Cynthia McKinney increasing her ties to the racist far-right: Michael Collins Piper and Israel Shamir.

About a year ago, I wrote a number of pieces on Cynthia McKinney's increasing connections to far-right bigots such as former Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Mahathir; his chief aide, conspiracy theory author Matthias Chang (read here and here); and Islamic Party of Britain leader David Pidcock (read here).  I also wrote about her anti-Semitic interviews with hate bloggers Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan (read here).   McKinney's supporters and representatives of the U.S. Green Party have defended her work with this motley crew, sometimes stating that condemning McKinney's work with them amounts to "guilt by association", acknowledging by implication that this group has some troubling beliefs or worse.  At other times, McKinney supporters have actually defended the extreme views of this group.

Now I've found two additional far right figures for whom McKinney has expressed her support and with whom she's made common cause.  I've also discovered that she's done another interview with the two hate bloggers about whom I wrote last year.


Non-denial denials

The information about McKinney's ties to Chang and Pidcock which I published here last spring appears to have been the basis at least in part for an article written by Rob Waters which was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in their December, 2009 Intelligence Report.  (Read here.)  For that article, Waters got Scott McLarty, a Green Party official, to go on the record to deny that McKinney shared the views espoused by her far-right associates, calling such a conclusion "guilt by association".  However, McLarty failed to find any problem with a lengthy quote from Chang's book The Shadow Money Lenders which McKinney posted on a Green Party website, in which a long list of Jewish bankers were accused of plotting to destabilize the world in order to take control of it. 

Anita Stewart, a Green Party official and staffer to McKinney (during the 2008 presidential campaign and, since then, with McKinney's Dignity Action Network), posted a gnomic comment to one of my articles about McKinney's ties to Chang.  She defended McKinney's endorsement of Chang's conspiracy theories as intrinsically valid.  Stewart's response, which, like McLarty's, failed to contend with the bigotry or far-right ideology of McKinney's allies, stated that, if McKinney agrees with them, they're probably right. (See comments here.)

As you read McKinney's praise of Chang, and McLarty's and Stewart's defense of that praise, keep in mind that Chang has written that he was inspired by "the American Free Press, The Barnes Review, The Spotlight, and the truth seekers that I have long admired, Harry Elmer Barnes, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, Christopher Petherick, Eustace Mullins (whose life-long persecution by the Police State is a disgrace to the Constitution), (and) Col. Donn de Grand Pre..."  That's a long list, and some of the names are obscure ones.  Suffice it to say that there is a common thread of bigotry running through that list.

Also keep in mind that McKinney's connection to Chang is more than lip service.  Chang, as chief aide to former PM Mahathir of Malaysia, runs a foundation purportedly devoted to the absolute pacifist position of making all war illegal.   (Read here.)  That foundation, far from actually campaigning to ban all war, focuses exclusively on falsely accusing Israel of crimes such as genocide.  Cynthia McKinney has participated as a keynote speaker, presumably for pay, in at lest three of this foundations' international conferences (two in Kuala Lumpur and one in London) where she participated in this ritualistic hate in the name of peace.  


Compared by her friends to Father Coughlin


While McKinney's supporters defend her by (falsely) claiming that she does not make anti-Semitic statements herself, the same defense cannot conceivably be made for those who interview her.  In one of last year's "Ognir" interviews with McKinney, Ognir/Ryan introduced her with a lengthy discussion of "banking Jewry" having controlled the world for the past four centuries.  In another, Ryan asked McKinney about Rahm Emanuel, saying "(h)e's got Jew nationality and Jew loyalties."  Far from condemning this obviously bigoted remark, McKinney replied by saying "I think that what you're talking about is who controls the U.S. government".  She went on to explain that she left the Democratic Party precisely because she believes it to be controlled by this conspiracy.

In last year's interviews, Ryan's questions to McKinney expounded elaborate, bizarre conspiracy theories concerning Jewish culpability for 9/11, the world financial crisis, capitalism, communism, and, absurdly, medical marijuana and gay marriage.  McKinney failed to disagree with the interviewers' assertions once, sometimes going so far as to say that she knew what the interviewer meant by this drivel, thus giving her tacit support.  On several occasions, she stated her explicit support.  She also showed her own ties to reality to be a bit shaky, comparing herself to civil rights hero Rosa Parks.  (Read my original posts on this for more details including transcripts.)

Since I last wrote about her interviews with Ryan and fellow hate blogger Daryl Bradford Smith, McKinney has returned to give them additional interviews.  In one conducted by Smith and Ryan on January 14, 2010, Smith introduced McKinney as the best thing to happen in U.S. politics since the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic radio preacher Father Coughlin.  (Listen below at about 6:20.)



This comparison, which most people would consider insulting, is a high complement for Smith, who features portraits of both McKinney and Coughlin and recordings of Coughlin's infamous post-Kristallnacht broadcasts on his website.  (Read here.  Smith also features on his website the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and conspiracy theories about Jews causing the swine flu epidemic.) If one of McKinney's critics were to denounce her by comparing her to Coughlin, that person would be swamped with passionate denials and vicious denunciations impugning the comparison as somehow motivated by a conservative, "Zionist" or even Jewish bias.  When the person actually interviewing McKinney makes that comparison, we hear the sound of silence.

from Daryl Bradford Smith's iamthewitness.com website:




McKinney says she's a fan of anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper, he dedicates a book to her
 
Cynthia McKinney has played the double-game of working with increasing brazenness with racists of the far-right, even as she says through her spokesmen that we shouldn't judge her by her friends.  I wonder how they explain the fact that McKinney has declared herself, via Facebook, to be a fan of the anti-Semitic author Michael Collins Piper.  Piper has worked for decades in the employ of Willis Carto, one of the United States' most infamous far-right racists. 

Author Leonard Zeskind describes Carto as one of the two foremost leaders of the U.S. "white nationalist" movement in the latter half of the 20th Century, and Piper as Carto's "loyal assistant". (Read here and here.  A Piper interview with Carto is available here.  [Link goes directly to RAM file.])  Carto is the founder of a number of extreme right wing groups such as the Liberty Lobby (which "appealed to both anti-communists and arch-segregationists", read here) and the Holocaust-denial group Institute for Historical Review, among his countless other similarly oriented projects.  Piper has worked for the newspaper founded and published by Carto, American Free Press, since that paper's founding, and has participated in a number of Carto's Holocaust-denial conferences.  (Read here and here.)  Piper has also been described as a "far-right emissary to the Islamic world", attempting to unite Islamists and the U.S. far-right around the common causes of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism .  (Read here and here.  My earlier article on Piper can be read here.)

Piper, along with David Duke and a rogue's gallery of others, participated in Holocaust denial conferences hosted by far-right Russian Nationalists (read here), and, infamously, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who invited Piper to the Tehran Holocaust denial conference as his personal guest (read here).  It would be fair to say of him that Piper has made the production of books, columns and radio programs fabulizing Jewish conspiracies to control the world his life's work.  He has, among other things, accused Jews of assassinating U.S. presidents, secretly controlling the government, financial system and media, and, literally, practicing human sacrifice and cannibalism.

