http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Disinformation-Works-by-Paul-Craig-...

OpEdNews 5/23/13 by Paul Craig Roberts

Have you ever wondered how the government's misinformation gains traction?

What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government's explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government's account.

The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against imperialism.

The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can't do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings.

Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concentrated in the executive branch that the US Constitution is no longer an operable document.

Whether a person believes the official story of 9/11 which rests on unproven government assertions or believes the documented evidence provided by a large number of scientists, first responders, and structural engineers and architects, the result is the same. 9/11 was used to create an open-ended “war on terror” and a police state. It is extraordinary that so many Americans believe that “it can’t happen here” when it already has.

We have had a decade of highly visible evidence of the construction of a police state: the PATRIOT Act, illegal spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the initiation of wars of aggression--war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard--based on intentional lies, the Justice Department’s concocted legal memos justifying the executive branch’s violation of domestic and international laws against torture, the indefinite detention of US citizens in violation of the constitutionally protected rights of habeas corpus and due process, the use of secret evidence and secret “expert witnesses” who cannot be cross-examined against defendants in trials, the creation of military tribunals in order to evade federal courts, secret legal memos giving the president authority to launch preemptive cyber attacks on any country without providing evidence that the country constitutes a threat, and the Obama regime’s murder of US citizens without evidence or due process.

As someone who exchanged a few emails with Alexander Cockburn regarding 9-11truth, and became frustrated with his refusal to address evidence and/or research that brings into questions the government's 9-11 conspiracy myth, I was pleased to see that Counterpunch decided to print this Paul Craig Roberts essay. I'm going to send CP a thank you mote. ;-)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-of-911/

By: Paul Craig Roberts| September 11, 2012

The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors.

In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story--except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.

April 26, 2012 CNN

Trials Without Crimes Or Evidence - by Paul Craig Roberts

April 25, 2012

Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of “detainees,” against whom no evidence exists. (Source) In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.

For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.

The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.

Paul Craig Roberts
April 6th, 2012

The stagecoach bounced along the uneven trail through Indian lands. A year ago there would have been danger from Indians. But Ulysses Grant had sent General Philip Henry Sheridan, who had brought the horrors of war to Confederate civilians, to annihilate the plains Indians.

In his winter campaign of 1868-69, Sheridan attacked the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes in their winter quarters, killing women and children and taking the Indians’ supplies and livestock. In Congressional testimony, Sheridan advocated the slaughter of the vast herds of bison in order to deprive Indians of food. Having turned professional hunters loose on Indian lands, Sheridan wrote: “Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated.” For his proficiency in war crimes, Sheridan was made commanding general of the U.S. Army.

When the first thud of the arrows hit the stage, the passengers screamed, “Indians, we will be scalped.” Among the passengers was a grizzled, hardened man. He retrieved an arrow and noting the metal arrowhead realized that it was not an Indian arrow and that the stage was being attacked by outlaws posing as Indians.

False flag attacks are as old as history. “Bowie” Johnston had fought Indians all his life. He had more respect for them than he had for most white men. Unlike the other passengers, he understood that Indians would be blamed when whites preyed upon whites.

Paul Craig Roberts provides another well written defense of 911 Truth.

Entitled "9/11 Truth Critics: Do They Have A Case?", Roberts column is largely in response to Alexander's recent insipid nonsense - The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years?.

Roberts starts out:

"The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments."

Highly recommended reading.

GRTV talks to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, author and researcher, about the significance of 9/11 on the brink of the tenth anniversary of those events. We discuss the many points at which the official explanation of 9/11 do not mesh with the available evidence, the many experts who have raised their voices in dissent (and been silenced), and what our response to 9/11 teaches us about where we are heading as a society.

'9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?' by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
August 8, 2011

In my recent article, “Creating Evidence Where There Is None,” about the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden by a commando team of US Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I provided a link to a Pakistani National TV interview with Muhammad Bashir, who lives next door to the alleged “compound” of Osama bin Laden. I described the story that Bashir gave of the “attack” and its enormous difference from the one told by the US government. In Bashair’s account, every member of the landing party and anyone brought from the house died when the helicopter exploded on lift-off. I wrote that a qualified person could easily provide a translation of the interview, but that no American print or TV news organization had investigated Bashir’s account.
An attorney with a British Master of Laws degree in international law and diplomacy, who was born in Pakistan, provided the translation below. He writes: “I have no problem with being identified as the translator, but would prefer to remain anonymous.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
Aug 5, 2011

The New Yorker has published a story planted on Nicholas Schmidle by unidentified sources who claim to be familiar with the alleged operation that murdered Osama bin Laden.

There is no useful information in the story. Its purpose seems simply to explain away or cover up holes in the original story, principally why did the Seals murder an unarmed, unresisting Osama bin Laden whose capture would have resulted in a goldmine of terrorist information and whose show trial would have rescued the government’s crumbling 9/11 story?

