Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The Myth of the Suicide Bomber, Part I

I arrived at work one morning in 1979 and was hit with the news that one of our colleagues had been shot and killed. Without any information beyond the words, “she was shot”, I visualized a drive-by shooting on the freeway. Never mind that such a scenario was less likely than her having been struck by lightning, my mind had drawn upon recent news stories to fill in the blanks.

We have been conditioned to use media-generated visions to flesh out stories that are bereft of genuine information. On September 11, 2001, the American people drew on a colossal reservoir of media fantasy that had been collecting in their minds for years. Before any information was available and before an investigation had taken place the public was invited to fill in the blanks, prompted by three words: terrorist, hijacking, and suicide.

Three days later, when the alleged hijackers’ names and photographs were released by the FBI, the photos seemed to confirm what most people already understood – that Muslim hijackers had committed a stupendous act of terrorism against the people of the United States. Never mind that forty-eight hours is not enough time to thoroughly investigate even a single murder. Never mind that the source of the names and photos was not revealed. Never mind that seven of those named and pictured were still alive. The public had been primed to believe that suicide terrorism equals Islamic perpetrators.

What is the source of such a widespread belief? Many would assume that the belief is based on carefully gathered and documented evidence of individual suicide bombings, but that is not the case. In the Middle East the word suicide is routinely attached to the word bombing before any investigation is possible and without any evidence. This fact, by itself, points to a false flag perpetrator.

A false flag operation is an act of terrorism made to appear as if it were the act of the enemy. It is not a military tactic, but a propaganda tactic. Since the end of WW II, the European Jews who created Israel repeatedly have used the false flag operation in their propaganda war against the people of the Middle East. The formation of the State of Israel in a land belonging to others required an audacious removal of settled people and theft of their property. The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis has always been lop-sided with the Israelis in the role of the heavy. After three successful wars against the inhabitants of Palestine in 1948, 1967, and 1973 what the Israelis had on their hands were millions of dispossessed, unarmed people in the periphery of what had been Palestine and in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. This did not satisfy the Israelis who wanted the whole lot to move into neighboring countries leaving the land to the Jews.

The injustice and inequality of this situation was too obvious for the Israelis to pursue their goals without being severely condemned. Feeble Palestinian resistance was not enough. It was necessary to make the hapless Palestinians look menacing, dangerous, fanatical, and bent upon the destruction of Israel to justify the Zionists’ continued expansion and relentless punishment of these defeated people.

The Israelis faced an image problem, not a military problem, but Jews have had a great deal of experience in depicting themselves as the victims of “unprovoked”, unwarranted, murderous hatred. The false flag operation is perfectly suited to the Israelis’ predicament in the Middle East.

The conflict between Palestinians and Jewish-European interlopers began with the signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. For sixty of those ninety years the State of Israel has represented worldwide Jewish interests, while the Palestinians have been denied their ancestral lands and every advantage of statehood. The Israelis boast nuclear weapons and Palestinian youths throw rocks.

The Palestinians have never been organized to resist Israeli aggression and occupation. They had been chased from their homes in 1948 and for the next twenty years, they lived in makeshift refugee camps. But remarkably in September 1970 these beleaguered Palestinians suddenly emerged as highly organized airplane hijackers who orchestrated the simultaneous hijacking of four passenger jets and a fifth two days later. Not only were these Palestinians highly organized, they were part of a putative, world-wide, terror network that included the Red Army Faction of Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and the Revolutionary Red Army of Japan. Not only were these Palestinians part of a world-wide Marxist-Leninist-Maoist terror network it was claimed that they trained and supplied arms to members of the Red Army Faction!

The above scene is familiar, not because we remember what was going on between Israelis and Palestinians in 1970, but because, with only minor adjustments, it describes the major elements of dozens of false flag operations since 1948, including 9/11. But where was Islamic terrorism in 1970? Where were the Muslim suicide bombers in 1970? And how did the worldwide Marxist-Leninist-Maoist terror network come to be replaced by a worldwide Islamic terror network?

The easy substitution of one worldwide terror network with a completely different network, with new leaders, adherents, objectives, history, and ideology reveals the sleight-of-hand of the inventors who create the settings for false flag operations.

Monday, March 1, 2010

What Is Western Culture?

The Art Renewal Center website and much of what is written on their forum implicitly asks the question, “What happened to art at the beginning of the twentieth century? To answer that question one must take a wide view because what happened to art is not isolated from the ongoing process of cultural decline we see today in Europe and its far flung outposts.

It is often argued that we are simply witnessing a kind of progress in the form of global free trade and accelerated buying and selling, but if accelerated and expanded trade is a positive influence why does it coincide with the decline of Western culture?

What is Western culture? We know what races of people created the didgeridoo, the geisha and the tipi, but “Western” culture often draws a total blank from Americans and many Europeans. They are likely to mistake the ubiquitous commercial “culture” for Western culture. If they are given the names of Bruckner, Yeats, or Bouguereau nothing registers; and if they are given the names of Mozart, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare they will recognize those, but only in terms of “cultured” elites, not the culture of the people. In other words, the entire product of Western Civilization, particularly the high culture of Europe, is not recognized by its people as belonging to them.

In what sense does culture belong to a people? We understand that Chinese culture is the product of the Chinese and the culture of the Bushman is the product of Bushmen so in that sense it belongs to those who have created it; but when there is a discussion of the culture of the Europeans, naysayers tell us that white people who would think that the culture of the West in any way belongs to them are merely attempting to “take credit” for the genius of others.

Such a reading presents an odd disparity. It suggests that, unlike Japanese or African cultures, the European culture is the product of individual genius, not the product of a people, and that this individual genius appears randomly in fits and starts and taken as a whole represents the sum of Western Civilization.

Civilization requires a critical mass of ordinary people of like mind from which culture and genius are born. There is a reason why, among trillions of people born on earth, a Bach is born in Germany and not in Tierra del Fuego. Hundreds of thousands of years of separation have resulted in the distinctive physical and mental qualities that concentrate in a people. The resulting culture is meant to nurture all who are born into it.