Allegedly on this day, a group of teenagers in San Rafael, California who called themselves the Waldos, because “their chosen hang-out spot was a wall outside the school,”^[4]  hatched a fall 1971 plan to search for an abandoned cannabis crop that they had learned about.^[5] The Waldos designated the Louis Pasteur statue on the grounds of San Rafael High School as their meeting place, and 4:20 p.m. as their meeting time.^[4] The Waldos referred to this plan with the phrase “4:20 Louis”. Multiple failed attempts to find the crop eventually shortened their phrase to simply “4:20″. For some reason this has evolved into a counter-cultural byword for cannabis culture in general, with thousands gather on April 20 all over the world to both enjoy the herb and protest its criminalization.^[5]

I find it interesting that many Christians oppose this unique plant which Jesus created and even worse, pledge their support to an ever expanding war on some drugs in the name of which governments increasingly deprive their citizenry of privacy and civil liberties. So I’m going to take this opportunity to examine some of the grounds on which these Christians base their stance on “marijuana” and see just how much truth there really is to it.

Below I will attempt to address, as honestly and comprehensively as I am able, the most common objections to the Christian ingestion of cannabis. Note that while I believe from my research there are many beneficial uses to the cannabis plant, such as for industry or medicine, in this post “use” will refer to the “therapeutic or relaxationally inebriating use of the resin”.

An individual may disobey the authorities if she has warrant from the Word of God to do so, and does so in a way that honors the gospel if she has warrant from the Word of God to do so, and does so in a way that is an honor to the gospel. Outlawing the use of marijuana is not an assault to Scripture.

This seems to be a fairly mainline position. We know from Acts 4:19, that the second point is reasonable. But can we really biblically say that a government which takes it upon itself to think they know better than God by prohibiting the creative use of what was created by Him to grow on this planet is not assaulting the Word of God? Was it not the “Word of God” which brought cannabis into being in the first place? “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds” (Genesis 1:11) and later, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth… They will be yours for food” (Genesis 1:29).

Paul of Tarsus wrote in his First Epistle to Timothy (4:4), “…everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected it if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.” In fact, he expressly warned about those who would, through false piety, command us to abstain from this or that. It also might be prudent to remember that cannabis, in the United States, has only been criminal for a few decades. It was legal and socially acceptable to enjoy from time to time even when Ronald Reagan was a boy. It was sold as potent tinctures to treat, for example, nausea, migraines and insomnia, grown to furnish the mooring of ships in the world’s navies, sold to children as a tasty treat and smoked in pipes in plush gentlemen’s clubs and jazz bars.

Counter-argument: What about the corruption of God’s creation after the Fall? Would you recommend that people eat poisonous plants on this same basis?

Response: The fatality of poisonous plants obviously excludes them from things we should be consuming if we wish to remain alive. Cannabis has no such ‘poisonous quality’ and in fact has been shown to be quite beneficial to the body. This argument is like saying that since a shark is a fish and is dangerous, we cannot have a pet fish.

It is sinful to ingest marijuana to any extent that alters the chemistry of the body and causes a physiological response of any magnitude. People take it for the effect, and it is a sin to seek this effect, even getting a pleasant, euphoric buzz.

But what then of Jesus radical statements in Matthew 15:11-20 that “There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him…because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods.” The stringent claim that Jesus is only referring to ‘food’ is contradicted by Jesus’ own use of the word “nothing.” Also, to really press the issue: cannabis foods (salads, drinks, or baked goods) should be permissible, according to the argument, regardless.

The point is that drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis cannot make someone sin. But this is not to say, that the use of inebriants does not lower inhibitions when consumed to the point of excess.

Marijuana users frequently lose their motivation to work.

Without dismissing the testimonies of former users who sincerely believe that this indeed occurred in their lives, it should also be noted that from 1916-1929, the U.S. Army sponsored the Siler Commission to determine if off-duty cannabis smoking in Panama made officers lazy and unmotivated and determined that “no ill effects from smoking mariajuana for several days in succession were observed even when the soldiers were given mariajuana ad libitum” and “no mental or physical deterioration effects of smoking mariajuana could be demonstrated”, concluding that “no recommendations for further legislative action to prevent the sale or use of mariajuana in the Canal Zone, Panama, are deemed advisable under existing conditions” (1, 2).

