Serpent-songs in America

Signs are that the battle against 911-Truth is growing desperate: Those who are interested—and all humanity should be very interested—can tell that the fight is heating up and coming to a head. How can they tell? By opening their ears and listening to the serpents singing in America.

One highly visible example can stand in for the dozens of others squirming around in the bottomlands of the Internet. This past March, Paul Craig Roberts published an essay called “The Perfidy of Government: Evidence v. Denial.” It showed this impassioned and prolific writer (an economist who served as assistant secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, Roberts remains a “true” conservative, virulently abjuring all things neocon) in best form as he yet again decries some of the deepest toxins that have poisoned, and that are now well-advanced in the process of destroying, our republic.

His piece sets out as a review of three books, the first by Matt Taibbi, on the deceit, lies, and trickery that produced the financial “collapse” (i.e. gargantuan piracy) that is still slowly killing our nation (Griftopia [2010]); the second by Charlie Savage Takeover (2007); and the third—a book that I have myself read and can vouch for its being every bit as important as Roberts says—by James W. Douglass, JFK And The Unspeakable (2008).

All three are high-stakes books. Describing Griftopia, Roberts explains what credit default swaps are, what short-selling is, and how the TARP bailout in 2008 took the form it did because Goldman Sachs saw the situation “as an opportunity not merely to have U.S. taxpayers make good on its exploitation of AIG, but also to fund with free capital supplied by hapless taxpayers more money-making opportunities for ‘banks too big to fail.’” Taibbi’s analyses in Griftopia are so brilliant, Roberts says, that

If the U.S. had a media worthy of the name, instead of mere shills for private oligarchs and propagandists for government, Matt Taibbi would be the editor of an independent Wall Street Journal with a regiment of investigative reporters. Then Americans would have a prospect of reclaiming their country and their economy.

Roberts gives less space to Charlie Savage, though no less praise for the author’s grim portrayals—“Savage documents completely,” says Roberts, “how American civil liberty was destroyed by Dick Cheney and the traitors he was able to place in key positions in the Bush regime.”

But it’s JFK and The Unspeakable, which Roberts takes up last, that gets the most emphatic treatment—and rightly so, since this is the book that goes deepest of the three into the actual history of our last half-century and looks unflinchingly at the origin and onset of the disease that is now destroying us.

How is this so? Well, Douglass makes it clear that after the Cuban missile crisis—that is, after the closest call that planet Earth has ever had—JFK’s perfectly sane and highly successful back-channel meetings-of-the-minds with both Khrushchev and Castro were greeted by the Dr. Strangelovian U.S. “defense” establishment not as the unprecedentedly constructive, potentially Cold War-ending steps into the future that they were, but—surprise—as evidence that the president was himself nothing less than a security risk. In Roberts’ words:

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and even the Secret Service entrusted with the protection of the president concluded that JFK was soft on communism and a national security threat.

As a result, in clinically simple terms, “The decision was made to eliminate the security risk.” And so JFK was murdered. Again in Roberts’ words:

Douglass presents in fascinating detail every inch of the story. I can’t reproduce it here. Suffice it to say that Oswald was on both the CIA and FBI payrolls. He was set up as the patsy without realizing it until he was in the Dallas jail where he was shot by Jack Ruby, another CIA asset.

With what result? Here is the trap that LBJ found himself in:

The problem for President Johnson was that the CIA had assassinated Kennedy in a manner that was too transparent. The CIA had overdone its setup of Oswald, for example, to the point that it was transparently a CIA operation.

What to do? If Johnson ordered the arrest of the CIA operatives responsible, the responsibility rose high up into the ranks. What would be the effect on the American public during a difficult time of the cold war if they learned that they could not trust their own government not to murder their own president? In addition, liberals were concerned that if the truth came out, Americans’ trust in their government would evaporate. Heaven forbid!

Johnson made the decision to cover up the crime and that was the task assigned to the Warren Commission.

And the rest, as we say, is history. Here is the climactic and most revelatory sentence from Roberts’ review:

Out of JFK’s assassination came Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, and 9/11.

