Tomorrow, Australians will witness the start of a long-overdue Parliamentary debate on the continuing military occupation of Afghanistan.
It is likely to be a rather silly debate between people with a poor grasp of the relevant facts, discussed publicly by a discredited national ‘Commentariat’ (mainstream media).
The latter’s role is especially despicable. Over the last nine years, it has parrotted the bogus Origin Myth of the 21st Century ‘Terror Wars’ – while trying to conceal the truth about 9-11 from an increasingly sceptical and disenchanted public.
World Trade Center Building 7 on fire: soon afterwards it collapsed at free-fall velocity. The US Government says fire caused the collapse!
As a result, the more honest Australian politicians who may (at last!) be seeing through the dense haze of lies about the ‘War on Terror’ have a ‘let out’.
If they continue to overlook key facts that demolish the entire case for invasion, war and occupation, the media will treat them kindly.
And the war drags on…
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Ever since doubts first surfaced over the truthfulness of the offical US Government narrative about 9-11, Australia’s mass media has been in virtual lockdown.
Almost without exception, mass media outlets in this country have failed to report huge and obvious flaws in the evolving government story about 9-11 and gross, self-evident deficiencies in subsequent official investigations.
Right up to the present day, even leftist ‘antiwar progressives’ such as Ben Eltam (formerly with New Matilda and now a regular correspondent with ABC’s The Drum) continue to write articles with ironic titles such as Obscuring the truth about the war about Afghanistan – articles that obscure the truth about Afghanistan!
Eltam’s recent article includes this unproven absurdity, slipped in as an article of faith (emphasis added):
When the US first dispatched troops to Afghanistan in November 2001, the world was still coming to terms with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These attacks were in fact planned largely in Germany, by Mohammed Atta and his co-conspirators in Hamburg, but there is no doubt that they were funded and green-lighted by the Al Qaeda leadership in the caves of Tora Bora.
Ben Eltham: why do intelligent, progressive journalists write nonsense about 9-11?
Actually, Ben, there’s not only doubt over what you suggest. It’s completely obvious to anyone with half a brain that the 9-11 attacks were NOT “funded and green-lighted by the Al Qaeda leadership in the caves of Tora Bora”. The only reason anyone believes such nonsense any more is because people like you keep repeating myths for which there is zero evidence. Why do you do this?
The herd mentality is probably part of the explantion. There are only really two other possibilities: rank intellectual cowardice or deliberate, conscious participation in the promulgation of disinformation.
By now I’ve concluded that almost without exception, Australia’s paid ‘Commentariat’ is either conformist to the point of voluntary stupidity, too cowardly to tell the truth about huge crimes central to current world events – or actively complicit in falsifying the story about 9-11. None of those possibilities reflect well on them, to say the least.
Phillip Adams: veteran ABC 'journalist' who serves up disinformation with lashings of pomposity
From 2002 onwards I corresponded, sporadically, with Australian journalists and politicians about the anomalies of 9-11. Not once did I receive a satisfactory answer. Journalists, such as the ABC’s Late Night Live presenter Phillip Adams, typically replied to my emails – but only to parry like a boxer. I got the impression Mr Adams – or whoever answers his emails – did read and understand my points. But he made no attempt at intellectual engagement. I’d point out a glaring anomaly. He’d ignore it and skip to a distracting quibble instead. I made suggestions for interviewees – people with high levels of technical expertise and credibility by dint of their academic position and/or qualifications, who could speak critically and with authority about 9-11. These suggestions were ignored. In general, letters to politicians on this subject – including Greens Party politicians – were completely ignored. I now know I wasn’t the only Australian to experience this phenomenob. Many of us have been ignored in similar fashion.
This puerile ostrich-like behaviour has continued right through to the present day.
Back in December 2007, I posted an article – A tale of three broadcasters – on CairnsBlog, an independent local blog with more guts than most. I had some fun with the article, because I was able to show that the ABC had never even mentioned World Trade Center 7 in its searchable post-911 reportage. In other words, a 47-story building had collapsed in New York City within a few seconds on that magic day September 11th 2001 – but Australia’s national broadcaster hadn’t noticed! (How many other skyscrapers go missing like that, one wonders?)
Perhaps the article helped to sting the ABC into a limited, defensive action. In May 2008, The Drum published Unanswered 9/11 questions, an article by Hereward Fenton, a leading member of Australia’s growing 9-11 truth movement. It did mention WTC-7 in the body of the text (not just in comments posted by members of the public). A real breakthrough!
Hereward Fenton: an honest Australian (not a paid journalist)
Hereward’s article attracted 545 comments within less than 48 hours, indicating enormous public interest. Then comments were closed and the ABC hasn’t returned to the topic since. The only subsequent mentions I can find on this subject by the ABC via radio, TV or on the web have been attempts to ridicule so-called ‘Truthers’. Usually these are brief, vulgar sneers.
This is clearly so far from the way a public broadcaster is supposed to operate that the mind reels. It’s not journalism at all. It’s cynical mass-manipulation.
Australia’s privately-owned mainstream media, dominated by News Corp, has been worse (if that’s possible) than the ABC.
