Michael Ruppert is an ex-detective with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), who claims that he was drummed out of the force in 1978 because he had uncovered evidence of CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking. His proudest boast is that he blocked the Senate’s confirmation of the Director of Central Intelligence, John Deutsch, as Secretary for Defense in December 1996 by publicising his Agency’s role in pushing drugs. This claim has not been acknowledged by more reputable sources (see, for example, Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, p.535).
As the author of Crossing the Rubicon and the From the Wilderness website he is also one of the few - if not only - members of the 9/11 truth movement to advance a comparatively coherent thesis challenging what truthers call the “official story”. Put simply, Ruppert argues that the September 11, 2001 attacks were plotted by then-Vice President Dick Cheney and a shadowy government cabal in anticipation of imminent global oil shortages. 9/11 would provide Cheney and his co-conspirators with the opportunity to wage a war to secure America its oil supplies in the Middle East.
But Ruppert has one other claim to fame which he would probably prefer not to see publicised. He is - in his own way - the victim of a confidence trickster.
The con-man in question is fellow American Delmart Vreeland, known to conspiracy theorists as “the man who predicted 9/11″. Vreeland’s story has been extensively covered by the Toronto-based radio journalist Ron Aninich. It makes for disturbing reading, but not for the reasons a truther might suppose.
On December 6, 2000, Vreeland was arrested by police in Toronto on charges of fraud, forgery, threatening death or bodily harm, and of obstructing a peace officer. The Canadian police were informed that he was wanted in Michigan for similar offences, and he became subject to extradition proceedings over the following months. On September 14, 2001, Vreeland told his custodians an astonishing story. He claimed that he was a Lieutenant in the US Navy (USN), attached to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). From September 4-7, 2000, he was on a clandestine mission to Moscow to steal classified documents related to Russian space weapons systems. During that time, Vreeland stole documents purporting to contain evidence of a plot to destroy landmarks in New York, Washington and other US cities. As “proof”, Vreeland provided a note to Canadian court officials on October 7 which he had written prior to 9/11. This note contained a list including the WTC, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the White House, and the melodramatic phrase “Let one happen. Stop the rest!!!”. Vreeland did not explain why he chose not to do more beforehand to alert the Canadian authorities’ attention to an imminent terrorist attack on his own country. Nor did he explain why his warning note didn’t contain any more pertinent information of use to any agencies (Canadian or US) seeking to thwart the attacks – such as a date upon which they were scheduled to occur.
Vreeland fought extradition on the grounds that the conspirators responsible for 9/11 - which included the Russian security services, drug-dealers, organised crime and US government agencies - were waiting to silence him once he was extradited back to the USA , and his lawyers repeated his assertion that he was a clandestine agent in the ONI. Ruppert believed Vreeland, and publicised his case, treating him as the “one man who, in a rational world, could totally expose the complicity of the US government in the attacks of September 11th”. He also poured scorn on journalists such as David Corn, who questioned Vreeland’s reliability. However, the Canadian judiciary concluded that Vreeland’s story was a pack of lies from start to finish (for example, he was discovered to have been discharged from the USN during his basic training, and at the time he was supposedly in Moscow uncovering the 9/11 plot, Vreeland was actually in police custody in St Thomas, Ontario).
On September 11, 2002, the Toronto Sun reported Vreeland’s “disappearance”. He was due to appear in court on the 9th and 10th for extradition hearings, but he had vanished without a trace, leaving his flat “ransacked”. Surely this was indicative of Vreeland’s honesty: he had clearly been kidnapped and silenced by the US government and its minions in order to keep the truth from the American people? Nope. He miraculously appeared South of the border, two years later. On October 24, 2008, Vreeland had his final brush with justice: he received a life sentence from a court in Colorado after his conviction for “13 felony charges, including inducement of child prostitution, sexual assault, sexual exploitation of children and distribution of cocaine”. Ruppert’s “White Knight” had manipulated two young boys “into performing sex acts and making child pornography”.
The “man who predicted 9/11″ turned out to be a liar, a felon, and a paedophile.
Reading through the sordid details of Vreeland’s case, I find myself asking why Ruppert thought that his “smoking gun” was anything other than a fantasist and a con-man. Granted, he could not have predicted that his witness would turn out to be a sociopathic sexual predator, but the ex-LAPD detective could have done what Aninich did, and traced Vreeland’s criminal career prior to his arrest by the Toronto police. Ruppert’s day job used to involve tracking down men like Vreeland and putting them behind bars. But in order to push his tall tales, Ruppert would have to suspend all his critical and sceptical intellectual facilities.
What would a proper sceptic have done? Ruppert might have asked himself whether he could really believe the claims made by a man who presented himself as a cross between Arthur C. Clarke and Jason Bourne. Yet instead, he took at face value the word of someone who claimed to be a Lieutenant, USN, despite having failed basic training; who claimed that in 1986 he had designed the space weapons technology behind the Star Wars programme (on the back of a high school education, and no science degrees); and who stated that the US military had sent him on a clandestine intelligence-gathering mission to Moscow, despite the fact that he couldn’t speak Russian or read the Cyrillic alphabet. Any of these tall tales should have triggered Ruppert’s bullshit detector, but he accepted them without demur.
Rather than set up a hypothesis (’Was 9/11 committed by some government or agency other than al-Qaeda?’) and rigorously analyse the evidence both supporting and disproving this supposition, Ruppert dogmatically clung to the belief that the September 2001 attacks were an “inside job”, and he scavenged for proof - no matter how tenuous or weak - which supported his preconceived “theories”. This counter-empirical and blinkered approach to intellectual enquiry left him open to manipulation and humiliation by a charlatan who simply wanted to escape the jail time which was his due.