There may be readers who will still feel surprise, or even shock, at reading a sentence such as this one, while many others—like me—will not. If readers like me are surprised, it’s not at the content of the sentence but only at seeing the truth that it expresses—that at no time between November 22, 1963, and now has our nation been under the control of its visible government—set down so plainly and so visibly as this: In yet another of the many widely-read essays of Paul Craig Roberts.

I’m so surprised at seeing it lying here right out in the open, in fact, that I can’t quite take it at face value. I think there’s a snake in the garden.

Let’s look more closely and see.

Roberts’ next sentence, if read by an instructor in freshman English, might draw a comment like “provide transition.” Indeed, it does come very abruptly:

Niels Harrit, a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, together with U.S. physicists and engineers published a paper in the Open Chemical Physics Journal in 2009 that proves that nano-thermite was used to bring down the World Trade Center towers.

And there it is: The serpent’s ploy is revealed. How so? Well, everyone remembers the story of Eden, the way the snake did his careful work first by flattering Eve until she felt a false sense of security and trust—and only then bagging her with the false trick that undid her. Same here. First, Roberts takes his good time with the preparatory task of flattering his readers—which he does through the selfless generosity of including them as insiders, making them feel that they are privileged, and sophisticated, enough to be trusted with the pricelessly important truth about the linked JFK-RFK-OC-Waco-9/11 half-century of U.S. history. And then? Then the serpent slips in a major and diversionary untruth, this untruth being a diversion that has the purpose of keeping his readers away from a vastly more important true truth.

And what is the true-truth, what the false-truth? The false-truth is that anyone has “proven” “that nano-thermite was used to bring down the World Trade Center towers” (in fact the buildings weren’t “brought down” at all but were transformed into dust). The Niels Harrit paper is wrong, and it is based on error, misinformation, and partial evidence. And yet Roberts insists that the paper provides “proof” of the use of nano-thermite on 9/11. It does no such thing, never has, and never will.

What, on the other hand, is the true-truth—and how do I know it’s the true-truth? The true-truth (the one that Roberts, for whatever reasons of his own, wants none the rest of us to know) is that nano-thermite had nothing to do with the disappearance of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 but that they were transformed into dust (they were molecularly dissociated) by the use of a weaponized form or forms of Tesla-based directed free-energy technology. How do I know this? I know it because I have read Dr. Judy Wood’s globally-important book on the subject, WHERE DID THE TOWERS GO? THE EVIDENCE OF DIRECTED FREE-ENERGY TECHNOLOGY ON 9/11. In fact, I know this book very well. I had a hand in the late-stage editing of it, I wrote the Foreword to it, I reviewed it, and I wrote an op-ed piece about the American scientific establishment’s inability to support the book because of the risk of professional threats against its members if they were to speak out in its favor. Further, I know that Dr. Wood’s volume describes the true-truth for these reasons: Because it is based on a scientifically valid method of empirical analysis; because its logic is both solid and complete (unlike that of the Harrit, et al., paper); and, perhaps most important of all, because it takes into consideration all available evidence, not just some evidence, again unlike the Harrit paper (which, for one example, admits that the use of thermite both creates and requires “intense heat” and “extremely high temperatures,” failing entirely to take into consideration the extremely abundant evidence that throughout the events of 9/11 there was in fact an absence of high heat).

What Paul Craig Roberts may be thinking, or what his purposes may actually be, in choosing falsehood over scientifically proven truth aren’t things that are mine to know. I do know, however, that it is not only galling but also extraordinarily insulting that he chooses to frame his advocacy of the false within an essay whose greater purpose is to accuse the rest of us of the very sin that he himself is guilty of—and that is the failure to be led by evidence instead of by hunch or “belief,” the failure to adhere to the empirical path of scientific method.

As I said, his essay is titled “The Perfidy of Government: Evidence v. Denial,” making quite clear the notion, again, that what’s perfidious is to be a person who “thinks” by adhering to fixed idea instead of to evidence and logic. Yet in his own concluding paragraphs, right after doing his own sprightly dance of cover-up and non-empiricism, Roberts sees fit to castigate large swaths of others—people, the “media,” the nation—for doing exactly the same thing that he himself has just done.

