Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
Assertions that President Clinton assisted drug
smugglers, ran a hit squad that killed his political
enemies, and covered up the assassination of his aide
Vincent Foster first circulated on right-wing
alternative media, spread to right-wing information
networks, and eventually appeared in mainstream media
outlets.
Immediately following the attacks, stories began to
circulate about 4,000 Jews being warned to avoid the
twin towers on 9/11. Reporters traced the contention
back to a series of rumors and claims by unnamed sources
that bounced around the Internet, becoming more
elaborate with each retelling.
American Dream wrote:I'm not sure that a wholesale railing against "the Left" nor simply tagging Berlet as an agent of the CIA or Israel are the best responses.
American Dream wrote: Far more important is to respond with reason, utilizing a coherent argument grounded in solid evidence.
AD, surely you got something more interesting to bring to the table than Berlet? I quite enjoyed the hitpiece you posted about Chogyam Trungpa, for instance, having read (and been suitably unimpressed with) several of his written works.
Pacifica affiliates and scores of small FM stations play tapes by or air interviews with a cast of characters including John Judge, David Emory, Sherman Skolnick, Bo Gritz, and Craig Hulet (aka K.C. Depass). These "experts" weave webs so intricate they make a Hitchcock plot seem like a script for Mr. Rogers...
He especially targets for badjacketing people who write about CIA criminal culture and the murder of JFK, like Mark Lane ('Rush to Judgement') and L. Fletcher Prouty ('The Secret Team: CIA and its Allies in Control of the World'). His anchor for his line is Larouche. Larouche is not a good guy worth defending but is highly visible and pointing people at CIA crimes. So it serves two purposes to demonize him and portray others as being like Larouche with 'guilt by contrived association.'
Hugh Manatee Wins wrote:Chip Berlet is one of the oldest CIA infiltraitors of the Left and keeps showing up on Democracy Now and National Propaganda Radio.
His strategic line is "paranoid conspiricism is the trademark of right-wing anti-semites."
http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/conspiracism.html
This is a good way to scare the Left away from the history of the CIA and Pentagon which function almost exclusively through secret planning, conspiracism, in other words.
Only as a credibility prop to sucker the Left, Berlet will steer you to FBI abuses like COINTELPRO but almost none of CIA's. (CIA and FBI do that to each other.)
He especially targets for badjacketing people who write about CIA criminal culture and the murder of JFK, like Mark Lane ('Rush to Judgement') and L. Fletcher Prouty ('The Secret Team: CIA and its Allies in Control of the World') and Victor Marchetti ('The Cult of Intelligence').
Ole Chip disses John Judge, David Emory, and Pacifica Radio-
http://www.publiceye.org/media/spooky.htmlPacifica affiliates and scores of small FM stations play tapes by or air interviews with a cast of characters including John Judge, David Emory, Sherman Skolnick, Bo Gritz, and Craig Hulet (aka K.C. Depass). These "experts" weave webs so intricate they make a Hitchcock plot seem like a script for Mr. Rogers...
His anchor for this 'conspiricism=paranoid hater' line is Larouche. Larouche is not a good guy worth defending but is highly visible and pointing people at CIA crimes. So it serves two purposes to demonize him and portray others as being like Larouche with 'guilt by contrived association.'
Now ole Chip is steering us away from the inside job of 9/11, too, natch.
Just like Douglas Rushkoff, BTW.
The Chipster has targeted David Ray Griffin due to his 9/11 Truth visibility and series of books exposing the NIST's report as just another Warren Commission-type cover-up.
When the Holocaust Museum shooting was discussed by Amy Goodman, Chip Berlet was on her show doing his thing - tying everything the Left abhors to "dangerous conspiricism," just like the CIA media that portrayed that hateful killer as a 9/11 truther.
CIA, all the way. That's Chip Berlet. Here to stay. Watch what he say.
