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Watchout For Gatekeepers
Watchout For Gatekeepers
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The Left Gatekeepers Phenomenon
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http://911review. com/denial/gatekeepers. html
The denial that 9/11/01 was an inside job is nowhere deeper than in the traditional Left and the established Left media.Respected commentators for the Left, such as David Corn of the Nation, pooh-poohed challenges to the official story of the attack, or at most suggested complicity of the Bush administration by pointing to Saudi connections to the Bush family, all while staying within the confines of the official myth of the hijackers, crumbling skyscrapers, etc
The causes of the Left gatekeeper phenomenon are, no doubt, complex. It may be that, because of their political marginalization, writers on the Left tend to be more defensive about their credibility. Furthermore, many Left publications are dependent on foundation funding, and those relationships may compromise objectivity on conscious and unconscious levels.It is also probable that many left icons are co-opted by covert disinformation programs such as Operation Mockingbird that target the Left media precisely because people expect challenges to the official story to come from that quarter
Left Denial
Researcher Mark Robinowitz devotes much of his vast website to tracking the Left gatekeeper phenomenon.He provides a good summary of the phenomenon of Left denial
e x c e r p t
title: Denial is not a river in Egypt: 'Not See's,' Nazis and the psychological difficulty in facing the truth about 9/11
author: Mark Robinowitz
Both the corporate, mainstream media and most of the foundation-funded "alternative" media have sought to restrict investigative journalism and dissident opinions about the so-called "War on Terror." Since 9/11, the Left media -- including The Nation, Z magazine, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Alternative Radio -- have shied away from examining the pretext for endless war.They have ignored the national "Deception Dollar" campaign, which has printed over three million DD's listing websites of the independent investigations of 911, despite a massive distribution effort across the country, especially at peace rallies
Worse, several of these institutions have gone on the attack against independent media and journalists who have done excellent work exposing the lies behind the official stories of 9/11.In the spring of 2002, when some of the material documenting official foreknowledge of 9/11 began to surface in the corporate media, The Nation, Z and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting attacked independent investigators who are piecing together the evidence, instead of helping those who have done the best work
site: www. oilempire. us page: www. oilempire. us/denial. html
Hypocrisy Now!
One of the most notable cases of Left denial is that of the respected journalist Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now!. Goodman has long rebuffed requests that she interview an expert on the subject. Instead she has tiptoed around the core facts of the attack and addressed only peripheral issues, such as the EPA's fraudulent assurances that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe while Ground Zero was still smoldering. Finally, after a concerted campaign by the 9-11 Visibility Project, Goodman featured David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, on her May 26, 2004 show. Goodman pitted Chip Berlet against Griffin, and gave the last word and closing summary to Berlet, who spun the myth that the attack was strictly blowback.Nonetheless, Griffin was allowed to make the case that the attack was an inside job for the first time ever on the nationally syndicated show
Mark Robinowitz recounts confronting Amy Goodman about her refusal to cover the issue prior to the Griffin interview
e x c e r p t
title: Amy Goodman's Not-So-Good Coverage of 9/11
author: Mark Robinowitz
...
In the fall of 2002, Ms. Goodman spoke in the same room at the University of Oregon during a previous speaking tour. After her speech (which was very similar to her May 2004 speech), I asked her after the event if she would help investigate the recently disclosed story of how the Air Force, CIA, NORAD and National Reconnaissance Office were conducting "war games" similar to 9/11 during the 9/11 "attacks," which were apparently used to confuse the air defense response. She would not reply, and looked at me in apparent fear. It was a particularly strange response considering she had just spoken eloquently about her tremendous courage in reporting on the massacre in East Timor.(The issue of the 9/11 war games on 9/11 has not ever been mentioned on Democracy Now -- and it is likely that if they were, DN would run the risk of losing their foundation funding, which would force them to lay off much of their staff)
...