The gullible Schmidle tells us: “‘There was never any question of detaining or capturing him–it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,’ the special-operations officer told me.” In other words, the SEALs murdered bin Laden, because the US government did not want detainees, not because trigger-happy stupid SEALs destroyed a font of terrorist information.

Why did the SEALS dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean instead of producing the evidence to a skeptical world?

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10152010.html

Paul Craig Roberts
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:31 CDT

Does anyone remember the "cakewalk war" that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

Alex Jones welcomes back to the show economist and a nationally syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts, who recently announced his journalistic retirement in an article entitled “Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It.” He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. Mr. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice and How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds.

Paul Craig Roberts expresses his frustration with the censorship of 9/11 and why he is no longer going to write his bi-weekly column for such sites as Counterpunch and AntiWar.com. He explains that if people can't deal with 9/11 they can't adequately deal with any of the other important topics we are needing to deal with as well.

Good-Bye. Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By Paul Craig Roberts
March 24, 2010

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

From Op Ed News:

"Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Road-to-Armageddon-by-Paul-Craig-Ro...

February 25, 2010

The Road to Armageddon

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper's website for the past three days was the "Inside the Beltway" report, "Explosive News," about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.

February 10, 2010
Anyone Could be Next
The U.S. is Now a Police State

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

Announcing the Understanding Deep Politics Conference:
- Revealing the Driving Forces Behind World Events and Creating Alternative Solutions

University Inn & Conference Center - Santa Cruz, CA - May 14 - 16th, 2010

10 international intellectual leaders converge in one weekend in pursuit of truth and solutions.

With Speakers: Ellen Brown, Ian Crane, David Ray Griffin, Annie Machon, Jim Marrs,
Cynthia McKinney, Michael Parenti, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott and Barrie Zwicker

Tired of endless wars, bank bailouts, corrupt politicians, unrelenting corporate power, loss of
liberties, the healthcare crisis and the overall current malaise? Find out the how and whys of
many of the current societal issues facing us and be part of new emerging solutions.

By Paul Craig Roberts

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida "mastermind" behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

After such amazing success, al-Qaida would have attracted the best minds in the business, but, instead, it has been reduced to amateur stunts.

December 2, 2009
The World's Least Powerful Man
The Obama Puppet

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

It didn’t take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel’s.

Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so.

The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can’t do anything about it.

President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order.

Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.

Commentary
No theories necessary
By David Cogswell
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Sep 22, 2009, 00:25

“Why Propaganda Trumps Truth” by Paul Craig Roberts is one of the more fascinating things I have read lately.

The Rovian Republicans are always quick to smear anything that questions or opposes them in any way, but Roberts is not so easy to tar. He was assistant secretary of the treasury under Reagan. And those who write off conservatives as loony might consider his academic record. His alma maters include the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University. He was a senior research fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. He served on the congressional staff in the House and Senate before he was appointed by Reagan.

How the Big Brother controls “alternative” media
By Matthew D. Jarvie | Dissecting the New Age
August 14, 2009

http://www.wariscrime.com/2009/08/14/news/how-the-big-brother-controls-%...

CNP members from L to R: (Top) Jack McLamb, Dr. Stanley Monteith, Cliff Kincaid, Paul Craig Roberts, (Bottom) Dr. Jerome Corsi, Larry Pratt, Dr. Michael Coffman, Bob Barr.

Pictured above is just a few of the more popular names — especially among followers of the “alternative” media — who are members of the ultra-secret Council for National Policy (CNP). If you have never heard of this organization before, don’t be surprised because it’s almost never mentioned by the media, and especially not by those “big names” in the alternative media who regularly feature CNP members as guests on their show.

Sunday, 21 June 2009
Iran Faces Greater Risks Than It Knows
by Paul Craig Roberts

Stephen Kinzer’s book, All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, tells the story of the overthrow of Iran’s democratically-elected leader, Mohammed Mosaddeq, by the CIA and the British MI6 in 1953. The CIA bribed Iranian government officials, businessmen, and reporters, and paid Iranians to demonstrate in the streets.

The 1953 street demonstrations, together with the Cold War claim that the US had to grab Iran before the Soviets did, served as the US government’s justification for overthrowing Iranian democracy. What the Iranian people wanted was not important.

Today, the street demonstrations in Tehran show signs of orchestration. The protesters, primarily young people, especially young women opposed to the dress codes, carry signs written in English: "Where is My Vote?" The signs are intended for the western media—not for the Iranian government.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22867.htm

I never thought that I would be lauding the father of Reganomics, but here is another fine article from Paul Craig Roberts.

Regards
Mike Zimmer

The Waning Power of Truth by Paul Craig Roberts

June 19, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- David Ray Griffin, the nemesis of the collection of disinformation known as the 9/11 Commission Report, has taken up the question of Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?