That leaves the smaller, emerging private media. Unfortunately, on this topic, web-based journals such as New Matilda have been no better. Crikey.com has shared the same blindspot.
Increasingly, over time, individual members of the public have been able to get comments posted that are critical of the official version of 9-11, in response to articles that are not about that topic. This applies to the ABC’s web presence and to the mainstream media (even News Corp) and smaller independents such as Crikey.
The situation re: 9-11 is thus comparable to the situation pertaining to the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. The public discuss it – but not paid journalists (not in public, at any rate).
Do a web search for references to ‘World Trade Center 7′ within the websites of major Australian news outlets (WTC-7 is a useful surrogate for critical views about 9-11, because the ‘mainstream’ in Australia ignores it). You’ll find references in the ABC website, Crikey, New Matilda – even Murdoch newspapers. But in each case, with the exception of Unanswered 9/11 questions, the links point to comments from the public – never to editorial content.
It’s as though Australian journalists follow an unofficial Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not cast doubt on the official narrative about 9-11.
With Australia’s long-awaited Parliamentary debate on Afghanistan due to begin tomorrow, I tried to get some comments into Crikey last week that raised the questions informed and honest people know need answering. These could easily be condensed into questions to pose in Parliament without further delay.
This discussion erupted following an article entitled Abbott’s real Afghan problem: his minister – a rather humdrum piece by Bernard Keane about the Afghanistan War and Australia’s Opposition leader Tony Abbott. My comments attempted to inject sanity into the debate on crucial issues: Why did this war actually begin back in late 2001? Were the reasons given at the time at all truthful?
Since the occupation of Afghanistan has enjoyed ‘bipartisian’ support in Australia ever since on the basis of bi-partisan acceptance of these stated reasons – examining them carefully is no mere distraction. It’s central – or should be central – to the forthcoming debate in Parliament.
Bernard Keane: Crikey.com expert on Afgan caves, exploding skyscrapers, ignoring nanothermite traces and tinfoil hats
The ‘debate’ in Crikey was an interesting, if unsatisfying experience. Links to the article became obscure very soon, so only the few who were already aware of debate (and others they may have contacted) were able to find the article and post new comments. In effect, this meant my solitary scepticism about the events of 9-11 was lined up against a solid wall of ‘true believers’ in the official story.
It occured to me that Bernard Keane, Crikey’s most prolific political writer and the article’s author, might have remained unaware of these anomalies about 9-11.
Keane rarely participates in discussion about his articles. For all I know he may not read the comments. So I tweeted him direct late last week, citing a rather tame reference to an article by Robert Fisk about 9-11. Mr Fisk, after all, is a very well-known international correspondent, even in parochial backwaters such as the Canberra press gallery. I wanted to encourage Mr Keane in the belief that some journalists can push the envelope on the 9-11 issue and remain employed. Robert Fisk: Even I question the ‘truth’ about 9/11 was published in The Independent three years ago and Fisk is still in a job (although he does seem to appear a lot less often on the ABC these days…)
Tweet to Bernard Keane
Bernard Keane's 'wisdom' via Twitter
Keane’s response was prompt and abusive. Rather pettily, he ‘unfollowed’ me immediately on Twitter. (I’d scarely pestered the man to that point; it was my first corresponence with him on the subject.) Clearly, Bernard Keane is hyper-sensitive on the subject of 9-11.
I wonder why?
It must be hard for ‘journalists’ like Keane – and I trust, hope and expect their life will become increasingly harder. They are behaving like medieval bully-boys who mocked heliocentric cosmology. They appear to wallow in their own simulated ignorance. But illogical bias is not tenable in the long term for anyone who wishes to retain a modicum of intellectual integrity.
For reasons they can best explain themselves, these ‘journalists’ are unable to deal with the subject of 9-11 in a rational way. They must pretend there’s nothing to see… when it’s quite obvious to more and more of the public that there IS an astonishing amount to notice, scrutinise and critique in the official 9-11 narrative.
It’s obvious too that 9-11 and the ongoing disaster in Afghainstan are closely connected. The 9-11 ‘attacks on America’ were the initial pretext for war. The same casus belli is still used – by politicians from Barak Obama to Julia Gillard – as the ‘reason’ western nations invaded Afghanistan. It’s the rationale for continuing occupation.
When people understand that 9-11 was not perpetrated by ‘radical Muslims’ – the entire flimsy excuse for the Afghan war falls apart. By concealing this from the public they should serve, Australian ‘journalists’ bring disgrace on themselves and their profession. To use another analogy from the Middle Ages, they are like the worst medieval ‘doctors’, whose quackery was often counter-productive but who managed to secure lucrative contracts from the wealthy by scyophancy and fraud.
A young Afghani war casualty: unlike western 'journalists', there's a physical explanation for his blindness
I believe 9-11 was essentially a Zionist false flag operation, deliberately designed and primarily intended to rationalise new imperial wars and occupations, drastic curtailment of civil liberties in the west itself and the demonization of Muslims (viewed by the Israeli State as a key enemy).
I don’t expect journalists to agree with me about this.
I do expect them to report facts - including facts that point to the likelihood such a hypothesis is correct.
To its shame, Australia’s discredited Commentariat has conspicuously failed to do this.
And the war drags on…
