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Guest article

 By Dr. Paul Craig
Roberts<http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/paul-craig-roberts>
 Global Research <http://www.globalresearch.ca/>, May 25, 2013
*PaulCraigRoberts.org<http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/05/23/why-disinformation-works-paul-craig-roberts/>
*

 *Have you ever wondered how the government’s misinformation gains
traction?   *
 *What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as
9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or
left goes along with the government’s explanation, because they can hook
their agenda to the government’s account.  *
 The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist
mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies
them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against
imperialism.
 The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves
America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in
by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the
government, which can’t do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings.
 Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official
story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing
predispositions and agendas.
 In such a country, truth has no relevance.  Only agendas are important.
 A person can see this everywhere.  I could write volumes illustrating how
agenda-driven writers across the spectrum will support the most improbable
government stories despite the absence of any evidence simply because the
government’s line can be used to support their agendas.
 For example, a conservative writer in the June issue of *Chronicles* uses
the government’s story about the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, Dzhokhar
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to argue against immigration, amnesty for illegals,
and political asylum for Muslims.  He writes:  “Even the most high-tech
security systems imaginable will inevitably fail as they are overwhelmed by
a flood of often hostile and dangerous immigrants.”
 The writer accepts all of the improbable government statements as proof
that the brothers were guilty.  The wounded brother who was unable to
respond to the boat owner who discovered him and had to be put on life
support somehow managed to write a confession on the inside of the boat.
 As soon as the authorities have the brother locked up in a hospital on
life support, “unnamed officials” and “authorities who remain anonymous”
are planting the story in the media that the suspect is signing written
confessions of his guilt while on life support.  No one has seen any of
these written confessions.  But we know that they exist, because the
government and media say so.
 The conservative writer knows that Dzhokhar is guilty because he is Muslim
and a Chechen.  Therefore, it does not occur to the writer to wonder about
the agenda of the unnamed sources who are busy at work creating belief in
the brothers’ guilt.  This insures that no juror would dare vote for
acquittal and have to explain it to family and friends.  Innocent until
proven guilty in a court has been thrown out the window.  This should
disturb the conservative writer, but doesn’t.
 The conservative writer sees Chechen ethnicity as an indication of guilt
even though the brothers grew up in the US as normal Americans, because
Chechens are “engaged in anti-Russian jihad.” But Chechens have no reason
for hostility against the US.  As evidence indicates, Washington supports
the Chechens in their conflict with Russia.  By supporting Chechen
terrorism, Washington violates all of the laws that it ruthlessly applies
to compassionate Americans who give donations to Palestinian charities that
Washington alleges are run by Hamas, a Washington-declared terrorist
organization.
 It doesn’t occur to the conservative writer that something is amiss when
martial law is established over one of America’s main cities and its
metropolitan area, 10,000 heavily armed troops are put on the streets with
tanks, and citizens are ordered out of their homes with their hands over
their heads, all of this just to search for one wounded 19-year old
suspect.  Instead the writer blames the “surveillance state” on “the
inevitable consequences of suicidal liberalism” which has embraced “the
oldest sin in the world:  rebellion against authority.” The writer is so
pleased to use the government’s story line as a way of indulging the
conservative’s romance with authority and striking a blow at liberalism
that he does not notice that he has lined up against the Founding Fathers
who signed the Declaration of Independence and rebelled against authority.
 I could just as easily have used a left-wing writer to illustrate the
point that improbable explanations are acceptable if they fit with
predispositions and can be employed in behalf of an agenda.
 Think about it.  Do you not think that it is extraordinary that the only
investigations we have of such events as 9/11 and the Boston Marathon
bombing are private investigations, such as this investigation of the
backpacks:
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/05/20/official-story-has-odd-wrinkles-a-pack-of-questions-about-the-boston-bombing-backpacks/
 [1]
 There was no investigation of 9/11.  Indeed, the White House resisted any
inquiry at all for one year despite the insistent demands from the 9/11
families.  NIST did not investigate anything.  NIST simply constructed a
computer model that was consistent with the government’s story.  The 9/11
Commission simply sat and listened to the government’s explanation and
wrote it down.  These are not investigations.
 The only investigations have come from a physicist who proved that WTC 7
