Chomsky ponders Trump 'False Flag' Op

As you may know, I'm a big advocate of the work of Noam Chomsky. His writing and talks changed my political outlook. I discovered Chomsky when I was 17 and it quickly set me on the course to where I am today. Though I am no longer a left-wing libertarian, I am still a socialist and I think there are important lessons to be drawn from the anarchist tradition. Chomsky is a key figure in contemporary anarchism.

One of the main attractions of Chomsky's work is the level of moral clarity and intellectual honesty. He cuts through the bone to the marrow with precision. Going to the fundamentals of a political question is the cornerstone of radical thought. As an analytical critic Chomsky takes apart US foreign policy and unravels its claims before our eyes. It's a thankless task in many ways. Another side of this has been Chomsky's opposition to 9/11 conspiracism on the left.

Yet in a recent interview Noam Chomsky contradicts his past record on combating conspiracy theories. He suggests that the Trump administration may opt for a 'false flag' operation to save its right-wing agenda. When I first heard about this I didn't believe it until I read the Alter-Net interview. In his own words, Chomsky says: "I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly."

I was very surprised to read these words and I even feared the old man may be losing his touch. If you want the full context, here it is for your judgement:

JF: Do you think there will ever be a moment of awakening, or a disconnect for Trump's supporters of his rhetoric and what he's been doing in Washington, or can this just keep going? 

NC: I think that sooner or later the white working-class constituency will recognize, and in fact, much of the rural population will come to recognize, that the promises are built on sand. There is nothing there.

And then what happens becomes significant. In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball to something else. Maybe scapegoating, saying, "Well, I'm sorry, I can't bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it." And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people: immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be. And that can turn out to be very ugly. 

I think that we shouldn't put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.

Now let's break this down. It's certainly true that the Trump administration is increasingly unpopular and isolated. President Trump's approval rating stands 35% - a historically low precedent for a new president. Even George W Bush only reached 25% at his lowest point, just as Nixon reached 36% after Watergate. In these conditions, it is plausible that the administration would want something, anything to shore up support for the government. But this is not the basis for a false flag operation.

I should add I'm not saying the US government has not been guilty of false flags in the past: the Gulf of Tonkin being the obvious example. It's now uncontroversial that the Johnson administration leapt on Tonkin to expand the war against Vietnam. It's also true that there are real conspiracies in history. Look up COINTELPRO or the Iran-Contra affair, if you want to see a real conspiracy in action. There are even questions around Pearl Harbour and the extent to which FDR provoked Japan.

So, what is the problem with Chomsky's points here? Professor Chomsky might be defended on the grounds that this was a throw-away remark - one line in a full interview, with little clarification. There are gradients of what a 'staged' or 'alleged' attack could mean. Many of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists accept the case that the Bush administration had "advance knowledge" and simply allowed the attacks to go ahead. A more plausible theory is that the administration was so incompetent that it failed to act on the information it had about the plot.

This is a long way from the Ickean dimension of reptilian lizards, the whackjob theory that the Twin Towers falling was CGI, or the blatant anti-Semitism behind the idea that it was all staged by Mossad. However, the view that the US government had some role in the 9/11 attacks still belongs to the conspiracists. Chomsky has dealt with these theories well in the past. He would point out that the 9/11 attackers were mostly Saudi citizens. If it was an 'inside job', it would make little sense to frame Saudi Arabia if the aim was to invade Iraq. This is still a major hole in the theories.

I have yet to hear an account of the 9/11 attacks which can account for this hole. Most conspiracy theorists don't even talk about it because it's outside the reach of their assumptions. The politics of conspiracism are uncritical of the surrounding world, in fact, the point of such theories is to reinforce passivity and provide excuses for inaction. Why try to change the world when the Illuminati run everything? They're all powerful. So any attempt to challenge them is doomed to failure. This is why there are no movements or parties based on these theories.

Serious political action and theory requires hard work. It requires commitment. Naturally the online 'truthers' have jumped on Chomsky's comments, while the remarks have left many of Chomsky's friends and fans perplexed. I am not alone in this regard. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook has criticised Chomsky's comments. Here's what Cook posted on his Facebook page:

One doesn't need to be convinced that Bush-Cheney or the US security services were implicated in 9/11 to see that there is a deep problem with Chomsky adopting his new position. He has previously suggested in different places both that a major false-flag operation in the US would be almost impossible to conceal and that it is a waste of the left's energies, and its credibility, to indulge in this kind of speculation. 

That was at least a plausible position for him to adopt. But it is entirely inconsistent with his new position that we should expect Trump to carry out a false-flag operation and even accuse him of intending to do so before it occurs.

I have no doubt that Chomsky was right to argue that conspiracy theories are a dead-end for the left. So it's disappointing to read these comments, even in their full context. This isn't a reason to discard everything Chomsky has ever written. Demanding infallibility is unrealistic and ultimately puerile and rather conservative. Let's be mature about this. Furthermore, it is more in line with Chomsky's free thinking to disagree with him than it is to blindly follow him.