site: www. oilempire. us page: www. oilempire. us/democracynow. html
On of the factors behind the reluctance of journalists such as Goodman to give a voice to skeptics of the official 9/11 myth may be their dependence on foundation money
e x c e r p t
title: THE GATEKEEPERS: Foundations Fund Phony 'Left' Media
author: Shiu Hung
site: www. leftgatekeepers. com page: www. leftgatekeepers. com/chart. htm
Cracks in the Wall
Two early exceptions to the Left media's blackout of evidence that the attack was an inside job were the radio shows Guns and Butter and Taking Aim , both of which have prominently featured Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone.These researchers focus on issues of historical precedents and economic and imperial motives pointing to the attack being an inside job or false-flag operation Guns and Butter also made the historic step in January of 2004 of airing an interview with researcher Jim Hoffman on the physical evidence of the demolition of the World Trade Center, whose transcript is posted on 911research. wtc7. net, a site focusing on physical evidence
The publication of Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor, appears to have somewhat eroded the Left establishment's taboo against questioning the attack. Among the endorsements printed on the book is one by Professor Howard Zinn, author of the acclaimed A People's History of the United States.The 9-11 Visibility Project also counts Medea Benjamin, Gore Vidal, Jim Hightower, and Ed Asner among the endorsers of the 9/11 Truth Movement
The work of Steven Jones, a physics professor for 20 years who published a draft of Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? in late 2005, appears to have created still more space for progressives to question the official version of events In an essay in CommonDreams. org , Ernest Partridge highlights several anomalies that undermine the official version, but gives short shrift to evidence that the attack was engineered
The 2006 Offensive
The year 2006 saw an unprecedented barrage of attacks by trusted left media icons, paralleling a surge in attacks by mainstream media outfits. The surge is almost certainly a response to an growth in the number of people considering challenges to the official story -- an expansion in part fueled by the increased credibility imparted to such challenges by the work of Steven E.Jones
AlterNet
In July AlterNet. org published The 9/11 Faith Movement by July Terry Allen, of the Independent Media Institute.The article is yet another straw man attack, failing to disclose any strong arguments for insider involvement in the attack while highlighting red-herrings like the Silverstein's "pull-it" comment
Dissident Voice
In August, Dissident Voice published Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11 by CIA alum Bil Christison. While packaged as a plea to take the "conspiracy theories" about 9/11 seriously, the piece actually appears to be a Trojan horse attack, enthusiastically promoting the Pentagon no-jetliner theory while pairing it with a tepid endorsement of the WTC demolition theory. Christison trots out the usual arguments for the no-jetliner theory, failing to note any of their errors.In contrast, he fails to note any specific arguments for the demolition of the Twin Towers or Building 7
The Progressive
On the anniversary of the attack, the Progressive published Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies, Already by Matthew Rothschild. Rothschild lauches his attack with sarcasm and ennumerates many positions of "conspiracy theorists" in order to ridicule them, but fails to describe the arguments on which those postions are based. The main argument Rothschild adduces against the theories is the fallacious one that an inside job would necessarily involve a vast conspiracy.Rothschild's attack amounts to little more than a series of fallacies: appeals to prejudice, appeals to authority, guilt by association, and straw man arguments
Counterpunch
Alexander Cockburn has a longstanding habit of bashing the "conspiracy theorists" in his Counterpunch. org publication. In late 2006 Counterpunch featured a series of three articles by Manuel Garcia, an employee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, purporting to explain the collapse of WTC 1, 2, and 7. Whistleblower Kevin Ryan penned a biting critique of Garcia's articles in Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don't Exist.After dismantling Garcia's "physics", Ryan provides insight into the political and psychological forces that are in play
e x c e r p t
title: Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don't Exist
author: Kevin Ryan
Government scientists get paid to support government policies, particularly in this era of "Bush Science", and clearly Garcia is willing to play along But why would political news organizations, like Counterpunch, that present themselves as alternatives to the corporate media, promote these false claims?
Consider for a moment the implications of a breakthrough in the truth about 9/11. If the official story about 9/11 is completely false, as it has proven to be, that fact should call into question those media sources who have helped to cover-up the details over the last five years, even if only through gross negligence of the facts. Whether or not collusion with alternative media was involved, if there is a possibility that the neo-cons actually helped in planning or executing the attacks, then the fact that they pulled it off means that Alexander Cockburn and other (ostensibly) liberal leaders might no longer enjoy the "irreverent and biting" superiority that they identify themselves with.It could be very distressing for some of these rebel leaders to realize that instead of "muckraking with a radical attitude" they have spent years meekly bolstering the status quo
It appears that these kinds of realizations are inevitable, and actually offer us a chance to improve our situation. In the US, we'll soon have more opportunity to notice the default states in which we are expected to accept scientific authority no matter how illogical, and accept a cartoonish political framework no matter how impotent.In the next few months, these opportunities will come like "hot volleys" from Manuel Garcia, providing stark examples of how pretentious "experts", and other types of fictitious, homogenized (ironcrete) leaders give no real alternatives to the problems we've seen in the last five years
site: 911Review. com page: 911Review. com/articles/ryan/garcia. html
The Psychology of Denial
The reasons for the intense denial about the 9/11/01 attack inside the Left establishment appear to go much deeper than the fact that many of its institutions are funded by endowments like those of the Ford Foundation. The official myth appeals to political philosophies that condemn U.S. imperialism by providing the supreme example of "blowback" -- the proverbial chickens coming home to roost.Researcher August West speaks to this and other psychological underpinnings of the denial
e x c e r p t
title: Left Denial on 9/11
author: August West
Denial lies at the heart of this unusual Left reaction. Many activists have looked at the questions, thought about the answers for a bit, and retreated in horror in the face of implications. If the government had foreknowledge and let the attacks happen, or worse, actually took part in facilitating them, then the American state is far more vicious than they could have imagined. And if so, what would happen to them should they vocalize this? Needless to say, this would greatly raise the stakes of political action well beyond the relatively superficial level that even many leftists operate at. It would be impossible to go on living as before, being essentially a spectator whose life is work/shopping/entertainment, with the occasional political rally, lecture or movie to spice things up and make one feel involved. People like that, or even ones more involved with some regular effort at political reform, could no longer feel that the political situation could be changed for the better through small, incremental steps, a 100 year or even 500 year plan. This prospect is thoroughly unsettling, and is easier to deal with if simply dismissed outright. ...
