Classic Analyses / Media INTRODUCTION Whereas mainstream ‘journalism’ about international affairs is thoroughly controlled by (and usually owned by) the aristocracy that control the government, and therefore such ‘journalism’ boosts the government regardless of which of the government’s parties is in power (since they both are controlled by the aristocracy, instead of by the public such as they claim), a few of the alternative-news sites make serious attempts to present truthful news, and those few sites are more trustworthy than are any of the mainstream sites — or than are any of the sloppy ‘alt-news’ ones. Most ‘alt-news’ sites are so sloppy that they end up just like the mainstream sites are, confusing or even deceiving their followers, and thus they do an important part of the job that the aristocracy everywhere wants done: to deceive, and/or outright confuse, the public, in order to control (manipulate) the public to accept things as they are, regarding the nation’s relationships with foreign countries, including even which ones are to be labelled as “allies” (such as Saudi Arabia), and which ones will be labelled “enemies” (such as Syria). This societal control-function, and source for invasions (and also for many domesticproblems as well, such as for the public’s acceptance of enormous wealth-inequality) is the reality about the press. The press is a crucial lever to control the public’s view of national, and especially of international, affairs. It thus serves the aristocracy as a crucial tool to determine if, when, and whom, the nation’s government will invade, as well as to determine the government’s domestic policies. However, standard myths about ‘our free press’ are, of course, to the exact contrary of this reality (and are thus promoted by the press as part of their service to the aristocracy) — namely, that the press are independent of the nation’s aristocracy (instead of owned and controlled by it), and that the press care about finding and communicating to the public the truth, instead of about communicating whatever happens to be the most advantageous to convey to the public in order to get the public willingly to pay taxes and otherwise to support (and maybe directly to participate in) the nation’s military to invade other countries so as to overthrow the leaders that the nation’s aristocracy want to overthrow — such as (for America’s aristocracy): Saddam Hussein in 2003, Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, and Bashar al-Assad in 2011(-and-still-trying). The bloodshed and national expense drained by these invasions are catastrophic — and are far worse for the victim-countries, even than they are for the invading one — but the press are essential in making the public support and accept it. Whereas all of the right-wing ‘alt-news’ press is conservative, and therefore ultimately supports the mainstream press’s view (the view that we live in a democracy, not in a dictatorship, and that ‘our’ military fights for ‘the right side’ — even though it creates mayhem around the world (such as those recent examples), in the propagandistic name of national ‘defense’ and supporting ‘freedom and democracy’), some of the left-wing ‘alt-news’ press actually do likewise, by their own form of sloppy thinking. The focus here will be on the left-wing type of sloppy-thinking ‘alt-news’ media, because all of the right-wing type is basically conservative and therefore is ultimately supportive of the aristocracy — like the mainstream press are (even if in different ways). ISRAEL and 9/11 [dropcap]A[/dropcap] good example of the latter type of ‘alt-news’ — the left-wing sloppy sort — is “The Corbett Report” and its 15-year-anniversary (2016) report about the origin of the 9/11 attacks. This example will be explored here in depth, because their ‘news’-report, on that subject, entrenches more deeply an old anti-Semitic lie, which many in the aristocracy promote so as to hide the actual (non-Jewish, purely aristocratic) source of the funding and organization (the actual elite people) behind the 9/11 attacks — in this particular case, the lie conveyed is that “the Jews did it” (as anti-Semites say), or that “Israel did it” (as both anti-Zionists and anti-Semites say) (but it’s false and hides the real perpetrators, in either case — as will here be shown): Corbett’s video about the source of the 9/11 attacks, which was issued on 11 September 2016 to commemorate 9/11, headlined “9/11 Suspects: Dancing Israelis”, and it’s shown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XHm56O2NTI It is full of unsupported assumptions and allegations, key ones of which are false. For examples: Corbett (5:40) “They [the ‘dancing Israelis’] had been sent there to document the event [the 9/11 attacks on the WTC].” He repeats that (as will be proven here) false assumption at 9:10-. Then, he alleges (13:40-) “The FBI were convinced that these spies knew about 9/11 in advance,” but presents no evidence to back up this (as will be proven here to be false) allegation. Israel is an apartheid state, and so should be abandoned by all nations (like South Africa was when it was apartheid) regardless, but prejudiced persons’ falsehoods are falsehoods, not facts — and these falsehoods hide the real source of the 9/11 attacks — and so protect the actual guilty parties. That video is presented to its viewers as if Corbett himself had come up with this (as will be proven here to be false) storyline about the source of the 9/11 attacks; and, therefore, the video’s viewer-comments heap him with praises such as (this one that has 204 net up-votes) “You’re a madman, Corbett. People can’t handle all this truth, day after day. How do you expect them to