Believing in 'White Genocide'.

Above I've attached a video from Liberty GB chairman Paul Weston which was produced last November and has since become a favourite among white nationalists. Here he reels out questionable statistics in order to buttress the claim that the demographic changes taking place can constitute 'genocide'. The claim that the birth of non-white children in European counties amounts to 'white genocide' has become a trope of the Far-Right. Recently, I was fortunate to stumble upon a critique of the lie of 'white genocide' at Debunking Denialism.

I've covered Liberty GB before, which was formed in huge fallout from the attempt to build a parliamentary wing for the EDL. The line used to be that the struggle is cultural and not about race. In this video Weston comes out. He states that cultural and civic nationalism, which Liberty GB claimed as it's position, will not work without (as he implies) forced repatriation. However, we should note that the 'culturism' of this organisation was always about the characterisation of Muslims as non-racial. And yet Liberty GB has never been able to shut up about the 'white race', which would mean the problem is not just cultural; in fact it defines Muslims as non-white by implication. This is all very revealing of the loaded language of culture, race, and nationalism.

The appeal to white racial consciousness is vital to fascism because it presupposes a harmonious collaboration between classes as 'white people' are a multi-class formation. In advancing race consciousness over class consciousness the objective is to hold together capitalist society in spite of its immense contradictions. All systemic failures can be pinned on 'external threats', whether it is the trade unions, the Left as a whole, or Muslim migrants. This is no secret. Paul Weston is overtly calling Liberty GB a "counter-revolutionary party". Liberty GB frames multiculturalism, gay liberation, feminism, and 'political-correctness', as flanks in a war waged by "cultural Marxists". Of course, the "cultural Marxists" were the Jewish intellectuals of the Frankfurt school. The same old paranoias are reasserted in new forms. All of this was fundamental to Breivik's manifesto incidentally.

Notice Weston names Lebanon, as he has also mentioned Yugoslavia, taking the side of the Christians over the Muslims. Not coincidentally the Maronite Christian factions included fascist groups, just as Serbian identity was heavily defined by an Orthodox Christian background. Liberty GB takes the side of both, as well as 'white' South Africans, and the Israeli occupation as an outpost of 'Western' civilisation. Unsurprisingly, Weston has said in the past that "Islam is worse than Nazism". So it's clear what he takes to be the necessary course of action and what he sees as the 'lesser evil'.

Update on Lockerbie.

In the latest Al-Jazeera documentary on the Lockerbie bombing a former Iranian intelligence officer was interviewed. Abolghassem Mesbahi claims that Tehran decided to retaliate against the US after the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988.  As an intelligence officer Mesbahi answered to President Rafsanjani and claimed Ayatollah Khomeini backed the plan to avenge Flight 655. The civilian airliner was mistaken for an F14 Tomcat about to attack and shot down over the Persian Gulf and 290 people died. Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein reported back in 1988: "A pair of binoculars could have told the officers of the Vincennes what was flying overhead. But binoculars don’t cost half a billion dollars. The more complex the weaponry, the deeper the pork barrel and the more swollen the bottom line." It was in December 1988 that Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

It seems plausible. In 1996 the Clinton administration cut a deal with President Rafsanjani to compensate the families of the victims with payments of over $200,000 per passenger amounting to more than $60 million. A part of the deal was that the US government did not apologise nor admit any responsibility for what it maintains was a 'mistake'. The Iranian government has consistently disputed this claim. Al-Jazeera interviewed Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, who claims that the Iranians turned to a free-lance Palestinian group to take down five planes. The group in question has been named by various sources as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC for short). The main problem is that we may never know the full truth as the trial of al-Megrahi was clearly so flawed. It's doubtful that there will be any retrospective investigation.

Al-Jazeera has covered this subject before. In 2011 the channel gave a platform to Scottish defence investigator George Thomson, who claims that the forensic evidence against al-Megrahi was "inaccurate" and may have been contaminated. In 2012 Al-Jazeera interviewed al-Megrahi on his deathbed and revealed that the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission had re-examined the case and had recommended it be referred back to the courts. I've covered this story myself on and off since 2009 when al-Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds to the outrage of the US hawks and their British sycophants. I first came across the claims in an article by John Pilger, which I drew heavily on in my early writing on this subject. Since then a lot has transpired in Libya, the Gaddafi regime disintegrated before a NATO onslaught and the country now seems to be rapidly descending into anarchy.

After Al-Jazeera released its documentary the BBC, the Independent, the Daily Mail, and the Telegraph, have given the claims coverage. With both Gaddafi and al-Megrahi in the ground it may be time for a serious reflection on what went on in 1988 and how the Lockerbie case was handled in the British legal system. It certainly seems that the UK media has opened itself to the possibility that Iran retaliated and that in turn opens up all kinds of troubling questions.