McKinney supporters might be interested to learn that Piper's employer Willis Carto worked in George Wallace's segregationist presidential campaign as a leader of Youth for Wallace and subsequently set up an organization which morphed into the neo-Nazi National Alliance.  Both Carto and Piper have for many years worked with former-Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and continue to do so.  (For a recent example, read here.)  Carto was a key backer both of Duke's 1988 run for U.S. president (read here) and Duke's 2004 "New Orleans Protocol" outlining a political strategy for U.S. "European Nationalists" (i.e. white supremicists).  (Read here.)  The ADL says that Carto is "one of the most influential American anti-Semitic propagandists of the past 50 years... he has been associated with nearly every significant far-right movement in the country, from neo-Nazism to militias, segregationism to Holocaust denial."  (Read here.  For Searchlight Magazine's take on Carto, read here.  Examples of Carto's racist letters to Verne Kaub, a Liberty Lobby board member and author, are available here and here.)

Not only has McKinney now declared her support for Carto's assistant, Michael Collins Piper, Piper  has reportedly declared his support for Cynthia McKinney by dedicating his book The Judas Goats: The Enemy Within to her as follows.  (Read here.)

To the Honorable Cynthia McKinney
Democratic Congresswoman from Georgia

. . .For daring to speak out and raise questions about what really happened on 9-11 and about the dangerous U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world — a policy that has made America many enemies around the globe — Cynthia McKinney was driven from the U.S. Congress in 2002.  Judas Goat — a former Republican, no less — was recruited to run against Miss McKinney in the Democratic Party primary.GOP organizers moved into the Democratic Party to assist the Judas Goat. Tons of Zionist money poured into Georgia to help Miss McKinney’s challenger. In the end, Miss McKinney was defeated.  But two years later Cynthia McKinney made a comeback and she sits in the U.S. Congress today — a voice for sane policies and one who still does not hesitate to speak the truth. And as this is written, they are moving against her once again. Her voice is one for all good people. Dear God: Let there be more like Cynthia McKinney!

Piper's Judas Goats book alleges that the Jews control the world via dual Zionist and Trostkyite conspiracies, both under the control of the Rothschild family.   Piper describes it as supplement to a book called Synagogue of Satan by Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, which Piper calls "an overwhelming detailed history of how Jewish power and influence -- particularly through the venue [sic] of the Rothschild banking dynasty -- how that influence came to rule supreme".  (He's nothing if not consistent.)  He talks about the book at length in an interview with far-right radio hate preacher Texe Marrs, audio of which is embedded below.

(Listen here at 6:30.)

Michael Collins Piper also has at least one connection to the previously discussed anti-Semitic blogger Noel "Ognir" Ryan.  The below-embedded video, which I found on Ryan's website TheInformationUnderground.com (here),  features audio from a recent Piper radio program.  In that program, the administrator Ryan's internet forum and radio programs (under the name "LordLindsey" -- he goes by "Lindsey" here), tells Piper how pleased he was with Ognir's McKinney interview.  (At about 3:20 of the video below.)  The reason?  McKinney alleged in that interview (at great length) that (in Lindsey's words) "Zionist Jews control more than 99% of the United States Congress". (You can listen here, at first link, to that McKinney interview.) [NOTE: Among the ever-growing list of incredibly offensive material available on the TheInformationUnderground.com, is a video which attempts to glorify Holocaust Museum murderer Jim von Brunn. View here.]





Considering that Michael Collins Piper does little else but promote the grossest bigotry, I would be very interested to hear from McKinney what it is about him that she supports.  Maybe there's some aspect of his work that's escaped public notice that McKinney would like to draw attention to with her praise of him.  I would also be interested in hearing the reactions of progressives to McKinney's support for this advocate of the racist far-right. 


"I am in Turkey with Israel Shamir!!!"

That's how Cynthia McKinney giddily headlined her article on her meeting with Israel Shamir in Ankara last year (read here).  She writes (here):

I can hardly believe this moment!!  Israel Shamir has written about me and lifted my spirits when I was most down.  Even from faraway Israel, he understood my plight and dared give voice to the truth.  They say that sometimes distance gives clarity--and certainly in Israel's case, in observing my serial targeting, he saw what many inside the United States could not see.  Despite his writings, I never met him until this moment, just a few minutes ago!!  We are speaking together this afternoon in Ankara, Turkey.  He has already sent his message out on his list and so I include it here for you.  I will send my message to you later.  I will bring these contacts from around the world that I have made on behalf of peace, home to the United States so that we can more easily achieve our objectives for justice and peace and dignity in the area of policy where we and the world need it the most.  We are a part of something much bigger than us individually, and our moment is now.

I guess they hit it off.  For those who don't know of Shamir, he's a shady character who got his start working as journalist for a prominent Russian, far-right, ultra-nationalist newspaper under the pen name "Robert David" .  (His legal name has, at various times, been Jöran Jermas or Adam Ermash.)  He spent some time living in Israel under the assumed name "Israel Shamir".  After this, he Portrayed himself in the West as an Israeli and a leftist, and has focused largely on producing anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda.  He has meanwhile continued to maintain an ideological double identity, publishing in Eastern European languages and Russian from an overtly far-right perspective.    Although he is ethnically Russian and a naturalized citizen of Sweden, he touts the fact that he lived in Israel under his assumed name (read here and here and here and here), and is frequently cited as an "Israeli journalist" when used as source.  This identity is useful to writers who either want to put an acceptable face on what they know to be anti-Israel disinformation, or are credulous enough to believe in the fairy tales he promotes.  I wrote about one such instance, Alison Weir's reliance on Shamir's promotion of literal truth of the blood libel, here and here.  Weir cited him as an "Israeli journalist" working to uncover what she and Shamir describe as Israel's campaign of murdering people to steal their organs.  Both Weir and McKinney still work with Shamir and cite him as an authority in spite of his having been denounced as an anti-Semite by Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah (read here), and as an impostor and charlatan by countless others.

To cite one out of countless examples of Israel Shamir's extremism, he counts among his close ideological allies the infamous Horst Mahler, whom Shamir calls "(a) friend of Palestine and anti-zionist, an anti-imperialist freedom fighter".  Read here.  Mahler, formerly a leader of the far left Red Army Fraction, has been for many years a leader Germany's racist far right, largely motivated by extreme anti-Semitism (as evidenced here).  In 2003, Mahler founded a Holocaust denial organization he called Verein zur Rehabilitierung der wegen Bestreitens des Holocaust Verfolgten.  (Read their press release here.  Co-signers of the organization's charter included Ernst Zündel, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, and Frederick Töben.)  In subsequent years, Mahler has been convicted several times of crimes connected to his activism connected to denial of Nazi war crimes.  In a 2007 interview with the German edition of Vanity Fair, an English translation of which "Shamir" makes available on his website (read here), Mahler said of Jews that they "are the embodiment of a god, who according to our understanding is Satan, and they play a tragic role in the corruption and negation of the life of all the other Peoples".  (In that interview, Mahler greeted his interviewer by saying "Heil Hitler!”, and  went on to praise Hitler, defend his own father's Nazism, and equate it with leftist opposition to "American imperialism".)