Beneath unconscious motivations also lie some conscious agendas. Those on the Left who have embraced "critical support" for a "limited response" war will no doubt not wish to have their political bankruptcy exposed. But even most of those who oppose the War have nevertheless accepted the notion that the U.S. was attacked by a vicious enemy. For some, this represents an opportunity to promote their moralistic approach: let us respond in an appropriate, moral and non-military manner. Others, such as Chomsky, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn and Alex Cockburn, simply trot out the "blowback" explanation: this horrible attack happened because America has done bad things, has not listened to "us" (wag, wag the finger), and better start changing its policies (as if an empire can be run in a nice way!). Yet others who disagree with war boosters like Katrina van den Heuvel of The Nation nevertheless buy their thesis that the war promotes increasing state powers (e.g., making airport baggage inspectors federal employees), and this amounts to a move towards "socialism".If the events of 9/11 were not what they seemed to be, this takes away the chance to promote these political programs, perhaps to even advance certain careers
page: sf. indymedia. org/news/2002/03/117429. php
****************************************
The Left Gatekeepers Phenomenon
****************************************
http://911review. com/denial/gatekeepers. html
The denial that 9/11/01 was an inside job is nowhere deeper than in the traditional Left and the established Left media.Respected commentators for the Left, such as David Corn of the Nation, pooh-poohed challenges to the official story of the attack, or at most suggested complicity of the Bush administration by pointing to Saudi connections to the Bush family, all while staying within the confines of the official myth of the hijackers, crumbling skyscrapers, etc
The causes of the Left gatekeeper phenomenon are, no doubt, complex. It may be that, because of their political marginalization, writers on the Left tend to be more defensive about their credibility. Furthermore, many Left publications are dependent on foundation funding, and those relationships may compromise objectivity on conscious and unconscious levels.It is also probable that many left icons are co-opted by covert disinformation programs such as Operation Mockingbird that target the Left media precisely because people expect challenges to the official story to come from that quarter
Left Denial
Researcher Mark Robinowitz devotes much of his vast website to tracking the Left gatekeeper phenomenon.He provides a good summary of the phenomenon of Left denial
e x c e r p t
title: Denial is not a river in Egypt: 'Not See's,' Nazis and the psychological difficulty in facing the truth about 9/11
author: Mark Robinowitz
Both the corporate, mainstream media and most of the foundation-funded "alternative" media have sought to restrict investigative journalism and dissident opinions about the so-called "War on Terror." Since 9/11, the Left media -- including The Nation, Z magazine, The Progressive, Mother Jones, Alternative Radio -- have shied away from examining the pretext for endless war.They have ignored the national "Deception Dollar" campaign, which has printed over three million DD's listing websites of the independent investigations of 911, despite a massive distribution effort across the country, especially at peace rallies
Worse, several of these institutions have gone on the attack against independent media and journalists who have done excellent work exposing the lies behind the official stories of 9/11.In the spring of 2002, when some of the material documenting official foreknowledge of 9/11 began to surface in the corporate media, The Nation, Z and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting attacked independent investigators who are piecing together the evidence, instead of helping those who have done the best work
site: www. oilempire. us page: www. oilempire. us/denial. html
Hypocrisy Now!