cope with so much reality?” Or, (in response to the transcript-version) “Amazing work this week James….as always!” However, as will be shown below, Corbett is just rehashing here old similar videos, embellishing some of their false assumptions as if they are his originally created views, his ‘discovery’, while not even crediting his actual sources, which he himself didn’t even care enough to check and verify prior to citing them (to the extent he even does cite his sources). He virtually invites deception of his audience. And they believe him, and even pay him — he’s preaching to the choir, just exploiting his co-believers — and this is supposed to be ‘journalism’, instead of propaganda. But it’s red meat to his co-believers, who apparently, generally, don’t even know that he’s merely rehashing old distortions. Although his propaganda is different from that of, say, the New York Times, the business-model is basically the same; only the deceptions are not. Much of this the-Jews-did-it talk comes from speculative videos like that, which fail to ask the intelligent questions, but instead are loaded with mere assumptions, some of which are false. One example of an older video that might have been actually a source for Corbett’s, is dated 20 October 2010, “The Five Dancing Israelis – 9/11/2001 – Our Purpose Was To Document The Event” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStJ5BgadPs which presents someone saying that Israelis who were involved in this alleged “dance” were “later revealed as Mossad assets” (no evidence given as to whom or how — or by whom — ‘revealed’) and then it shows Brit Hume of Fox News asking a reporter (5:20-) about “this question of advance knowledge of what was going to happen on 9/11. How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents might have known something?” The reporter replies: “Well it’s very explosive information, obviously” but he has no information about that ‘information’, and then quickly says “A bigger question is how could they NOT have known?” (Oh, really? Reporting that false allegation is ‘news’?) Then, one of those “dancing Israelis” — by now back inside Israel — is shown on Israeli TV saying “Our purpose was to document the event.” (We’ll get later to what that statement from him actually meant.) Another of these speculative videos, dated 6 March 2012, “Dancing Israelis Our purpose was to document the event” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIeP84WEZLU focuses especially on this “dancing Israeli” saying “Our purpose was to document the event,” and then it goes on to show a Jew alleging that Judaism (presumably meaning belief in the Pentateuch as being history instead of myth) is not only true but “breaking down all false gods” (implicitly attacking there perhaps both Christianity and Islam but certainly non-Abrahamic religions) and then showing other things that bait anti-Semites, and that make no appeal whatsoever to rational people. Individuals who have prejudices don’t need more than such rank trashy speculation in order to think that their prejudices are true. Perhaps most people are like this — which would make the aristocracy’s job much easier. Regarding this “dancing Israelis” matter, just stop and think about it. What did that statement “Our purpose was to document the event” actually mean? Did it mean that this person had been filming the 9/11 attack before the event even started (such as all of these anti-Semites and anti-Zionists are assuming— and duping their viewers to believe)? The FBI found that the “dancing Israelis” had actually started to film it after the first jet hit the WTC. That’s a major reason why the FBI closed the case. The fact that those “dancing Israelis” were delighted that the attack had occurred, doesn’t prove that they had had anything whatsoever to do with causing the attack. Similarly, Benjamin Netanyahu, on 16 April 2008, said: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the twin towers and pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.” But this, too, doesn’t prove that he was at all involved in the 9/11 attacks. The FBI, after an exhaustive three-year investigation, found that the “dancing Israelis” did not know about it in advance. See the “Full text of ‘Dancing Israelis Police and FBI Reports 9/11/01’”. For example, it says, in their report there, dated “July 10, 2003” (and I boldface the timeline-sensitive words): “Newark investigation found no factual or substantive circumstantial information to corroborate eyewitness accounts the five (5) Israeli Nationals ‘videotaped’ the attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Investigation did find that still photographs were taken of the attack by these individuals with a 35 mm camera found in their possession.” And: “Newark investigation found no factual or substantive circumstantial information to indicate the five (5) Israeli Nationals were on top of a parking garage ‘videotaping’ prior to first hijacked aircraft striking tower #2 of the World Trade Center. Numerous circumstantial facts strongly support the five (5) individuals statements they traveled to the roof of the parking garage after learning of the attacks from radio broadcasts and Internet news sites. None of the pictures developed from the film found inside the 35 mm camera depicted the twin towers prior to the attack.” Then, it said, “On 07/10/2003”, that “Newark investigation was completed and closed.” Then, on “Date: 04/14/2004”, the “Evidence Control Center” reported: “Details: The evidence related to the above-listed investigation was determined to be of no value to the PENTTBOMB investigation [i.e., to the FBI’s investigation into who had planned and financed