The harsh fact is that Vreeland stole something important from Ruppert. In this case he did not steal his victim’s money, valuables, or (as was tragically the case with his two young victims in Colorado) innocence. He stole Ruppert’s credibility, and that is a commodity which this particular truther will find it exceedingly difficult to recover.
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48 responses
I can already hear the conspiracy theorists accusing shady government officials of trumping up Vreelands charges so that they could “silence” him.
It amazes me how many of these crackpots still insist on their skewed world view despite evidence to the contrary.
Some comments on previous posts are hilarious, especially the way they link to other sites that they feel reinforce their views.
Keep up the good work Joseph.
Joseph, You are very wide of the mark here in your assumptions that Mike Ruppert was naive and uncritically accepted Delmart Vreeland’s claims.
If you have taken the time to read the relevant chapters in Crossing The Rubicon, then you will already be aware that Ruppert was suspicious that Vreeland was a “dangle”. Ruppert quotes a conversation with ex CIA counter terrorism officer Leutrell Osborne, in which Osborne claimed that people with similar backgrounds to Vreeland (low-level criminality like cocaine use, burglary, car theft, assault etc) had been used on similar missions to the one described by Vreeland. That of course does not verify Vreeland’s claims but it does provide an interesting operational parallel for consideration.
Ruppert also specifically calls Vreeland’s claims about SDI “disinformation” (p294). Regarding the space based missile defence involvement alleged by Vreeland, Ruppert states: “He filled his website and phone conversations with details of how the system worked…I never reported on it because I had no ability to verify any of his claims. Quite frankly, I never really believed him” (p305).
Ruppert clearly did not naively and gullibly accept these claims, as Joseph claims above. Clearly, his “bullshit detector” was fully functioning!
The facts show that Ruppert was sceptical and cautious in dealing with Vreeland’s claims.
And Ruppert was certainly prescient in predicting that his investigation into Vreeland would be used to discredit him:
“I knew Vreeland was going to be used to discredit me…” (p292).
From an academic perspective, I think it’s fair to say that the clearly perjorative use of the word “truther” displays a certain bias.
OK, Rich. If Ruppert thought that Vreeland was a ‘dangle’, then why did he describe him as someone ‘who, in a rational world, could totally expose the complicity of the US government in the attacks of September 11th’? How come he excused the paucity of Vreeland’s ‘revelations’ by stating that:
‘The history of jailhouse deaths of key witnesses leans heavily in favor of Vreeland’s belief that he could be killed at any moment. His apparent strategy is to not reveal any accurate Top Secret material to either his lawyers or the press, hoping that his silence will provide him with some support from US clandestine services.’
And if he accepted that Vreeland was an unreliable witness, how come he attacked journalists like David Corn who said much the same thing?:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030402_cornreply.html
Ruppert’s claim that Vreeland ‘wrote an accurate warning of the September 11th attacks’ - and that Canadian court authorities confirmed this - is also completely untrue. Look at the supposed ‘warning note’, and also read the reportage that Aninich has done if you have any doubts.
As far as ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ is concerned, I notice that Ruppert still refers to Vreeland’s ‘handlers’ (p.292), to his clandestine trip to Russia (p.293), and to him being ‘a skilled government operative’ (p.294). It is also clear from pp.305-306 that he also accepted Vreeland’s claim that he was in Moscow to steal Russian space weapons technology.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ezyLJrAu1SIC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=Crossing+the+Rubicon+Delmart+Vreeland&source=web&ots=gftRdFZvlD&sig=GiFIAY2u2WY5l5AWSBdtTHqmH7I&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result#PPA294,M1
http://www.federaljack.com/downloads/ebooks/Michael%20Ruppert%20-%20Crossing%20the%20Rubicon.pdf
Ruppert’s standards of evidence are also discussed in one of my previous posts (scroll down for my comments on his misrepresentation of NORAD exercises):
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/01/more-on-15-questions-for-911-truthers-a-reply-to-stewart-bradley/
If Ruppert had been ’sceptical and cautious’ in dealing with Vreeland’s claims, he would have simply dismissed them out of hand. Instead, he was suckered hook, line and sinker. He still treated Vreeland as an intelligence officer, rather than as a complete charlatan and a felon. So I stand by comments. Ruppert was a credulous fool, and because he was simply looking for ‘evidence’ to prove his preconceived theories Vreeland was able to make a complete fool of him.
http://freeyourmind-hiddentruths.blogspot.com/
It is, of course, entirely appropriate that a conspiracy `theorist’ (these narratives never rise to the level of actual theory) should be bolstered by a known fabulist - these narratives are no more than fables.
And appropriately, the fact that this individual is a fabulist is used in support (see Comment 2) of the conspiracy `theory’!
It proves only that you can never win against a conspiracy fabulist - if you assume their ideas are proposed in good faith (which they never - or rarely - are).
Rich,
Your defense of Rupport is surprising and lame. Rupport clearly lost all perspective as even you admit he thought Vreeland was just a “dangle.”
I esecially enjoyed your Rupport quote about Vreeland’s contribution to space based missle defense: “I had no ability to verify any of his claims . . .” Uhm yeah right, Rupport comes off as LAPD’s answer to Inspector Clouseau.
Reading this blog, which I enjoy, I’ve noticed a common thread between 9/11 truthers, holocaust deniers, creationists, pseudohistorians and fellow travelers: they misrepresent, misconstrue, omit, misread and apply double standards to the evidence in order to achieve their predetermined outcomes.
Excellent post about Ruppert’s use of Vreeland.
I think that Rich’s suggestion that Ruppert had wised up to Vreeland’s unreliability has some validity, but only after the damage had been done. Having seen Ruppert giving a lecture back in 2002, he was gaga over his supposed primary source.
