he has consistently failed to address over the years_ even while he has written in detail about so much else_, did not involve America’s “invisible government forces.” What does he think Colin Powell was doing at the United Nations with Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet sitting behind him when he [Powell] fabricated evidence for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction?

    Fair dinkum
    Fair dinkum
    Sep 22, 2019 8:58 AM

    Off topic, but another great journalists needs our help.
    John Pilger aims to document the sell off of the NHS>>
    https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/john-pilger-film-the-dirty-war-on-the-nhs/