the 9/11 attacks], but [and here the machine-read text is garbled, but approximately this] was found to be worthy of a Cl investigation. Newark’s inquiry TWIN TOWERS was closed in July of 03, however FBI HQ [garbled] is still pending. Newark is awaiting a summary of ___ to assist us in determining the final disposition of the evidence retained by Newark.” Then, on “Date: 02/18/2005”, from the Newark FBI office, was reconfirmed: “(Closed)”. So, apparently, “FBI HQ” (the J.Edgar Hoover Building in DC) had needed this confirmation from the Newark Field Office, in order to close completely the FBI’s “Dancing Israelis” part of the PENTTBOMB investigation. Ever since that time, anyone who was still alleging that the “Dancing Israelis” had possessed any advance-knowledge that the 9/11 attacks would occur as they did and when and where they did, was saying something that the FBI had already conclusively determined to be false. — [dropcap]A[/dropcap]nd, also in the ‘news’ during 9/11 (and subsequently to become mixed into the myth about the “dancing Israelis”), had been this “911 Explosive laden van 2-3 arrests” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CHq6JocvDM Dan Rather alleged there, on 9/11 (0:30-), that “Two suspects are in FBI custody after a truckload of explosives was discovered around the George Washington Bridge … enough explosives in the truck to do great damage to the George Washington Bridge.” Rather had picked that allegation up from NYC’s local CBS affiliate station’s reporter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VeJuiJv6Rs She said that two men had just then been (0:26-0:29) “arrested at the George Washington Bridge with an entire truckload of explosives.” But, actually, the next day, “officials denied any explosives were found in the van.” However, that finding was ignored by the national ‘news’ media. There was no further news-coverage about the matter. When the ‘bomb-van’ threat was found to have been non-existent, the ‘news’ media simply ignored the report that it was, and left the previous ‘news’ reports — the fake ones, which had misled people — standing, as if they had been true. Also on 9/11, a different news-report said that a van that was near “the Hackensack River Bridge” and carrying five possible “Israeli tourists” had been inspected by police for explosives, but a report the next day also indicated that no explosives had been in that van: http://web.archive.org/web/20011108025936/http://www.bergen.com/news/2bombvan200109125.htm Subsequently, both of those two, separate, ‘bomb-van’ incidents became merged and mixed together, into what emerged to become an enduring myth, that “the dancing Israelis” had not only been part of the 9/11 plot, but were subsequently aiming to blow up the George Washington Bridge. This is what happens when ‘news’ media report not actual news but mere arrests — which shouldn’t ever even be reported to the public unless and until charges are filed about the given matter. If a person is arrested but not charged, and the person isn’t a government-official, there should be no public report, because no public issue is involved in that event. People’s privacy, and defendants’ ability to be judged by an impartial jury if a court case does result from an investigation, both get thrown to the dogs, by such premature ‘news’ reports, which feed propaganda, because ‘news’ media care so little about accuracy, but care lots about being the first to report ‘news’ — which neither of those cases actually was, since no charges were ever filed. More details about the truckload-of-explosives-in-a-van myth can be found here: http://www.911myths.com/index.php?title=A_truckload_of_explosives — THE ABYSMAL PREVAILING PRESS STANDARDS A credible journalist won’t report speculation. Speculation might subsequently be proven false. To publicize false allegations is to prejudice the public; only bad can come from it. What’s said in speculation (such as reporting anyone in authority saying, at the first heat of an alleged event, such a thing — actually tentative and only speculative — as “A truckload of explosives was discovered around the George Washington Bridge”), is something that a credible journalist, working for a credible news-medium, simply won’t do. And only a public who likewise don’t care much about truth would even want them to report speculation as being instead fact — not even if the ‘news’ being reported is someone else being quoted as passing his speculation off as being ‘fact’. Someone else’s stating his mere speculation as being instead fact is no excuse for reporting the statement. A public that cares a lot about truth won’t subscribe to ‘news’media that are such fakes as that. Someone else’s mistakes are no ‘justification’ for one’s own. There was no basis yet, for reporting, “A truckload of explosives was discovered around the George Washington Bridge.” It was not at that time — or ever — a confirmed allegation. A confirmed allegation would instead have been something like “Police somewhere in nearby New Jersey are said to be inspecting a vehicle to determine whether it contains explosives.” The only circumstance where an authentic news medium will report a false allegation is in order to point out that an allegation that was published is false — to report that some fake ‘news’ medium had done that sort of thing. However, fake ‘news’ media never report about other such ones as being fake. They don’t expose their real “brothers in crime.” Only authentic news media (such as this) expose inauthentic ones. The inauthentic ones instead just continue to ‘report’ distortions and lies, mixed in with proven truths, in order to make their allegations seem ‘authoritative’ to