The Bullet that Saved JFK.

To many, John F Kennedy was a hero. The pretensions of the Great Man are always a worthwhile target and the Kennedy cult is one such prime case. The legend of John F Kennedy is a tightly inflated balloon that has been wafting across the discourse since the young man defeated Nixon in 1960. Fifty years since the man was gunned down under circumstances of considerable fixation the time is more than ripe to take aim at that balloon and fire. Kennedy is not remembered for the details of his foreign policy, his efforts in the subversion of Latin American governments, his anti-Communist crusade against Cuba and his escalation of the Vietnam war. And yet there is a plethora of theories floating along with the personality cult.

The trouble with conspiracy theories in general is the tendency to apply Occam's Razor in reverse, slitting through all the simple answers to the end. The preference is always for building a vast and intricate theory. If there is a simple explanation, or a rational explanation, then it is to be rejected as a rule in favour of unfounded speculation of the wildest variety. It can lead anywhere after that point of no return. Like the conspiracy theorists who believe the attacks on the World Trade Centre were either achieved with a) US missiles or b) the attacks were a hologram. Once you've accepted such a proposition you're left with the problem of where all those people - in the planes, in the towers, in the Pentagon - have really gone. So why not suppose they were all gassed in Chicago? Or taken out to Nebraska to be shot on orders from Cheney? The degrees of nuttiness know no bounds.

We find the same with Lee Harvey Oswald. There are inconvenient facts, such as the fact that Oswald owned the guns involved in the events of November 22nd 1963 - not just the assassination, but the murder of a police officer as well - and the fact that the paraffin test at least demonstrated that he had fired a hand gun (though not the rifle, which doesn't discharge a residue). Why would an innocent man shoot a police officer as he ran out of a building? Of course, to answer such a question one first has to be open to a certain array of possibilities. If you have already decided that the captured shooter was a 'patsy' for a high-level conspiracy to ratchet up the war in Vietnam, then why bother? There are more important matters at hand. For instance, if the Mafia was involved (and this goes for the CIA too) then why would Oswald be left to try and hail a taxi to escape from the scene? Ignorance is sometimes all too invincible. Nevertheless, the assumptions behind these theories are always particularly revealing.

The first possibility to be written-off from the outset by the 9/11 'Truth' movement is that Arabs are perfectly capable of hatching such a complex plan and carrying it out. That has a lot in common with the tradition of European anti-Arab racism. Just as Western historians couldn't comprehend that the Arabs could have raced to the straits of Gibraltar from the Middle East and crossed over to the Iberian peninsula. The racist assumption that the Arabs are a race so primitive as to be incapable of a modicum of self-defence ran right into the mid 20th Century. It was a convenient myth for the European empires. It was with the emergence of General Nasser and the crisis of Suez that the Arabs were recognised as capable fighters. After that the new myth would soon be that the Arabs are bloodthirstily savages. The 9/11 'Truthers' simply revert to the early racial myth.

The JFK cult has assumptions no less worthy of unpicking. Jack Kennedy was fortunate to die before the 1964 election. The bullet preserved the memory of a charming and glamorous Kennedy, a fallen angel and martyr for American liberalism. It is all too outlandish to believe that the Kennedy administration posed a serious threat to the intelligence sector, the military-industrial complex and the capitalist system in any way. Really the system should work, it's merely an aberration - if only Kennedy hadn't been shot by perpetrator X (take your pick: the Mafia, Castro, Johnson, the CIA, the anti-Castro Cubans, the rogue CIA and so on to infinite regress). It is a reassuring vision for someone who doesn't really believe social change is possible and doesn't really want to pursue it. It reaffirms passivity and so it should. These theories always seem to arise around events which threaten the pretensions of invincible and invulnerable power.

The fact that Kennedy was a Cold War liberal who saw withdrawal from Vietnam as only acceptable after victory - a victory he may have believed would come in 1965 - which puts him on the same wavelength as Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon. He thought it was fine to invade Cuba and snuff out its push towards independence. When the CIA botched the invasion, Kennedy was angry at the prospect of a tarnished record for his time in office. It was the failure of the mission, not the mission  itself, which was the problem. Kennedy took responsible publicly, and then fired Allan Dulles. This was when he made his famous remark expressing a willingness to "shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces". Of course, the Emperor would be furious when his minions fuck up what should have been a routine operation (or worse, as they were defeated in the case of the Bay of Pigs).

As for the rest of the record: Kennedy cut taxes for the wealthiest slice of American society, bringing down the New Deal rate of income tax from 90% to 70%; while pouring yet more cash into the war budget and had mostly empty gestures on civil rights. He was a strident anti-Communist who spent his spare moments sketching the uniforms of soldiers. The conservative writer Ira Stoll has reviewed the Kennedy Presidency in time for the 50th year since the Great Man was vanquished. The Stoll thesis is that the Kennedy legacy ought to belong to conservative hagiographers and not their liberal counterparts. It was the bullet that saved the Kennedy myth. If Kennedy had lived we would remember him as an ugly war criminal, the Vietnam war would have robbed him of his angelic innocence and Addison's disease would have done the rest.