Horst  Mahler and "Israel Shamir" in 2008

Mahler (second from left) with sign reading "There was no Holocaust"

"Israel Shamir" has found a very willing  subject for his disinformation in Cynthia McKinney.  With the instincts of a gifted con artist he found the sweet spot where her prejudices intersect with his agenda.  Via McKinney, Shamir promotes the idea that Europe's neo-Nazis and Russia's ultra-nationalists are funded by Jews as part of a global war on Islam, and that this purported covert war is intrinsic to Israel's existence.  This is a bit of misdirection that someone with Shamir's connections to Russian ultra-nationalists -- connections he has been careful to conceal -- might find very useful.

Shamir's writing style can be a bit diffuse, but while following his train of thought might be  tricky, you can be certain as to its destination.  Here's a portion of the text of his Ankara speech as posted by McKinney on her Facebook page:

The problem is the Jewish state. Not only does it besiege Gaza and destroy a football stadium in el Bireh. These are local problems, painful but local. The Jewish state (It is not a Jewish state. It is a Zionist state. S1000+) focuses Jewish power all over the world into action. Without a Jewish state, this power would disperse; it would remain local, it would remain chaotic, probably it would be subdued by the forces of assimilation. Israel focuses these chaotic forces and concentrates them into action.

This action is against Islam. Not only against Islam, but Dar ul Islam (the Islamic world) is a prime target. In the US , the Jewish Neocons led their country into a crusade against Iraq and Afghanistan ; now they are spearheading the push against Iran.

They have formed a powerful front against President Obama and have turned him into a laughing stock after he uttered a few words of wisdom about Palestine .

In Europe , if you inspect the coffers of anti-Muslim neo-Nazi groups, you'll find that they thrive on Jewish support. In Russia , Jewish nationalists and Zionists try to rally the Russians against their Muslim brethren. Sometimes they do it under cover of the Russian Church , or of Russian nationalism. I wrote about this recently, as I had discovered that the most fervently anti-Muslim forces in Russia are organised by crypto-Zionists.

Even if a Palestinian state were to be established and recognised, it wouldn’t stop Israeli attempts to undermine its neighbours, to bomb Iran , to sow the seeds of discord from Russia to France , from Turkey to India . Israel 's too powerful intelligence services would keep meddling. Neither would it neutralise the armed forces of Israel , and you know as well as anybody that the generals do not give up their toys, their privileges or their influence easily. The Israeli military machine is so powerful that it would seek to exercise its might.

Consider that the source for this incoherent conspiracy theory has been associated with precisely the far-right Russian nationalist movement most ardently connected to both anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic violence in Russia.  I tend to believe that McKinney (like the rest of Shamir's audience in Ankara) is oblivious to this fact and is taking him at face value to be an Israeli leftist.  But that sort of gullibility is no excuse for the promotion of this sort of deranged and hateful conspiracy theory.  Regardless of whom McKinney believes Shamir to be, the intent of this string of lies is clearly stated: to drive further wedges between Muslims and Jews, to oppose a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel and to deny Israel's right to exist.  In promoting these views, McKinney, like Shamir, should be regarded as an anti-peace activist.

"Guilt by association": a catch-all defense for supporting the indefensible

Cynthia McKinney and her supporters may call any condemnation of her work with Matthias Chang, Michelle Renouf, David Pidcock, Mahathir Tun, Michael Collins Piper, Jöran "Israel Shamir" Jermas, Daryl Bradford Smith and Noel "Ognir" Ryan guilt by association, but by doing so, they help legitimize racism, anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, as does McKinney herself.  While guilt by association might be a legitimate defense to merely talking with, attending the same meetings as, or even belonging to the same organizations as bigots, it is quite another matter to support them politically, tout their writings, promote their views, or actually work in their employ.  By doing this, and by doing this with increasing frequency, McKinney has made precisely her association with bigotry the centerpiece of her message.

More importantly "guilt by association" refers to a legal standard for criminal acts: people cannot be held legally responsible for the acts of others unless they criminally participate in those acts as well.  The standard by which we judge the character of political figures should be much higher than that.  McKinney's supporters, in defending her work with racists and extremists, say "only hold her to the standard by which we judge criminal acts".  A political figure whose followers hold to such a low standard must be doing something wrong.  Besides, as I have shown above and in my earlier articles, this defense ignores what is now painfully obvious.  McKinney is not just associating with people who do and say bad things, she is actively supporting those malicious acts and participating in them herself.


Other McKinney supporters defend her differently, claiming that she is well-intentioned, but is recklessly making ill-advised alliances.  As the number of these alliances grows, and the connections grow deeper, this defense becomes less and less plausible.  The fact that Cynthia McKinney has made common cause with bigots of the far-right with at least some knowledge of who they are indicates that her actions are based on a malice she shares with them.  Cynthia McKinney has done nothing to distance herself from the overtly bigoted views espoused by so many of those she works with, even when they espouse these views to her in public forums.  On the contrary, she has gone out of her way to agree with many of these views, and even to publish them on websites maintained by her or by the Green Party on her behalf.  While in the past she mostly avoided using the word "Jew" in favor of "Zionist", with her publication of Shamir's speech, even this thin veil of propriety has disappeared.  If McKinney had sincerely wished to distance herself from these views, she would have denounced her friends' bigotry long ago; instead, she has repeatedly gone out of her way to support it.

The idea that her guilt is merely "by association" is laughable.  Her guilt is sometimes that of a silent, grinning supporter of her friends' racist rants, and at other times that of an active promoter of those views herself.  Sometimes she has couched her feelings about Jews in language vague enough to hypocritically disavow ill intent, but no one with any pretense of opposing bigotry should be deceived.  Nor should they tolerate the fact that she claims to support peace for Israel and Palestine while campaigning against a peace settlement.  Those who have supported McKinney or have been drawn to any part of her message owe it to themselves to speak out against this.

Screen shot from Cynthia McKinney's Facebook page.




(NOTE: I've revised this article to include a paragraph about Horst Mahler's connection to "Israel Shamir" and two additional photographs.  Thanks to Karl Pfeifer for much of that information. Pfeifer's 2005 article on "Shamir" and Mahler can be read here. Thanks as well to Gene of Harry's Place for his kind words and his link to this article -- read here.)

