An Open Letter to
Patrick Martin of
www.wsws.org, who wrote:
. . . Such a record [as Obama's] can be defended as
"progressive" only on the basis of the complacent perspective of
upper-middle-class liberals who are indifferent to the colossal impact of the
economic crisis on working people and bloody destruction in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The liberals' lament: What's wrong with Obama?
9 March 2010 by Patrick Martin
Dear Patrick:
RE: Progressives & Domestic Covert Ops
On February 27, 2009 I attended a fundraiser in a comfortably outfitted Mar Vista,
California home for Marcy Winograd, the progressive candidate challenging
blue-dog Democrat Jane Harman for the 36th congressional
district. Marcy gave a stirring anti-war
speech in which she promised to reach out to developing countries, not to make
war against them, but to "make progress together" with them. During the Q&A I was silent until the
inevitable, "any others?"
"It's a longish question," I began, "so bear with me.
The last politician who publicly espoused the
goal of mutual economic progress with developing countries was John F. Kennedy
-- the Alliance for Progress. It enraged
and infuriated the right-wing of this country because the United States, and
the Western world generally, operates as a vast enterprise of coercive
extraction against the interests of what is called the "developing world" but
that is in fact the exploited countries of the world.
I happen to be wearing Hanes underwear, which
I consider a bargain at $1/pair, made in Haiti.
And it is a bargain, because some Haitian woman has the choice of
starving on the streets or making $0.14/hour in a sweatshop.
I buy my Chiquita bananas at Trader Joes for
$0.19 a piece, also a bargain at prices kept low by privatized death squads
throughout Central America that enjoy the support of Attorney General Eric
Holder who used his DOJ connections to give Chiquita executives a free pass for
their funding a terrorist organization that murdered union workers.
I have watched the DVD's 'Life and Debt'
about the IMF's destruction of the Jamaican economy to steal their resources
and keep labor costs to a bare subsistence, and watched the John Perkins DVD on
Globalization ('Speaking Freely,' Volume 1) detailing how little wars are waged
against such countries to keep their rulers in the U.S. pocket at the expense
of their people to the benefit of the U.S. economy.
So would you be kind enough to explain how it
is possible for the U.S. and the countries it exploits to march forward
together in 'mutual progress'?"
Marcy, whom I consider the best of the best of persons and political candidates,
thanked me for asking the question. She
said clearly that she would support unions here and, a little less clearly,
abroad, but she never answered the question because it cannot be answered
within the framework of conventional politics.
Another man raised his hand and said, referring to me,
"I agree with you
completely, that's how it is, but the fact that we can't change everything,
doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to change the things that we can change."
I responded, with low-key effrontery,
"You mean, I take it,
to at least get our share of the spoils?"
To my great surprise, from a corner of the
room a person I did not identify spoke up and said,
"That's right."
And then we moved on to canapés.
I am not from Marcy's district and was not known to those people,
but during the next hour four of them independently
came up to me and thanked me for asking such a good question.
I will be more impressed with international socialism
when it tells the American worker frankly that the international revolution
it proposes will put his life and limb at risk
and diminish his standard of living, but that in the long run,
if things go as hoped, there will be a world in which others will benefit
vastly and in which he can take satisfaction provided his values and identity
are radically transmogrified to those of a socialist ideal.
I favor such a world, and am prepared for the
sacrifices it entails, but most Americans, even working-class Americans, do not
and are not. They want a bigger and
fairer share of the American pie.
John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, in an effort to co-opt and channel any
revolutionary impetus into a reformist path, captured this state of affairs,
". . . no revolution can succeed if it results in
lowering the standard of living for most people."
[1]
I expect that you will dodge that issue
with projected savings from the military budget and the elimination of profit,
but the collective military budgets of a properly run global imperialism
more than pay for themselves; and, most of the vast profits
that currently stand as markers of relative wealth amongst the
rulers could never be productively translated into real goods or services
because they far exceed the current value of such --
that's what finance capital is and does, my friend.
[2]
Patrick, I have been rude and abusive to you in prior correspondence,
but hopefully not undeservedly.
My patience with WSWS on the issue of
covert ops has worn thin over the years,
but now I will once again try to take you gently by the hand
without our having to meet and you will perhaps understand why.
The 9/11 movement is sadly riven over what counts as evidence
of a USG domestic covert operation and the mechanisms by which it occurred.
I have from time to time attempted to direct you and WSWS collectively to the
best evidence, but in vain, as your recent article on anthrax shows.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/anth-f26.shtml.
The fact is that the ruling class not only orchestrated 9/11,
but as part of its showmanship, as part of its "shock and awe"
declaration of power, blew up three buildings
in the middle of downtown Manhattan and we the people have been
relatively helpless to organize against this vast state crime.