If he had doubts, Ruppert didn’t voice them then, and seemed to cling to Vreeland’s unlikely tale because he obviously wanted it to be true so it would give his own fractured fairy tale some wings…
What does Ruppert think of Vreeland now? Does he admit that he has been duped or that it is just evidence of a bigger government cover up. I think I know the answer but I would like someone “in the know” to inform anyway.
Heh, I see Joseph has been completely taken in by the Agency’s dangle (Vreeland) in order to discredit Ruppert. It’s sad to see the efforts people will go to to avoid facing the TRUTH!
*Sigh*
The Troofers have this interesting theory that of course the CIA would hire guys like Vreeland; because they are eminently deniable. Who would believe that the CIA would hire a guy who produces (and performs in) child pornography? He’s perfect!
Pat, I got the story about Vreeland’s conviction from your site - many thanks.
Buck, I don’t know what Ruppert thinks of Vreeland now. My guess is that he’s trying to forget he ever existed.
‘I see Joseph has been completely taken in by the Agency’s dangle (Vreeland) in order to discredit Ruppert. It’s sad to see the efforts people will go to to avoid facing the TRUTH!’
The ‘TRUTH’ as far as I’m concerned is that people like Michael Ruppert will abandon all common sense and critical facilities when confronted with people - like Vreeland - who appear to confirm their paranoid world view. The CIA don’t need to discredit Ruppert - he does a perfectly good job of that by himself.
Ruppert buys into the Leo Wanta nuttiness too. That story is even more absurd.
http://thechiefbrief.blogspot.com/search?q=leo+wanta
it seems that pretty much everyone has a view on 9-11, and pretty much everyone here buys the official conspiracy theory, as compared to one of the non-official ones. Ruppert may well be a complete loony. Many “truthers” may well be paranoid and/or delusional. That does not, however mean that the official story is anywhere close to the truth. Building 7’s collapse alone should be enough to cast much doubt on the official story line, not to mention the extreme reluctance of gov’t agencies to provide footage of whatever hit the pentagon.
Disparaging anyone who questions the official story as a paranoid “truther,” just because some of the questioners happen to be silly, naive, or a little nutty shows just as much lack of skepticism as Ruppert did regarding Vreeland.
There’s plenty of evidence on the National Security Archive website about all the f*#ked-up “conspiracies” our gov’t (and specifically our intelligence agencies) has been involved in over the years, more than a few targeted against American citizens. It’s not out of the question that there is much more to the 9-11 story than we have been told. Don’t throw out the 9-11 truth movement baby out with the paranoid “truthers” bathwater.
Diptherio, you’re setting up a straw man here. I am not saying that governments do not commit covert, or unscrupulous acts. That doesn’t mean that we have to swallow hysterical ‘theories’ like those propagated by Ruppert. Particularly if they happen to be heavily based on the testimonies of proven liars.
And yes, the National Security Archive has good information on Iran-Contra etc. Furthermore, post-2003 press coverage show that the Bush administration and Blair government cooked the books when it came to pre-war intelligence assessments on the Iraqi WMD programme. But there’s a point here that you’re missing. In a democratic system with a legalised opposition, free press and a culture of accountability, examples of government wrong-doing always come out into the open. And if you’re trying to say otherwise, you can perhaps tell me how the Bush administration could pull off a perfect false-flag attack on 9/11, but foul up the occupation of Iraq and dealing with Hurricane Katrina. As for my own government, given the number of times classified discs and documents have been lost recently, I have trouble believing that the powers-that-be in Whitehall are competent enough to organise a cover-up.
Diptherio
You’ve got it backwards. Truthers aren’t disparaged because they’re silly, nutty or naive.
It’s only because they keep factually wrong arguments that truthers, like holocaust deniers, creationists, pseudo-historians and the like, are then labelled silly, nutty and naive.
You haven’t shown any factual relationship, concerning 911, between Vreeland and Ruppert. Is what Ruppert is saying about 911 true or false?
‘You haven’t shown any factual relationship, concerning 911, between Vreeland and Ruppert.’
Other than the fact that the latter treats the former as an unimpeachable source.
‘Is what Ruppert is saying about 911 true or false?’
False. Next …
Joseph:
“Furthermore, post-2003 press coverage show that the Bush administration and Blair government cooked the books when it came to pre-war intelligence assessments on the Iraqi WMD programme. But there’s a point here that you’re missing. In a democratic system with a legalised opposition, free press and a culture of accountability, examples of government wrong-doing always come out into the open.”
May I draw your attention to the fact that that the Dossier concerning Britains involvement in the Iraq/WMD affair is hardly coming out into the open.
As for free press…I tend to go with Chomsky’s view of the media, all things considered.
‘May I draw your attention to the fact that that the Dossier concerning Britains involvement in the Iraq/WMD affair is hardly coming out into the open.’
I am of course refering to the intensive and critical press coverage of HMG’s official line from early 2003, which intensified once Iraq was occupied and the predicted stocks of WMD were never discovered.
‘I tend to go with Chomsky’s view of the media, all things considered’.
Ah yes. What is it he said? Something along the lines of ‘propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to dictatorship’? Well he should know. After all, he and his Medialens goons were able to get the ‘Guardian’ to pull an online version of an interview he did with them on 31st October 2005. The interviewer was less than reverential, you see:
http://jeffweintraub.blogspot.com/2005/11/noam-chomsky-skeptical-interview-with.html
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20051031.htm
I consider that to be a fitting illustration of my point.
Naturally Chomsky is a man with many critics.
He is well within his rights to defend himself against media spin such as occurred in this case,
‘He is well within his rights to defend himself against media spin such as occurred in this case’.
By encouraging the censorship of any article that’s less than hagiographic?