The Racist and His New Clothes.

 

In recent years Britain has become a hotbed for anti-Muslim bigotry like many of its neighbours on the Continent. It has become the primary means of mobilisation for marginal elements on the radical Right. Old canards against immigrants are being recycled and directed purposely to siphon off disenfranchised working-class and lower middle-class support for mainstream parties in this way. For instance, the BNP’s accusations that there are South Asian paedophile gangs were transformed into ‘Muslim’ paedophile gangs as if the grooming and rape of non-Muslim children has any basis in theology. It is now a staple of right-wing commentary that there are ‘Muslim’ paedophile gangs in the shadows of every city in the country. No focus on non-Muslim paedophile rings.[1] Naturally, the mainstream media has plenty of time to feed its own rape-mania and has no qualms about fanning the flames of anti-Muslim racism in doing so. No real concern for the victims of child abuse.

 

 

Given that the Muslims have become the main target of groups like the BNP the old targets have had to take a backseat. The main reason for this is that it has become more acceptable to express disdain for Islam than the West Indians who settled here in the 1950s. Likewise it has become completely unacceptable to engage in old-fashioned Judeophobia. Meanwhile bashing Muslims has become an umbrella for spreading enmity against South Asian British citizens.[2] The slur ‘Paki’ has been replaced with ‘Muslim’ in the vocabulary of every racist in the country. The EDL have attacked Sikh temples in the past and have marched under the chant ‘We love the floods! We love the floods!’ in reference to the floods which devastated Pakistan in 2010. Of course, the EDL has no qualms about exploiting the sectarian tensions on the old Indian subcontinent and soaking Sikh and even Hindu support. In that way the rabble of aging football hooligans and skinheads can claim to non-racist in its joy at the prospect of Mother Nature drowning Pakistani children.

 

 

This is the same reason the EDL has been filmed wagging Israeli flags, and making Nazi salutes. When Lee Rigby was killed the EDL was quick to jump on the scene and soon there emerged a video of the goons yelling for the ‘black bastards’ to be deported. Mostly unreported went the attempts by the EDL to make headway in electoral politics. The British Freedom Party was founded in 2011 with Paul Weston, a former UKIP blogger, as well as with an influx of ex-BNP members. In one of the speeches given by Paul Weston he said “In fact, Islam is worse than Nazism” before sounding off about the stoning of women.[3] He went on to claim that the growth of a Muslim population will lead to the breakdown of British society, pointing to the Lebanese Civil War and the collapse of Yugoslavia. In other words, Weston places the blame for the collapse of these societies on Lebanese Muslims and Bosnian Muslims.[4] That would imply Weston takes the side of the neo-Fascist groups in Lebanon and the nationalist fantasists of a ‘Greater’ Serbia.

 

 

In spite of his courageous support for the ‘lesser evil’ to Islam the new party soon evaporated. Its existence lacked the strong presence of a fart in the wind. Not content with this failure Paul Weston formed Liberty GB with much of the same herd and little deviation from the comradely affection for Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.[5] The new group soon found plenty of friends in soaking up the right-wingers of the blogosphere united in their hatred of Muslims and non-whites. Soon Mr Weston was on YouTube again looking to beat the competition posed by various videos of cats flushing toilets. He had some more revealing words too. By the summer of 2013 Paul Weston was giving talks on what he described as the “racial and cultural war against the indigenous people of this country.”[6] Going on to deem this “genocide” Weston goes on to claim the cities are “inundated with the Third World”.[7] He lists the places which have been “inundated” as follows: Tower Hamlets, Bradford, Birmingham, Luton and Leicester. The plot thickens.

 

 

All the while Paul Weston is adamant that it’s not just the Muslims that are the problem. Oh no, most certainly not! The Muslims are only the ‘pawns’ in Weston’s mind, a foreign race imported to undermine and destroy white Britain.[8] The people responsible are broadly pinned as ‘liberals’, ‘hippies’, ‘multiculturalists’ and ‘Marxists’. In his more blunt moments Mr Weston claims that it’s all the Frankfurt school. From beyond the grave Jewish Marxist intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse are responsible for political correctness, multiculturalism, feminism and mass-immigration.[9] It’s all a part of a calculated plot by the Jews who deems ‘cultural Marxists’ who created critical theory to wage ‘cultural terrorism’ against Western civilisation.[10] He claims elsewhere that “the Left now control pretty much everything”.[11] Yet again the raison d'être of National Socialism resurfaces in the clever language of a ‘counter-Jihadist’.

The anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the Frankfurt school are responsible for a vast array of problems has become increasingly popular and mainstream on the Right.[12] It originates in the mad ramblings of Lyndon LaRouche and in the twenty years since it has been taken up by American shock-jocks and the reactionary press in Britain.[13] It has been promulgated by many cultural conservatives as well white nationalists.[14] Naturally the BNP have moved in on this. In 2011 Nick Griffin put across his non-understanding of the Frankfurt school in a talk with Simon Darby and posted it on the Party’s YouTube channel.[15] This year the BNP appears to have gone on to hold a knuckleheaded talk on the Frankfurt school where the Jewish intellectuals were painted as belonging to an international conspiracy alongside the Freemasons, the Illuminati and Bilderberg.[16] If anything it’s good to see that the Illuminati conspiracy theory has finally been given the audience it deserves.

 

 

Not coincidentally, Anders Behring Breivik promulgated the same theory in his manifesto and considered ‘cultural Marxists’ to be “traitors” deserving of execution.[17] In that same manifesto Breivik praises the EDL as a ‘blessing’ and quoted Paul Weston’s Gates of Vienna blog posts predicting ‘a European civil war.’[18] Fortunately, the economic crisis in Britain has not been so severe as to produce the conditions necessary for a full-blown fascist resurgence as we have seen in Greece for instance. The rabbles organised by the EDL come nowhere near the ranks of Blackshirts led by Sir Oswald Mosley. It’s primarily an online phenomenon with the potential to influence psychopaths and thugs to take action. It was this that led to Breivik’s rampage and the numerous attacks on mosques and Muslims since the Rigby murder. It would seem that this could get a lot uglier before the liberals wake up to find what they have allowed to flourish and take it seriously.

 

This article was originally written for and posted at the Third Estate on September 29th 2013.

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[1] Bard-Rosenberg, R; Daily Mail Lies: Are Asian gangs targeting white girls? (2010): http://thethirdestate.net/2010/11/daily-mail-lies-are-asian-gangs-targeting-white-girls/

[2] EDL Uncovered: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_D9J685CQ

[3] Paul Weston on Islam & Nazism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZjOd-A5HDM

[4] Ibid.

[5] ‘Communist UAF orders BBC to curb Free Speech’: http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/5836-communist-uaf-orders-bbc-to-curb-free-speech?highlight=YToxOntpOjA7czo5OiJjb21tdW5pc3QiO30

[6] Paul Weston on the Woolwich killing, Islam and the State of Modern Britain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ocqyqjaVSg#t=271

[7] Ibid.

[8] Paul Weston ‘Is Britain sustainable?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBhe4nsm8rI

[9] Paul Weston on ‘How to Destroy a Country’: http://libertygb.org.uk/v1/index.php/news-libertygb/5868-how-to-destroy-a-country-part-one

[10] Ibid.

[11] Paul Weston ‘Is Britain sustainable?’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBhe4nsm8rI

[12] ‘Who are Breivik’s Fellow Travellers?’: http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2012/04/who-are-breivik%E2%80%99s-fellow-travellers

[13] Jay, M; Dialectical Counter-Enlightenment: the Frankfurt School as a Scapegoat for the Lunatic Fringe (Skidmore College, 2010): http://cms.skidmore.edu/salmagundi/backissues/168-169/martin-jay-frankfurt-school-as-scapegoat.cfm

[14] ‘Cultural Marxism’ Catching On: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2003/summer/reframing-the-enemy?page=0,1

[15] ‘EU-Frankfurt school neo-Marxism’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTULjwiG08

[16] ‘Frankfurt School & New World Order’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZoj2fLbYk0

[17] Seymour, R; Anders Behring Breivik and 21st Century Fascism (2012): http://www.leninology.com/2012/08/anders-behring-breivik-and-21st-century.html

[18] RT; Breeding Breiviks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwxq_ml0T0o



Ignoble Liars.

Douglas Murray is just the youngest public ideologist of the 'War on Terrorism' and his work is worth reading at least to know thy enemy. Noting the charge of 'noble lies' leveled by critics of the Iraq war, and its pretext, Douglas Murray writes "The notion of the 'noble lie' certainly arises in Plato, and it is true that Strauss and many neoconservatives admire Plato. But what Plato described (in his Republic) was that, on occasion, leaders have to conceal truths from the masses in order to lead them most wisely. He certainly did not (as one commentator put it with wild hyperbole) claim that 'it is practically a duty to lie to the masses.'" Going on to stress that "Plato described how in matters of grave importance, occasions arise in which a leader will know best, and in which the less well-informed masses, if given the opportunity to decide on a specific matter, might decide wrongly." This goes against his earlier position in the book where he slams the conclusion that Leo Strauss was a "champion of the 'noble lie'" as misinformed.