Let’s look as he combines the subject of the three books he has reviewed with the subject of the scientifically fraudulent (but strenuously advocated by Roberts) Harrit paper on nano-thermite and 9/11. Be alert. Be ready to distinguish between truths, half-truths, and falsehoods:

In the U.S. this startling finding [that is, the Harrit paper] is unreported except on 9/11 truth sites. The researchers say that in the dust from the World Trade Towers destruction they found unreacted nano-thermite, some of which they tested to confirm their identification. They researchers say that they have enough of the unreacted nano-thermite left for others to examine.

There have been no takers in America. Not a single U.S. physics department, most of which are totally dependent on federal government grants, will touch the subject.

The campaign that has been organized against the finding of Harrit and his associates is that the dust has not been in certified custody, and the explosive material could have been added. This claim overlooks that nano-thermite is a material that is not available to anyone except the U.S. military.

In America today the financial press says we cannot believe Taibbi [author of Griftopia]. Law professors hoping for elevation to the federal bench say we cannot believe Savage [author of Takeover]. The mainstream media and some leftwing Internet sites say we can’t believe Douglass [author of JFK And The Unspeakable].

It is in this disbelief of hard evidence that America is dissolving.

What is it that drives a figure like Paul Craig Roberts to embrace untenable positions like the one created by the Harrit paper—and then to make a hypocrite of himself by condemning others for offenses identical to his own? Not only does he do this sort of thing but he continues doing it. A few days ago, on June 20, Intrepid Report ran another Roberts essay, this one called “Conspiracy Theory.” The new essay adds little but repeats much. In it, once again, Roberts is absolutely correct that all around us there exists massive, purposeful, highly destructive suppression, omission, and denial of the truth. (In fact I myself just published a book on the subject: The Skull of Yorick: The Emptiness of American Thinking at a Time of Grave Peril—Studies in the Cover-up of 9/11.) But he’s quite, quite wrong—not to mention devious and corrupt—in pursuing his own desperate attempt to cover up the directed free-energy truth by pushing and peddling the nano-thermite falsehood.

Certainly it isn’t possible, given the breadth of Roberts’ education and experience, that he could genuinely believe that the nano-thermite hoax is scientifically valid—or, concomitantly, that the irrefutably scientific truth of Where Did the Towers Go? is a hoax.

No, there simply cannot reside in a man of Roberts’ stature and experience that great a degree of scientific ignorance and illiteracy.

And yet there are others who profess and behave just as he does. One of the most industrious and harmful groups of this kind is the highly active Richard Gage organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group that pushes—hard—for the same disproven nano-thermite line that Roberts does.

Some may ask how people can know, or learn, that this group, too, is fraudulent. To that question I give the same answer I gave at the beginning of this essay—They can do it by opening their ears and listening to the serpents singing in America.

Or, perhaps, by opening their eyes and simply observing them at work. Worth watching, for example, is this video entitled “Abraham Hafiz Rodriguez Questions Richard Gage at AE911Truth Presentation on 4/12/2011, Part 2 of 2” (part one of the same material is here), where what you won’t see at work are the qualities of openness, candor, inclusiveness, thoroughness, and reason that are the marks of scientifically valid empirical researchers or observers.

Maybe Americans really are just too dumbed-down to get it, too dumbed-down and inexperienced any longer even to know, like the spring lamb, when they’re being royally fleeced.

I hope that that is not so, but I fear dreadfully that it may be.

But let me now, like Paul Craig Roberts, end this essay by drawing its parts together.

Anyone interested in knowing when they’re not being fleeced on the subject of 9/11 and when they are being fleeced should get hold of a book by Andrew Johnson called 9/11—Finding the Truth. Johnson’s sub-title explains the relation between his book and the work of Dr. Judy Wood: “A Compilation of Articles by Andrew Johnson Focused around the Research and Evidence compiled by Dr. Judy Wood.” Now, once you’ve read WHERE DID THE TOWERS GO?, a trip through Johnson’s book will introduce you to a number of the people and of the types of people, like Roberts and Gage, who see it as their job to smear, misrepresent, calumniate, and otherwise denigrate Dr. Wood and her scientific, irrefutable work.