In fact, some of the very solid 9/11 researchers
reject this possibility out-of-hand (e.g., Michael Ruppert, Mark Robinowitz,
John Judge, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Paul Thompson). But if you look closely
at the real 9/11 brainpower with scientific training and credentials,
there is virtual unanimity
about both conclusions and about what counts as good evidence for those
conclusions. No opinions, no speculation,
no nonsense. I did not expect you to
put down your Trotsky in favor of becoming a "Truther," but I did hope that
your modified understanding of how domestic covert operations are done in the
U.S. might better inform your writings.
With that goal still in mind, I'm going to refer you at the very end
of this letter
to three on-line videos totaling less than 30 minutes that prove controlled
demolition and do so not on our authority, but on the authority of NIST
(National Institute of Standards and Technology), the scientific body finally
assigned (after FEMA) to provide the official USG account of the collapse.
David Chandler, a high-school physics
teacher, attended a NIST public forum on their "DRAFT" report in which NIST
officials explained that the collapse of WTC 7 was 40% slower than free-fall,
as had to have been the case given the massive resistance from the underlying
structure, i.e., free-fall would have violated the law of momentum because it
requires that no resistance be present.
Chandler stood up and advised that using the videos of the collapse from
NIST and a free software program,
it was possible to demonstrate
that WTC 7 had undergone 2.25 seconds of free-fall.
Chandler showed that NIST was able to offer its initial figure
of 40% slower than free-fall only by arbitrarily deciding
to start timing the "descent" considerably
more than a second before the building began its collapse.
Chandler's presentation forced NIST to revise its final report to admit the
free-fall, but then according to NIST, mirabile dictu! free-fall no
longer violated a law of nature.
Free-fall, just in case you don't get it,
is possible only if there is no structural resistance.
This can occur only if all the building support columns
are simultaneously severed, something that requires controlled demolition.
More formally, the potential energy of the
building cannot be converted to kinetic energy at the rate of gravitational
acceleration -- free fall -- unless there is zero structural resistance, which
requires simultaneous severing of all support, i.e., controlled demolition.
Chandler's three videos also show NIST
officials palpably lying, engaging in conscious fraud, full stop.
NIST did not show the good manners to serve Chandler, and others,
the canapés to ease the contradictions. As I stated in
"Pardon Our Dust,
or, Why the World Trade Center Dust Matters",
I will be brief here from necessity. If the Towers and Building 7 were
destroyed by controlled demolition, then these vastly complicated acts were
coordinated through the security apparatus of the World Trade Center in
conjunction with high-ranking members of the U.S. military, especially the Air
Force, whose cooperation was required to assure that the commercial airplanes
hit their targets, and with the media, whose job it was to disseminate the
fiction of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda from the mouths of the intelligence
agencies that coordinated this grand act of political theater. The cover-up was
managed by control of the crime scene and subsequent
"investigations", destruction of the evidence, and was anticipated
through a variety of legislation and executive orders that are well known to
911 researchers. The USG, in cooperation with elements of private industry and
finance capital, brought us 911. The 911 Commission, like the Warren Commission
before it, remains a cruel hoax to euthanize critical public thinking. Not all
of the actors who served the cover-up were aware of their roles, but they were
ultimately set into motion by those who were.
Behind, and parallel to, the visible and overt political power
structure lies the fundamental source of political power and action in the
United States. It is known well only to those who participate regularly in it,
and to a small number of persons, who for one reason or another have stumbled
into it, have refused to look aside, and have pursued it to its bottom. I don't
wish to dramatize the "invisible government" but these are the persons
who control domestic covert action to effect profound changes in political
power and political climate in extra-legal ways and who also own and control
much of Congress. The motivation and sense of entitlement to do so is an old
story, and keeping within the bounds of U.S. history there is John Jay, who
would become the first Chief Justice of the United States, who said in arguing
against popular suffrage, "The people who own the country ought to govern
it." Covert action is one amongst many means that allow those who own this
country to rule it without ostensibly violating the spirit of democracy.
These persons are united in keeping their deeds secret from the vast
number of Americans even when they strongly disagree amongst themselves about
the wisdom of a particular covert action like 911. Providing the details for
this political perspective would take us too far afield, but it is this
perspective that is entailed by the thermitic dust in the World Trade Center,
one that would mobilize the American people could they only grasp it and come
to terms with it. That is what people like Steven Jones, Niels Harrit, Jim
Hoffman, Kevin Ryan, David Ray Griffin, Richard Gage & friends are trying
to promulgate, and people like Dr. Moffett are trying to suppress.
I lifted the sardonic title of my 2006 essay,
"Science,
Handmaiden of Inspired Truth," Or Putting NIST in Perspective
from a chapter of Robert A. Brady's 1938 classic
"The Spirit and Structure of German Fascism."
