Ed Felien : A Good [Angry White] Man With a Gun

Image from The L Magazine.

Pissed-off patriot:
‘A good man with a gun’

These angry white men are doing their best to bring back an idealized past that never really existed

By Ed Felien / The Rag Blog / December 12, 2013

“The only thing that stops a bad man with a gun is a good man with a gun.” -- Wayne LaPierre, National Rifle Association

Paul Anthony Ciancia believed he was that good man. He believed he was a warrior against the traitors who were taking over our government, bankrupting our currency, and trying to establish a New World Order.

On Friday, November 1, Ciancia walked into the Los Angeles airport and began firing an assault rifle, killing Transportation Service Administration (TSA) officer Gerardo Hernandez and wounding several others, until police officers were able to bring him down with several rounds to his midsection.

Ciancia’s duffel bag contained a handwritten, signed letter stating that he had “made the conscious decision to try to kill” multiple TSA employees and that he wanted to “instill fear in their traitorous minds.” The note said he would be happy if he managed to kill just one TSA agent. “Black, white, yellow, brown, I don’t discriminate.” It also mentioned fiat currency and NWO (the New World Order).

One official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the note referred to how the gunman believed his constitutional rights were being violated by TSA searches and that he was a “pissed-off patriot” upset at former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Austin's Alex Jones, a popular right-wing conspiracy theorist, host of Infowars.com (“because there is a war on for your mind”), had ranted weeks before about how the government had always meant to arm TSA agents as part of the plan for the New World Order’s authoritarian and socialist domination of America.

The Southern Poverty Law Center explains:

The New World Order refers to a longstanding conspiracy theory that today, in its most popular iteration, claims that global elites are plotting to form a socialistic “one-world government” that would crush American freedoms. Often, the root of the alleged conspiracy is traced to the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and the adoption of fiat currency -- paper money that is not backed by gold, as it once was in the U.S.

So-called Patriots also increasingly see the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which produces intelligence assessments of extremists that are distributed to other law enforcement agencies, as an enemy and even a collaborator in the New World Order conspiracy. Many believe DHS has targeted their movement and is somehow connected to the alleged construction of concentration camps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purported camps are thought to be meant for those Americans who resist a coming national seizure of all weapons from U.S. citizens.

The TSA, short for the Transportation Security Administration, is an agency of the DHS charged with ensuring the security of transportation, most notably air transportation. Although it has not been widely singled out by Patriots, it has been subjected to criticism by far-right homophobes, among others, who have alleged that TSA agents engaging in hand searches are really sexually groping travelers.

In his note, Ciancia called former director of DHS Janet Napolitano a “bull dyke.”

In many ways, Ciancia is no different from the other crazed lone gunmen who went berserk: Jared Loughner and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting; Wade Michael Page randomly killing six people in a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; Adam Lanza and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings -- all young white males who couldn’t find their place in the world, couldn’t find work, couldn’t find meaning.

Michael Kimmel, an authority on male violence against women and the author of No Safe Place, says, in an interview with PBS:

The traditional model of masculinity has been around for an awfully long time, basically it posits that men have to be... well the basic rules of manhood, if I were to put them this way are, no sussy stuff, that’s the first rule. You can never do anything that even remotely hints of femininity. The second rule is to be a big wheel. You know, we measure masculinity by the size of your paycheck, wealth, power, status, things like that.

The third rule is to be a sturdy oak. You show that you’re a man by never showing your emotions. And the fourth rule is Give ‘em Hell. Always go forward, exude an aura of daring and aggression in everything that you do. And this model of masculinity has been around for an awfully long time.

I think Kimmel is right in his psychological assessment, and the actions of these men can be seen on the one hand as a grand and deluded burst of masculine assertion. As if by this one act they will redeem their lives.

But it would be wrong to ignore the political content of their actions. Jared Loughner was attempting to assassinate a Democratic Congresswoman. In January 2011, I wrote:

Kelly [Gabrielle Giffords’ opponent in the last election] was supported in his campaign by ALIPAC (Americans for Legal Immigration PAC). John McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said of the group, “It is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.” He was also supported by Sarah Palin. She appeared with him on Fox News and said, “ I don’t feel worthy to lace his combat boots.” Giffords’ congressional district was one of 20 Democratic districts that McCain carried in 2008 where the incumbent voted for health care reform.

On her website, Palin said, “We’ll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington.” Their districts were on a U.S. map located by crosshairs. After the shooting, Palin’s campaign denied the crosshairs were meant to appear as targets, even though she had also said on March 23, “Don’t Retreat, Instead, RELOAD!”

The imagery and the rhetoric is clear, and it’s consistent with Republican rhetoric throughout the 2010 campaign:

• Robert Lowry, Republican candidate in Florida, fired at a target with his opponent’s initials written on it.
• Rep. Allen West’s first choice for chief of staff, Joyce Kaufman, said, “If ballots don’t work, bullets will.”
• Sharron Angle talked about Second Amendment remedies in her race against Harry Reid in Nevada.
• Michele Bachman said she wanted her supporters “armed and dangerous.”

Jesse Kelly held a fundraiser in June where he advertised: “Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.”

Minimum donation: $50.

Wade Michael Page could justify randomly killing six people in a Sikh temple because he believed they were a threat to racial purity in America.

Law enforcement officials told CBS that Adam Lanza may have been motivated by a desire to outdo Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian Neo-Nazi who killed 77 people, mostly children, in July 2011.

These acts, then, can be seen as part of a tradition begun by Timothy McVeigh, who detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people. A militia sympathizer, he hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.

These angry white men are doing their best to bring back an idealized past that never really existed -- where white male authority was unquestioned, where there was order in society and everyone knew their place, where God and the flag were respected.

In many ways the right is imitating the left-wing armed revolutionaries of the ’60s, Che Gueverra and the Weather Underground. What is needed now is not to react to this violence with more violence. What is needed is to help these people chill out.

Liberals and left-wing progressives don’t spend much time listening to right-wing talk radio. Any spare time for the mass media is reserved for The Daily Show or Stephen Colbert or Saturday Night Live. And the reward is a self-satisfied smirk and a feeling of superiority. It must be how the artists and intellectuals in Weimar Germany felt when they laughed at that funny man with the little mustache.

We should not try to fight fire with fire. We need to fight fire with water. We need to listen to right-wing talk radio. We need to call up Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Alex Jones and gently pour water on their incendiary ideas. The alternative is continued violence, continued killings, continued chaos. It is up to us to make sense of it and help our right-wing brothers and sisters to simmer down.

[Ed Felien is publisher and editor of Southside Pride, a South Minneapolis monthly where this article was also published. Read more articles by Ed Felien on The Rag Blog.]

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Marc Estrin : Unholy Ground

UNHOLY GROUND

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / September 11, 2010

Here it is 9/11 again, and the world is all caught up in a debate on whether our "attackers" are being "insensitive" in demanding a presence at "ground zero" -- or two blocks away, or 20, or on the island of Manhattan.

Although I'm a fiction writer, it's hard for me to get involved in this debate concerning counterfactuals, sides taking passionate sides on the ethics of a fairy tale. Though it is interesting to thrash out whether Jack was right to steal the giant's magic harp, the fact is that there was no giant; there was no harp; there was no Jack. At least not as real people in this marvelous story.

While there may have been some middle-easterners involved in some way (though the evidence is unclear), the concrete-set notion that "19 Arab highjackers with box cutters attacked us" is -- to anyone who has looked at the physical and circumstantial evidence -- perfectly silly, and certainly not grounds for an anti-Muslim crusade.

This is not the place to present the mountains of evidence against the "official story" of 9/11. For a brief fact sheet on the collapse of the three buildings, one might go here.

Suffice it to say that planes do not "vaporize" upon crashing, and steel buildings do not symmetrically collapse at free fall speed from airplane strikes or fire -- or from no airplane strikes and tiny fires, as in the case of Building 7.