Brockes had Chomsky cold on his encouragement of Srebenica denial (as per his endorsements of Diana Johnstone’s work). He was caught out, and he had a tantrum. The ‘Guardian’ behaved in a cowardly manner in not backing their journalists. End of story:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/stephen-glover-on-the-press-480151.html
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/chomsky_the_gua.html
“By encouraging the censorship of any article that’s less than hagiographic? ”
No….by asking for a retraction and an apology, that is not censorship it is a response to a published article which was misrepresentative. I dont think there is much to be gained by keeping a retracted article on the website, other making a mockery of it.
I was not surprised to see Kamms blog has many of the same links as CK. He obviously shares a similar political standpoint and so I am not surprised he would pounce upon any opportunity to take a cheap shot at “the world top public intellectual”
‘No….by asking for a retraction and an apology, that is not censorship it is a response to a published article which was misrepresentative.’
It was not a misrepresentation. Chomsky endorsed Johnstone’s distorted excuse for ’scholarship’ over Srebenica. He has form on this, as he also parrots the propaganda line about ‘fake’ concentration camps (the subject of the libel trial which sunk ‘Living Marxism’), and also claiming that the war in Kosovo was all the KLA’s fault:
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20060425.htm
But then what can one expect from someone who denied Year Zero?:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm
The ‘world’s top public intellectual’ is something of a specialist in counterknowledge.
This is worth noting from the RTS interview:
‘We know from the Western documentation what it was. In the year prior to the bombing, according to Western sources about two thousand people were killed, the killings were distributed, a lot of them were coming in fact according to British government, which was the most hawkish element of the Alliance, up until January 1999 a majority of killings came from the KLA guerillas who were coming in as they said, you know, to try to incite a harsh Serbian response, which they got, in order to appeal to Western humanitarians to bomb.’
Chomsky was referring to a House of Commons report which stressed that Kosovar Albanians ‘were suffering greater atrocities than the Serb population’, and that while the KLA’s attacks ‘were mostly focussed on Serb policemen’, the Serbian security forces ‘often focussed on unarmed civilians’.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/28/2809.htm
On Omarska:
‘NC: However, but if you look at the coverage, for example there was one famous incident which has completely reshaped the Western opinion and that was the photograph of the thin man behind the barb-wire.
DM: A fraudulent photograph, as it turned out.
NC: You remember. The thin men behind the barb-wire so that was Auschwitz and ‘we can’t have Auschwitz again.’ The intellectuals went crazy and the French were posturing on television and the usual antics. Well, you know, it was investigated and carefully investigated. In fact it was investigated by the leading Western specialist on the topic, Philip Knightly (sic), who is a highly respected media analyst and his specialty is photo journalism, probably the most famous Western and most respected Western analyst in this. He did a detailed analysis of it. And he determined that it was probably the reporters who were behind the barb-wire, and the place was ugly, but it was a refugee camp, I mean, people could leave if they wanted and, near the thin man was a fat man and so on, well and there was one tiny newspaper in England, probably three people, called LM which ran a critique of this, and the British (who haven’t a slightest concept of freedom of speech, that is a total fraud)…a major corporation, ITN, a big media corporation had publicized this, so the corporation sued the tiny newspaper for lible (sic). Now the British lible laws were absolutely atrocious. The person accused has to prove that the, what he’s reporting is not done in malice and he can’t prove that. So and in fact when you have a huge corporation with batteries of lawyers and so on, carrying out a suit against the three people in the office, who probably don’t have the pocket-money, it’s obvious what is going to happen. Especially under these grotesque lible laws.’
This is his take on what happened here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/itn/article/0,,191237,00.html
Brockes was too kind to Chomsky.
On the ITN v LM libel case, a classic example of british bullshit …er…. I mean justice.
That case was not just a little flawed was it?
These journalists were invited to the alleged concentration camps to inspect the compounds so the allegations could be dismissed. The photo was of Trnopolje, a refugee camp, as described by Paddy Ashdown at the time. So the photo was misleading, not that the factual veracity of it was of any concern to Justice Morland, nor were the presentations of Knightly and Simpson despite being subpeonaed.
I particularly like this comment by one of the claimants
‘I was not knowingly not telling the truth’
Diana Johnstones book, I have not read it so I cannot comment other than it is clear that its subject matter was far broader than the genocide overstatement cherrry picked out to discredit Chomsky for his endorsment. An appeal to fact and reason is how he describes it I think. and BTW to claim an overstatement of an event is not the same as to deny it.
“The ‘world’s top public intellectual’ is something of a specialist in counterknowledge.”
I guess that comes down to ones definition of counterknowledge, I consider it to be an untruth rather than politically inconvenient.
‘On the ITN v LM libel case, a classic example of british bullshit …er…. I mean justice.
That case was not just a little flawed was it?’
It’s only a ‘little flawed’ if you happen to be either an idiot or an apologist for Serb hypernationalism.
‘Living Marxism’ accused Ed Vulliamy of lying about Omarska and Trnopolje. Vulliamy and ITN took them to court. LM had the claims of a complete nut called Thomas Deichman to back their case - Deichman decided that the footage ITN took was faked because the fence behind which Fikret Alic and the other prisoners stood looked funny.
ITN and Vulliamy had the testimony of the survivors to back them up. LM lost the case because they didn’t have a leg to stand on. I suggest you read David Campbell’s account before you make any further comment on this issue:
http://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/part1.pdf
http://www.david-campbell.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/part2.pdf
If Chomsky was genuinely interested in finding out more about what happened, he would not still be repeating (wittingly or otherwise) the lie about Alic standing behind a fake fence. With this, Johnstone and his earlier championing of the Holocaust Denier Robert Faurisson, he has done one of two things:
(1) He has either got himself involved in a controversy and adopted an untenable position without appraising himself of the facts (and the respective merits of both protagonists in the argument) first, has made himself look like a fool, and is too obstinate to admit it.