I had considered quoting the following passage,
but decided against doing so from fear of being over-the-top.
If anything, Chandler's videos, which have been available
for nearly a year and half with limited effect,
show that Brady was being modest.
None of his examples is nearly so compelling as NIST being forced to
admit free-fall for a 47-story building while denying controlled demolition.
The
reader must clearly understand that there is no fundamental difference between
the Nazi attitude toward the "natural" and the "social" sciences.
Let him consider the solutions to the following propositions:
I wish to travel to X, a distance of sixty miles, in half an hour.
I wish to shoot John Doe.
I wish to prove I did not shoot John Doe [having just shot him.]
I wish to know that my maid is inferior to myself.
I want to be told that there is no unemployment.
Let the reader then assemble the "expert counsel" required for supply of the
answers which I wish given, let each expert be called a "scientist," and he has
the full meaning of the Nazi position on both the physical and social
sciences. The scientist, in short, is to
proceed just exactly as does the conventional lawyer in the courtroom.
He is to find out whatever the Nazis wish to know,
and he is to prove whatever they wish to demonstrate. (p. 55)
The NIST reports are a continuation of just this sort of "science."
The only thing missing from NIST's performance would be an argument
as benediction to the Official Story that even if a law of nature
had been violated, the crazy 9/11 Truthers had utterly failed
to provide any direct evidence whatsoever that anyone in the
USG, military, or ruling elite had been guilty of the violation.
At this point the canapés would be served by
the Queen of Hearts who answered Alice's protest
that "one can't believe impossible things,"
with "I dare say you haven't had much practice!
When I was your age I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why,
sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Chandler's three videos are listed at architect
Richard Gage's website, www.ae911truth.org,
under "NIST admits freefall" in the left column.
Chandler has recently added a simpler summary
video that I recommend skipping:
it's for people who have an intuitive grasp of the science itself.
Chandler's videos are also at his own website,
http://911speakout.org/,
titled "WTC7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall."
The other three carefully explain the high-school level science
and display NIST officials' patent guilt and discomfiture
at being pressured to lie apace to maintain the official story.
The limited effect of his compelling videos is a sad
commentary on how weak a force for most people, even very smart ones, is the
effect of reason, logic, and science -- not to mention morality, as the
fundraiser illustrates, when it does not dovetail with self-interest --
compared to the power of tribal authority where fundamental worldviews
are at stake.
In his primer on the acquisition and maintenance of
rational beliefs, Willard V. Quine, a major philosopher and logician of the
past century, urged,
"Evidence
for belief must be distinguished from causes of belief; for some causes of
belief can be counted as evidence and some cannot. . . .The intensity of belief
cannot be counted on to reflect its supporting evidence any more than its
causes can.
[3]. . .
But at root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data,
skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth.
[Thus] In the chapters ahead we will be interested in the ways of
acquiring and sustaining right beliefs be they pleasant or painful."
[4]
The beliefs of the science-based faction of the 9/11
Truth movement are repugnant even to them,
and although supported by reason and science,
reason and science provide no emotional appeal.
They are opposed by the far stronger voice of tribal authority
aided by the fact that these beliefs are painful, very painful indeed.
Quine states an additional factor that explains why our task
has been so difficult. As the title of his book suggests, our
beliefs form a system in which consistency and coherence should be crucial
factors, and which, like a web, must work as a coordinated whole.
Furthermore, in assessing whether or not to accept a new belief,
he recommends assessing its plausibility against
the entire body of our beliefs, which are presumed to be largely correct.
As Quine put it:
Often in assessing beliefs we do best to assess several in combination.
A very accomplished mechanic might be able to
tell something about an automobile's engine by examining its parts one by one,
each in complete isolation from the others, but it would surely serve his
purposes better to see the engine as a whole with all its parts functioning
together. So with what we believe.
It is in the light of the full body of our beliefs
that candidates gain acceptance; any independent merits of a candidate
tend to be less decisive.
[5]
The worldview described above in "Pardon Our Dust"
does profound violence to the "full body of our beliefs"
in any conventional sense, and has been called "clinically insane,"
among other kind epithets. Admittedly, it has the unhappy burden of
sounding crazy (to most people), but being true.
One ongoing debate amongst those who understand 9/11 as an "inside job"
is whether the USG let it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or made
it happen on purpose (MIHOP), but I suggest that this is not the best
distinction to address, since, e.g., standing down Air Force defenses,
or installing "US Visa Express" to facilitate entry of many of
the alleged Saudi hijackers into the U.S. is both a "letting"
and a "making" it happen.
[6]
The better distinction is whether or not the
Official Story is "spooky" or contra-causal, i.e., whether or not it violates
known laws of physics, engineering, or chemistry.
As noted, it does, and the free-fall collapse is merely one of many.