I began serious study of 9/11 issues back in 2004 after my reading of David Ray Griffin's first book, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. Here is my review from back then.

In the six years since, I have read many articles, watched many videos, and had endless discussions with smart people about this issue. And I've concluded two things:

1. The official story is transparent junk.
2. It's very difficult to get anyone to question it.

And while firm conclusions are a bit evasive -- at least around the edges -- about who actually "did" 9/11, much evidence points to those with motives, materials, authority, and opportunities to pull it off. The prime suspects combining all these are personnel and agencies of the U.S. government. But it will take an independent investigation to look into that. Nevertheless, it is very likely that "ground zero" is not only not "sacred," but is rather intensely unholy, smelling of sulfur.

Given #2 above, it's not likely that an independent investigation will happen soon -- at least in the U.S.

So what should a novelist do? Since the MSM will not cover it, I decided to write SKULK, a comic novel about 9/11 issues. Maybe, I thought, the material could get beyond the truther choir out into the fiction-reading public. An end-run, as it were, around let's-not-go-there-ism. Though the story is ridiculous (but rich), the websites mentioned by the schemers are real. Were a reader to be curious enough to check them out, he or she would be standing at the edge of a vast sea of real information generally out of public view.

So for this 9/11, I thought I'd share a short section of SKULK in which Skulk -- Teresa Lee Skulkington of the Connecticut Skulkingtons -- convinces her boyfriend, Prof. Richard Gronsky, of Kansas State University, that America needs a "teaching moment," and that 9/11 truth is it.

Our heroine was originally modeled on Ann Coulter, and this scene germinated after I was told (I cannot vouch for this) that AC was -- improbably -- a Deadhead! So here, in a chapter called "The Wheel, our dynamic duo, high on Uncle Sam acid tabs, are recovering from a complex trip. Gronsky's pet project is to get Kansas to secede from the union. I'll explain anything else that needs explaining in [square brackets].

And at the seventh hour, they rested. The Dead cd had been retired. Richard lay sprawled out on the couch, eating green, green guacamole, singing to himself his favorite verse from Carmina Burana over and over like some tape loop at Kaufmann’s. [the department store where a mysterious year-round Santa Claus works]
Rex sedet in vertice
Caveat ruinam!
Mmmm, mmmm, mmm, yowsa...
Nam sub axe legimus
Hecubam reginam.
“Yes.”
She, on the other hand, was over-tired-revved, sitting in the chair, her arms around her knees, her head down, wrapped in teeming brain.
“You know that article you read me?”
“Unh unh.”
“The article about the kid and the water?”
“No. What kid? What water?”
“Hydrogen oxide or whatever.” [a conspiracy theory about the government putting di-hydrogen oxide in the water]
“Oh, yeah, yeah. What about it?”
“The Free State of Kansas is never going to happen...”
“What do you mean?” he loudly objected.
“Hold on there. Hear me out, hear me out.”
Richard closed his eyes.
“The Free State of Kansas is never going to happen -- without some kind of shock, some huge consciousness-raising about the true state of things.”
“Isn’t Dubya enough?”
“No, no, no. Read your own goddamn Frank book. [Skulk has come down to Kansas to disprove Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas?] Rove has got the status quo sewn up. We’ve got to break...”
“Could we talk about this tomorrow?”
“This is tomorrow. Look at the sky. And you’ve got an eight o’clock class. So perk up!”
She poured what was left of the chardonnay in his lap.
“Look,” she continued, “the American public is very sweet -- especially Kansans -- and Love is All -- and all -- but they’re...I don’t want to say ‘stupid’. Let’s just say they’re a little hidebound in what they take to be the present. The official version of the present.”
“Let’s give ‘em all some Uncle Sam...” he suggested.
“Yeah, well they’ve had too much Uncle Sam already. They need to -- what do you academics say? -- unpack him. See what’s really in there.”
“But that’s ridiculous. They won’t,” Richard observed.
“They will if they are shaken up enough. Enough to see through some of the more obvious lies.”
“Like?”
“Like all the 9/11 stuff, liberal bonehead. What could be more explosive?”
“They’ve already been shaken up by 9/11.”
“Yeah, and they’ve circled the wagons. Around Dubya and the gang.”
“That’s predictable. People always support...”
“But what if they realized that Dubya and the gang were the ones that did it? I mean in some way did it?”
“What?”
“9/11.”
“Unh unh. I’m not going there. And no one else will either.”
He rose exhaustedly to his feet and began pacing.
“Look,” she lectured, “who ordered NORAD to stand down? Have you seen the early photos of the Pentagon? It’s only a little, tiny hole. Where’s the plane? Melted? Where are the engines? Engines don’t vaporize from burning fuel. How did two giant skyscrapers…”
“Three.”
“Three -- collapse from fire when no steel buildings had ever collapsed like that before in the history of buildings? C’mon. Weren’t you suspicious when you saw all that on TV?”
“No. I was horrified.”
“Hey, these are the guys that took us into war to stop Saddam from dropping nuclear bombs on us. And they’ve got people still swallowing it.”
“These are the guys?? These are your buddies, your father’s friends. I can’t believe you’re saying this! You! Ms. Fierce Right-wingnut.”
“Yeah. Well that was then and this is now. Post. Don’t you want to see the Free State of Kansas?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So we need to shake our dear citizens out of their lethargy. Fight the mass psychosis.”
“How?”
Teresa sat down in Richard’s place.
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
“But I do know this: Things seem pretty benign here at home, right? -- at least for Dubya and the gang. But a haystack soaked with kerosene also looks benign. It doesn’t smell that way -- but then neither does the country. But it appears content to just sit there -- until you toss in a match.”
“And you want to be the match.”
“We want to be the match.”
“The 9/11 stuff.”
“What else? It’s the smoking gun.”
“I see.”
Richard plopped down next to her on the couch. They both sat in silence for several minutes, each concerned with conflagration.
“What was that place called with the French name that John Brown...where somebody slaughtered somebody else?” she asked out of the blue.
“Marais des Cygnes,” he answered, Swamp of the Swans. Why? You thinking of slaughtering somebody? Your once-beloved vice-president, when he comes to speak at Raytheon next week?”
“No,” she said, taking him seriously. “That would bring down a police state big time. Homeland Security über Alles. No, we need some kind of teaching moment. And it can’t be seen as a terrorist act.”
“A teaching moment.”
“You’re supposed to know about those. I just thought it was a nice name.”
“What?”
“Marais des Cygnes.”
“Oh.”
“It’s like you and me. You the swamp, and I the swan."

How much Uncle Sam will it take to get people to understand the workings of Uncle Sam?

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Conspiracy Theories : Exhaust Fumes from the Angry

Photo montage by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.
Conspiracies:
Exhaust fumes from the angry

What better way to divert attention from the catastrophic eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration than to fan the flames of discontent with renewed conspiracy theories and tacit encouragement for simmering racism...

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / April 1, 2010

Some time ago a kid I had years earlier been asked to sponsor at an Eagle Scout awards ceremony invited me to his wedding. Call him Stan. He had razor sharp quick wit and an unquenchable interest in everything around him. From a poor background, Stan was a likable young redneck who had managed to earn the merit badges needed to become an Eagle Scout. He clearly had a high IQ which had gone unchallenged for most of his young life.

I was given a map to the location of the wedding. It was far out in the country up north of the coastal Biloxi-Gulfport metro area. I had always marveled at how in less than half an hour one enters thick pine forests and a totally different world, detached from the tourism, golf courses, beaches, and all the glitz of the casinos "down on the coast."

The wedding at an old settlement church at the end of a gravel road was brief, plain, and functional. The bride's full skirt helped conceal her pregnancy. The reception was in a large room beneath the church. Women and kids shuttled in bags of chips and other snacks from the cars and trucks outside.