One of the most notable cases of Left denial is that of the respected journalist Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now!. Goodman has long rebuffed requests that she interview an expert on the subject. Instead she has tiptoed around the core facts of the attack and addressed only peripheral issues, such as the EPA's fraudulent assurances that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe while Ground Zero was still smoldering. Finally, after a concerted campaign by the 9-11 Visibility Project, Goodman featured David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, on her May 26, 2004 show. Goodman pitted Chip Berlet against Griffin, and gave the last word and closing summary to Berlet, who spun the myth that the attack was strictly blowback.Nonetheless, Griffin was allowed to make the case that the attack was an inside job for the first time ever on the nationally syndicated show
Mark Robinowitz recounts confronting Amy Goodman about her refusal to cover the issue prior to the Griffin interview
e x c e r p t
title: Amy Goodman's Not-So-Good Coverage of 9/11
author: Mark Robinowitz
...
In the fall of 2002, Ms. Goodman spoke in the same room at the University of Oregon during a previous speaking tour. After her speech (which was very similar to her May 2004 speech), I asked her after the event if she would help investigate the recently disclosed story of how the Air Force, CIA, NORAD and National Reconnaissance Office were conducting "war games" similar to 9/11 during the 9/11 "attacks," which were apparently used to confuse the air defense response. She would not reply, and looked at me in apparent fear. It was a particularly strange response considering she had just spoken eloquently about her tremendous courage in reporting on the massacre in East Timor.(The issue of the 9/11 war games on 9/11 has not ever been mentioned on Democracy Now -- and it is likely that if they were, DN would run the risk of losing their foundation funding, which would force them to lay off much of their staff)
...
site: www. oilempire. us page: www. oilempire. us/democracynow. html
On of the factors behind the reluctance of journalists such as Goodman to give a voice to skeptics of the official 9/11 myth may be their dependence on foundation money
e x c e r p t
title: THE GATEKEEPERS: Foundations Fund Phony 'Left' Media
author: Shiu Hung
site: www. leftgatekeepers. com page: www. leftgatekeepers. com/chart. htm
Cracks in the Wall
Two early exceptions to the Left media's blackout of evidence that the attack was an inside job were the radio shows Guns and Butter and Taking Aim , both of which have prominently featured Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone.These researchers focus on issues of historical precedents and economic and imperial motives pointing to the attack being an inside job or false-flag operation Guns and Butter also made the historic step in January of 2004 of airing an interview with researcher Jim Hoffman on the physical evidence of the demolition of the World Trade Center, whose transcript is posted on 911research. wtc7. net, a site focusing on physical evidence
The publication of Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbor, appears to have somewhat eroded the Left establishment's taboo against questioning the attack. Among the endorsements printed on the book is one by Professor Howard Zinn, author of the acclaimed A People's History of the United States.The 9-11 Visibility Project also counts Medea Benjamin, Gore Vidal, Jim Hightower, and Ed Asner among the endorsers of the 9/11 Truth Movement
The work of Steven Jones, a physics professor for 20 years who published a draft of Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse? in late 2005, appears to have created still more space for progressives to question the official version of events In an essay in CommonDreams. org , Ernest Partridge highlights several anomalies that undermine the official version, but gives short shrift to evidence that the attack was engineered
The 2006 Offensive
The year 2006 saw an unprecedented barrage of attacks by trusted left media icons, paralleling a surge in attacks by mainstream media outfits. The surge is almost certainly a response to an growth in the number of people considering challenges to the official story -- an expansion in part fueled by the increased credibility imparted to such challenges by the work of Steven E.Jones
AlterNet
In July AlterNet. org published The 9/11 Faith Movement by July Terry Allen, of the Independent Media Institute.The article is yet another straw man attack, failing to disclose any strong arguments for insider involvement in the attack while highlighting red-herrings like the Silverstein's "pull-it" comment
Dissident Voice
In August, Dissident Voice published Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11 by CIA alum Bil Christison. While packaged as a plea to take the "conspiracy theories" about 9/11 seriously, the piece actually appears to be a Trojan horse attack, enthusiastically promoting the Pentagon no-jetliner theory while pairing it with a tepid endorsement of the WTC demolition theory. Christison trots out the usual arguments for the no-jetliner theory, failing to note any of their errors.In contrast, he fails to note any specific arguments for the demolition of the Twin Towers or Building 7
The Progressive
On the anniversary of the attack, the Progressive published Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies, Already by Matthew Rothschild. Rothschild lauches his attack with sarcasm and ennumerates many positions of "conspiracy theorists" in order to ridicule them, but fails to describe the arguments on which those postions are based. The main argument Rothschild adduces against the theories is the fallacious one that an inside job would necessarily involve a vast conspiracy.Rothschild's attack amounts to little more than a series of fallacies: appeals to prejudice, appeals to authority, guilt by association, and straw man arguments
Counterpunch
Alexander Cockburn has a longstanding habit of bashing the "conspiracy theorists" in his Counterpunch. org publication. In late 2006 Counterpunch featured a series of three articles by Manuel Garcia, an employee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, purporting to explain the collapse of WTC 1, 2, and 7. Whistleblower Kevin Ryan penned a biting critique of Garcia's articles in Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don't Exist.After dismantling Garcia's "physics", Ryan provides insight into the political and psychological forces that are in play
e x c e r p t
title: Manuel Garcia Sees Physics That Don't Exist
author: Kevin Ryan
Government scientists get paid to support government policies, particularly in this era of "Bush Science", and clearly Garcia is willing to play along But why would political news organizations, like Counterpunch, that present themselves as alternatives to the corporate media, promote these false claims?
