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:	post by Headbanging_Man at 2011-05-05 18:09:10

ArrowHeadNLI said	[orig][quote]

- I don't think anyone like Steve Pieczenik is offering incontrovertible proof of everything. I think he offers some very compelling information that IS undoubtedly hearsay, but we're talking about journalism, not a court case. The use of unnamed sources in modern journalism has been completely perverted, but the kind that Pieczenik (granting him status as a reporter) is discussing is what unnamed sourcing was invented for: to allow information to be revealed without subjecting the whistleblowers to the possible retaliation of their employers/superiors.

I don't have any particular faith in him as a source over any other, however, the insider information he alleges dovetails neatly with a lot of the other slim bits of info out there, in re: Osama's long-past death. I find Benazir Bhutto far more compelling than anyone in the current White House, and the more I think about it, unless Musharraf mispoke, I would say his statement on the matter was a way of "announcing" OBL's death without actually crossing his US paymasters. Again, nothing incontrovertible, but if the WH/Pentagon cannot clarify these contradictions, they remain a point to question. Merely saying "Shut up, we got him" is not sufficient to "debunk" serious questions.

I don't KNOW that Bin Laden has been dead for 9 years, though I do believe it strongly enough to critically doubt the current WH/Pentagon story. Being called a stupid cunt who has irrational faith in Alex Jones (I don't), or labeled a "deather" (as the mainstream media is attempting now to do) isn't really sufficient to change my mind.

- I agree and disagree about the media and the use of gatekeepers. It's true that the internet in general has offered self-publishing and networking opportunities for the completely inept, insane, and intellectually worthless. That said, I'm not sure I agree that the same really has been applied to the mainstream media; on the one hand, yes, CNN has pathetically devolved to the point of reading viewer Tweets on the air... On the other hand, the major TV/radio/print news IS now in 5 sets of corporate hands, and even with technological expansion, editorial control is the most crucial gate, and it still shuts quite easily on controversial issues. The internet gives someone like Alex Jones a vastly expanded audience from what he would have had 20 years ago, but in some ways I feel the mainstream dialogue is more restrictive than ever.

I could get into a few examples, it's quite a massive subject though; maybe the JFK assassination would still serve as a legitimate example though. I find it an increasingly useful event in reference to the way the executive branch and its corporate partners work together covertly. Despite the fact that the general public had rejected the lone-assassin theory entirely by the end of the 1970's, when the subject comes up in current stories, you will still see, in ANY mainstream source, discussion of "assassin Lee Harvey Oswald", for example. These stories even stick to the Warren Commission scenario (3 shots, no conspiracy), even though this fiction was refuted in 1979 by an official congressional body (House Select Committee On Assassinations). Likewise, when Dr. Malcolm Perry died 2 years ago, his obituary in many publications tried to sanitize his testimony to the Warren Commission, focusing on an out-of-context quote about JFK's neck wound to sanitize his testimony away from "conspiracy theory". At least the NYT was good enough to correct itself (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/us/08perry.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper) though they left in the bit about how he kept quiet after the WC report because he "regretted contributing, however inadvertently, to the various conspiracy theories"; strangely they don't mention the possibility that he might have been scared for his life, in light of the treatment of other witnesses against the WC. These are small examples, but I would say they're part of a very large pattern in which editorial control ensures that the "official" story prevails, regardless of how much evidence there may be to the contrary.

I won't even get into actual CIA presence in the media, but the fact that the Agency came under some (very limited) congressional scrutiny about this in the 1970's doesn't preclude these type of psy-ops continuing to this day.

- There ARE RETARDS, WHACKJOBS, NUTCASES, and IDIOTS out there, and some of them have their own blogs or news sites. However, it's also useful to remember that the powers that be frequently use such characterizations to discredit legitimate critics, as well as actual flakes. I'd rather deal with the issues on their merits, and question my sources, but not rule them out without good reason. Everyone from Noam Chomsky to Ron Paul (and far beyond on both sides of the political spectrum) has been labeled a whackjob or "conspiracy theorist" by someone (or more frequently, someones) merely wishing to discredit their valid political criticisms. The only real way to deal with this, in my eyes, is to deal with every source and every issue on its own merits. It's far too easy and lazy to simply take other people's words as to who are the RWNIs...

- In addition to morons and crazies, there are liars. Not everything in the news media is a lie, however my limited studying of the past 60-70 years or US history has shown me that ALMOST everything related to US foreign policy/national security/military/intelligence matters IS a lie. Not just spun and manipulated, but a lie. There are too many events to even begin to capture them all, but suffice it to say, as sources go, I have a very strong opinion about the military, and the CIA-Wall St. complex (and their various front men in the Oval Office). The executive branch has EARNED my incredulity, it's not merely a matter of faith on my part. Earlier I mentioned Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch; those are just 2 of a handful of propaganda psy-ops the Pentagon has pulled on the American (and global) public in the past decade; looking back to Bosnia, Gulf War I, Iran-Contra, death squads in Guatamala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Gulf Of Tonkin, Pearly Harbor... We're just talking about a legacy of utter dishonesty in the name of military empire. The burden of proof is simply not on the skeptic when it comes to official Pentagon or CIA pronouncements.

- And finally, spin and manipulation of actual events is dangerous, but I do think the "Big Lie" is much more destructive than near lies; even if he was talking about the Jews, Hitler of course used this tactic himself (under the brilliant guidance of Goebbels):

All this was inspired by the principle--which is quite true within itself--that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

At least we learn on a social level to deal with spin and manipulation; unfortunately our culture and educational system do not push people to question the great "factual" premises of our world, thus the "impudence to distort the truth so infamously" remains a valuable tactic for authoritarians.

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