Stan's new bride poured me a paper cup full of Hawaiian Punch right out of the can as friends and family gathered for the party. Stan introduced me to his father, a rumpled rather dour man in his 40's. He shook my hand and almost immediately pulled me aside from the others and looked me in the eye conspiratorially and asked what I knew about "the new world order."

I didn't know what he was talking about. Stan walked over briskly before I could answer, and trying for a bit of levity, I said, "Stan your father just asked me if I knew about the new world order. I'm not sure, do you know if that order was for here or to go?"

Stan guffawed. His father stiffened and folded his arms across his chest. Stan quickly led me off to meet his mother and other relatives. He rolled his eyes and said, apologetically, "Man, I forgot to tell you about my old man. Just ignore him. He is all off into that kind of stuff." I had just met my first conspiracy theorist true believer face to face and it was unsettling.

I later would learn the wide range of beliefs in secret societies and evil plans afoot all designed to bring ruin, harm or even imprisonment. British polemicist, Cristopher Hitchens, defines conspiracy theories as the "exhaust fumes of democracy."

Those who ramble on about the Freemasons, the Tri-Lateral Commission, satanic cults, "the Clinton body count" and of course, the "birthers" are a duke's mixture of folks whose angst and anger can be traced back some 2,000 years. Early believers felt that a religious, social, or political group or movement would cause a major transformation of society for better or worse, depending on what one was believing. World domination or end of the world... depending.

Early Christian Millenarian groups proclaimed that the current society and its rulers were corrupt, unjust, or otherwise wrong. The Lutherans in about 1520 condemned the Millenarians. Countless new "we are right and you are wrong" cults and sects have been forming ever since, based upon narrowed religious interpretations, politics, pseudo science, and lots of rumor and wild speculation.

America has its own religious sects with their very own prophets, founders and teachings including Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Scientologists, and Christian Scientists just to name a few. All seem good folks seeking enlightenment, proclaiming peace and goodwill and devotion to good works.

Former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, as well as U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Harry Reid, are among 16 Mormon members of Congress in both houses who wear "sacred underwear" to remind them of a "continuing need for repentance and obedience to God, the need to honor binding covenants voluntarily made in the temple, and the need to cherish and share truth and virtue in our daily living." Visitors are not allowed into the inner sanctum of their huge temple in Salt Lake city, however.

Extreme fringe groups may claim a loose Christian connection but they also easily mix in hatred, racism, paranoia, and patriotism. Hundreds of obtuse and extremist groups flood the internet with classic conspiracy beliefs including the American Nazi Party, White Power Worldwide, several skinheads groups and deniers of all sorts. On November 18, 1978, a charismatic psychopath, Jim Jones, founder of the conspiracy-based People's Temple, led his gullible and devoted followers into one of the largest mass suicides in history, convincing 918 people to drink poison-laced Kool-Aid.

But if we dial down the level of these extreme examples of anger, political confusion, misplaced faith and too often, gullible ignorance, we can get a picture of conspiracy-based protests and activity in America today.

We already have a 2012 doomsday prediction and in the news this week, the Michigan Militia, calling themselves "Christian warriors" and training to battle the Antichrist, were planning to kill a police officer then set off roadside bombs to kill policemen who would gather en masse for the funeral. Nine of those folks have just been rounded up and jailed. Prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, said of the group, "They fear this 'new world order' and they thought that it was their job to fight against government -- the federal government in particular."

Fifteen years ago Stan's father's "new world order" beliefs were less militant but probably not too fundamentally different from those of the Michigan Militia "Christian Warriors." But 15 years ago he and his buddies mostly railed and fumed amongst themselves, reinforcing their beliefs and forming bonds in their churches, clubs, and civic organizations.

Today conspiracy internet sites and cable TV talking heads like Fox News and Glen Beck, and Rush Limbaugh's raving radio programs, keep the anger among conservatives stirred up 24 hours a day.

Conspiracy believers, who are so easily influenced by rumors, innuendo, and outright lies, are, however, not easily dissuaded from their view of the world, even after the rumors, innuendo, and outright lies have been totally and repeatedly debunked. They cling to those beliefs because it allows them to be members of a group and it sustains a sense of belonging. Intellectual challenges are seen as threats to what they fiercely already know to be the "real truth."

The USA's landing on the moon, for example, is still thought to be a hoax, all filmed on a movie set. Fox news even aired "Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?" Even with moon rocks having been studied by scientists around the world and proclaimed to be of extraterrestrial origin, conspiracy nuts like Bart Sibrel were still out there screaming about the "government coverup."

Sibrel might have had some sense knocked into him when he confronted Buzz Aldrin in 2002 and called him a "coward and a liar." Aldrin, 72 years old at the time, socked Sibrel a good one in the jaw.

Today's conspiracy theorists have what they feel is a rock-solid target with a black president having been elected by "liberal Democrats." That he is a constitutional scholar, has worked at the grass roots with the poor and disadvantaged after becoming a Harvard educated attorney, and is extremely bright and "motivates the world" is proof enough for them that he is the Antichrist. And others who don't believe in Antichrist predictions still don't like him because he is black. Period.

The Tea Party crowd today certainly contains a large percentage of those disaffected supporters from the McCain-Palin rallies where we heard shouts of "kill him!" and other violent epithets against Barack Obama. Obama's clear victory validated a mandate for change. But the Republican party has pledged to keep Obama from succeeding, no matter the consequences for the country. Many ultra-conservatives have taken his election as a personal insult.

What better way to divert attention from the catastrophic eight years of the Bush-Cheney administration than to fan the flames of discontent with renewed conspiracy theories and tacit encouragement for simmering racism to come out into the open once again. Tea Party extremists were easily whipped up to scream "nigger, kike, fagot, baby killer" at the nation's Capitol where some actually spit upon elected officials. Republicans stood on the balconies of the Capitol building holding posters egging on the ranting mob below. What a great Tea Party everyone was having!

President Obama and his administration have had the stamina and calm determination to take on the toxic Bush political and financial disasters with unpopular, costly damage control while also moving forward with other badly needed and long ignored major legislation. Obama's perseverance resulted in beginning historic health care reform legislation.

Applauded by many at home and around the world, this progress has, however, created increased fear and anger among Obama's detractors rather than generating hope. The clouds of dissent are thickening, as Hitchen's noted, from "the exhaust fumes of democracy."

The last thing soured and riled-up conspiracy theorists and simplistic political protesters need is an even darker cloud over them. Perhaps their hot air will disperse their own exhaust fumes and allow some clear light to shine upon them. Or perhaps not.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Rag Blog Scoop about 'Cognitive Infiltration' Stirs up Internet Storm

Marc Estrin exhibits the tag line to his exclusive Rag Blog article about Obama advisor Cass Sunstein that has received much attention in the blogosphere.
Estrin's exclusive about Obama confidant
Triggers alarm about controversial scheme

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2010

The Rag Blog broke a story on January 11 entitled "Got Fascism?: Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration’” that has stirred up an internet storm.

The article, written for The Rag Blog by novelist Marc Estrin, reveals a previously unreported and highly controversial strategy for fighting dissension and “extremism” -- especially targeted at those adhering to "conspiracy" theories -- originated by Obama appointee and long-time Obama friend and colleague Cass Sunstein in a 2008 scholarly journal.

The material published in The Rag Blog was in turn covered by Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story on January 13. It was followed up by Glenn Greenwald in an extensive article published by Salon.com entitled “Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal,” that has been updated several times since and even received a response from Paul Krugman. Greenwald’s Salon.com article was also distributed by CommonDreams.

Both Tencer and Greenwald credited The Rag Blog and Marc Estrin with breaking the story. Marc Estrin’s original article has been reposted extensively on domestic and international websites, and The Rag Blog has received thousands of referral hits from the Raw Story, Salon.com, and CommonDreams postings and from the republishing of our original story around the internet.

Visits to The Rag Blog have come from links placed on a wide variety of sites and from across the political spectrum, but the story has especially caught on with conspiracy buffs and among some on the ultra-right.

