Standing Up to the Madness??
by wsws (reposted)
Tuesday May 27th, 2008 6:55 AM
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 :Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Hyperion, 2008 (Hardcover), $23.95 Amy Goodman is well-known as the host of Democracy Now!, the independent news program broadcast on a variety of public radio and television channels, as well as the author or co-author of a number of books on political events. Her views are firmly located on the liberal left, with an orientation toward left elements in and around the Democratic Party, such as Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and the Greens.
David Goodman, Amys brother, has written for a number of left-liberal magazines including Mother Jones and the Nation, as well as more mainstream outlets such as the Washington Post and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.
Standing Up to the Madness begins with a well-known citation: When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the American flag. This saying, attributed to various people, has become something of a mantra in certain circles on the American left. The litany of complaints which followeroding civil liberties, increasingly stark economic divisions, the war in Iraqare presented with no close examination. Each ill is viewed as having a single unifying cause, to wit: the Bush Administration.
No mention is made of the connection between the breakdown of democracy and the growth of social inequality, or between the predatory war aims of the US elite and the attacks on democratic rights at home. In a word there is no suggestion that the policies of the Bush administration reflect more than the madness of one individual or perhaps, at most, neo-conservative circles. The book never raises the larger question of the failure of the social and economic order, capitalism.
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/may2008/...
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Another fig leaf for GW's 9/11 complicity?
Democracy When? Gatekeepers or truthseekers??
Tuesday May 27th, 2008 12:45 PM
If Amy Goodman is handing out fig leaves to apathetic and ineffective Democrats for their participation alongside GW bush regime passing the U.S. Patriot Act and the invasion of Iraq, is it not then also possible that she participates in the left gatekeeper movement to silence any questions about U.S. government complicity in 9/11??
By now most anti-war activists are aware that 9/11 attacks were the primary EMOTIONAL excuse (however FACTUALLY incorrect) that enabled the GW Bush regime and tag-along Democrats to gain momentum for the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq. The 9/11 truthseekers are the general group of people who in various ways question the official version of the 9/11 Commission and provide contradictory evidence (mostly physics, not social studies!!) that the collapse of the WTC towers were not caused by the plane crash alone..
Physics of 9/11 simplified;
Heat of blue flame unattained in short lived high altitude jet fuel combustion, HOW did the flames get so hot in such a short time as to melt and pulverize steel support columns??
WHERE did all the structural WTC evidence disappear to so quickly? To China for scrap metal recycling the day after!! According to Guiliani and GW Bush, no further investigation of the rubble was needed!!
HOW and WHY did WTC building 7 collapse the same day by methods of demolition when it wasn't even struck by a plane?
Additional evidence exists that shows the CIA, FBI and other U.S. intell agencies were forewarned of an attack on the WTC and the orders up until the last moment were for NORAD to stand down and allow the hijacked planes to impact the WTC building..
Theories include that GW Bush wanted to increase the loss of life and the damage to the WTC, in order to increase the EMOTIONAL burden on the people of the U.S. looking for revenge. If left unassisted by the U.S. the goal of Al-Queda was to impact the WTC towers and leave them burning like a candle for a day, though remain standing structurally intact as a reminder in photo imagery. Fewer people would have died in this unassisted event and the top floors of the WTC would have been soon repaired, thus reducing the emotional burden of the U.S. psyche and lessening the motivation for invading Iraq out of revenge and fear..
Al-Queda most likely did not plan to collapse the entire towers down to the ground level, this was accomplished by internally placed incendiary devices planted by agents of the U.S. government. Great care was taken to prevent these demolition experts from talking!?!?
This has spun reality in many directions, with some people claiming that Al-Queda secretly works for the CIA (this i do not support as their other actions are indeed effective, even if the response by the U.S. government is to cause further destruction elsewhere to benefit oil corporations), and on the other side the left gatekeepers refusing to engage the 9/11 truthseekers in any rational dialogue outside of namecalling (paranoid, racist, conspiracy theorists, etc..)..
We're not doing so good when our most aired voice of the left believes in their own leadership to the point of enabling themselves to become gatekeepers of the truth, and banishing 9/11 truthseekers to the fringes of Area 51 UFO cultists..
Then this is further complicated by MANY 9/11 truth discrediting websites, the typical one claiming the planes were holograms and/or UFOs piloted by extraterrestrials. The majority of 9/11 truthseeking is based upon logical physics and any UFO links are quite possibly attempts to discredit 9/11 truthseekers..
One of the more serious 9/11 truthseekers is a professor of physics David Ray Griffin. He is also disappointed in Amy Goodman for her current role as left gatekeeper..
"Hypocrisy Now!
One of the most notable cases of Left denial is that of the respected journalist Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now!. Goodman has long rebuffed requests that she interview an expert on the subject. Instead she has tiptoed around the core facts of the attack and addressed only peripheral issues, such as the EPA's fraudulent assurances that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe while Ground Zero was still smoldering. Finally, after a concerted campaign by the 9-11 Visibility Project, Goodman featured David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, on her May 26, 2004 show. Goodman pitted Chip Berlet against Griffin, and gave the last word and closing summary to Berlet, who spun the myth that the attack was strictly blowback. Nonetheless, Griffin was allowed to make the case that the attack was an inside job for the first time ever on the nationally syndicated show."
see link @;
http://www.911review.com/denial/gatekeepers.html
This author also feels that the initial 9/11 attacks and all other general actions by Al-Queda are a result of blowback (response to U.S. and Israeli occupation of Muslim holy lands), the question is how much of it is genuine blowback from Al-Queda and how much is self-sabotage by the U.S. government and GW Bush regime looking to inflame the emotions and passions of people in the U.S. to their willingness to fight unending military conflicts in the name of "war on terror"??
(NOTE to IMC editors; Some of you like censoring these types of comments for unknown reasons. Please consider in your rush to fulfill some arbitrary political correctness, this censor-happy behavior places you on the same plane as GW Bush et. al. and their crew of censors!!)