McKinney's fascist friends (continued)

I wrote recently about Cynthia McKinney's association with Matthias Chang, a Malaysian attorney who promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in his books and in international anti-Israel conferences he organizes for former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Mahathir. (Read here.) McKinney has been featured as a speaker at several of these conferences, and has promoted Chang's most recent book, The Shadow Money-Lenders, on the U.S. Green Party's website, endorsing Chang's contention that an international conspiracy of "Zionist" bankers is deliberately destabilizing the world economy to institute a one-world government under "Zionist" control. (Read here.)

According to Chang (read here), his books are inspired by those of Eustace Mullins, author of "Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation" (read here) and The Biological Jew (read here). Chang is published in the United States by Willis Carto's The Barnes Review and American Free Press, which are essentially neo-Nazi publications largely devoted to Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. He works closely there with Carto associate Michael Collins Piper (read here), who has been described as "an American far-right emissary to the Islamic world" (read here). Piper, for his part, is the author of a number of books, including FINAL JUDGMENT:The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, which blames "Zionists" for assassinating John and Robert Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., CIA Director William Colby (?), and for the attacks on the Oklahoma City Federal Building and the World Trade Center. (Read here.)

It turns out that Chang isn't McKinney's only fascist friend. In a recent column which McKinney also posted on the U.S. Green Party website (read here), McKinney approvingly quotes David Pidcock and refers to him as her "London friend". In March 2009, both McKinney and Pidcock participated in a London anti-Israel forum which was sponsored by Prime Minister Mahathir's foundation. Pidcock was the head of an apparently defunct organization called the British Islamic Party; their literature refers to him ominously as "The Leader". He claims to be affiliated with something called the "National Association for Victims of Fraud and Banking Malpractice" (which flies under Google's radar) and also says that he meets on a monthly basis in the U.K. House of Lords as part of something called the Forum for Stable Currencies. He says (here) that he, and the following list of notables, acted as informal economic advisers to Prime Minister Mahathir when he was in office:

"It might be of interest for you to know that there was some western input into Dr. Mahathir's eastern thinking. The unsung western heroes include James Gibb-Stuart author of the Money Bomb and Hidden Menace; Kenneth C. Palmerton Vice Chairman of CCMJ – the Christian Council for Monetary Justice and an English convert Rupert Mohammed Rafiq an English banker, and other members of the Forum For Stable Currencies..."

Pidcock is the author of Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern (downloadable here), which contends at great length that a 3,000 year-old conspiracy of Freemasons, Illuminati, and "Luciferian Zionists" (?) is responsible for the bulk of the world's evils. It also "defends" Salman Rushdie against the death sentence of the Ayatollah's fatwa, stating that it would violate Islamic law to execute someone so clearly insane. In other words, the book is of the same general character as those of Chang, Mullins and Piper, albeit in a more disjointed and idiosyncratic form, if such a thing is possible.

Pidcock also authored a bizarre pamphlet called "Islamic Prophecies" which claims that the Israelis intend to conquer and occupy most of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia as part of an ancient plot in which Freemasons and the Young Turks are somehow involved. His "evidence" is available in pdf here.

One of the primary internet outlets for Pidcock's ravings is the website iamthewitness.com. (A cached version of the website is available here.) This website is entirely devoted to fascist and anti-Semitic propaganda, prominently featuring the complete International Jew by Henry Ford, which it bills, here, as recommended by Pidcock. This website is operated by someone called Daryl Bradford Smith, who describes himself (here) as a former chef, restaurateur and professor, as well as a "patriot (with a) minuteman mindset". A Google search of the iamthewitness website for the term "pidcock", here, gets 362 hits. Besides publishing Pidcock's crackpotSatanic Voices, Smith has posted audio of several interviews with Pidcock. The audio of these interviews is available online here.

I strongly recommend listening to at least one of these interviews and glancing at Satanic Voices to bring into focus both just how crazy this stuff is and how anti-Semitism is a sort of unified field theory for these people. They literally believe that this is the key by which they can explain all of human history. For one thing, he strongly implies (here) that both Lincoln and Napolean were victims of Jewish conspiracies. There's also this "Message from The Leader" on the British Islamic Party website written in response to 9/11 in which Pidcock blames "Zionists"and "British Intelligence" for Pearl Harbor. (Read here. Money quote: "If...the World Trade Centre is 'another Pearl Harbor', then the President and his cabinet knew all about it, just as Roosevelt knew of the impending attack on his own men and ships long before the attack

... The overall plan (with respect to Pearl Harbor) was to offer to the Zionists 'A clear cut policy on Palestine'.)

Listen to this interview (mp3 available here) to get a sense of the sheer, all-encompassing madness of a world-view which purports to explain most of human history by the Jews having been cursed in biblical times. In it, he blames Jews for both the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. The interview is described on Smith's website (here) as follows (redundancy intact):

Whoever controls the world's money controls the world

The financial conspiracy of the Jewish Mafia. David Pidcock lays bare the financial conspiracy of the Jewish Mafia. Pidcock explains the "City of London" is Zionist, not British, and many of Hitler's top Nazis were Jews.

Smith's next interview with Pidcock (mp3 here) is described as concerning

How the sinking of the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and other attacks were created just like the 9-11 attack.

On her Green Party blog, Cynthia McKinney asks whether the U.S. is headed the way of the U.S.S.R. and asks if President Obama is in the process of setting up the equivalent of a post-Soviet oligarchy. She turns for her answer to David Pidcock:

from Buyer's Remorse, Economic Collapse, Oligarchs & War (cached version here):

When I was in London recently for the Malaysia conference, I met a gentleman who completed the answer for me. Economist Michael Hudson and lawyer and author Ellen Brown had confirmed my worst fears, but Mr. David Pidcock really brought them all home for me. And the short answer to the question I put to him is,
"Yes, the U.S. economy is being hollowed out with our own money, not for the benefit of the American people, but for the benefit of a few and yes, President Obama has enabled the very characters who have successfully implemented this result elsewhere."

In the next few essays, I will explain as others are doing as well, what is going on in plain speak. The obligation of voters to educate themselves will be far more difficult if there is far less truth in plain speak out there for them to read. I will try my best to combine my research and experiences with the findings of trusted experts and share them with you in plain speak....

Finally, David Pidcock, my London friend, reminds us in "Money: A Christian View," that a socially healthy economy achieves the highest possible standard of living for all and achieves the "elimination of insecurity and fear and consequent selfish materialist values, so that the individual human being may be enabled to live

with dignity and self-respect."

It appears that Cynthia McKinney has some very peculiar ideas about which experts are trustworthy. She is able to overlook their extreme, even outlandish, bigotry so long as they confirm her own prejudices. McKinney should reveal what else Pidcock had to say to her concerning the identity of the oligarchy which he, and apparently McKinney, believe to be behind the global economic crisis.

U.K. readers may be interested to know that, in addition to his purported monthly meetings in the House of Lords, Pidcock has also claimed to be associated with Brian Gould, former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. In 2002, Pidcock chaired a Dubai forum devoted to promoting Sharia-compliant finance (read here) and says that he found common-ground with Gould. Grain of salt alert: this is Pidcock's view of the relationship, not Gould's.