(In December The Rag Blog published an article about a Supreme Court decision that let stand a lower court ruling declaring torture, in the words of the author, “an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention” -- a ruling that in effect denied even suspected enemy combatants the protection that comes with being classified a "legal entity.” The Rag Blog posting of that article (a story that did not originate with us) also drew extensive attention including a front page link on The Raw Story -- much of it again from the conspiracy fringe -- and resulted in thousands of visits to The Rag Blog.)

In his original Rag Blog feature Estrin wrote:

In a recent scholarly article, [Cass Sunstein] and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 [2009], pp. 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Estrin reflected:

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides." (p.225).

Glenn Greenwald wrote for Salon.com:

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs."

In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).

This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger [The Rag Blog's Marc Estrin], and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer...

And from Daniel Tencer at The Raw Story:

Sunstein's article, published in the Journal of Political Philosphy in 2008 and recently uncovered by blogger Marc Estrin, states that "our primary claim is that conspiracy theories typically stem not from irrationality or mental illness of any kind but from a 'crippled epistemology,' in the form of a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources."

By "crippled epistemology" Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a limited number of sources of information that they trust.

Therefore, Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the conspiracy theories in public -- the very sources that conspiracy theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.

Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories, suggests that the government "enlist nongovernmental officials in the effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves. There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the independent experts."

Sunstein argued that "government might undertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremist theories." He suggested that "government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action."

"We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI," Estrin writes at the Rag Blog, expressing surprise that "a high-level presidential advisor" would support such a strategy.

Estrin notes that Sunstein advocates in his article for the infiltration of "extremist" groups so that it undermines the groups' confidence to the extent that "new recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides."

Sunstein has been the target of numerous "conspiracy theories" himself, mostly from the right wing political echo chamber, with conservative talking heads claiming he favors enacting "a second Bill of Rights" that would do away with the Second Amendment. Sunstein's recent book, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done, was criticized by some on the right as "a blueprint for online censorship."

Sunstein "wants to hold blogs and web hosting services accountable for the remarks of commenters on websites while altering libel laws to make it easier to sue for spreading 'rumors,'" wrote Ed Lasky at American Thinker.

[Versions of The Rag Blog's story about Cass Sunstein are also up on Daily Kos, OpEd News, and Information Clearing House, along with numerous other blogs and news aggregators.]

[Thorne Dreyer is editor of The Rag Blog.]

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Got Fascism? : Obama Advisor Promotes 'Cognitive Infiltration'

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Presidential advisor and long-time Obama buddy Cass Sunstein.
Your government appointees at work:
Cass Sunstein seeks 'cognitive' provocateurs

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / January 11, 2010

Cass Sunstein is President Obama's Harvard Law School friend, and recently appointed Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

In a recent scholarly article, he and coauthor Adrian Vermeule take up the question of "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures." (J. Political Philosophy, 7 [2009], pp. 202-227). This is a man with the president's ear. This is a man who would process information and regulate things. What does he here propose?

[W]e suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity. (Page 219.)

Read this paragraph again. Unpack it. Work your way through the language and the intent. Imagine the application. What do we learn?

• It is "extremists" who "supply" "conspiracy theories."
• Their "hard core" must be "broken up" with distinctive tactics. What tactics?
• "Infiltration" ("cognitive") of groups with questions about official explanations or obfuscations or lies. Who is to infiltrate?
• "Government agents or their allies," virtually (i.e. on-line) or in "real-space" (as at meetings), and "either openly or anonymously," though "infiltration" would imply the latter. What will these agents do?
• Undermine "crippled epistemology" -- one's theory and technique of knowledge. How will they do this?
• By "planting doubts" which will "circulate." Will these doubts be beneficial?
• Certainly. Because they will introduce "cognitive diversity."

Put into English, what Sunstein is proposing is government infiltration of groups opposing prevailing policy. Palestinian Liberation? 9/11 Truth? Anti-nuclear power? Stop the wars? End the Fed? Support Nader? Eat the Rich?

It's easy to destroy groups with "cognitive diversity." You just take up meeting time with arguments to the point where people don't come back. You make protest signs which alienate 90% of colleagues. You demand revolutionary violence from pacifist groups.

We expect such tactics from undercover cops, or FBI. There the agents are called "provocateurs" -- even if only "cognitive." One learns to smell or deal with them in a group, or recognize trolling online. But even suspicion or partial exposure can “sow uncertainty and distrust within conspiratorial groups [now conflated with conspiracy theory discussion groups] and among their members,” and “raise the costs of organization and communication” -- which Sunstein applauds as "desirable." "[N]ew recruits will be suspect and participants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides." (p.225).

And are we now expected to applaud such tactics frankly proposed in a scholarly journal by a high-level presidential advisor?

The full text of a slightly earlier version of Sunstein's article is available for download here.

Marc Estrin. The author gets in the last word.
[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

UPDATE: See Rag Blog Scoop about 'Cognitive Infiltration' Stirs up Internet Storm by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / January 16, 2009

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BOOKS / Speak English! by Mike Palecek

Sci-fi, conspiracy theories and politics merge:
Speak English! is a wild journey

By Joan Wile / The Rag Blog / October 10, 2009

[Speak English! by Mike Palecek. Trade paperback, 322 pp. Published by CWG Press; to be released November, 2009.]

Speak English, by Michael Palecek, speaks the truth, and in English.

Combination road story, sci-fi mystery, philosophical consideration, and political castigation of just about everything, Mr. Palecek's book is a must-read for all who seek justice, peace, accountability of elected officials, and penetration of the myths that cloud our political vista.

With unique and dazzling style, Mr. Palecek takes us with him on a cross-country book tour during which we encounter many of the gutsy anti-establishment heroes and heroines of our times.

This account is book-ended by an intriguing tale of country boys engaging with aliens and flying saucers.

The seeming disparity between the extra-terrestrial yarn and the contemplative trek across the United States is resolved, finally, in a surprising twist which leaves the reader awestruck yet satisfied.

The author is obsessed with his beliefs that the 9-11 tragedy was caused by George Bush and his cronies, and that President Kennedy's assassination did not occur as the official investigation findings claim.

He is also heartbroken about Paul Wellstone's death in an airplane crash and suspicious that it, too, was a politically-motivated killing.

One comes to believe, while reading the book, that these are not necessarily crackpot conspiracy theories but rather enigmas deserving of much deeper probing.

Speak English contains many varied elements -- poetry combined with funny yokel dialogue, for instance; inspiring quotes from eminent writers and statespeople; questions upon questions with startling answers.

Just as the book's protagonist encounters many adventures on his book tour, we, the readers, encounter twists and turns from paragraph to paragraph and page to page that make our perusal of his book one big adventure. It is difficult to adequately describe its immense sweep and broad diversity of style and subject.

This is a page-turner. Curl up in a comfortable chair with a healthy dose of cynicism and open-mindedness for an enlightening and entertaining trip through America's (no-)heartland and the author's unique, inquiring sensibility.

[Joan Wile is the author of Grandmothers Against the War; Getting off Our Fannies and Standing up for Peace (Citadel Press, '08).]

Go here to find Speak English! by Mike Palecek.

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Security Tapes Shoot Blanks : Oklahoma City Bombing Revisited

Screen grab from security video after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 shows people moving through nearby building. Photo from the FBI via The Oklahoman / AP.
Gaps in security tapes:
Revisiting the Oklahoma City Bombing

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / October 1, 2009

The Associated Press reported on September 28 that attorney Jesse Trentadue had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act security camera tapes of the vicinity around the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building at the time of the terrible bombing in 1995.

Trentadue failed to obtain some CIA documents he sought. The tapes came from the security system of neighboring buildings as the FBI never claimed it had tapes from the Murrah Building itself. Trentedue found that the tapes had blank points just before the time of the explosion, and he thought the blanks could mean the tapes were edited.