American Dream wrote:CONSPIRACISM IS PERILOUS TO IGNORE
Conspiracist theories are attractive in part because
they start with a grain of truth embedded in preexisting
societal beliefs.
Conspiracy theorists are correct about one thing: the
status quo is not acceptable. Conspiracists have
accurately understood that there are inequalities of
power and privilege in the world-and threats to the
world itself-that need to be rectified. What conspiracy
theorists lack is the desire or ability to follow the
basic rules of logic and investigative research.
Conspiracy theories spotlight lots of fascinating
questions- but they seldom illuminate meaningful
answers.
While conspiracists tell compelling stories, they
frequently create dangerous conditions as these stories
can draw from pre-existing stereotypes and prejudices.
Cynical movement leaders then can hyperbolize false
claims in a way that mobilizes dangerous forms of
demonization and scapegoating. People who believe
conspiracist allegations sometimes act on those
irrational beliefs, and this has concrete consequences
in the real world. Angry allegations can quickly turn
into aggression and violence targeting scapegoated
groups. Conspiracist thinking and scapegoating on a mass
scale are symptoms, not causes, of underlying societal
tensions; and while conspiracism needs to be opposed,
the resolution of the grievances themselves is necessary
to restore a healthy society. Whether conspiracist
claims are circulated by angry populists or anxious
government officials, the dynamics generated by
conspiracy theories are toxic to democracy.
___________________________________________
lupercal wrote:That's some serious lunchmeat. I'd never encountered a Berlet masterpiece before so thanks for a healthy serving. It looks like he put every psyops distraction the spooks have pumped out since 1963 and probably before into the meat grinder. Leaping to the grand finale, below, my take is that this delicacy is meant to coincide with the Tiller and museum shootings to kick off a campaign to criminalize the propagation of "perilous" conspiracy theories:...[etc.]
American Dream wrote:.....
Mark Lane may be a good researcher, but then again maybe not. His involvement with bringing MLK witness Grace Stephens to Jonestown does raise some serious questions...
As to Prouty, I think he really was a whisteblower but he never transcended his world view from his cold warrior days. So he does bring that hardcore right wing bias to his presentation, sincere though he may be.
L. Fletcher Prouty
* The Fourth Force -- initial CIA "expansion" via 40s Pentagon War Plans, 12/75
(ASCII text)
* The Guns of Dallas, 10/75
(ASCII text)
* How the CIA Controls President Ford, 7/75
(ASCII text)
* Indonesia 1958: Nixon, the CIA, and the Secret War, 8/76
(ASCII text)
* An Introduction to the Assassination Business, 9/75
(ASCII text)
* Playing God With the Forty Committee, 2/75
(ASCII text)
* The Sabotaging of the American Presidency -- the U-2 debacle, 1/78
(ASCII text)
* THE SECRET TEAM, The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, 1997 (entry point to ASCII text format)
o Acknowledgments
o Author's Note
o 1972 Preface
o 1992 Preface
o 1997 Preface
1. The "Secret Team" -- The Real Power Structure
2. The Nature of Secret Team Activity: A Cuban Case Study
3. An Overview of the CIA; SECTION I: Intelligence versus Secret Operations
4. An Overview of the CIA; SECTION II: Origins of the Agency and Seeds of Secret Operations
5. An Overview of the CIA; SECTION III: A Simple Coup d'Etat to a Global Mechanism
6. From the Word of the Law to the Interpretation: President Kennedy Attempts to Put the CIA Under Control
7. "Defense" as a National Military Philosophy, the Natural Prey of the Intelligence Community
8. "It Shall Be the Duty of the Agency: to Advise, to Coordinate, to Correlate and Evaluate and Disseminate and to Perform Services of Common Concern..."