This wretched conclusion entails a more radical revision
of our understanding of state power and organization than people like Ruppert,
Ahmed, Judge or Thompson are willing to contemplate.
To put it more plainly, the ruling class blew up three goddamn skyscrapers
in downtown Manhattan and nine years later the righteous hard-core left,
and most of the public, hasn't a clue.
How the hell did they get away with that?
The unpleasant answer -- and the sticking point that pushes back
against admitting the contradictions between the Official Story
and fundamental laws of nature, not to mention a vast body of
ordinary inculpating evidence -- is the existence of an apparatus of
private-public state power that is vastly organized
beyond most people's imagination yet wholly invisible to their sight,
articulating the details of which lies beyond the scope of this essay.
The unpleasant answer also underscores the difficulty in accepting it:
unlike a scientific revolution that involves a radical but understandable
"paradigm shift," the ugly facts of 9/11 force the destruction of much of
our web of belief without telling us how to mend it,
or with what to replace it.
This is why understanding 9/11, and USG
domestic covert operations generally, tends to repel the solid and sober-minded
while also appealing deeply and darkly to those more loosely anchored to
reality and opens the door to discredit those who expose them.
Among many measures taken to keep domestic covert
actions from public consciousness, the perpetrators exploit the natural
resistances described above. For all practical purposes,
the mainstream media is the disinformation end of the intelligence community.
As Quine notes: because most sciences are technical, hard to understand,
and beyond the reach of most non-practitioners,
they are readily impersonated by cults that gain popularity despite,
or sometimes because of, the fact that they are incomprehensible.
So we find many of these [cult]
theories borrowing liberally from genuine science,
and many more using terms that sound, to the uninitiated,
like the stuff of which true science is made.
Now many of the bogus doctrines are actually unintelligible;
their seeming content simply vanishes when closely scrutinized.
But given the incomprehensibility of so much genuine science for so many of us,
that very unintelligibility can be mistaken as a sign of authenticity.
Alas it can even inspire reverence.
[7]
Thus, to hide the contra-causal "facts" of the Official Story
a smear program has been mounted against the 9/11 researchers
with genuine scientific expertise who have proven that these "facts"
violate fundamental laws of nature. Under the aegis of presenting a
"united front," these scientists have been invited, and sometimes corralled,
by the USG disinformation agents, often via the media,
into the same tent with a group of crazies and/or USG agents
pushing everything from mini-nukes to space-rays as an "explanation"
for the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings.
This tactic relies on the fact that most people correctly reject these
"theories" as crazy and also instinctively harden
against considering the seemingly crazy but true theories
that threaten much of their entire worldview.
And, less bizarrely, the science researchers have been lumped with
varieties of "no-planers" who offer ill-supported or unsupported
and often frankly false theories that no plane hit the Pentagon,
or that plane switching occurred and that the hijacked
commercial airliners did not hit the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.
(I omit the crazies who claim that there were no hijacked airplanes,
that the seeming airplanes were only holograms.)
It is not from a wish to be divisive, but from a commitment
to stick to evidence that is clear and compelling,
rather than doubtful or dubious or worse, that the science end of
the 9/11 movement has been conservative and declined such associations.
Unlike politics, in 9/11 what matters the most is not the fact
of shared conclusions, but the evidentiary path traveled to reach them.
Give my apologies to Joe Kishore for not
contributing to the Socialist Equality Party fundraiser and instead asking him
to attend a Richard Gage (AE911Truth founder) lecture in Los Angeles,
and watch Gage's DVD, "9/11: Blueprint for Truth:
The Architecture of Destruction," though our goals are similar.
Chandler's example is one of many violations of laws of nature
that the official story must embrace. Among my other favorites
is watching the top 15-20 stories of the South Tower starting to topple over
like an axed tree, and then disintegrating in mid-air while the undamaged
bottom of the building explodes outward symmetrically top-to-bottom, supposedly
crushed by the part that fell to the side.
I wish that we were making this up.
For rational evidence-driven folk like myself, the fact that basic laws
of physics have been flagrantly defied by NIST and FEMA in the service of a
cover-up without our being able to rouse the American people despite our best
efforts, suggests the difficulty of the task before us.
Basic Newtonian physics is uncontested, and is much easier to understand
than Marxist economics. This flouting of physical science in the service
of cover-up has been going on apace for nearly nine years now.
Orwellian crimestop is in full bloom even amongst those
who are otherwise capable of facing the evils of a capitalist
system directly. I hope that you and
your comrades at WSWS, who can see the first contradiction upon which the good
Marcy stumbles but not the second, can clear your heads of it by coming to
grips with what happened on 9/11.
Regards,
Michael Green
Michael B. Green, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Qualified Medical Examiner (1992-7/2006, retired)
Former Assistant Professor of Philosophy
University of Texas at Austin