Trentadue pursued the case because he believes his brother Kenneth was murdered by guards in prison because some believed he was John Doe #2, Timothy Mc Veigh’s accomplice. However, Kenney was never officially a target in the bombing investigation. Jesse Trentadue thought the FBI linked his brother to the bombing because he had a tattoo on his left arm.

Prisoner Kenneth Trentadue was found dead in his federal prison cell in Oklahoma City in August, 1995. He had been pulled over on June 10, 1995, and was held for a parole violation. The body was covered with bruises and blood. The Bureau of Prisons and the FBI prevented Medical Examiner Fred Jordan from conducting a complete examination and pressured him to drop the matter. Trentadue’s death was ruled a suicide.

In 1997, Oklahoma Republican Senator Don Nichols said prison guards told him they were ordered not to talk about the death of Kenney Trentadue. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Orin Hatch said it looked like Kenny was murdered. The Bureau of Prisons awarded the family $1,100,000 because its handling of the matter inflicted pain on them.

On April 19, 1995, the Alfred E. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. The generally accepted account of the Oklahoma City bombing is that one man, with some assistance from an accomplice pulled it off. It was such a horrible event --costing 168 lives -- that none of us at the time could bear to think that there could have been something wrong with the official account.

Timothy McVeigh was quickly apprehended and labeled the main bomber. There was a brief search for the second man who was seen with McVeigh just before the explosion --John Doe #2. While still claiming to search for him, the head of the investigations ordered other agents to cease looking for him.

McVeigh’s Army buddy Terry Nichols, who was far away in Herington, Kansas at the time was arrested as an accomplice. Nichols admitted to helping to construct a bomb on April 18.

The prosecution’s supporting testimony came from Michael Fortier and his wife Lori after months of badgering and intimidation. The testimony was also compromised by the effects of drug use on their memories. Lori Fortier rehearsed her testimony with the FBI for four days before she went on the stand. She was granted immunity for her testimony, and Michael was to serve less than 11 years for not warning authorities about a crime he knew was about to be committed.
‘
Some of the witnesses described a man who did not look like McVeigh renting the Ryder truck. McVeigh’s fingerprints did not turn up on the truck or the counter of the body shop where he allegedly rented it. Some of the workers say that two men came in to rent the truck, and that one of looked a lot like Tod Bunting, who was with McVeigh at Fort Riley.

Bunting later said he rented a truck at the same place a day later, but this was never pursued. Some experts think Bunting looked a lot like the John Doe- 2 composite. Some who believe there were two trucks, aside from the one Bunting said he rented, note that a second truck was rented a week before McVeigh allegedly rented one.

Stephen Jones, attorney for Timothy McVeigh and a former Nixon aide, was certain that McVeigh exaggerated his own role in the bombing to protect others. The bomber repeatedly said he alone should suffer so that the “revolution” could go on. Sixteen times the prosecution told the court it was not withholding any evidence from the defense. Then three weeks before the execution, it turned over some additional material.

Jones was ultimately able to prove that the FBI withheld hundreds of pages of documents from the defense. Eventually the bureau admitted to withholding over 4,000 pages. The Associated Press reported that 75% of the files used in the McVeigh trial were at least partially sealed. Jones filed a Petition of Mandamus to get access to some of those files, but the Appeals Court denied him on grounds of national security.

Jones suspected that McVeigh got some assistance from white supremacists and thought it possible that Nichols could have had a tie to Islamic extremists in the Philippines. A number of witnesses saw McVeigh with men who looked like they came from the Middle East. Jayna Davis, a former KFOR-TV reporter has amassed much evidence along these lines. Davis and her partner turned up the fact that McVeigh associated with a number of men from the Middle East. It cannot be established if John Doe #2 existed or if he was from the Middle East.

Some experts thought it would take from four to eight men to pull off the Oklahoma City bombing. Immediately after the event, police circulated composites of two men seen together 15 minutes before the blast. The people who saw more than one suspect were never called before the grand jury.

Craig Roberts wrote that a federal law enforcement official told him that the bombing was about the records of Mountain Aviation, which had operated at the Mena, Arkansas, Airport, and allegedly moved drugs. He has a fireman witness to support the report that records were removed from the building the next day. He had another law enforcement source that claimed money for the operation was provided by a Mexican national with previous CIA ties, who might have been working then for the Columbian drug cartel. He, like this writer, found all of the pieces of the story difficult to fit together.

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City after 1995 bombing.
How much help?

McVeigh said he alone mixed all that fertilizer. And fuel oil. It is hard to believe one man could have done that. Charles Farley testified to seeing four men with McVeigh near Geary State Lake the day before the explosion. The accounts of the explosion raise a question about whether there was a second bomb in the building, and explosives experts, including Brigadier Benton Partin, are on record that the fertilizer bomb was not powerful enough to do the damage attributed to it.

It could not have been the only source of damage. It would have been impossible to destroy a large concrete pillar deep in the building. The general thought that demolition charges on some pillars would be necessary. The general is a self-described Christian who hates Communism. For four years, he was chairman of the Republican Party of Fairfax County, Virginia. The FBI interviewed him but ignored his carefully framed comments.

Dr. Roger Raubach, a physical chemist who worked at Stanford, agreed with Partin and said he didn’t care if there were a semi-trailer with 20 tons of ammonium nitrate, “it wouldn't do the damage we saw there." Testimony of people who were inside the building when the explosions occurred includes recollections that seem to support the general’s view.

Films of the explosion showed two smoke plumes, one outside the building and one inside. Allegedly two tons of ammonium nitrate was used in the McVeigh bomb, but the smell of ammonia was not present at the scene. The truck was 30 or 40 feet away from the building. Witnesses testified to a tremendous flash and feeling great amounts of static electricity, all characteristics of nuclear and sub nuclear blasts. The Feds demolished the building on May 23. Mc Veigh had military training and would have known that ANFO was not effective in destroying steel and concrete.

Terrance Yeakey, an Oklahoma Police Sergeant, was the first officer to get to the Murrah Building at the time of the explosion. He was certain he saw a flash within and that windows were blown out. He called his former wife to say, “it’s not what they are saying it was.” He also overheard ATF agents reveal something else that convinced him the official view of the explosion was very wrong.

Three days before he was to receive the department’s Medal of Valor in 1996 Yeakey’s body was found in a field, half a mile from his car. His arms and wrists were slit as well as both jugular veins. There was a downward gunshot wound in the head. When the car door was opened, blood ran out. The death was declared a suicide. No autopsy was done, and the car was not dusted for prints. There was no investigation. But the Medical Examiner did note that there were no “stellate” wounds, meaning a silencer prevented the head from being marked by escaping gas. The mortician found multiple rope burns. Yeakey’s notes on the bombing were never found.

The media reported that two unexplained bombs were removed from the building. There is also a FEMA memo on this subject. CNN reporter Suzanne Sealy told viewers that one bomb was found on the east side of the building and that the FBI sent people a few blocks away.

Yeakey’s former wife revealed that the sergeant shared a safe deposit box with Dr. Charles Chumley, with whom he worked during the rescue effort. After that they conferred several times about what had happened. Chumley and Yeakey had refused to turn in false reports as requested by federal officers. Chumley, a pilot, went down in a crash in August.

Far right white extremists

There is a dispute about the security tapes at the Murrah building. The FBI says the tapes show nothing, but a Secret Service memo claims the tapes could have shown accomplices. The “Major,” one of the men at the enclave, contacted McVeigh at Fort Bragg before he left the army. McVeigh was being recruited to gather intelligence on right-wing groups like the Klan and the Aryan Nation. McVeigh was deeply disappointed at the time that he had not been taken into Special Forces.

David Paul Hammer, a death row inmate, has a manuscript allegedly containing things McVeigh told him. The FBI tried to interview him before he was executed, but the interviews did not take place due to disagreements about who could be present. It claims that McVeigh and Nichols were helped by people connected to Elohim City, a Christian enclave in northeastern Oklahoma where Strassmeir was in charge of security. Mc Veigh and Nichols drove from Fayette, Arkansas to Elohim City, on October 12, 1993.