9. From the Pines of Maine to the Birches of Russia: The Nature of Clandestine Operations
10. CIA: The "Cover Story" Intelligence Agency and the Real-Life Clandestine Operator
11. The Coincidence of Crises
12. The Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report in Action
13. The Dulles Era Begins
14. Personnel: The Chameleon Game
15. The Nature of Secret Team Activity: A Cuban Case Study
16. Transportation: Anywhere in the World -- Now
17. Logistics by Miracle
18. Cold War: The Pyrrhic Gambit
19. Mission Astray, Soviet Gamesmanship
20. Defense, Containment, and Anti-Communism
21. The New Doctrine: Special Forces and the Penetration of the Mutual Security Program
22. Krushchev's Challenge: The U-2 Dilemma
23. Time of Covert Action: U-2 to the Kennedy Inaugural
24. Camelot: From the Bay of Pigs to Dallas, Texas
25. Five Presidents: "Nightmares We Inherited"
o Appendix I
o Appendix II
o Appendix III
o Bibliography
o Index
As to LaRouche, he has enjoyed such connections to Paperclip Nazis, CIA spooks and the like that you've got to wonder who he's really helping. Henry Kissinger ought to pay him big bucks for making him look like a victim of insane radical loonies, rather than the perpetrator that he actually is...
compared2what? wrote:...having refreshed my memory and done some additional random-sample checking-through, I have to say that as far as it goes, most of what he has to say is responsibly reported and factually correct, in letter if not in spirit.
For example, he's not wrong to point out that Fletcher Prouty's career as a whistleblower was underwritten by and beneficial to both the Liberty Lobby, and to various outlets in the far-flung international intelligence and media operations of the LaRouche conglomerate.
Nor is he wrong that both the Liberty Lobby and the LaRouchies are totalitarian fascist groups that, at best, don't always proudly announce their ties to white supremacist and/or Nazi ideologies.
Although he doesn't point it out, he could have added that Prouty also had a long and mutually beneficial relationship with the Church of Scientology.
Which, incidentally, quietly infiltrated and took control of the Liberty Lobby and its affiliated publications back in the early '90s.Which was some years before one of its imprints published a new edition of Prouty's book, of which Hugh speaks with such unreserved praise.
He's also not wrong to point out that Mark Lane has a very similar profile and set of affiliations.
And although there's more room for debate on this one, owing to the complexity of the subject, there's not much question in my mind that if the Christic Institute...
And while Chip Berlet doesn't use the word "conspiracy"...
Most of the features that ended up in the narrative promoted as 911 Truth, v Popular-but-politically-and-legally-useless-points-2-through-whatever-number-v-we're-on-now also originated in the white supremacist precincts of the far right. Incidentally.
You must be joking. "His career as a whistleblower?" Utter nonsense.
Obviously you haven't even read his books or you would've noticed how searingly dangerous they are to CIA, NSC, and Pentagon.
In its signature Avirgan v. Hull lawsuit (mentioned
above) the left-leaning Christic Institute incorporated
the central, conspiracist claims of The Secret Team, a
book by right-wing populist L. Fletcher Prouty.
Christic's investigators maintained back channel
communications with right-wing groups known to purvey
antisemitic conspiracy theories. Christic inadvertently
took conspiracy allegations rooted in the Protocols,
sanitized the antisemitic references, and peddled the
results to the Political Left and gullible liberal
funders.
The 9/11 conspiracy theory alleging 4,000 Jews were
warned of the attacks is a clear case of antisemitic
conspiracism peddled by certain Political Right groups
as a recruitment tool. Their ultimate goal is mobilizing
people to oppose progressive social and economic justice
campaigns by targeting vulnerable communities as
scapegoats. The progressive version of the 9/11
conspiracy generally avoids blatant antisemitic
references. Some on the Left, however, picked up phrases
such as "international bankers," "globalist elites,"
"secret government," "international bankers," and
"banksters," that historically have been used as coded
references to alleged Jewish power.While their target
was Bush and Cheney, the accusations and catchphrases
employed were laden with antisemitic bigotry.
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