Additionally, it is known that many hard-working Orientals and Jamaicans consume cannabis in cigarettes, pipes and even teas, to relax in the evenings without the threat of an alcohol hangover during work in the morning(3).

It seems far more honest to blame such laziness, not on a simple plant, but on the sinful and excessive indulgence of an individual with no self-control, particularly in the modern U.S., where people grow up worshipfully seeking pleasure and instant gratification. It is just as Jesus said: “But the things that come out of the mouth and the heart; these make a man ‘unclean’” (Matthew 15:18). This argument is shifting the blame and turning it the other way around. Cannabis doesn’t make people lazy and unmotivated. People make people lazy and unmotivated.

Someone who is affected to any extent by marijuana is not sober (which it says in 1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 that we must be!). To smoke marijuana to get any level of euphoria from it is clearly a sin, therefore.

Why then do they think Christians most commonly drink alcohol, if not to experience the pleasant and relaxing feeling derived from it (‘euphoria’) or as the Scriptures say to “gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15)? Be honest. Scripture freely admits this and nowhere condemns this effect as sinful. It does condemn, however, the immoderate and excessive abuse of that effect. Many Christians agree that the required Christian attribute of sobriety is consistent with the occasional drinking of alcohol in moderation. So, what is the difference between ingesting cannabis in moderation and ingesting alcohol in moderation? The answer to that question can only be arbitrary at best.

The moderate drinking of wine, or other forms of alcohol, cannot be compared to the immediate intoxicating effects of marijuana.

This one is interesting. So, the difference for its proponents is that the smoking of cannabis results in an immediate effect whereas alcohol takes some time to set in. There is an obvious reason for this: simply that any substance, when smoked, passes straight through the brain-blood barrier and is thus metabolized very quickly. If this is the problem, they should have no grounds whatsoever, therefore, to prohibit the oral consumption of cannabis, mixed into drinks, salads or baked into goods, the effect of which takes about the same amount of time to appear as drinking alcohol. My point is that it seems silly to think that it matters to Jesus if it takes a couple minutes or a half an hour to take effect. What matters to Him is whether or not we have foolishly consumed so much that we are no longer in our right mind or physically incapacitated, and therefore unable to hear from His Spirit, faithfully serve others or be an honorable witness for Him–i.e. “drunk” or “stoned”.

The current evidence indicates that the proposed therapeutic value of marijuana is greatly overrated.

This is contrary to the facts(4), which reveal that cannabis has been used for centuries as an effective analgesic (pain killer), anticonvulsant, appetite stimulant, hypnotic (sleep aid), antipyretic (anti-inflammatory), antiemetic and muscle relaxant. The U.S. DEA’s own administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, when shown these facts, ruled “Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man“(5). Modern research suggests that cannabis is a valuable aid in the treatment of a wide range of clinical applications.(6) These include pain relief — particularly of neuropathic pain (pain from nerve damage) — nausea, spasticity, glaucoma, and movement disorders.(7) Cannabis is also a powerful appetite stimulant, specifically for patients suffering from HIV, the AIDS wasting syndrome, or dementia.(8) Emerging research suggests that its medicinal properties may protect the body against some types of malignant tumors(9) and are neuroprotective against toxicity.(10) In fact, on October 7, 2003, patent #6,630,507, entitled “Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants” was awarded to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, based on research done at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), claiming that cannabis is “useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia”(11). The medicinal value of cannabis is still being rediscovered in this century and it bears further investigation.

Cannabis has no culinary application—except for “Oreo’s and mustard”, and therefore has no legitimate use.

Cannabis, as mentioned earlier, can be mixed in salads and grain alcohol, boiled in milk and tea or baked into brownies, cakes, biscuits and such. These creative preparations are enjoyed by a variety of cultures worldwide and have been for centuries.

The cannabis plant should not be included in the Hebrew word eseb and so is not within the scope of Psalm 104:14.