The enclave was run by a Reverend Robert Millar, 71, a Christian Identity minister. His church believes that white Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people and the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Three of the men there had ties to the military. Two of those men, Richard Guthrie and Pete Langan, and McVeigh, robbed banks to raise money for the community and to arm it. (The FBI probably thought Guthrie and Kenney Trentadue were the same person.)

Apparently the men McVeigh met at Elohim City went only by code names. One of them was “the major” who contacted him at Fort Bragg. McVeigh called Strassmeir “Andy the Kraut.” Elohim City constituted 1,000 acres and was home to racists, Neo-Nazis, right-wingers, and just plain criminals.

Danny Coulson, director of the FBI’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force checked into an Oklahoma City hotel on April 19, hours before the attack. Attorney General Janet Reno in 1994 established VAAPCON, an operation to learn if right-wing Christian groups and militias were capable of violence, and Coulson was part of that operation. However, the FBI said it had no prior knowledge the Murrah Building would be attacked. There is an Embassy Hotel receipt, but Coulson wrote four years later that he and his wife were house-hunting in Fort Worth that day.

Transcripts on a December 8, 1997, “in chambers” conference among Judge Richard P. Matsch, Nichols’ attorneys and Justice Department lawyers reveals that the judge never read the file on what ATF informant Carol Howe told her FBI handler, Angela Finley. She said that the Elohim City (City of God in Hebrew) community was plotting against the U.S. government. She described its inhabitants as racists.

Two days after the attack she talked to Finley about their plans to blow something up and mentioned Dennis Mahon, a member of White Aryan Resistance, as her source, and added that he talked about Andreas Strassmeir having made three trips to scout out the Murrah Building. She had also travelled with Reverend Millar. Howe was reinterviewed and confirmed Finley’s written report.

Howe was arrested for making a bomb threat when the prosecutors learned that Stephen Jones, Nichols’ attorney, was going to call her as a witness. She was acquitted; Judge Matsch issued a ruling that prevented the defense from using her file.

Agent Peter Rickel admitted in open court that Millar had been a paid informant since 1994. When he spilled the beans, a senior agent bolted the room for some reason. This means there were three informants within the compound, including Howe and Strassmeir.

Not long after the bombing, the FBI arrested the “Midwestern Bank Robbers,” men associated with the bank robberies -- in all 22 heists. They were part of the Aryan Republican Army. Its headquarters was a safe house in eastern Kansas, and Elohim City was one of many outposts.

Richard Wayne Snell, a neo-Nazi leader, was executed on the day the Murrah Building was attacked in 1995. He had been involved in an earlier plot to attack the building and told guards that Murrah would be attacked on the day of his execution. There were people at Elohim City who were sympathetic to Snell and knew about his prediction.

There are several leads that could point to the involvement of Islamic forces, particularly the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, with the bombing of the Murrah Building. Should this be revealed, it would be clear that people we helped in Afghanistan repaid our support with this terrible deed. That is reason enough to ignore these leads

Just as the far right militant organizations are filled with government informers, it is likely that there are also informers within the Islamic groups. Gene Wheaton, a former CIA agent, noted: “Every major Middle-Eastern terrorist organization is under surveillance and control of the intelligence agencies in the U.S. None of these guys move around as freely as they'd like you to think." Exploring the involvement of the white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and Islamicists would eventually turn up information that federal agents knew about the planned attack and somehow failed to prevent it.

It should be noted that federal moles are not informed of one another’s presence. So they do not compare notes. It is possible that Hussain al-Hussaini of Oklahoma City was a federal mole and even now sees the tragedy simply as a sting gone wrong and something to keep quiet about so that other informants and operations can be protected.

In the last analysis, these people probably had very little grasp of the big picture. People above them must digest their reports and make intelligent decisions. What they were thinking, we will never know. We do know that days before the explosion William Colby told a friend that the right wing militias must be discredited.

He wrote: "I watched as the Anti-War Movement rendered it impossible for this country to conduct or win the Vietnam War. I tell you, dear friend, that this Militia and Patriot movement in which, as an attorney, you have become one of the centerpieces, is far more significant and far more dangerous for America than the Anti-War movement ever was, if it is not intelligently dealt with. And I really mean this.” He must have realized that the bumbling and bloody assault at Waco strengthened the militias and their allies.

“Two days after the event, FBI director Louis Freeh told the Senate Judiciary Committee, "Most of the militia organizations around the country are not, in our view, threatening or dangerous." Go figure!

On July 16, 2005, the McCurtain Daily Gazette reported that the Elohim City Christian fundamentalists were involved in the bombing. Mike German, a 17 year FBI man who led the investigation, resigned when he learned that the Bush Justice Department would not follow this lead.

Sketch of John Doe #2.
Nichols and Al Qaeda

The travels of Nichols have received too little attention. Usually accompanied by his second wife, Nichols travelled to the Philippines about 16 times. FBI 302 reports and investigators hired by Jones learned that Nichols met with Abu Sayyaf people, Philippine Muslim extremists, in late1993 or early 1994. Nichols is known to have made telephone calls to Cebu city when his wife was not there. The Nichols lived in Cebu City for a time in 1993. Also present were Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, and Wali Khan Amin Shah.

In 1996, Edwin Angeles, military strategist for Abu Sayyaf, surrendered to the Philippine government and said that the Oklahoma City bombing was discussed at that meeting. He was subsequently killed. According to his widow, Elmina -- his third Muslim wife --Nichols was a deep penetration agent for the Philippine government. She said the meeting took place every day for a week in a warehouse in 1994 and that there were two Americans present, Terry the Farmer and another unnamed person. They discussed blowing up buildings. The dying woman said the money came from Yousef. She claimed to have heard Edwin discussing the role of Yousef as a representative of the Iraqis with a Philippine soldier.

In March 2008, Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher became interested in the tie between Terry Nichols and Ramsay Yousef and complained that the Bush administration has obstructed his efforts. Richard Clarke, former NSC counterterrorism director, has said the feds have not been able to disprove the Yousef-Nichols connection. Both Yousef and Nichols are now in federal prisons.

In late 1994, Nichols’ first wife discovered that he had $20,000 in stash and precious metals worth at least $60,000. Like McVeigh, Nichols came out of the army with a deep hatred of the U.S. government. McVeigh wanted to become an arms dealer but he told people his trips to the Philippines were to bring back little paper butterflies to sell in the U.S.

Cary Gagan, a government informant, attended a meeting at the Western Motel in Los Vegas on May, 1994 also attended by five people from the Middle East, two Columbians, and Terry Nichols. At the time he was moving drugs from Mexico to Denver for two Arabs, Omar and Ahmed, who were at the meeting.

The men took some cocaine and then moved to the Players Club, an apartment complex in Henderson, where they discussed drug dealing. They also discussed blowing up a federal building in Denver with a truck painted to look like a mail truck. On January 14, 1995, Gagan picked up the truck in Golden. It had about thirty duffel bags with ammonium nitrate. He took the truck to the location he was given and informed the FBI where it was and asked for instructions. The FBI did not recontact him, and he went home via bus.

At a March 17, 1995, meeting with his employers in Greenwood Colorado, he saw architectural drawings of the Alfred Murrah Building. There was a new figure at the meeting, whom Gagan suspected was an agent. He warned the FBI about what he learned and the bureau seemed disinterested. On March 27 and 28 he called the US Marshal’s office in Denver, but his calls were not returned. Then he sent a short letter to Tina Rowe, the head of that office. After the bombing, Rowe told KFOR-TV (Oklahoma City) that the letter had not been received.

The feds said Gagan had a history of mental illness, even though he had a letter of immunity on Justice Department letterhead. The effort to discredit him was led by Lawrence Myers, a journalist with likely ties to the government. He had previously succeeded in discrediting a federal grand juror who was viewed as a problem and played a major role in the conviction of a former CIA agent for allegedly looking for someone to shoot his son.