Or
(2) He endorses genocide denial, so long as those that commit said crimes against humanity can be considered to be ‘anti-Western’ or ‘anti-imperialist’.
One of these propositions is true. Which is it?
Phillip Hammond notes:
“During the Kosovo bombing, even mild critics of British government policy were instantly denounced as appeasers and enemy stooges. The phenomenon is hardly new, of course, but today the silencing of debate has the full weight of contemporary emotional correctness behind it. Particularly since the Bosnian war, anyone doubting the altruistic motives of the West or the bestiality of demonised enemies like the Serbs risks being branded a neo-Nazi Holocaust-denier. In this context the suppression of dissent is done with such self-righteousness that it seems difficult to resist. ITN’s Richard Tait, for instance, declared that using the libel courts to close down a critical magazine and bankrupt its editor was ‘an important blow for freedom of speech’. Characteristically, Knightley was to have been a witness for LM’s defence in the ITN libel trial, although his testimony was ruled inadmissible (along with that of almost every other defence witness).”
Extract from “Lessons of the First Draft of History”.
I take it from posting that rant that (1) it doesn’t matter to you if ‘Living Marxism’ were lying when they said that the Bosnian Serb-run concentration camps were not real, and that the ITN journalists fabricated evidence of their existence, and (2) that it’s no big deal that Chomsky still repeats the myths propagated by LM.
Thank you for clarifying your position on this.
In order to comport with your last propositions I would need to fully support the charges, the conduct of the trial, and the verdict against LM.
Regarding Chomsky: You are taking an identical line to Brockes (or her editors) with their attempted hatchet job.
‘In order to comport with your last propositions I would need to fully support the charges, the conduct of the trial, and the verdict against LM.’
So why don’t you read Dr Campbell’s analysis of the case, which I linked to previously?
‘Regarding Chomsky: You are taking an identical line to Brockes (or her editors) with their attempted hatchet job.’
Well spotted. I happen to think that Chomsky’s record as an apologist for Serb atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo is well documented, fortunately by the man himself. And if you actually read through my comments and the sources I cite, you would see this for yourself.
Re: your quote from Philip Hammond - Hammond is a lecturer in Media Studies, not History, so quite why we should take him as an expert on the recent history of the Balkans is beyond me. In any case, his comments on the supposed ‘policy’ of demonising the Serbs completely ignores the equivocal position of the Major government to the Bosnian conflict, which involved treating all warring factions as morally equivalent, and blocking attempts to lift the arms embargo that penalised only one side - the Bosnian government. This was a line of policy endorsed by several sections of the British media (see, for example, the coverage offered by the ‘Daily’ and ‘Sunday Telegraph’, not to mention Brendan Simms’ ‘Unfinest Hour’).
Attitudes started to change around 1995, but that was due to the small matter of genocide at Srebrenica. Read Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both’s book on this act of barbarism if you have any illusions as to whether moral revulsion against the Bosnian Serb regime and its backers in Belgrade was in any way unwarranted.
In short, ‘Steve’, I suggest that you abandon the uncritical Chomsky-worship and start ascertaining the facts first.
The facts presented by the likes of Brock and Johnstone appear to be more plausible than that of the more manichaean accounts,
I find it interesting that the commander of UN forces in Bosnia, Gen Rose, was rather empathic toward the Serbs.
I think Knightly summed up the concentration camp issue very well and seems to suggest that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. (as is often the case).
You can find his comments at the end of the counterpunch article
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11052005.html
I am looking forward to discussing the Balkans war, with a very well informed source shortly.
It might help to clear the cognitive dissonance that results in reading too many narratives and counter-narratives.
Correction….”results from reading too many…………”
So you prefer your sources on the Yugoslav wars to come from hacks like Johnstone who don’t speak Serbo-Croat, never visited the Balkans, and who don’t cite local sources? Why am I not surprised.
Knightley’s comments are a travesty of the truth. Again I refer you to Campbell’s analysis of the case, and painstaking examination of the evidence. Your unwillingness to engage with this speaks volumes.
I want to ask you a question, Steve. Morally, and intellectually, what makes you different from neo-Nazi types who say that the Holocaust ‘never happened’?
For one, there was no holocaust in former Yugoslavia, it is unfair on the Serbian people to draw such a comparison. Just as it was unfair to draw the comparison between Trnopolje and nazi extermination camps.
On holocaust revisionists: It would seem that few deny or condone the attrocious mistreatment and massacre’s of minority racial groups including Jews. There is a difference between those and Nazi apologists and anti-semites, driven by racism, nationalism and belief in Nazi doctrine (Neo Nazi’s).
If were talking genocide, perhaps we should remember that the reason the Yugoslavian charge of genocide against the US could not be taken to trial was because the US, a conditional signatory of the ‘Genocide Convention’ is immune to prosecution by the ICJ (that being the condition). Also Serbia, was cleared by the ICTY and ICJ of genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina, despite the Srebrenica judgement.
(Thankyou for all your links thus far, I have read them all. including Campbell.)
The problem with the arguments presented on this comment page is that people by nature generally do not wish or simply refuse to really seek the truth about an event or events based on evidence. We look at one or two pieces of headline story, react to it, and then proclaim ourselves “educated about the event, and knowledgeable of the truth”And Americans are some of the most easily misled people on the planet. And we’re the most easily distracted by mindless entertainment and mass media headlines. All we care about is having the story fed to us, and the official story is good enough. Why seek any more information? Cable TV just told me the whole story!