This is an unprovable argument. The word eseb simply means “herb”. Except for the sake of carrying the argument that cannabis ‘does not serve man’, there is no given reason to assume that the cannabis plant, being an herb after all, would for some reason not be considered part of the herb family in the Hebrew language.  In fact, linguistic research indicates it may well have been a very well known and important herb. In 1936 by Sula Benet, a little known Polish etymologist from the Institute of Anthropological Sciences in Warsaw, posited that the word cannabis, thought to have been of Scythian origin, has a much earlier origin in Semitic languages like Hebrew, and that it appears several times throughout the Old Testament. Benet explained that “in the original Hebrew text of the Old Testament there are references to hemp, both as incense, which was an integral part of religious celebration, and as an intoxicant.”

Benet’s assertion is that the word for cannabis is kaneh-bosm, also rendered in traditional Hebrew as kaneh or kannabus. The root kan in this construction means “reed” or “hemp”, while bosm means “aromatic”. This word appears five times in the Old Testament; in the books of Exodus, the Song of Songs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The word kaneh-bosm has been mistranslated as calamus, a common marsh plant with little monetary value that does not have the qualities or value ascribed to kaneh-bosm. The error occurred in the oldest Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint in the third century BC, and was repeated in the many translations that followed.”

In fact, according to The Living Torah translation by Aryeh Kaplan, what appears to be cannabis is a major ingredient of the sacred Holy Anointing Oil recipe in Exodus 30:22-33. For further speculation regarding this connection, see this.

Similarly, the linking of the Greek term pharmakeia used in Revelation 9:21 applies to, among other things, cannabis ingestion.

No, in the New Testament, the Greek meaning of pharmakeia is the mixing of various oft poisonous substances for magickal purposes. It does not appear that they were actually ever intended to be ingested by anyone or that they had what we would call today ‘pharmacological’ properties. Thus the most accurate translation of this word into English is indeed “sorcery” not “drugs”, as most versions render it. However, if we are to assert that it simply translates as “drugs” or “pharmaceuticals”, then it presents a serious problem: which drugs? Penicillin, ethanol, aspirin, morphine, echinacea, placidyl? Obviously, Christians are not prohibited from taking drugs to cure or relieve their various ailments.

In conclusion, I propose that cannabis ingestion for its pleasurable effect, in moderation, is not biblically prohibited anymore than alcohol ingestion for its pleasurable effect, in moderation, is biblically prohibited. What is prohibited is the immoderate and excessive abuse of any substance–be it alcohol, cannabis, caffeine, tobacco, sugar, etc.

Incidentally, this same conclusion was reached in the massive, 3,000+ page Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1893-4), published by the Honourable W. Mackworth Young, British governor of India, the first official and most complete unbiased systematic study of cannabis consumption undertaken to date which states, “the moderate use of hemp drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all”, including “no appreciable physical injury of any kind”, “no injurious effects on the mind”, and “no moral injury whatever“, concluding that it should continue to be permitted, albeit “with a view to check immoderate consumption” (and “at the same time to augment the public revenue”).

The common response to this information will likely be: Nevertheless, whether we debate it or not, cannabis is, in fact, criminal. First of all, however, there actually are places where cannabis consumption is permitted, like the Netherlands (which officially allows the possession and sale of up to 30 grams of quality “marijuana” or “hashish” in coffeehouses), places where the medicinal use of Cannabis is becoming widespread as in California and places where cannabis cultivation for industrial purposes is common, like Canada, France and Russia. Secondly, the fact that it is criminal in the U.S. should therefore either motivate us to politically call for its legalization** or disregard the statutory law, as many Christians would support if the government prohibits the use of wine or tomatoes and therefore sets itself against the clear teaching of the Bible.***

**See Economics of Cannabis Legalization, A Detailed Analysis of the Benefits of Ending Cannabis Prohibition by Dale Gieringer, Ph.D., 1994

***Some food for thought: if certain individuals had not disobeyed the statutory law and preserved the cannabis plant by growing it illegally, the corporations and governments of the world would likely have already eradicated this remarkable plant from the face of our world.

