by Prof. Peter Phillips and Prof. Mickey Huff
March 4, 2010
from
DailyCensored Website
Peter Phillips is
professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, President of
Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, former director of
Project Censored, and coeditor of Censored 2010.
Mickey Huff is associate professor of history at Diablo
Valley College, Director of Project Censored/Media Freedom
Foundation, and co-editor of Censored 2010. |
New research in the journal American
Behavioral Scientist (Sage publications, February 2010) addresses the
concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD).
Professor
Lance deHaven-Smith from
Florida State University writes that SCADs involve high-level government
officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in
covert activities for political advantages and power.
Proven SCADs since World War II include:
-
McCarthyism (fabrication of evidence of
a communist infiltration)
-
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (President
Johnson and Robert McNamara falsely claimed North Vietnam attacked a
US ship)
-
burglary of the office of Daniel
Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in effort to discredit Ellsberg
-
the Watergate break-in
-
Iran-Contra
-
Florida’s 2000 Election (felon
disenfranchisement program)
-
fixed intelligence on WMDs to justify
the Iraq War.1
Other suspected SCADs include,
-
the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald
-
the shooting of George Wallace
-
the October Surprise near the end of the
Carter presidency
-
military grade anthrax mailed to
Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy
-
Martin Luther King’s assassination
-
the collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7 on
September 11, 2001
The proven SCADs have a long trail of
congressional hearings, public records, and academic research establishing
the truth of the activities. The suspected SCADs listed above have
substantial evidence of covert actions with countervailing deniability that
tend to leave the facts in dispute.2
The term “conspiracy theory” is often used to denigrate and discredit
inquiry into the veracity of suspected SCADs.
Labeling SCAD research as “conspiracy theory” is
an effective method of preventing ongoing investigations from being reported
in the corporate media and keep them outside of broader public scrutiny.
Psychologist Laurie Manwell, University
of Guelph, addresses the psychological advantage that SCAD actors hold in
the public sphere.
Manwell, writing in American Behavioral
Scientist (Sage 2010) states,
“research shows that people are far less
willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms,
their beliefs... pre-existing beliefs can interfere with SCADs inquiry,
especially in regards to September 11, 2001.” 3
Professor Steven Hoffman, visiting
scholar at the University of Buffalo, recently acknowledged this phenomenon
in a study “There
Must Be a Reason - Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification.”
Hoffman concluded,
“Our data shows substantial support for a
cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that
rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or
disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information
that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part
people completely ignore contrary information.” 4
Sometimes even new academic research goes
largely unreported when the work contradicts prevailing understandings of
recent historical events.
A specific case of unreported academic research
is the peer reviewed journal article from
Open Chemical Physics Journal (Volume
2, 2009), entitled “Active
Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust for the 9/11 World Trade Center
Catastrophe.”
In the abstract the authors write,
“We have discovered distinctive red/gray
chips in all the samples. These red/gray chips show marked similarities
in all four samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using
optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy
dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry
(DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted
thermitic material and highly energetic.”
Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a
metal powder and a metal oxide which produces an aluminothermic reaction
known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of
buildings.5
National Medal of Science recipient (1999) Professor Lynn Margulis
from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst is one of many academics who supports further open investigative
research in the collapse of the World Trade Center towers.
Margulis recently wrote in Rock Creek Free
Press,
“all three buildings were destroyed by
carefully planned, orchestrated and executed controlled demolition.”
6
Richard Gage, AIA, architect and founder
of the non-profit Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Inc. (AE911Truth),
announced a decisive milestone February 19, 2010 at a press conference in
San Francisco, CA. More than 1,000 architects and engineers worldwide now
support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin
Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center complex on September 11,
2001.7
Credible scientific evidence brings into question the possibility that some
aspects of the events of 9/11 involved State Crimes Against Democracy.
Psychologically this is a very hard concept for
Americans to even consider. However, ignoring the issue in the context of
multiple proven SCADs since World War II seems far more dangerous for
democracy than the consequences of future scientific inquiry and
transparent, fact-based investigative reporting.
Anything short of complete, open discourse based
on all the evidence about these critical issues in our society relating to
the possible continuation of SCADs is simply a matter of censorship.8
Notes
1 Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond
Conspiracy Theory - Patterns of High Crime in American Government,”
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, (February, 2010): pp.
795-825. For more studies on SCADs and related issues see all articles
for American Behavioral Scientist, Sage publications, Vol. 53, No. 6,
(February, 2010)
For more background reading on this subject with specifics on the
controversial cases mentioned in this paragraph, see the following
scholarly works:
-
Robert Abele, The Anatomy of a Deception: A
Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (New York:
University Press of America, 2010)
-
Bob Coen and Eric Nadler, Dead
Silence: Fear and Terror on the Anthrax Trail (Berkeley, CA:
Counterpoint, 2009)
-
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and
the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking Adult, 2002)
-
Steve Freeman and
Joel Bleifuss, Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Exit Polls, Election Fraud,
and the Official Count (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2006)
-
Robert
Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate.
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987)
-
David Ray
Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final
Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (New York: Olive
Branch press, 2008)
-
Mark Crispin Miller, Loser Take All: Election Fraud
and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (New York: Ig Publishing,
2008)
-
Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and
the Red Menace (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983)
-
Robert
Parry, Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery (New York:
Sheridan Square Press, 1993)
-
William Pepper, An Act of State: The
Execution of Marin Luther King (Updated) (New York: Verso, 2008)
-
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of
Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq (New York: Tarcher and Penguin, 2003)
-
selected works of Peter Dale Scott, including:
-
Deep Politics and the
Death of JFK (1993, 1996)
-
Drugs Oil and War (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, March 2003)
-
The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2007)
-
The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep
Politics of War (Ipswich, MA: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008)
-
Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning
us to Death (New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2005)
-
Lawrence
Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 1997)
-
Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: The CIA, The
Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York: Seven Stories
Press, 2nd Edition, 2003)
2 Ibid.
3 American Behavioral Scientist, Sage publications, February, 2010, Vol.
53, No. 6. Specifically, see Laurie A. Manwell, “In
Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public
Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11,”
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 53, No. 6, (February, 2010): pp.
848-884.
4 “How
We Support Our False Beliefs,” Science Daily (Aug. 23, 2009).
For the full study see Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., et al, "There Must Be a
Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification," Sociological Inquiry,
Volume 79 Issue 2, (2009): pp. 142-162.
5 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank
M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R.
Larsen, "Active
Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust for the 9/11 World Trade Center
Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 (April 3, 2009):
7-31.
6 Lynn Margulis, “Two
Hit, Three Down, the Biggest Lie,” Rock Creek Press, February
2010, Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 6
7 Richard Gage, AIA video,
Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, Press
Conference, February 19th, 2010, SF, CA.
8 For more on issues of media censorship see Peter Phillips and Mickey
Huff, eds., Censored 2010 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009).
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