David Pidcock

MUCH MORE ON MCKINNEY AND THE FAR-RIGHT HERE, INCLUDING HER INTERVIEWS ON RACIST INTERNET RADIO PROGRAM.

Cynthia McKinney and the far-right. The red-brown convergence now includes the Greens.

Former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has joined those seeking to take advantage of the world economic crisis to promote anti-Semitism. McKinney has published a column promoting the conspiracy theories of the far-right anti-Semite Matthias Chang.


McKinney's column (read here), which accuses George Soros and Alan Greenspan of participating in a plot to deliberately destabilize the world economy in order to install a "one-world government", uses Chang's term for this purported conspiracy: "the Shadow Money-Lenders" (not coincidentally, the title of Chang's most recent book). Typical of such conspiracy theories, Chang and McKinney connect this to an ancient plot which took shape under the hidden hand of the Rothschilds. McKinney puts a somewhat confused post-colonial third-world spin on this by citing Haiti as an example of what she says is planned for the rest of the world, the apparent link being that she happens to be in Haiti at the moment. Her leftist, "shock doctrine" approach also serves to make the essentially fascist contents of her column more palatable.

"I can only guess what the endgame is", McKinney states, before telling us, in the words of Matthias Chang, that

"(a) policy of 'controlled chaos' will be implemented and we will witness in major cities of the USA, UK and Europe of street battles, orchestrated by the Intelligence Services, between the white folks and the immigrant population. In the USA it will be against the Latinos and then the blacks . . . In the UK and Europe, it will be against mainly immigrants from Turkey, the Northern Mediterranean states and Pakistan and they are essentially Muslims. There is therefore, the added fuel of Islamic radicalism, which in the first place, was the creation of the Western intelligence services."

Matthias Chang is a Malaysian attorney who served as an adviser to former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir Mohamad with whom he is still closely associated. Chang's influence was evident in Prime Minister Mahathir's infamous speech to the 2003 Islamic Summit Conference, in which he accused the Jews of world domination and oppression of the world's Muslims (read here). Chang was also behind a visit of a delegation of Holocaust deniers and "9/11 truth" advocates to Malaysia in 2006 (read here). The delegation was led by Michael Collins Piper, famous for his claim that Israel was behind the JFK assasination. During this tour, this delegation participated in a conference called “Islam, Humanity and World Peace” in which Yvonne Ridley also participated . This delegation was interviewed by the Malaysian media, addressed conferences at the University of Malaya and the International Islamic University, and visited with Prime Minister Mahathir. They also promoted the Malay translations of Pipers books. (Read here.)

Chang has made a post-politics career of writing books which expound at great length his belief in apocalyptic conspiracies involving Jewish bankers. He has also continued to advise Dr. Mahathir, working on the board of his foundation and organizing "anti-Zionist" conferences. Excerpts of "The Shadow Money-Lenders" posted online make the very confused argument that international bankers (read "Jews") have been both controlling and destabilizing the governments of the world's most powerful nations, with the exception of China, which Chang claims has somehow escaped this snare (read here). Chang blames this same international bankers conspiracy for creating both capitalism and socialism, and for the Russian Revolution, Zionism and the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, citing familiar far-right anti-Semitic propaganda as evidence. The cover of the book warns that "THERE WILL BE BLOOD ON THE STREETS", with the word "blood" written in a blood-red, dripping typeface (read here). (Editorial note: shouldn't that be "blood in the streets"?)

While McKinney has a history of anti-Jewish and conspiracy theory beliefs, this is something new. In the past, she has blamed her political failures on a Jewish conspiracy. She has supported boycotting Israel and cutting off U.S. ties. However, by promoting the neo-fascist books of Matthias Chang, she has taken a leap from the world of the left into the world of the brown-red convergence, where anti-Semites of the extremes of right and left meet.

Cynthia McKinney must know of Matthias Chang's far-right beliefs; he wears them on his sleeve. His books are literally filled with bizarre conspiracy theories. Chang's so-called "Future Fastforward trilogy" of books, which oppose both capitalism and socialism and present a nightmarish vision of a world controlled by an evil Zionist Anglo-American conspiracy, are solidly in the tradition of fascist, anti-Semitic conspircay propaganda. His website extols as his inspiration an amazing list of Holocaust deniers and anti-Semitic crackpots (read here):

the American Free Press, The Barnes Review, The Spotlight, and the truth seekers that I have long admired, Harry Elmer Barnes, Willis Carto, Michael Collins Piper, Christopher Petherick, Eustace Mullins (whose life-long persecution by the Police State is a disgrace to the Constitution), (and) Col. Donn de Grand Pre...

Chang and Mahathir have created what they call the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War -- a foundation whose website is completely devoted to anti-Israel propaganda (read here), and whose blog is similarly "focused" (read here). Here's a quote from a recent post on the foundation's blog (read here):

The Jewish psychic (sic) that they are “the chosen people of God” is the bitter source of the miseries afflicting the entire World ever since the time the Jewish God, Yahweh, chose the Jews to be His chosen people. To the Jews all the non-Jews over the world including Bush, Obama, Gordon Brown and the entire Americans, Europeans and the Asian are “non-human” and “inferior souls” whom they termed as Gentiles. These Gentiles could be cheated, deprived of their property and be killed without pricking the conscience of any Jew. A dangerous physic indeed! Don’t you remember Shylock in the “Merchant of Venice”?.

The Jews had never kept their promises to the Gentiles. Why should they? As any resolution, promise, treaty, contract, mutual agreement with the Gentiles is not binding upon the Jews as the Jews are ordained higher souls than the Gentiles. Indeed, the United Nations kept a high volume of the Jews’ non-compliances and violations of the United Nations’ Resolutions.

At Chang's and Mahathir's invitation, McKinney participated in a conference their foundation sponsored called the "Expose War Crimes - Criminalise War International Conference", which was held in Kuala Lumpur in February 2007. (Read here.) Presumably, she did so at the foundation's expense, perhaps even being paid for her participation. This account of the event in a Malaysian arts website wryly notes the contradiction of the "peace activist" Chang being prominently touted by the racist British People's Party (here, for example, in a piece about his participation in the Iran Holocaust Denial conference of 2006). The description of the proceedings of this conference makes the Durban Conference seem like a meeting of B'nai Brith. At one point, McKinney stood up and declared: “Kuala Lumpur has become the peace capital of the world!” More recently, in February 2009, McKinney attended Chang and Mahathir's "Conference for Palestine" in Kuala Lumpur. (Read here.)

Gene of Harry's Place reports that McKinney participated in an anti-Israel conference sponsored by this foundation in London on March 31, 2009. (Read here.) McKinney's account of the event is online here.