References:

(1)”Marihuana Smoking in Panama”, The Military Surgeon, 73, 1933

(2)”Army Study of Marihuana Smokers”, Newsweek, 1945

(3)Working Men and Ganja Marijuana Use in Rural Jamaica by Melanie Creagan Deher, 1982

(4)”Marijuana As Medicine, A Plea For Consideration” by Dr. Lester Grinspoon and James B. Bakalar, J.D., Journal of the American Medical Association, 273, 1995

(5) In the Matter of Marihuana Rescheduling Petition, Docket 86-22 Opinion, Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Decision of Administrative Law Judge, 1988.

(6) Several books explore this issue in further detail. These include: A. Mack and J. Joy. 2001. Marijuana as Medicine: The Science Beyond the Controversy. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; L. Iverson. 2000. The Science of Marijuana. New York: Oxford University Press; B. Zimmerman et al. 1998. Is Marijuana the Right Medicine for You?; C. Conrad. 1997. Hemp for Health: The Medicinal and Nutritional Uses of Cannabis Sativa. Rochester VT: Healing Arts Press; L. Grinspoon and J. Bakalar J. 1997. Marihuana the Forbidden Medicine; E. Rosenthal et al. 1997. Marijuana Medical Handbook. Oakland: Quick American Archives; and R. Mechoulam. (Ed.) 1986. Cannabinoids as Therapeutic Agents. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

(7) NSW (New South Wales) Working Party on the Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes. 2000. Report of the Working Party on the Use of Cannabis for Medical Purposes. Sydney: Parliament House; J. Joy et al. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Washington, DC: National Academy Press; House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. 1998. Ninth Report. Cannabis: The Scientific and Medical Evidence. London: The Stationary Office; J. Morgan and L. Zimmer. 1997. Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence. New York: Lindesmith Center; Grinspoon and Bakalar. 1997. Marihuana the Forbidden Medicine.

(8) Joy et al. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base

(9)I. Galve-Roperph et al. 2000. Antitumoral action of cannabinoids: involvement of sustained ceramide accumulation of ERK activation. Nature Medicine 6: 313-319. See also: “Anticancer activity of cannabinoids”, Journal of the National Cancer Institute (1975); “Antitumor effects of THC”, Environmental Health Perspectives (2000); and “Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ‘74” by Raymond Cushing, AlterNet (2000)

(10) M. Van der Stelt et al. 2001. Neuroprotection by delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol, the main active compound in marijuana, against ouabain-induced in vivo excitotoxicity. The Journal of Neuroscience 21: 6475-6479; J. Joy et al. 1999. Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base

Here is a collection of twelve systems that are utterly unsustainable on our planet. Each of these twelve is scheduled for some sort of collapse or shut down in the coming years. They range from economics to medicine, population and the environment. And interestingly, the collapse of just one of these twelve would have devastating consequences across human civilization. What happens when two, three or ten of these things collapse?

This doesn’t even begin to cover the consequences of the collapse of these unsustainable things, however, but here are the twelve:

1) Debt-based banking and economic systems

There’s little question that our global fractional reserve banking system is headed for a catastrophic collapse. It’s a system based on debt rather than sound money principles, and the laws of economics dictate that the global multiplication of money and debt is entirely unsustainable.

This system will collapse, and when it does, it will be so large that the economic devastation will be global. Governments have actually made this worse, of course, by bailing out the dishonest investment institutions that have made the situation worse. The coming financial collapse will teach humanity some hard lessons about honest money.

2) Conventional agriculture and “rape the planet” farming

The current agricultural system that feeds the planet is simply unsustainable. It is a “rape the planet” model that clear-cuts forests to grow GMO soybeans that feed factory cattle which are turned into processed meat. All the while the government suppresses proven alternatives to deforestation such as cannabis. Even the plant crops grown through conventional agriculture depend on chemical fertilizers from sources that are running out (fossil fuels, phosphate mines, etc.).

Furthermore, the mass application of chemical pesticides, fungicides and Monsanto’s Roundup chemicals is destroying the viability of soils while polluting the world’s farms, rivers, streams and oceans. This system is unsustainable. When it collapses, humanity will learn (the hard way) that only sustainable agriculture can sustain human life on our planet.