I would ask this: How many people who have posted comments on here have actually read Crossing the Rubicon? or bothered to read much of the excellent work done by 911 researchers? And really read it and weighed ALL the information before reaching a conclusion, WITHOUT allowing your personal beliefs to come into it? As you would a criminal investigation? It does NOT suffice as Mike Ruppert has said repeatedly, to react based on what you believe is the truth in a ciminal case….what suffices is ONLY an objective conclusion based on the evidence presented. And most Americans simply refuse to do this. They can’t possibly even consider or begin to believe that our government and our intelligence community could be as corrupt as it actually is. But what you don’t want to believe about your government has NOTHING to do wtih the evidence or reality of the situation.
As opposed to reacting to a single story in which one tiny part of his book has a source who ends having a questionable character, and then thereby proclaming his ENTIRE WORK, his ENTIRE BODY of evidence, his ENTIRE resarch endeavor as a “fairy tale”, and based on nothing but fantasy, then you are doing a discredit to him and to anyone for that matter seeking the real truth about this government and this country.
But that is what America is all about. We don’t want to believe anything negative about our government or military, we don’t want to be critical of our institutions, and so we simply BLACK OUT those pieces of information that don’t coincide with our beliefs!!! You can do that with anything. “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories”…..and so therefore no matter how much information or research you have access to, you’ll never choose to believe anything except the official story, because it’s the only reality you can live with and still sleep at night. It’s the only thing that fits your reality.
And again, that is NOT the truth. That is living in a way in which you ignore pieces of evidence to suit your own needs. And that is how America now works. Question nothing, challenge nothing, say nothing against America’s supposed unwavering “goodness”, and life will be just fine. That’s great for your reality, but I have disturbing news for you. You are mentally ill. Perhaps you’ll wake up some day.
Mike Ruppert’s book is nearly 600 pages long, and simply because one tiny piece of the book turns up a source who ends up having a checkered character, that suddenly that means that his ENTIRE book is discredited? Wow, that really shows a great ability of Americans to discriminate,balance and seek the whole truth in a matter. But as Mike said when quoting Allen Dulles regarding the Warren Commission Report, “Americans don’t read.” And sure enough, he’s right! YOU DON’T READ. AMERICANS don’t read. They want a headline that will discredit once and for all anyone who challenges our government or our supposed democracy. Such is the story of Mike Ruppert. His body of work is so disturbing and so shocking and so truthful, that most Americans simply black it out, and most Americans will declare Mike Ruppert’s work as fantasy WITHOUT even reading his book. And that is perhaps the most disturbing thing of all. There is America in a nutshell. A man who researches 911 and researches our government for two years, and spends another year writing a 600 page book, is discredited and dismissed by the public without pausing, because it doesn’t fit with what they want to believe. And with that mindset there is no hope.
I will leave you with this. You need to look at the whole picture of what Mike Ruppert is saying and stop focusing on one source(out of thousands by the way that he used), and judging the information he has brought forth. One source does NOT discredite an entire work which has evidence from hundreds of sources and pieces of information. You cannot ignore the rest of his work or dismiss it because one source out of hundreds was discredited. That is irresponsible and serves no purpose other than to perpetuate a conclusion based on emotion and belief rather than on information and evidence taken as a whole.
“Crossing the Rubicon” is the most important book written in the 21st century, and it is destined also to be one of most ignored, discredited, and despised books of our age. And it’s all because the book speaks the truth about our world. And it’s a truth most people are too scared to face. The US government is not the noble and innocent bearer of peace, love, and freedom as your media has fed you. The truth is much uglier and much more disturbing. It is YOUR problem if you can’t handle what Mike Ruppert is saying. It is YOUR problem if you choose to live in a CNN world in which America always has a halo over its head. You can make that your reality if you want. But shame on you if you do.
I would finally in closing point people towards the works of David Ray Griffin, Michael Parenti, and others who speak the truth about our government and about what is really taking place on our planet. These people are the true historians and real truth seekers. Their problem like so many who have come before them, is that what they have to say is too upsetting and too disturbing for most people to face. It doesn’t change the truth.
Mike
‘For one, there was no holocaust in former Yugoslavia, it is unfair on the Serbian people to draw such a comparison. Just as it was unfair to draw the comparison between Trnopolje and nazi extermination camps.’
That is an outrageous statement. There was genocide and ethnic cleansing, and there were concentration camps where people were systematically abused and in many cases killed because of their ethnicity and religion. Don’t use the absence of gas chambers to whitewash what the Bosnian Serbs did.
‘On holocaust revisionists: It would seem that few deny or condone the attrocious mistreatment and massacre’s of minority racial groups including Jews. There is a difference between those and Nazi apologists and anti-semites, driven by racism, nationalism and belief in Nazi doctrine (Neo Nazi’s).’
Your use of the term ‘revisionist’ is illuminating, and is an inherent effort to legitimise them. A ‘revisionist’ will critically analyse and review the evidence in front of him (or her), a ‘denier’ will just ignore it. And in my experience, the likes of Toben, Irving et al are not just querying specific details of the Holocaust, they are saying it never happened. If you’ve got any doubts, have a look at the Michael Santomauro thread and follow the arguments offered by various sickos there.
‘If were talking genocide, perhaps we should remember that the reason the Yugoslavian charge of genocide against the US could not be taken to trial was because the US, a conditional signatory of the ‘Genocide Convention’ is immune to prosecution by the ICJ (that being the condition). Also Serbia, was cleared by the ICTY and ICJ of genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina, despite the Srebrenica judgement.’
This is utter bollocks. Genocide is defined by the 1948 convention as ‘any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group’.
This does not cover acts of war, such as aerial bombing. The USA signed the convention on 11th December 1948 - its signature was not ‘conditional’, and had nothing to do with the establishment of the International Criminal Court 40 years later.