On the basis of the available evidence, Griffin concludes that bin Laden died in December 2001, most likely of kidney failure. He has been kept alive in the media by US government PSYOPS as a useful bogyman to justify America’s illegal wars of aggression. The messages received from bin Laden since his death appear to be conveniently timed fabrications designed to advance US government purposes.

Osama bin Laden is likely to become a mythical person, like the Georgia Tech student, George P. Burdell, who will be sighted from time to time over a period that exceeds the length of a human life.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Paul Craig Roberts, as it was reading one of his columns in summer 2007 that got me started investigating 9/11. He is also a fan and frequent contributor to the Rock Creek Free Press, a newspaper produced and distributed by DC 911 Truth. Subscriptions to the Creek are just $20/year -- an incredible bargain, as each issue is chock-full of important and under-reported news. An actual newspaper shows up in your mailbox--this is not about access to a website.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan and served as editor of the Wall St Journal.

http://www.rockcreekfreepress.com/

In his Jan 7 column, Roberts wrote:

"The Rock Creek Free Press is terrific. After reading one issue, you will waste no more time on the "mainstream media." The Rock Creek Free Press is likely to rescue even the dullest mind from its brainwashed state."

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090107_informed.htm

By Peter Duveen

PETER'S NEW YORK, Jan. 9, 2009--Reagan Administration treasury official and author Paul Craig Roberts said yesterday he believes the Twin Towers of of New York City's World Trade Center did not collapse from aircraft impacts, but were taken down by explosives.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, two commercial jets collided with each of the Twin Towers. U.S. government accounts consistently assert that the buildings collapsed because they were weakened by fire and mechanical damage resulting from the jet impacts. But a growing number of critics of the government's version insist the buildings were taken down by a carefully arranged sequence of explosions known as a controlled demolition. Extensive video documentation exists of the destruction of the two buildings and surrounding structures.

"Any fool can look at those films and see the buildings aren't falling down, they're blowing up," Roberts said on the Alex Jones radio program out of Austin, Texas, in a telephone interview.

Continued at www.petersnewyork.com

I found this article by Paul Craig Roberts and thought I'd share it. It's not specifically about 9/11, but considering Mr Roberts is one of our most credible supporters, it seemed worthy of post. Peace all.

Whatever Happened To Western Morality? Are All Americans Guilty?
By Paul Craig Roberts, 1/3/2009
http://www.rense.com/general84/whatever.htm

On the last day of the old year in CounterPunch, two Israelis, Jeff Halper who heads the Israeli peace movement ICAHD and Neve Gordon who is chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University, asked, "Where's the Academic Outrage Over the Bombing of a University in Gaza?"

"Not one of the nearly 450 presidents of American colleges and universities who prominently denounced an effort by British academics to boycott Israeli universities in September 2007 have raised their voice in opposition to Israel's bombardment of the Islamic University of Gaza earlier this week," report Halper and Gordon. They note that Columbia University president Lee C. Bollinger, who has in the past ignorantly insulted Islamic representatives, "has been silent."

Bush Regime Declares Itself Above the Law

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bush-regime-declares-itself-above-the-law.html

Paul Craig Roberts
Lew Rockwell.com
Monday, Dec 08, 2008

The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.

It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnaped and “rendentioned,” that is, transported to third-world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.

Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a Vietnamese immigrant who somehow secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.

August 31, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts tells Alex Jones how the "brown shirt" republicans are joyfully taking us to brink of thermonuclear war with Russia who had been cooperating with us and Europe but is now reacting by expanding their sphere of influence.

19:31 3.35MB

August 27, 2008

Jason Bermas welcomes former Reagan administration official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who is predicting that the neo-conservatives are on track to start a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union and that a single strike on Washington by a Soviet SS 18 Missle (photo right) on Washington DC would kill everyone as far south as Atlanta, Georgia because of the massive amounts of radiation that would be released. (Danger Will Robinson!)

17:50 3.06MB

Infowars | The Alex Jones Show

Additional Paul Craig Roberts Media:
http://www.radiodujour.com/people/roberts_paul_craig/

From Counterpunch, http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08132008.html, on August 13, 2008, an article by Paul Craig Roberts where 9/11 is attributed fairly directly to the "Bush Regime".

Two Morons: Bush and Saakashvili
"President Bush, Will You Please Shut Up?"

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

...

No doubt the Bush Regime can con the American population, just as it did with Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, and 9/11 itself, but the rest of the world is not buying it, not even America’s bought-and-paid-for European allies.

...

With its Georgian venture, the Bush Regime is guilty of a new round of war crimes. What will be the consequence?

Many will reply that having got away with 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and with its preparations for attacking Iran, the Bush Regime will get away with its Georgian venture as well.

Possibly, however, this time the Bush Regime has overreached.

Paul Craig Roberts thinks our leaders are insane and should be yanked out Washington before they blow up the whole world and "end life on earth as we know it".

20080812_alexjones_paulcraigroberts.mp3

Infowars.com | The Alex Jones Show