the gullible. But that’s really no more credible than is paid advertising. It’s not news-reporting. News-reporting is 100% true, not truths mixed with errors and/or lies (i.e., “myths”). And, in the rare instance where a news-medium will make an error, the news-medium will be alarmed about it, report its error, and transform its operation so as never again to repeat any such thing. Did that happen with all of America’s ‘news’-media, which reported in 2002 and 2003 that Saddam Hussein had or was producing weapons of mass destruction (WMD)? It happened with none of them. Judy Miller was fired from the New York Times. She was a rotten ‘journalist’, but firing her still left a rotten ‘news’-medium, one just as unreliable, which is no better now than it was then — still systematically distorting reality (like all the rest of the mainstream press still do, at least in the United States). — Some of these videos about the “dancing Israelis” (such as this) were even blatantly anti-Semitic, obsessed about Jews, as if there aren’t evil (and also good!) people in every ethnicity or religious category. They ignore that George W. Bush wasn’t Jewish. They ignore that the 9/11 attackers weren’t Jewish. They ignore that Dick Cheney wasn’t Jewish. They ignore that Condoleezza Rice wasn’t Jewish. Their bigotry obsesses and blinds them, and so makes them at least as bad as their imaginings about some amorphous ethnic or religious category of ‘bad’ people. Bigots are only to be loathed, and despised — regardless of which category of people happens to obsess a given bigot. The mainstream newsmedia aren’t like that: they hide their prejudices. But they feed the public’s prejudices, because the press are virtually prohibited from reporting the truths that would need to be reported in order for public affairs to make sense to the broad public. Hypocrisy thus reigns in the press, just as it does in the White House. This is why the public are confused. A reader at one of my reports about the Sauds’ role in 9/11, objected to it by citing this very lengthy “The ‘Dancing Israelis’ FBI Report — Debunked”, which was an “Update” dated on 6 April 2015, and therefore was supposedly somehow more up-to-date (by 11 years) than were the FBI’s closing-actions on this case in 2004 and 2005, but which actually was presenting only the 40,000-words that had been in the files of the FBI and local police regarding the “Dancing Israelis” matter during the year it happened, 2001; so, instead of its being 11 years later than (and thus supposedly more comprehensive than) the FBI’s closing-action was, it was 3 years earlier than was the FBI’s closing-action, and this closing-action was based upon lots more than just what was known in 2001 about the matter. Moreover, near the end of that entire 40,000-word record, the person who was posting it, embedded (and featured) a video, which happened to be the very same one that I linked to above here, where I cited “Another of these speculative videos, dated 6 March 2012, ‘Dancing Israelis Our purpose was to document the event’,” except that this uploading of that same video, to youtube, was instead titled “Five Dancing Israelis Arrested On 9/11”, and was dated five years earlier, on 5 January 2007. People present ‘evidence’ that’s garbage, and then other garbage-believers repeat it through the years, long after it has already been proven false; but, they all believe it — and they will continue to believe it — because they are committed to garbage; they will not let go of it. They don’t just choose it; they hug it; they will not let go of a falsehood, no matter how many years after it has already been proven false. To them, Earth will always be flat, not round. It has become an article of faith, for them. There is actually no reason for a person to trust ‘news’ just because it comes from a source that confirms his or her own prejudices, whatever they might happen to be. Constant intelligent skepticism — thinking things through in the way that a scientist is supposed to — is the only way to truth, not only about physics, but also about human affairs, too. There is no shortcut; scientific thinking is the only way, for any person who seeks the truth, instead of mere ‘confirmation’. People who seek only ‘confirmation’, end up ‘confirming’ their prejudices, and so being the fools of fraudsters; and these fools are the cheapest type of agent that any fraudster can obtain, because such fools are motivated by other people’s errors and outright lies, and not only by money (and not at all by good, which is always based only on truth — something that’s alien to people of prejudice). And then, best-selling novels about the 9/11 plot become promoted and confused by ‘news’ media and their subscribers, as if the novel is presenting a real history of how 9/11 happened (alleging events “that prove … that the operation leads directly back to companies and intelligence assets deeply rooted in and connected to the state of Israel”). This particular book’s author posts online her ‘resources’ such as a section on the novel’s ‘Israeli art students’, whom the author alleges that the New York Times had reported about on 18 August 2001, but which article actually had said that these people were “Vienna-based artists,” who were “on the 91st floor of the World Trade Center” (which building-number wasn’t indicated in that news-report), and the author also assumes that those ‘Israeli art students’ were the very same people as a ring of fake Israeli art students that the DEA were tracking throughout the U.S. for years. No reason for that assumption was given. The object is to sell books to fools, because that’s such a huge market — it’s very profitable. — The case