Consider for a moment the implications of a breakthrough in the truth about 9/11. If the official story about 9/11 is completely false, as it has proven to be, that fact should call into question those media sources who have helped to cover-up the details over the last five years, even if only through gross negligence of the facts. Whether or not collusion with alternative media was involved, if there is a possibility that the neo-cons actually helped in planning or executing the attacks, then the fact that they pulled it off means that Alexander Cockburn and other (ostensibly) liberal leaders might no longer enjoy the "irreverent and biting" superiority that they identify themselves with.It could be very distressing for some of these rebel leaders to realize that instead of "muckraking with a radical attitude" they have spent years meekly bolstering the status quo
It appears that these kinds of realizations are inevitable, and actually offer us a chance to improve our situation. In the US, we'll soon have more opportunity to notice the default states in which we are expected to accept scientific authority no matter how illogical, and accept a cartoonish political framework no matter how impotent.In the next few months, these opportunities will come like "hot volleys" from Manuel Garcia, providing stark examples of how pretentious "experts", and other types of fictitious, homogenized (ironcrete) leaders give no real alternatives to the problems we've seen in the last five years
site: 911Review. com page: 911Review. com/articles/ryan/garcia. html
The Psychology of Denial
The reasons for the intense denial about the 9/11/01 attack inside the Left establishment appear to go much deeper than the fact that many of its institutions are funded by endowments like those of the Ford Foundation. The official myth appeals to political philosophies that condemn U.S. imperialism by providing the supreme example of "blowback" -- the proverbial chickens coming home to roost.Researcher August West speaks to this and other psychological underpinnings of the denial
e x c e r p t
title: Left Denial on 9/11
author: August West
Denial lies at the heart of this unusual Left reaction. Many activists have looked at the questions, thought about the answers for a bit, and retreated in horror in the face of implications. If the government had foreknowledge and let the attacks happen, or worse, actually took part in facilitating them, then the American state is far more vicious than they could have imagined. And if so, what would happen to them should they vocalize this? Needless to say, this would greatly raise the stakes of political action well beyond the relatively superficial level that even many leftists operate at. It would be impossible to go on living as before, being essentially a spectator whose life is work/shopping/entertainment, with the occasional political rally, lecture or movie to spice things up and make one feel involved. People like that, or even ones more involved with some regular effort at political reform, could no longer feel that the political situation could be changed for the better through small, incremental steps, a 100 year or even 500 year plan. This prospect is thoroughly unsettling, and is easier to deal with if simply dismissed outright. ...
Beneath unconscious motivations also lie some conscious agendas. Those on the Left who have embraced "critical support" for a "limited response" war will no doubt not wish to have their political bankruptcy exposed. But even most of those who oppose the War have nevertheless accepted the notion that the U.S. was attacked by a vicious enemy. For some, this represents an opportunity to promote their moralistic approach: let us respond in an appropriate, moral and non-military manner. Others, such as Chomsky, Michael Albert, Howard Zinn and Alex Cockburn, simply trot out the "blowback" explanation: this horrible attack happened because America has done bad things, has not listened to "us" (wag, wag the finger), and better start changing its policies (as if an empire can be run in a nice way!). Yet others who disagree with war boosters like Katrina van den Heuvel of The Nation nevertheless buy their thesis that the war promotes increasing state powers (e.g., making airport baggage inspectors federal employees), and this amounts to a move towards "socialism".If the events of 9/11 were not what they seemed to be, this takes away the chance to promote these political programs, perhaps to even advance certain careers
page: sf. indymedia. org/news/2002/03/117429. php
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