Even after this Murray maintains that the charge is unfounded, offensive, glib, ignorant and nonsensical. Furthermore it is hurled about by people who have "misrepresented their Plato and not read their Strauss". He describes the outrage regarding 'noble lies' as a "faked outrage". This really comes out of his loyalty to a particular agenda manifested in the policy designs of the Bush administration. In his view the UK and US governments didn't lie because they merely revealed what they knew about Saddam's Iraq - or rather, what they thought they knew - to their people. The twerp goes further to say "they discussed intelligence that was incorrect, information certain amount of raw intelligence that may turn out to have been comprehensively mistaken." He even claims that the governments were too eager to pander to public opinion (except that which was anti-war) as he derides critics as 'conspiracy theorists' once again - it would seem, it is one of his favourite swearwords second only to 'moral equivalence' in his arsenal of vilification and obfuscation.

So the fault of the Anglo-American establishment was not in but in telling the people too much, revealing information that should not have been revealed. Apparently there is not the remotest possibility that any of this could constitute deception. Murray is keen to guard against anyone who might attribute immoral behaviour to George W Bush and Dick Cheney, while looking to maintain a high bar for American aggression against Iraq. Yet the administration officially dumped the talk of WMD as soon as the invasion found there were no such weapons. The supposed links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda were dropped as the invasion quickly turned Iraq into a centre of terrorist activity. The doctrine of 2004 was that it's enough for a country to have the capacity to build weapons and the intent to use them. So that's virtually any country in the world. It's this kind of thing that the neoconservatives are looking to defend by damning critics as 'relativists', yet another swearword deployed against critics of imperial adventurism.

I wonder if Murray refined these abilities in whatever public school mummy and daddy sent him to when they realised they didn't love him. It's clear Murray is aware that the Platonist framework gives convenient reasoning to the wider agenda to which he is a loyal servant. In Plato's Republic the 'noble lie' is supposed to engender devotion to the city-state among the citizenry, it is meant to be employed when philosophy fails. So if we accept that the established authority has to propagate a particular view of the world in order to maintain social harmony we can still question the neoconservative mission. Really it's that Murray believes in the cause to the extent that he can be totally cynical. To get to the bottom of this we have to question the fundamentals: the position that the United States can and ought to invade countries to make democracies out of them. It's the insistence that the interests of the US (which are pervasive in all of its interventions) are synonymous with the interests of the countries it invades and occupies that we rightly take fault with.

Back to Lockerbie.

As far as we are concerned the Lockerbie bomber has just snuffed it, the reaction of many was the same as to the death of Gaddafi: good riddance. The man killed 270 people, 189 of them were American and it was the biggest terrorist attack on British soil. The media has acknowledged there is a split of opinion over whether or not Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a mass-murderer. There was overwhelming opposition to releasing him in 2009 with the presupposition of blood on his hands. The obsession was over how this might affect the special relationship, which only exists on the Queen's side of the pond. The other concern readable in the main stream was over the cost to the reputation of British law. Of course, the mistake is to assume that this country has such high repute overseas in the first place. Furthermore it was evident then, as it is now, that the indictment and trial of the accused was not a fair one. There are reasonable doubts to be had at the allegation that al-Megrahi was involved in the atrocity of question.

To accept the label of 'guilty' stamped on al-Megrahi's corpse would be to turn a blind eye to gaping holes in the narrative. The "damning" testimony in the trial came from the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claimed that al-Megrahi bought clothing from him which were later found in the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103. Gauci gave false descriptions of al-Megrahi on 19 different occasions and failed to recognise him in court. The other testimony came from an anonymous witness, a CIA informant, who claimed he saw Lamin Khalifa Fahimah loading the bomb onto the plane in Frankfurt. Fahimah was found not guilty incidentally. For this Tony Gauci and his brother Paul received payments of over $3 million from the US Department of Justice - as part of the "Rewards for Justice" compensation programme - while the CIA informant received $4 million upon the conviction. This is precisely the reason that David Cameron was wrong to rejectcalls for an independent inquiry. It gets murkier and murkier the more you look at it.

What about the backdrop of the bombing? We forget that a few months before the Lockerbie bombing Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down over the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes. The Americans insisted this was an accident, the Iranians disagreed. You might be a tad disagreeable if an "accident" left 290 of your fellow citizens dead. When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie there were those who speculated that it was revenge. American officials, most of which were working at the US Embassy in Moscow, had reserved seats aboard Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt, but cancelled their bookings at the last minute. It’s also the case that South African Foreign Minister jumped on another plane instead of Flight 103. You could draw all kind of theories from this, but it’s safer to say that we really don’t know what happened. If an independent inquiry for Pan Am Flight 103 then it follows that there’s no chance of an inquiry into Iran Air Flight 655. Yet we are reminded to remember the victims of one flight, but not another.

The indictment of al-Megrahi and Fahimah came through in November of 1991. By then Thatcher had already shot down an attempt at an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing before it could even get off the ground. Then a report surfaced in 1990 that concluded the attack had been orchestrated by the Iranian government and carried out by a "free-lance" Palestinian group, probably the Popular Front for theLiberation of Palestine. The motivation: revenge for the 290 people killed by the USS Vincennes. Thatcher looked to keep this revelation low-key before she was dethroned by popular demand. This was just before Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait and the US sought to build a coalition to break the backs of the disobedient Iraqi regime. The Gaddafi regime in Libya refused to support the American intervention and instead backed Iraq. It suddenly became a lot more convenient to go back to the old scapegoat, the mad Colonel in the desert.