Chang's website prominently features the text of his message of support for the American Free Press and Barnes Review which was delivered to the "AFP-TBR Free Speech" conference in Washington, D.C. in September, 2006. This support is reciprocal. These neo-fascist groups publish and distribute Chang's books in the United States. (Read "Future Fast Forward" here.) The homepage of the Barnes Review website promotes several of Chang's books, even offering one as a subscription promotion alongside works such as The Myth of the Six Million and The Passion Play at Oberamerrgau. (See cached version here or pdf here.) The American Free Press website promotes Chang's Future Fastforward here (in pdf), asking the question:

"Will there be a worldwide "people’s war" against the super-capitalists and their Zionist allies?."

In Future Fastforward, Chang cites anti-Semitic polemicist Eustace Mullins as his primary influence, stating:

I have learned more about international finance and banking from (Mullins on the Federal Reserve) than any textbooks that I have studied as an economics student at the university level and ever since .

[Read more about Eustace Mullins here. Mullins on the Federal Reserve is readable online here. Another book of Mullins' crackpot anti-Semitic theories is posted here. In this book, The Curse of Canaan, A Demonology of History, Mullins argues that Jews (whom he sometimes calls "Canaanites") are literally descended from Satan. It traces Mullins' international bankers conspiracy to ancient Babylon, and claims that it includes both Jews and Freemasons. (Read here.) Mullins is also the author of The Biological Jew, which argues that the Jewish people fit the scientific definition of parasitism. (Read pdf here.) Louis Farrakhan, in the culmination of his farewell speech to the Nation of Islam, cited Eustace Mullins as required reading for his followers. (Read here and here.) Eustace Mullins is also the author of Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation, (read pdf here at p. 27) in which he names the culprits responsible for starting World War II. If you guessed "international Jewish bankers", you're right]


You may be interested to know a bit more about the groups which publish Matthias Chang, and which he in turn praises so highly. A pdf of a flyer for the AFP-TBR 2006 Free Speech conference is available on the American Free Press website here. The "Nordwave" website has a description of the conference here (cached version). Here are some highlights from the first day of the conference, in the words of "Nordwave":

On Friday, September 1, the opening evening of the conference, after welcoming remarks by American Free Press editor Christopher Petherick, attendees were treated to speeches by:

James K. Warner of the Christian Defense League (CDL Report, Sons Of Liberty Books) who spoke on the subject of Proportional Representation.

Mike Bower was the next speaker, his subject being the "third way" between jewish socialism/communism and jewish capitalism ... Social Credit. Mr. Bower has made an in-depth study of C.H. Douglas nationalist no-middleman economic theories.

It was our great pleasure to meet the following speaker, Mr. Alex Hassinger of Nordwave, an up and coming leader in the Nationalist movement who spoke on the future of our European culture.

Dr. Harrell Rhome of The Eagle Newsletter, Corpus Christi, TX was the next to speak on the survival of the West. Dr. Rhome puts out an excellent newsletter every month with an eclectic mix of revisionist history, suppressed news and articles on white survival.

Master of Ceremonies Dave Von Kleist introduced Margaret Huffstickler, a contributing author to The Barnes Review who also happens to have a beautiful operatic voice. Miss Huffstickler treated the crowd to a short recital.

John Stadtmiller of the Republic Broadcasting Network (www.rbnlive.com) hosted his nightly radio show in a separate room of the hotel, as did Michael Collins Piper. Attendees were able to sit in and listen if they chose to.

A wine and cheese social followed, where we were able to see old friends and made some new ones. Veteran patriots and nationalists Ralph Forbes, Dr. Ed Fields and his wife Jane, Jim Warner of CDL Report, Chicago activist Art Jones and his wife, Eustace Mullins, Ted Gunderson and Fred Toben were just a few in attendance.

John Nugent, Nationalist activist and former congressional candidate who is now writing for the Barnes Review was in attendance. My wife and I hadn't seen John since before the birth of our first child....16 years ago. We were very happy to see him again, and he introduced us to Mr. Theo Junker, the former member of the Wiking division of the S.S. who courageously opened a Museum in Wisconsin dedicated to the memory of Adolf Hitler. It was indeed one of the highlights of the conference meeting this courageous patriot who continues to fight the good fight well into his 80's. God bless you, Herr Junker!

Here are some highlights from day two:

The 911 Panel followed. It was my pleasure meeting Mrs. Ellen Mariani, widow of a 911 victim and a gutsy lady who has a lawsuit going against the government and Bush for their complicity and cover-up of this false-flag operation. She was joined on the panel by WTC survivor William Rodriguez and Lisa Gulliani and Victor Thorn of WING TV (www.wingtv.net).

Professor Ray Goodwin spoke next on corruption and Political correctness in academia, followed by USS Liberty investigator and film producer Tito Howard on new findings on Israel's treacherous attack on the U.S. vessel in 1967.

Afternoon session:Dr. Virginia Abernathy spoke on the illegal alien invasion, followed by AFP correspondent and author Michael Collins Piper, who read aloud Malaysian Nationalist author Mathias Chang's message to attendees.

RBN Radio's John Stadtmiller then gave a short talk on reaching out to the patriot community.

Eustace Mullins, veteran nationalist author and protege of the legendary poet and nationalist thinker Ezra Pound was the next to speak on the subject of The Federal Reserve and the world-wide spiderweb of the Rothschild banking dynasty. Mr. Mullins is a legend, and has gone through a lifetime of hell at the hands of the "usual suspects" and deserves our utmost respect and thanks.

Peymon Mottahedeh of Freedom Lawschool spoke next on the Constitution, the IRS and citizen's rights.

Steve Lynch gave a talk on government mind control.

Former FBI Los Angeles bureau chief Ted Gunderson spoke next on "Why the FBI can't find missing kids" and went into detail on children being exploited by high level politicians and bureaucrats.

Michael Collins Piper spoke next about his investigative work putting together his latest book, "The Judas Goats." Subtitled "The enemy within," this book is a history of infiltration and subversion of the American nationalist movement by the ADL and other agents of jewry from before the second world war to the present day. This book names names and exposes the traitors and infiltrators in our midst.

Saturday evening was banquet night. Author Joe Sobran was the featured speaker. I have always admired Joe Sobran's articles that have never pulled punches when it came to the jewish question, and looked forward to his talk. Unfortunately, it turned into the only real disappointment of the weekend. Mr. Sobran spent most of his talk pointing out the differences between muslims and Christians....this in the presence of Muslim allies in the struggle against Zion...including Dr. Hesham Tillawi of www.currentissues.tv

Now, being a fellow Catholic I understand where Sobran was coming from... but as I've stated many times, these are no longer "The Crusades" this is the era of the "Jewsades" where Christian Janissary's are off fighting Muslims so that they can be made utter vassals of Israel. The Muslims are NOT the aggressors today... the US and its alien Anti-Christ controllers ARE. Mr. Sobran would have done well to concentrate on public enemy # 1... that same race that screamed "Crucify Him" 2000 years ago.

Here's day 3:

Father Nicholas Gruner of the "Fatima Crusader" was in attendance and was kind enough to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at 7:00 a.m. in the main ballroom for those Catholics in attendance.