With the case brought by the Bosnian government against Serbia in February 2007, the latter was cleared of direct involvement in genocide, but the ICJ also ruled that Serbia had failed to prevent genocide (notably with Srebrenica) and punish the perpetrators, notably Karadzic (still at liberty at the time) and Mladic. They did not say that there was no genocide:
http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?sum=667&code=bhy&p1=3&p2=2&case=91&k=f4&p3=5
‘(Thankyou for all your links thus far, I have read them all. including Campbell.)’
Judging by your comments, evidently not. Would you like to go for a hat-trick and say that nothing untoward happened in Rwanda in 1994?
Mr Hayes, in answer to your diatribe. Firstly, I am not an American, and this is in fact a British website. It may puzzle you to learn this, but there are millions of people across this planet for whom English is their first language, but who are not US citizens.
I have read what you call ‘the excellent work done by 911 researchers’, and have ‘weighed all the information’ before reaching my conclusions. If you want to follow my arguments and my reasons for dismissing the fabrications of the laughably-misnamed ‘truth’ movement, you can consult these comments and the ensuing threads:
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/03/what-al-qaeda-says-about-911/
http://counterknowledge.com/2008/12/15-questions-911-truthers-now-need-to-answer/
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/01/5-more-questions-for-911-truthers/
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/01/more-on-15-questions-for-911-truthers-a-reply-to-stewart-bradley/
http://counterknowledge.com/2009/03/15-questions-for-truthers-a-final-response-to-stewart-bradley/
http://counterknowledge.com/2008/12/is-support-finally-drying-up-for-the-911-truth-movement/
‘The USA signed the convention on 11th December 1948 - its signature was not ‘conditional’,’
I’m sure you know that it took the US 40 years to ratify the ‘Genocide Convention’, when the ICJ was established. and did so under conditions that significantly weakened the convention. The “Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package” arose out of US domestic ethnic concerns, but was invoked to give the US legal immunity against charges of genocide levelled against it by Yugoslavia/Serbia.
‘With the case brought by the Bosnian government against Serbia in February 2007, the latter was cleared of direct involvement in genocide, but the ICJ also ruled that Serbia had failed to prevent genocide (notably with Srebrenica) and punish the perpetrators, notably Karadzic (still at liberty at the time) and Mladic. They did not say that there was no genocide’
Thats more or less what I said.
‘Serbia, was cleared by the ICTY and ICJ of genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina, despite the Srebrenica judgement.’
‘Your use of the term ‘revisionist’ is illuminating, and is an inherent effort to legitimise them.’
Thats a straw man Joseph.
Go talk holocaust deniers on the active thread here on this site, But please refrain from tarring me as such.
Having seen Vreeland in service of good (prevention and preemption ) I would appreciate if everyone would lay off him, because among a half dozen folks he is also a witness to the tradeshow held in Manhattan on 9/11 and its’ genesis. You don’t have to go to Moscow, when Moscow comes to You, but You would say You went to Moscow when 9/11 was only one half of the actual DEAL struck in early 2001. The witnesses will remain at locations, presumably, until rounded up and mailed to The Hague as was part of the plan, when it was U.S. counterdrug ops in the Middle East and elsewhere that repeatedly cost lives and dovetailed into the funding of the attacks. Attacking Yourself as gruesome as that was, did make terrorism unthinkable and beyond comprehension. Richter scales on that day read out 2.4 or a little less, short of neutron weapons. P2OG and JTTF ‘86 of Bush Senior’s Exec orders as well as PNAC come into play.
There was no collaboration, it was: Find the missing Nukes from lost arsenals after Soviet break-up and deal with those that have the ability to retrieve them for U.S.. A global security motion at the least, sanctioned from the top.
Try to come out of the stone age and think weather weapons and earthquake machines, etc.
I come down somewhere in between on the conspiacy theorist vs. skeptic debates, but one thing I’ve never been able to tolerate about the skeptics is their goddammed intellectual arrogance. Skeptics of Columbus argued that the world was flat, and that the sun revolved around the earth. It’s not like the radical thinkers haven’t won a round or two. Too much of the time, rational thought is just a security blanket for people too cowardly to face the truth - a balm that allows them to feel superior to others.
Mostafa, I would try to address your comments on Ruppert if I could actually work out what you’re saying.
Anonymice, I’m sorry you’re so upset about our ‘intellectual arrogance’, but your comparison between us ’skeptics’ and the flat-earthers of the Middle Ages is somewhat misplaced. After all, we (1) have the facts and the evidence on our side, (2) we aren’t censoring the ‘truthers’, and (3) all we ask for is for truthers to provide firm evidence for their ‘theories’, and also (as per my posts) explain the logical and factual anomalies which undermine their claims on what ‘really happened’ on 9/11. If that upsets you, then poor you.
Joseph… Bill O’Reilly believes the official story of 9/11 so it can’t be true. He has been caught lying many many times. That is the same logic you are applying to Mr. Ruppert. To be able to wrap your head around the possibility of 9/11 being an inside job you need to know your history well. Real history. You have to know how things work. Really work. Things are deeper than you think. But you have to do research. Here are some things unrelated to 9/11 just to get you in a correct mindset when looking at 9/11.
Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corporation which was seized in October 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act as being owned by “enemy aliens.” He made money off of dealings with the Nazi’s basically.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D6fxyOtVeI
Article and interview of writer.
Then there is the declassified document called, “Operation Northwoods or Northwoods,” was a false-flag plan, proposed within the United States government in 1962. The plan called for CIA or other operatives to commit apparent acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Castro-led Cuba. One plan was to “develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”.
This operation is especially notable in that it included plans for hijackings and bombings followed by the use of phony evidence that would blame the terrorist acts on a foreign government, namely Cuba.
The plan stated:
The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.
Operation Northwoods was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by then-Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, and sent to the Secretary of Defense.