In Chapter 32, for example, Johnson provides a narrative about the very same Abraham Hafeez Rodriguez whom you saw—if you watched them—in the videos called Abraham Hafiz Rodriguez Questions Richard Gage at AE911Truth Presentation on 4/12/2011, parts 1 and 2. In a word, Rodriguez was a supporter of the Gage organization, had donated money to it, and had even signed one of its petitions. He then, however, made an interesting mistake: He sent Richard Gage “a private email which contained a question about Dr. Wood. He asked Richard Gage if he had ever heard of her or her research, and if he would be willing to contact her to collaborate and help support her legal cases.”

Result number one: “He never heard back from Richard Gage.”

Result number two: “After a few days, he discovered his name had been deleted from the AE911 petition.”

Naturally enough, Rodriguez inquired as to the reason for his name having been removed from the petition. On Thursday, March 11, 2010, he got an email from one Mark Graham of AE911Truth. The email does not start out clearly or well, albeit seemingly harmless enough. But soon enough it positively explodes with what I can only believe are inadvertent revelations made by a writer who didn’t know what he is doing. The letter becomes deeply, ruinously incriminating.

The email’s relatively tame opening reads, in part, as follows:

Abrahm [sic],

I am writing to you on behalf of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth to explain why we removed your name from our list of petition signers. . . .

We decided to remove you from our list of petition signers because, whether you knew it or not, we have chosen to carefully limit the scope of our message to the collapse of the World Trade Center and the need for a new investigation that would specifically consider the use of explosives in bringing it down. Our message is displayed on our website in the petition and mission statement. . . .

Harmless enough, one might initially think—even though its meaning is not immediately clear to anyone who doesn’t already know what that meaning is. Then, once one does know it, the phrasing becomes less innocuous. It means this: We’re kicking anyone out who doesn’t believe ahead of time that the events of 9/11 were caused by explosives.

How scientific and open-minded of them. But you haven’t seen anything yet. Here are the next two paragraphs from Mark Graham’s email. If they don’t make you want to throw your shoes across the room, you’re missing the full dimensions of the awful revelation.

Here it is (Note: The word “theories” is emphasized by me, not by Mark Graham; Dr. Wood’s book contains evidence-based scientific conclusions, not “theories”):

Your suggestion about contacting Judy Wood and engaging in a discussion about her theories about directed energy weapons and others things is a suggestion for action that is outside of the scope of our message. We would lose more than we would again [sic]. If nothing else we would lost [sic] the time required to make such a contact and engage in a discussion/debate whose duration would be unknown. We are also well aware of Judy Wood and her theories. The reason we don’t support her or her theories is that they are outside the scope of our message.

There is a lot of evidence besides the characteristics of controlled demolition seen in the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 that strongly suggests or proves that the official story of 9/11 is false. As you know 9/11 is a very complicated subject. Yet Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth deliberately avoids those topics. We leave it to others to make those arguments and present the evidence to the public, to Congress, and so on.

May I ask where your shoes are? Is the picture frame across the room badly askew? What Mark Graham’s email has told us is nothing less than this: That the group he is a part of is not scientific, that it is not empirical in its methods, and that it does not object to (but in fact actually prefers) the elimination of inconvenient evidence over the impartial scientific consideration of all available evidence.

In short, the email announces for all the world to see that AE911Truth is not impartial but partial, is not objective but prejudiced, and is not scientific but instead propagandistic. AE911Truth, in short, is an organization with an ax to grind, and grind it they will. It is not an organization interested—in any way—in impartial study for the purpose of determining the truth.

The enormity of this fact should by now be clear to every reader: AE911Truth is an organization dedicated to lying.

Knowing these truths, how do we proceed? If this organization and if this august person are dedicated to the planting and perpetuation of falsehoods, what might we expect of even higher authorities of, for example, our “government”?

How do we proceed? Well, for starters, we open our eyes and look carefully at all that is there in front of us to be seen. And then we open our ears and listen carefully for the serpent-songs being sung all across America.

Eric Larsen is Professor Emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. Novelist, writer, and critic, he is also the founder, publisher, and editor of The Oliver Arts & Open Press. Most recently, he is author of The Skull of Yorick: The Emptiness of American Thinking at a Time of Grave Peril—Studies in the Cover-up of 9/11.