Dale Crowly spoke on The Bible and the first Amendment at 8:00a.m.

Willis Carto, founder and publisher Of American Free Press and The Barnes Review then introduced keynote speaker Dr. Ingrid Zundel, wife of imprisoned "holocaust denier" Ernst Zundel, who spoke at length of Ernst's ordeal, as well as others who refuse to accept the holocaust lie and are being imprisoned and tortured as a result by "democratic" governments.

Dr. Fred Toben of Australia's Adelaide Institute spoke next on "International attitudes toward the holocaust" Dr. Toben's own thoughts as well as pictures from the conference can be viewed by visiting his website.

Harry Cooper of "Sharkhunters" spoke next on the intriguing subject " Did Hitler and Bormann escape the Fuehrerbunker?" Perhaps we'll never know for sure...

After a delicious brunch about noon, Mike Piper handed out awards to some of the worlds most daring historical researchers, including:

• Dr. Fred Toben
  
• Canada's white rights advocate Paul Fromm
  
• Dr. Ingrid Zundel
  
• Lady Michele Renouf
  
• Peymon of Freedom Lawschool
  
• Eustace Mullins
  
• Victor Thorn of WING TV
  
• William Rodriguez
  
• AFP's and Barnes Review's John Tiffany
  
• Alex Hassinger of Nordwave

Long time veteran nationalist and activist Paul Christian Wolff received an award for his efforts to expose the REAL holocaust of Dresden.

Yours truly was surprised and got a big kick out of being given the "Saddam Hussein Award" I consider it an honor!.. Thanks Mike!

Dr. Udo Walendy then spoke on World War I history from a revisionist perspective.

The "Holocaust" panel was up next with Dr. Fred Toben serving as moderator, with panel members Willis Carto, Paul Fromm, Dr. Richard Krege, and Lady Michelle Renouf.

Following the panel discussion, Lady Michelle Renouf gave a talk on the immoral jailing of David Irving, Germar Rudolf and others.

My wife Deirdre Fields then gave a short talk on the Jewish hand in the genocide and disenfranchisement of whites in her native South Africa. Of course I'm not being prejudiced when I say it was one of the best speeches of the conference.

The fireworks were reserved for the grand finale... the Middle East Panel. Attorney and JFK assassination investigator Mark Lane (Rush To Judgment) was moderator of the panel, which consisted of two "anti-zionist" orthodox rabbis of the "Naturei Karta" organization, Lebanese Catholic Mark Glenn, Hesham Tillawi and Iranian Journalist Nader Talebzadeh. One of the more memorable statements came fron Hesham Tillawi, a native of Palestine who said, " I came to America to escape the zionist occupation of Palestine, only to find that America is also occupied by the zionists." Truer words are seldom spoken.
While the rabbis were anti-zionist for religious reasons of their own, Mark Glenn took the microphone and courageously told the rabbis to their faces that the problem was their Anti-Christ religion and the hatred in their Talmud. Mark just about got a standing ovation, and it was all down-hill from there for the rabbis....who sputtered and stammered and tried to pass the Talmud off as a book of "love." They obviously didn't know what audience they were trying to "pilpul." RIGHT ON MARK...
God bless you for telling the WHOLE truth.

Best to let these bigots speak for themselves. Cynthia McKinney: any comment on your poor choice of friends?



[*NOTE: A previous version of this post stated that McKinney has gone on the record to blame Israel for 9/11 and that the U.S. Green Party platform in 2008 made the same charge. While Cynthia McKinney has endorsed the 9/11 conspiracy theories of others who have blamed Israel, "Zionists" or "neo-cons" for the attacks (read here), she does not seem to have gone on the record about her views of an Israeli connection to 9/11. She is more than welcome to clarify her views on this subject in this space. McKinney has, notoriously, claimed that President Bush had foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately allowed them to occur to let his friends profit from the U.S. military response (read here). This charge, which she has repeated, has made her both a hero and embarasment to the "9/11 truth" movement. She has also repeatedly taken part in interviews where her questioners blamed Jews for 9/11. In each instance where this has happened, McKinney has not only failed to disagree, she has replied in ways designed to support such views.

With respect to the U.S. Green Party platform, an earlier version of this post mistook the position paper on 9/11 issued by the Washington State Green Party with the national platform. The Washington State Greens issued on their official campaign website a lengthy article outlining supposed evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy. This position paper, which was prepared by the party's 9/11 working group, cited as its only source the conspiracy theory website Serendipity.li. While the Washington State Green Party's website has disappered (much as the party itself has) the source for this material is still online and can be reviewed by those curious about the theories the Washington Greens endorsed. Anyone who still has the material published by the 9/11 Working Group of the Washington State Green Party during the 2008 campaign can send them to me at adamhollandblog@yahoo.com ]

Washington State Greens promote "9/11 truth" conspiracy theories

Airplane wreckage near the Pentagon, 9/11/2001

In researching Washington State Green Party for a story on their advocacy of a deceptive referendum which would divest Seattle's pension fund from companies doing business in Israel (a story I hope to post soon), I was surprised to discover the extent to which they promote "9/11 truth" and other related conspiracy theories.

They have on their platform committee a working group devoted to "9/11 truth" (read here and here and here) which has succeeded in getting the national Green Party to consider a platform provision on that subject that seems likely to be approved. (Read that resolution here.) The resolution refers to "the purported crash of United Airlines Flight 93" and calls for an investigation by "impartial experts in the fields of physics, structural engineering (and) architecture".

The Washington State Greens' website features an essay called "9/11 Truth is THE Issue: A Lesson for Green Politics" by Richard Curtis, PhD. Curtis is adjunct professor of philosophy at Seattle University and a prominent member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, David Ray Griffin's group, and who also chairs the Green's "9/11 truth" working group. In addition to being an advocate for 9/11-related conspiracies, he's also an advocate of Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory (read here), arguing that FDR knew of the attack beforehand and let it happen to facilitate U.S. entry into the war. This extremely absurd belief, originated by "historical revisionist" / Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes (read here) is common among "truthers". They are apparently unaware of how close Japan came to winning the war at Pearl Harbor. If the Japanese had destroyed our fuel supplies and aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. very well might have lost the war in the Pacific. There is absolutely no way that risk would have been deliberately taken.

The failure of conspiracy theorists to consider the tremendous risks and minimal benefits of the inside jobs they imagine is just as true of 9/11 'inside job' conspiracies as well. Why would the Bush administration risk having an attack on the United States to start a war? Haven't these "9/11 truth" people ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin? If the U.S. were seeking to create an illusory act of aggression as a pretext for a war, why would it have been an attack on New York and Washington, and not an attack on a U.S. aircraft or ship, or the border of an ally being breached, or something with fewer loose ends and risk of exposure. Not to mention, as evil as the conspiracy theorists believe our government to be, who would believe that they actually want that sort of harm to come to this country? Setting aside the innumerable errors of fact in their case, as well as the questionable (and always essential) belief that the conspiracy could be kept quiet, the "truther" theories never really give a plausible motive for taking such incredible risks when lesser ones would have been just as effective.