against the Sauds is instead based upon real (that is to say scientific) criminal investigation, by the FBI, and supported also by leaks from Wikileaks and others, and validated also in court testimony, and by other authentic evidence. But, among the public, there are many anti-Semites, and also both Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists, who want to believe, in some form, that ‘the Jews did it’. There is a substantial public that believes in a big amorphous Jewish conspiracy behind everything bad. Whether they are racists or not, they are fools, and the organized gang that is actually in control appreciate them for helping to distract the broader public from the real crime-ring that’s at the top, and from precisely what its individuals are doing, and why they are doing it. There are a lot of bigoted fools around. The real conspirators can easily get away with mass-murder, while such fools blame some amorphous mass of people (“the Jews,” “the Russians,” or otherwise) instead. Anyone whose main sources of ‘news’ are the traditional ones — TV, radio, and print (the media in which there are no links that a member of the audience can click onto in order to check out immediately a ’news’-report’s sources) — is being blocked from access to the sources (since the viewers on such media can’t simply click onto and examine for themselves these sources), and therefore can’t reasonably trustthose reports, at all. But in online news-reporting (or equivalent online historical reporting), the possibility exists, for a writer to link directly or indirectly (from the directly linked-to sources) to the original sources, for at least many of the key allegations in the given report; and, so, any intelligent reader can determine, for herself, whether a given online news-report is at all trustworthy. No longer must people depend only upon whatever prejudices they might happen to have — Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Republican, Democratic, Tory, Labour, or whatever. If a reader can’t click directly onto any questionable allegation to check its source, then the reasonable presumption would be that the given ‘news’ report is actually propaganda — unless and until the reader himself checks out and verifies its allegations (which very few will do, if the report isn’t online — and which few might do even if the report is online, but at least that site and its reporter respect their audience enough to empower them by providing those links, instead of merely to exploit or manipulate them). My own practice, as a reporter, is to link to the best source I know of, regarding any questionable allegation that I make, and to check very carefully any video or other non-linked source, before qualifying it to be worthy of being linked-to in my own reports. I believe that this procedural standard should be routinely adhered-to in all online news-reporting or -commentary. But very few reporters do adhere to it. (And few news-consumers complain about their failure to do so. The market for high-quality journalism doesn’t yet exist, but maybe it will someday.) If an alleged news-report or -commentary is written to be taken on faith, then the reasonable response would be to reject it on sight, so as not to pollute one’s mind with false beliefs, such as most minds tragically are. Perhaps some way will be found to teach the public how to teach themselves how to find real truth. Ultimately, this is the skill that any authentic scientist, in any field, is applying in that person’s own research — regardless of the field. For example, it is what separates the field of journalism, from that of mere propaganda (fake ‘news’). On any important topic, fake ‘news’ now reigns. The public are thus confused. They are deeply misinformed. There is no shortcut. For a good example of a video that I have, as of yet, found to be 100% truthful, and which was authentically original, published or posted to youtube barely two weeks after the incredibly complex and historically important event that it chronicled and explained, and which event is, even today, universally denied both by the U.S. regime and by the U.S. aristocracy’s ‘news’ media — that event being U.S. President Obama’s coup in Ukraine, which replaced the democratically elected government by a racist-fascist anti-Russian one in February 2014, and so kicked off the new Cold War, which Trump had promised to end but apparently can’t — see this ten-minute video; and, then, if that strikes your interest, see also an equally brilliant and truthful hour-long video-compilation, whose first ten minutes is that one (which first ten minutes can therefore be skipped if you don’t want to see the first one twice), this video, which hour-long compilation still managed to be published less than a month after the coup. The genius behind the basic ten-minute video is Aaron Hawkins, who is certainly one of the very great investigative journalists in our time. And that video is perhaps the best he has ever done. Even today, I find it stunning and the best 10-minute introduction anywhere, to Barack Obama’s biggest single curse upon the world, a curse worthy of George W. Bush, if not even worse. That video isn’t merely great journalism; it is great history, presented almost in real time, as a piece of video investigative journalism. It’s breathtaking — and it wouldn’t be so if it weren’t also true.
ERIC ZUESSE, Senior Contributing Editor • Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. Besides TGP, his reports and historical analyses are published on many leading current events and political sites, including The Saker, Huffpost, Oped News, and others.
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