Voodoo History: 9/11.

"The Towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for peace in our time, in the United States or any other country." - Hunter S Thompson

Today is Friday, it is also September 11th 2009, 8 years since the attacks on the World Trade Centre shocked the world and changed America forever. It was one of those moments in history, like the assassination of John F Kennedy on November 22nd 1963, many of those alive to have witnessed it will never forget where they were on that day. Much like the assassination of JFK, the attacks on the Twin Towers have become the subject of conspiracy theorists. Though, it should be noted that the main reason we fixate on atrocities like the attacks that brought down the Twin Towers is mostly down to the fact that Westerners were the victims. No public official dedicates a moment of silence to those who died in Chile on September 11th 1973, or during the following 17 years in Chile. That's why I'd like to dedicate this article to not only the hundreds of people who were murdered on September 11th 2001, but also to the thousands of people who were tortured and murdered on September 11th 1973 and in the months following. Though, it is not the latter I am focusing on in this article.

On the way to the London-based Westfield Centre today, I passed a crowd of men and women, mostly young, some sported dreadlocks and some wore headscarves. They were waving around placards that carried slogans like "Investigate 9/11" and "Obama is a puppet for the New World Order." One of the protesters had a megaphone and was shouting out slogans like "Investigate the criminal activities of the New World Order!" The protesters were handing out various DVDs that supported their cause or provided some greater insight into their theory. The demonstration was small. Though, it was certainly "lively" it was not the subject of intense policing - unlike the protests in Harrow on the same day. One of the documentaries was Endgame: Blue Print for Global Enslavement, which concludes that the Bilderberg group is attempting to establish a world government by exploiting fear of terrorism and climate change.

The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 11th 2001, was an event of shocking and bizarre magnitude. As the planes struck, President Bush was in an elementary school, reading My Pet Goat with the full knowledge that his country was under attack. A conspiracy theory was sort of inevitable, particularly with the events that followed 9/11 such as the invasion of Iraq. However, there is a deeply flawed and immoral logic at the heart of most of these theories. The theory that the Bush administration were in some way involved in the 9/11 attacks, as part of an overall plot to invade Iraq of which 9/11 provided justification. A common accusation of the Bush administration, in relation to this theory, is that 9/11 was actually a controlled demolition - assuming that such destruction would legitimise the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

What's wrong with this theory? A lot, actually. The facts are that the men involved in the plot were not Iraqi Arabs, most of them were from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. If the Bush administration is capable of orchestrating such a horrific act of state-sponsored terrorism against US citizens, it doesn't make sense that they would implicate Saudis and Egyptians. Saudi Arabia is the oldest ally of the US government in the Middle East, the US government effectively helps keep the dictatorial Saudi Royals in power, sitting on the "Black Gold" and heavily armed. Egypt is another close ally of the Americans, since it is almost totally dependent on the US for weaponry and support in the oppression of the Egyptian people. It would more sense to implicate Afghans or Iraqis in the attacks. But they weren't implicated in the attacks, Afghanistan and Iraq were targeted for supposedly harbouring terrorists. Though, we now know that those two states were most likely invaded to achieve strategic goals: gaining control of large oil and gas reserves in the Middle East being the most obvious.

It is true that the Bush administration knew that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri were planning a terrorist attack in the United States in the months prior to 9/11. They had been informed by numerous intelligence agencies and political leaders such as Vladimir Putin. It is true that the Bush administration benefited from the attacks, in terms of power, but so did all governments around the world. It is true that the Bush administration used 9/11 to gather jingoistic support for the invasion of Iraq. It is also true, and a matter of public knowledge, that the US government has a history of invading countries with the intention of seizing their resources and exploiting the natives. But an attack on the World Trade Centre by a group of Arabs does not justify an invasion of any Arab country. The assumption that 9/11 would provide some kind of justification for invadiing Iraq is fundamentally racist. The implication of the assumption is that the deaths of 3,000 Americans, at the hands of any Arabs, justifies killing nearly 2 million Arabs, that is nearly 700 Arab deaths for every 1 American death.

The way in which the Twin Towers fell was unusual and did resembled a demolition, to a layman. But that is irrelevant really, since there has never been a controlled experiment in which two of the world's tallest sky-scrapers are attacked to see what happens. Therefore, we do not know what "normally" happens when a plane collides with a tall building. There hasn't been a single scientific article submitted in favour of the theory that the World Trade Centre was demolished. But if we assume that an Arab life is worth a lot less than an American life, even then it was not in the interest of the Bush administration to demolish the Towers. The way in which the Twin Towers collapse ensured a lower body count, than if the towers had toppled over which may have killed tens or even hundreds of thousands. The Bush administration was probably the most extreme administration seen in decades, not even in terms of what they did but in how they did it. Despite that, it seems unlikely that the Bushites would have been crazy enough to orchestrate such attacks. If they had been exposed, which would have been quite likely due to the amount of people involved, that would have meant the end of the Republican Party.