Jesse Trentadue thought McVeigh’s contact was Andreas Strassmeir, a former German intelligence officer who is thought to have worked for the CIA and German intelligence. In 1992, he was arrested for driving without a license, but all sorts of pressure was brought to bear to get the charges dropped. He appears to have infiltrated a number of right-wing militias.

Terry Nichols said McVeigh had been promised protection in a safe house. Strassmeir, from his home in Berlin, said he met McVeigh once and he denied any connections with intelligence operations. FBI teletypes verify that Timothy had connections with Strassmeir and Elohim City, where the German carried out military training for white supremacists.

McVeigh failed a psychological examination to get into Special Forces, but many thought he was the ideal soldier and was leadership material. After he left the Army, something seemed to have happened to him, he was cold and emotionally spent. Yet he was considered a good guard.

While visiting a friend in Michigan, he said something strange. McVeigh said the Army implanted a miniature subcutaneous transmitter on him to keep track of him. He said it hurt him when he sat down. It is known that the military had been experimenting with telemeterics from at least 1968. Dr. Carl Sanders, who has developed military biochips, claims they were used in the first Iraq War. Caspan Advanced Technology Center was working on artificial intelligence and was engaged in microscopic electronic engineering.

The sad fact is that the military has a history of using soldiers for experiments of this sort. After his arrest, McVeigh presented himself, according to an Oklahoma Assistant Attorney General, as “a polite young man who gave polite, cooperative answers to every question. It was like the dutiful soldier," Gibson said. "Emotions don't come into play, right and wrong don't come into play. What happens next doesn't come into play… his mood was so level, it was unnatural. I looked at him and realized I felt no repulsion or fear. It was like there was an absence of feeling. He exuded nothing.”

In a February 9, 2007, affidavit, Nichols said McVeigh was “apparently” being directed by Nichols and claimed in 2007 that McVeigh was being controlled by Larry Potts, a ranking FBI official. Nichols said Potts manipulated McVeigh to change the bomb target. Documents to support his claims have been sealed. Nichols said he wrote, offering to help John Ashcroft, but received no reply. Nichols also claims that the bomb used was very different and much more sophisticated than the device he and McVeigh built.

The claim that McVeigh was somehow connected to the government might have some merit. It is known that McVeigh claimed that he had done some special black missions for the Army, and there is much evidence that people like him are often recruited for intelligence work as soon as they leave the military. Before leaving Fort Bragg, McVeigh said a Major contacted him about doing intelligence work for the government by infiltrating right-wing militias.

There may be a parallel to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. It is now clear that the FBI was using an Egyptian double agent to teach followers of the Blind Shaik’s men how to make bombs. The agency actually provided the materials. When its agent warned that arrests should be made immediately, the FBI hesitated, wanting to gather more information. Perhaps Oklahoma City is another example of bad timing -- a sting gone terribly wrong."

[Sherman DeBrosse is the pseudonym for a retired history teacher. Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go here.]

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Conspiracy Nation : Barack Obama and the Right-Wing Demagogues

Illustration by Gino Barzizza / The Indypendent.
Conspiracy Nation:

Right-wing demagogues reach out to a supposedly beleagured white middle class, telling them they are being squeezed by parasitic traitors from above and below.

By Chip Berlet / September 18, 2009

Even before Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, the internet was seething with lurid conspiracy theories exposing his alleged subversion and treachery.

Among the many false claims: Obama was a secret Muslim; he was not a native U.S. citizen and his election as president should be overturned; he was a tool of the New World Order in a plot to merge the government of the United States into a North American union with Mexico and Canada.

Within hours of Obama’s inauguration, claims circulated that Obama was not really president because Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts scrambled the words as he administered the oath of office. A few days after the inauguration came a warning that Obama planned to impose martial law and collect all guns.

Many of these false claims recall those floated by right-wing conspiracy theorists in the armed citizens’ militia movement during the Clinton administration -- allegations that percolated up through the media and were utilized by Republican political operatives to hobble the legislative agenda of the Democratic Party.

The conspiracy theory attacks on Clinton bogged down the entire government. Legislation became stuck in congressional committees, appointments to federal posts dwindled and positions remained unfilled, almost paralyzing some agencies and seriously hampering the federal courts.

A similar scenario is already hobbling the work of the Obama administration. The histrionics at congressional town hall meetings and conservative rallies is not simply craziness -- it is part of an effective right-wing campaign based on scare tactics that have resonated throughout U.S. history among a white middle class fearful of alien ideas, people of color and immigrants.

Unable to block the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, the right-wing media demagogues, corporate political operatives, Christian right theocrats, and economic libertarians have targeted healthcare reform and succeeded in sidetracking the public option and single-payer proposals.

A talented environmental adviser to the Obama administration, Van Jones, was hounded into resigning Sept. 5 by a McCarthyite campaign of red-baiting and hyperbole. Support for major labor law reform has been eroding.

With a wink and a nod, right-wing apparatchiks are networking with the apocalyptic Christian right and resurgent armed militias -- a volatile mix of movements awash in conspiracy theories. Scratch the surface and you find people peddling bogus conspiracy theories about liberal secular humanists, collectivist labor bosses, Muslim terrorists, Jewish cabals, homosexual child molesters and murderous abortionists.

This right-wing campaign is about scapegoating bogus targets by using conspiracy theories to distract attention from insurance companies who are the real culprits behind escalating healthcare costs.

Examples of right-wing conspiracy theories include the false claim that healthcare reform will include government bureaucrat “Death Panels” pulling the plug on grandma. Another is the claim that Obama is appointing unconstitutional project “Czars” More fraudulent conspiracy theories are being generated every week.

The core narrative of many popular conspiracy theories is that “the people” are held down by a conspiracy of wealthy secret elites manipulating a vast legion of corrupt politicians, mendacious journalists, propagandizing schoolteachers, nefarious bankers and hidden subversive cadres.

This is not an expression of a healthy political skepticism about state power or legitimate calls for reform or radical challenges to government or corporate abuses. This is an irrational anxiety that pictures the world as governed by powerful long-standing covert conspiracies of evildoers who control politics, the economy, and all of history. Scholars call this worldview “conspiracism.”

The term conspiracism, according to historian Frank P. Mintz, denotes a “belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history.” Mintz explains:

“Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology.”

When conspiracism becomes a mass phenomenon, persons seeking to protect the nation from the alleged conspiracy create counter movements to halt the subversion. Historians dub them countersubversives.

The resulting right-wing populist conspiracy theories point upward toward “parasitic elites” seen as promoting collectivist and socialist schemes leading to tyranny. At the same time, the counter-subversives point downward toward the “undeserving poor” who are seen as lazy and sinful and being riled up by subversive community organizers. Sound familiar?

Right-wing demagogues reach out to this supposedly beleaguered white middle class of “producers” and encourage them to see themselves as being inexorably squeezed by parasitic traitors above and below. The rage is directed upwards against a caricature of the conspiratorial “faceless bureaucrats,” “banksters” and “plutocrats” rather than challenging an unfair economic system run on behalf of the wealthy and corporate interests. The attacks and oppression generated by this populist white rage, however, is painfully felt by people lower on the socio-economic ladder, and historically this has been people of color, immigrants and other marginalized groups.

It is this overarching counter-subversive conspiracy theory that has mobilized so many people; and the clueless Democrats have been caught unaware by the tactics of right-wing populism used successfully for the last 100 years and chronicled by dozens of authors.

The techniques for mobilizing countersubversive right-wing populists include “tools of fear”: dualism, demonization, scapegoating, and apocalyptic aggression.

When these are blended with conspiracy theories about elite and lazy parasites, the combination is toxic to democracy.

Dualism

Dualism is simply the tendency to see the world in a binary model in which the forces of absolute good are struggling against the forces of absolute evil. This can be cast in religious or secular story lines or “narratives.”