came down at free fall and was thus the result of controlled demolition,
from a team of scientists who examined dust from the WTC towers and found
nano-thermite, from high-rise architects and structural engineers with
decades of experience, and from first responders and firefighters who were
in the towers and experienced explosions throughout the towers, even in the
sub-basements.
 We have reached the point where evidence is no longer required.  The
government’s statements suffice.  Only conspiracy kooks produce real
evidence.
 In America, government statements have a unique authority.  This authority
comes from the white hat that the US wore in World War II and in the
subsequent Cold War.  It was easy to demonize Nazi Germany, Soviet
Communism and Maoist China.  Even today when Russian publications interview
me about the perilous state of civil liberty in the US and Washington’s
endless illegal military attacks abroad, I sometimes receive reports that
some Russians believe that it was an impostor who was interviewed, not the
real Paul Craig Roberts.
 There are Russians who believe that it was President Reagan who brought
freedom to Russia, and as I served in the Reagan administration these
Russians associate me with their vision of America as a light unto the
world.  Some Russians actually believe that Washington’s wars are truly
wars of liberation.
 The same illusions reign among Chinese dissidents.  Chen Guangcheng is the
Chinese dissident who sought refuge in the US Embassy in China.  Recently
he was interviewed by the BBC World Service.  Chen Guangcheng believes that
the US protects human rights while China suppresses human rights.  He
complained to the BBC that in China police can arrest citizens and detain
them for as long as six months without accounting for their detainment.  He
thought that the US and UK should publicly protest this violation of due
process, a human right.  Apparently, Chen Guangcheng is unaware that US
citizens are subject to *indefinite* detention without due process and even
to assassination without due process.
 The Chinese government allowed Chen Guangcheng safe passage to leave China
and live in the US.  Chen Guangcheng is so dazzled by his illusions of
America as a human rights beacon that it has never occurred to him that the
oppressive, human rights-violating Chinese government gave him safe
passage, but that Julian Assange, after being given political asylum by
Ecuador is still confined to the Ecuadoran embassy in London, because
Washington will not allow its UK puppet state to permit his safe passage to
Ecuador.
 Perhaps Chen Guangcheng and the Chinese and Russian dissidents who are so
enamored of the US could gain some needed perspective if they were to read
US soldier Terry Holdbrooks’ book about the treatment given to the
Guantanamo prisoners.  Holdbrooks was there on the scene, part of the
process, and this is what he told RT:  “The torture and information
extraction methods that we used certainly created a great deal of doubt and
questions in my mind to whether or not this was my America.  But when I
thought about what we were doing there and how we go about doing it, it did
not seem like the America I signed up to defend.  It did not seem like the
America I grew up in.  And that in itself was a very disillusioning
experience.”  http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-guard-islam-torture-608/ [2]
 In a May 17 Wall Street Journal.com <http://journal.com/> article, Peggy
Noonan wrote that President Obama has lost his patina of high-mindedness.
 What did Obama do that brought this loss upon himself?  Is it because he
sits in the Oval Office approving lists of US citizens to be assassinated
without due process of law?  Is it because he detains US citizens
indefinitely in violation of habeas corpus?  Is it because he has kept open
the torture prison at Guantanamo?  Is it because he continued the war that
the neoconservatives started, despite his promise to end it, and started
new wars?
 Is it because he attacks with drones people in their homes, medical
centers, and work places in countries with which the US is not at war?  Is
it because his corrupt administration spies on American citizens without
warrants and without cause?
 No.  It is none of these reasons.  In Noonan’s view these are not offenses
for which presidents, even Democratic ones, lose their high-minded patina.
 Obama can no longer be trusted, because the IRS hassled some conservative
political activists.
 Noonan is a Republican, and what Obama did wrong was to use the IRS
against some Republicans.  Apparently, it has not occurred to Noonan that
if Obama–or any president–can use the IRS against opponents, he can use
Homeland Security and the police state against them.  He can use indefinite
detention against them.  He can use drones against them.
 All of these are much more drastic measures.  Why isn’t Peggy Noonan
concerned?
 Because she thinks these measures will only be used against terrorists,
just as the IRS is only supposed to be used against tax evaders.
 When a public and the commentators who inform it accept the collapse of
the Constitution’s authority and the demise of their civil liberties, to
complain about the IRS is pointless.

 *This article originally appeared **HERE* <http://bit.ly/15gzXWF>.


 *Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical
leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of
social and economic vicissitudes* *HERE <http://bit.ly/IntroducingPROUT>*
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--
Posted By Blogger to Progressive
Reform<http://progressivevanguard.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-disinformation-works-in-america.html>at
5/28/2013 03:08:00 PM


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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