But there remains the shadow of a looming question: What purpose do conspiracy theories serve in society? The truth is that people are disillusioned and cynical, nothing ever changes no matter who we elect and seemingly unexplained atrocities continue to occur. Human beings are pattern seekers, we yearn to understand our reality and we strive towards knowledge. This is the reason for philosophy, science and religion. But this tendency, which has arguably enriched our lives, makes us vulnerable to easy answers and junk theories. Conspiracy theories about Freemasons, Jews or even shapeshifting aliens are easy answers. People are not taught about the real causes of terrorism and assassinations, let alone the details of the democratic deficit and economic exploitation that is innate to the structure of our societies.

"Government is not the solution. Government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

I later found out Endgame was produced by Alex Jones, among many other documentaries. His political views have been described in the past as libertarian. The brand of libertarianism Jones subscribes to is the same kind as Ron Paul or Milton Friedman, which emphasises the importance of individual freedom and laissez-faire capitalism. Conservatism, and most right-wing political philosophies, can be characterised by a distrust of human nature, and government intervention in the market, combined with a paradoxical trust of corporations. Many right-wing libertarians like Ron Paul, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman etc. would like to see a separation between the state and the market. Although, libertarians tend to have a more positive view of human nature and a much more negative view of the government than conservatives. To some, Jones provides answers to serious questions.

Many of the survivalist private armies in America have declared themselves "constitutional militias" and are dedicated to the defence of individual liberty and the Constitution. These militias are heavily trained, well equipped with weaponry and have a large quantity of stockpiled food. They reject the legitimacy of the Federal Reserve and the IRS, as violators of the Constitution. Timothy McVeigh had links to such groups. These private armies are suspicious of the North American Union, as they believe it may be part of an attempt to establish a "world government". Alex Jones is a big supporter of militias, as part of American culture and as in accordance with his interpretation of the Constitution. The common tendency to view the government as the enemy is perfectly natural, after decades of switching between a small selection of parties who always fail to live up to their promises. This tendency is as natural as it is to view taxation as theft in our society, since we have no real democratic control over what our money ends up funding. Otherwise, we would look upon tax as a way of donating our hard-earned cash to the various programs and services we had agreed would receive funding.

Generally, there is a lot to be angry about today. But clearly people don't know what, or who, they're angry at. The anger is directed at the government and not at "Big Business". The anger is always focused away from corporations and towards the government. You have only to look at the recent controversy over MPs expenses to see this demonstrated clearly. As the scandals related to the bonuses bankers were receiving, despite their incompetence and recklessness, heated up the media began paying more attention to the expenses of politicians. The anger is directed at the government, because the state is a potentially democratic institution, corporations and businesses are not potentially democratic. Therefore, it's necessary to keep "Big Business" invisible and this is done so by guiding all hatred against the government. Most of the hatred and suspicion against the European Union derives from fears that immigration will spiral out of control and we will be governed by a distant clique in Brussels. Interestingly, the documentaries produced by Alex Jones portray unions, like the EU, as part of the move towards establishing a "world government" by elite groups.

In the words of John Dewey "Government is the shadow cast by business over society." The anger aimed at the government - the shadow and not the substance. Significant political change will still fail if the substance remains the same. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones are ignorant to this fact and continue to guide the anger at the government, in order to disseminate his own libertarian ideas. In theory, further integration into unions like the EU could be used to "change" the substance behind the shadow. Through such unions, the possibilities of strict regulation and increased taxation of corporations become a real possibility. Ordinarily, a multinational corporation could easily leave a country that imposes strict regulation and increased taxes, which is why politicians fear enforcing such policies. But with a union such as the EU politicians could easily enforce such policies across the whole of Europe, without fear of corporations leaving the country. The entire region of Europe is worth trillions, to corporations, it wouldn't be in their favour to ostracise an entire region.

It looks as though conspiracy theories are being used to disseminate certain ideas and views of the world. Not only are these views of a laissez-faire capitalist point of view. These views have a racist logic built into them. A theory which merely shifts the "blame" from one individual to some abstract group, like the Freemasons, is not the friend of the victims of exploitation and violence world wide. These theories do not even refute the assumptions they rely, assumptions that are widely accepted by politicians and energy corporations alike. It is not Freemasonry, Judaism, Scientology or the Government which needs to be eliminated to prevent these kinds of atrocities. It is exploitation and racist violence which is the cause of these atrocities. It is true that no one should accept the right of an oppressed people to retaliate with mass-murder. But it is also true that no one should accept the oppression of such people in the first place, let alone the aggressive reaction launched against such people by their oppressors.