John F Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods.
Then there is the FACT that George Bush stole the 2000 election. It is not disputed, it is fact. They had the debacle in Florida, the state of Jeb Bush and in the middle of the recount 5 judges just decided to give the presidency to George Bush. Many real journalists consider this the official end of democracy in the United States. What did Bush have to do to make that happen? Why didn’t they give it to Gore? Did they flip a coin? Who knows.
Then there is Vioxx. In June 2000, Vioxx’s maker Merck sent the FDA results of the VIGOR study which showed that Vioxx posed serious risks of heart attack, stroke, and sudden-cardiac death. Somehow the FDA didn’t get around to changing the Vioxx label to warn about these risks until April 2002, almost two full years later. In September 2004 Merck was so alarmed by results it found in the APPROVe study it not only shut down the study early but pulled Vioxx from the market.
Then came the story of an amazing cover-up. David Graham, M.D., a 20-year employee of the FDA along with other researchers found that Vioxx had caused as many as 140,000 cases of serious coronary heart disease, as many as 60,000 of them fatal. The study was slated for publication in the November 17, 2004 issue of the British medical journal The Lancet. The study didn’t appear when scheduled because Graham says that he was threatened by superiors at the FDA. He told Newsweek,
What I believe they were trying to prevent from reaching the public was our estimates of the number of people who suffered heart attacks or died because of Vioxx use…I believe there were multiple levels of FDA management who wanted to keep the information of the magnitude of harm caused by Vioxx from the public and wanted to damage my credibility as a scientist…There’s no question in my mind that, had Merck not withdrawn Vioxx, it would still be on the shelves today and Americans would still be dying from heart attacks because of it. And this would be with the FDA’s full knowledge and complicity. When [Merck's] VIGOR study [which resulted in the addition of a warning label on the drug] came out in June 2000, it showed a fivefold increase in heart attack risk. What on earth was the benefit of Vioxx that the FDA thought was so great and so valuable that it outweighed this risk?[20]
When asked why doctors and patients weren’t warned about Vioxx earlier, Graham said,
I would assume the reason this happened is because the FDA sees its mission primarily as one of serving the [pharmaceutical] industry…If the FDA really gave a high priority to safety, it’s possible they never would have approved Vioxx when they did…The FDA’s failure to ban high-dose Vioxx in 2000 is a mistake of monumental proportions, but it highlights the deficiencies in the FDA and its serious structural, cultural and scientific problems…I think the FDA is incapable of reforming itself, and it shouldn’t be trusted to reform itself. The only way that things will change is if Congress imposes the changes. If it doesn’t, it will have to accept some of the responsibility for the disasters that will follow. With Vioxx, the FDA looked the other way. And America paid a severe price for it.
Graham’s study was eventually published in The Lancet in late January 2005,[21] but amazingly, about three weeks later on February 18 an FDA advisory panel recommended returning Vioxx to the market. What should particularly haunt the panel was a vote in favor of Bextra,[22] despite the panel’s concern about limited long-term data on its safety.[23]
Then, lo and behold, on April 7, 2005—less than a month after the favorable advisory vote—Pfizer withdrew Bextra from the market at FDA request, citing not only heart attack, stroke, and sudden-cardiac death risks, but also potentially fatal skin reactions. It turns out that ten members of the FDA panel who voted February 18, 2005 for both Vioxx and Bextra not only had ties to their makers, but their votes were crucial for securing the favorable votes on the panel for both drugs.[24]
So a wing of the US government lets 40,000-60,000 of its own citizens die. Do heads roll over it at least? Was it a huge story? No it was swept under the rug.
Then there is hurricane Katrina. This to me proves not that Bush is incompetent, but that he simply doesn’t care about the citizens of the United States. All he had to do was say the words, “Send the army.” But he didn’t. If you watch Spike Lee’s “When the Levees Broke” you’ll realize how American citizens were treated like they weren’t welcome in their own country.
And there are lots more if you look for them. How about the fact that a small group of men loan the United States most of its money. The owners of the Fed. One owner, David Rockefeller also created the Council on Foreign Relations. I believe almost all presidents have been a part of the CFR, including Obama and his wife. David Rockefeller has been quoted,
We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years.”
“It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
“For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.
Some claim bankers run this country not presidents. Obama raised 750 million for his campaign. I wonder if he owes any favours? Either way, some food for thought.
Thank You Dan for chiming in the PharmaCoLogIC perspective, just want to reiterate that the second look at ‘Ruby Tuesday’ is never too late to take for a consuming public. It all stopped for me when the U.S. Dept. of State somehow issued a press release in Pakistan (a staunch ally in nuclear weapons recovery tasks) containing the hypothetical language ( after the Andaman Quake), that ‘there may be a nuclear culprit”.
That is an ugly truth, but is it genocide to murder 238,000 coastal dwellers, or they don’t qualify under the group thing?
Vreeland is by no means a con, he probably has several passports issued, probably multiple U.S. and maybe not all of them blue, or an anniversary green edition. He heard stuff and saw stuff and it all scared the life out of most folks. He is in jail for a reason, probably for protection.
Is there a valid case for a war crime tribunal if several services from several countries put forward evidence that a western backed P2OG/TIWG program sucessfully detonated an arsenal through proxies that was coaxed out of ‘hiding in the wrong hands’ by an endeavor ltDV saw coming. The math is easy: insure the target, buy it, hit it, collect, buy the nukes, destroy the nukes, pay the penalty. Or was the cold war a hoax and WW2 just a business opportunity for GM’s Opel. What did they fight over in Europe again? Either way the numbers check out, not that anyone is looking to hard at the bank domino effect. I gotta take my Zyprexa and wake up in the same position I fall asleep in. Wonder why all the weight gain?
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