Dr. Curtis argues at length in his piece that the 9/11 "official conspiracy theory" was a lie generated by a corrupt two party system, thus linking the Green Party's reason for being (i.e. as an alternative to the two parties) with the "9/11 truth" movement. I strongly recommend that anyone considering support for the Greens or their proposals read this Green Party document (CLICK HERE) before they do so to get an indication of where the Greens are coming from.

The document connects 115 disparate assertions in "proving" that 9/11 was an inside job, but, amazingly, cites this website: (Serendipity: Geopolitics, Drugs, Religion, Music and More!) as its sole source. It contains several demonstrably false assertions, including several to the effect that no plane hit the Pentagon. It does not address the hundreds of witnesses who ACTUALLY SAW THE PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON INCLUDING AN A.P. REPORTER (read here). (No explanation for the missing passengers and crew of that flight is offered. In fact, in a debate with Chip Berlet on Democracy Now, David Ray Griffin himself was unable to defend his assertion that a missile and not a plane struck the Pentagon other than to say that his case was cumulative as opposed to deductive, and therefor not as weak as its weakest links (read here).

Curtis also falsely re-asserts the commonly believed falsehood that there was an unusual spike in put orders for stocks which would reasonably be expected to go down in price as the result of the attack, an argument which is addressed and DEBUNKED HERE. Curtis also implies that Zbignew Brzezinski was in with Bush on the conspiracy, an allegation I'm sure that Brzezinski would find very puzzling indeed.

Green Party supporters: feel free to contact me to let me know why I shouldn't think this stuff is just plain mishuga.

By the way, if you haven't read the transcript of David Ray Griffin's DEMOCRACY NOW! debate with Chip Berlet, you should. You really get a sense of the twisted logic and shoddy research underlying the "truth" movement. READ IT HERE. Read the Popular Mechanics webpage on the attack on the Pentagon HERE.

Washington State Greens promote "9/11 truth" conspiracy theories

Airplane wreckage near the Pentagon, 9/11/2001
[NOTE, June 30, 2009: the Washington State Green Party website is no longer fully funcitonal, so a number of the linked-to documents are no longer available. A notice at the Washington Green Party's URL (here, halfway down the page) states that the party itself is "dormant". I'm looking for archived copies of the linked-to material elsewhere. My apologies for the dead links below!]

In researching Washington State Green Party for a story on their advocacy of a deceptive referendum which would divest Seattle's pension fund from companies doing business in Israel (a story I hope to post soon), I was surprised to discover the extent to which they promote "9/11 truth" and other related conspiracy theories.

They have on their platform committee a working group devoted to "9/11 truth" (read here and here and here) which has succeeded in getting the national Green Party to consider a platform provision on that subject that seems likely to be approved. (Read that resolution here.) The resolution refers to "the purported crash of United Airlines Flight 93" and calls for an investigation by "impartial experts in the fields of physics, structural engineering (and) architecture".

The Washington State Greens' website features an essay called "9/11 Truth is THE Issue: A Lesson for Green Politics" by Richard Curtis, PhD. Curtis is adjunct professor of philosophy at Seattle University and a prominent member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, David Ray Griffin's group who also chairs the Green's "9/11 truth" working group. In addition to being an advocate for 9/11-related conspiracies, he's also an advocate of Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory (read here), arguing that FDR knew of the attack beforehand and let it happen to facilitate U.S. entry into the war. This extremely absurd belief, originated by "historical revisionist" / Holocaust denier Harry Elmer Barnes (read here) is common among "truthers". They are apparently unaware of how close Japan came to winning the war at Pearl Harbor. If the Japanese had destroyed our fuel supplies and aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. very well might have lost the war in the Pacific. There is absolutely no way that risk would have been deliberately taken.

The failure of conspiracy theorists to consider the tremendous risks and minimal benefits of the inside jobs they imagine is just as true of 9/11 'inside job' conspiracies as well. Why would the Bush administration risk having an attack on the United States to start a war? Haven't these "9/11 truth" people ever heard of the Gulf of Tonkin? If the U.S. were seeking to create an illusory act of aggression as a pretext for a war, why would it have been an attack on New York and Washington, and not an attack on a U.S. aircraft or ship, or the border of an ally being breached, or something with fewer loose ends and risk of exposure. Not to mention, as evil as the conspiracy theorists believe our government to be, who would believe that they actually want that sort of harm to come to this country? Setting aside the innumerable errors of fact in their case, as well as the questionable (and always essential) belief that the conspiracy could be kept quiet, the "truther" theories never really give a plausible motive for taking such incredible risks when lesser ones would have been just as effective.

Dr. Curtis argues at length in his piece that the 9/11 "official conspiracy theory" was a lie generated by a corrupt two party system, thus linking the Green Party's reason for being (i.e. as an alternative to the two parties) with the "9/11 truth" movement. I strongly recommend that anyone considering support for the Greens or their proposals read this Green Party document (CLICK HERE [NOTE: the Washington State Green Party website is no longer fully funcitonal, so this document is unavailable. A notice at their URL states that the party itself is "dormant". I'm looking for archived copies of the linked-to material.]) before they do so to get an indication of where the Greens are coming from.

The document connects 115 disparate assertions in "proving" that 9/11 was an inside job, but, amazingly, cites this website: (Serendipity: Geopolitics, Drugs, Religion, Music and More!) as its sole source. It contains several demonstrably false assertions, including several to the effect that no plane hit the Pentagon. It does not address the hundreds of witnesses who ACTUALLY SAW THE PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON INCLUDING AN A.P. REPORTER (read here). (No explanation for the missing passengers and crew of that flight is offered. In fact, in a debate with Chip Berlet on Democracy Now, David Ray Griffin himself was unable to defend his assertion that a missile and not a plane struck the Pentagon other than to say that his case was cumulative as opposed to deductive, and therefor not as weak as its weakest links (read here). I spite of this, he and his associates such as Curtis still make these baseless allegations.)

Curtis also falsely re-asserts the commonly believed falsehood that there was an unusual spike in put orders for stocks which would reasonably be expected to go down in price as the result of the attack, an argument which is addressed and DEBUNKED HERE. Curtis also implies that Zbignew Brzezinski was in with Bush on the conspiracy, an allegation I'm sure that Brzezinski would find very puzzling indeed.

Green Party supporters: feel free to contact me to let me know why I shouldn't think this stuff is just plain mishuga.

By the way, if you haven't read the transcript of David Ray Griffin's DEMOCRACY NOW! debate with Chip Berlet, you should. You really get a sense of the twisted logic and shoddy research underlying the "truth" movement. READ IT HERE. Read the Popular Mechanics webpage on the attack on the Pentagon HERE.