Scapegoating

Scapegoating involves wrongly stereotyping a person or group of people as sharing negative traits and blaming them for societal problems, while the primary source of the problem (if it is real) is overlooked or absolved of blame. Scapegoating can become a mass phenomenon when a social or political movement does the stereotyping. It is easier to scapegoat a group if it is first demonized.

Teabaggers depicted progressive Austin Cong. Lloyd Doggett with devil's horns.
Demonization

Demonization is a process through which people target individuals or groups as the embodiment of evil, turning individuals in scapegoated groups into an undifferentiated, faceless force threatening the idealized community. The sequence moves from denigration to dehumanization to demonization, and each step generates an increasing level of hatred of the objectified and scapegoated “Other.”

One way to demonize a target group is to claim that the scapegoated group is plotting against the public good. This often involves demagogic appeals.

Conspiracism

Conspiracism frames demonized enemies “as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm.” Conspiracist thinking can move easily from the margins to the mainstream, as has happened repeatedly in the United States. Several scholars have argued that historic and contemporary conspiracism, especially the apocalyptic form, is a more widely shared worldview in the United States than in most other industrialized countries.

Conspiracism gains a mass following in times of social, cultural, economic, or political stress. The issues of immigration, demands for racial or gender equality, gay rights, power struggles between nations, wars -- all can be viewed through a conspiracist lens.

Historian Richard Hofstadter established the leading analytical framework in the 1960s for studying conspiracism in public settings in his essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” He identified “the central preconception” of the paranoid style as a belief in the “existence of a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of the most fiendish character.”

According to Hofstadter, this was common in certain figures in the political right, and was accompanied with a “sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic” which “goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation.”

According to Michael Barkun, professor of political science at Syracuse University, conspiracism attracts people because conspiracy theorists “claim to explain what others can’t. They appear to make sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing.” There is an appealing simplicity in dividing the world sharply into good and bad and tracing “all evil back to a single source, the conspirators and their agents.”

Cover Obama's back, but kick his butt

Today, when you hear the right-wing demagogues whipping up the anti-Obama frenzy, you now know they are speaking a coded language that traces back to Social Darwinist defenses of “Free Market” capitalism and to xenophobic white supremacy. The voices of Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, Dobbs and their allies are singing a new melody using old right-wing populist lyrics. The damage they can do is great even if most of these movements eventually collapse.

The centrist Democratic spinmeisters surrounding Obama have no idea how to organize a grassroots defense of healthcare reform. That’s pathetic.

These are the three R’s of civil society: Rebut, Rebuke, Re-Affirm: Rebut false and misleading statements and beliefs without name-calling; rebuke those national figures spreading misinformation; and re-affirm strong and clear arguments to defend goals and proposed programs.

That’s exactly what President Obama did on in his nationally televised address Sept. 9.

While keeping our eyes on the prize of universal, quality healthcare, we must also prevent right-wing populism as a social movement from spinning out of control. Since Obama’s inauguration, there have been nine murders tied to white supremacist ideology laced with conspiracy theories. It is already happening here.

Since centrist Democrats are selling us out, it is time for labor and community organizers to turn up the heat. We should defend Obama against the vicious and racist attacks from the reactionary political right, but we can have Obama’s back while we are kicking his butt.

Vigorous social movements pull political movements and politicians in their direction — not the other way around. We need to raise some hell in the streets and in the suites.

Right Wing Populism

Populist movements frequently adopt conspiracy theories of power, regardless of their ideological position on the political spectrum.

In her book Populism, Margaret Canovan defined four types of political populism. Populist democracy is championed by progressives from the LaFollettes of Wisconsin to Jesse Jackson.

However, the other three types -- politicians’ populism, reactionary populism and populist dictatorship -- are antidemocratic forms of right-wing populism. These were characterized in various combinations in the 1990s by Ross Perot, Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and David Duke -- four straight white Christian men trying to ride the same horse.

Two versions of right-wing populism are current in both the United States and Europe: one centered around “get the government off my back” economic libertarianism, coupled with a rejection of mainstream political parties, which is more attractive to the upper-middle class and small entrepreneurs. The other is based on xenophobia and ethnocentric nationalism, which is more attractive to the lower middle class and wage workers. These two groupings unite behind candidates that attack the current regime since both constituencies identify an intrusive government as the cause of their grievances.

[Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates, is the author of the recent study Toxic to Democracy, and is co-author with Matthew N. Lyons of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort.]

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas leads FreedomWorks. Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg / UPI.

The movement behind the mob

By Elizabeth Henderson / September 18, 2009

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey chairs FreedomWorks, while Matt Kibbe, who worked for the late Lee Atwater (of Willie Horton ads notoriety), is president and CEO. When accused of encouraging “astroturf” activists to disrupt healthcare town halls, Kibbe responded, “Vocal participating was celebrated when the left would do it. When conservatives do it we’re denounced as thuggish.”

Head of the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights, Palmisano has wielded his title as former president of the American Medical Association, the main doctors’ lobby, to oppose a public option.

Phillips started on the astroturf scene in 1997 when he joined former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed at Century Strategies, a PR and consulting firm. Phillips was named president of Americans for Prosperity in 2006, which describes itself as “one of the premier grassroots citizen lobbyist organizations in the country.”

Scott, the former CEO of Columbia/HCA Healthcare, has shelled out $5 million of his own money to support Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, which he chairs. Also a significant donor to the GOP, Scott was head of Columbia/ HCA when it engaged in criminal practices, including bilking Medicare, leading it to be slapped with a record $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) was involved in the Tea Party protests in April and July and started Patients First, an anti-healthcare reform group. Other recent AFP campaigns include the Cost of Hot Air Tour -- complete with a 70-foot-tall hot-air balloon -- warning of the negative economic impact of “global warming alarmism,” and NoStimulus. com, an online petition signed by more than 450,000 “concerned citizens” protesting Obama’s stimulus bill. From 2003 to 2006, AFP received $1,181,000 from conservative foundations, including $1 million from the Koch Family Foundation.

Described by The New York Times as “lobbying... vocally against the proposed public option,” the Coalition to Protect Patient’s Rights (CPPR) states, “the government should not be involved in the private, personal discussion between a doctor and patient.” While it is unclear who pays CPPR’s bills, the Republican lobbying firm DCI Group coordinates its PR.

Founded in March 2009 to oppose Obama’s healthcare plan, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR) has launched a $20 million media campaign calling for reform that values competition between healthcare carriers, lets patients control their own coverage and rewards those who make healthy lifestyle choices. To get its message out, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights turned to CRC Public Relations (formerly Creative Response Concepts), of Swift Boat fame. When CPR is not making ads about the horrors of “rationed” care in Canada and Britain, it is sending out “town hall alert” emails and schedules of meetings. In one mobilization on July 24, CPR sent a list of more than 100 congressional town halls to the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee listserve, about a week before the anti-healthcare demonstrations exploded.

According to Think Progress, DCI Group “has specialized in manufacturing ‘grassroots’ support — using telemarketers, PR events, and letter writing campaigns -- to achieve policy results for narrow corporate interests.” DCI clients include the Health Benefits Coalition, a trade association of HMOs that wanted to “thwart congressional action on the patients’ bill of rights,” according to The American Prospect. DCI has also worked for Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, creating fake smokers’ rights groups to fight smoking bans. DCI has also worked for Burma’s military junta, Exxon-Mobil, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and anti-global warming campaigns.

FreedomWorks helped orchestrate this year’s tax day “Tea Parties” by doing everything from contacting conservative activists to training them on media messaging. In 2008, FreedomWorks created Angryrenter.com, which claimed to represent “renters and responsible homeowners” opposed to the “Obama Housing Bailout.” A successor to Dick Armey’s Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks was set up to be a GOP version of MoveOn.org. Billionaire Steve Forbes is on the board of directors and funders include the Koch family, ExxonMobil, and the Scaife, Bradley and Olin foundations.

Source / The Indypendent

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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