3) Mass-consumption economies based on buy-it-and-trash-it behavior

When children are raised to be good citizens, they’re taught to consume more stuff. In the U.S., it was even called “patriotic” by former President George Bush. To support your local economy, you’re supposed to go out and buy stuff that you don’t need, then chuck it into the trash after you use it, then go out and buy more!

Virtually the entire first-world economy is based on this idea that people need to consume more stuff, then throw it away, then consume more. That’s what all the corporate advertising is for, to convince people that they are inadequate unless they buy and consume more high-priced cars, designer jeans, electronic gadgets and throwaway home cleaning supplies. This system is insane. And it cannot continue indefinitely.

4) The accelerating loss of farming soils

There’s a documentary on this called Dirt (www.DirtTheMovie.org). It explains the value of soil and why conventional agriculture methods are destroying the literal foundation on which our civilization stands.

No dirt = no food. And the dirt is disappearing at an alarming rate, thanks to the unsustainable practices of conventional agriculture, with all its tilling, soil destruction, poisons and GMOs. I wonder what the people will plant their seeds in when all the cropland dirt is either dead or gone? Perhaps NASA will mine dirt from other planets or, *shudder*, create synthetic soil.

5) The mass poisoning of the oceans and aggressive over-fishing

Oceans ecosystems are collapsing. This isn’t some future prediction, it’s happening right now. Ocean acidification is destroying the coral reefs and mollusks all across the globe. At the same time, human civilization treats the oceans as giant planetary toilets into which all the toxic chemicals of modern civilization are flushed: Pharmaceuticals, pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals, hormone-disrupting chemicals and a whole lot more.

Massive fish die-offs are becoming increasingly common (http://www.naturalnews.com/031645_d…), and fish populations are plummeting across several species. We are beginning to see the results of mankind’s ongoing poisoning of the oceans.

6) Mass genetic pollution of the planet through GMOs

It will be the great, dark legacy of our modern civilization: The widespread genetic contamination of the planet through the use of GMOs.

Genetically engineered seeds are spreading their altered genetic code all across the world. The DNA of GMO crops is now detectable in soils, foods and water systems. What’s the upshot of all this? It’s a big unknown, of course, and that’s the frightening part: No one before has ever “played God” with the planet, right out in the open, and then observed what happens after a few years (or decades). Thanks to companies like Monsanto, we are the experiment, and no one know if it might ultimately lead to something like a widespread crop failure or even the alternation of natural web-of-life interactions across multiple ecosystems.

And if genetic pollution causes problems, how do you “clean” that pollution? You can’t! Genetic pollution endures. Once crops become infected with GE seeds, it’s all but impossible to eliminate the DNA contamination unless your willing to exterminate your own supply.

7) The drugs-and-surgery conventional medical system

Big Pharma’s days are numbered — based on economics if nothing else. The monopolistic pricing, the deadly side effects and the corrupt, criminal operations of the industry make it all utterly non-sustainable.

Big Pharma and the whole chemical approach to medicine is bankrupting companies, cities, states and nations. No nation can economically survive in the long run if it keeps spending its money on Big Pharma sick care schemes. Ultimately, those nations that hope to survive will need to ditch Big Pharma and return to natural medicine and preventive nutrition.

That day is coming. Sooner that you think, probably.

Widespread pharmaceutical contamination of the human population and the environment

Until the day comes that Big Pharma collapses into ruin, the pharmaceutical pollution of the planet will continue. Right now, pharmaceutical factories in India (which export their pills back to the states to be sold as brand-name drugs) are dumping untold thousands of gallons of dangerous chemical drugs into the waterways there

Many major cities are heavily contaminated with pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and outright poisons.

Fortunately, this sad chapter in human history will soon come to an end.

9) Runaway human population growth

Here’s the one nobody wants to talk about. But make no mistake: The human population growth we see right now is entirely unsustainable. The available of cheap food and fossil fuels over the last century has contributed to an unprecedented population explosion that is now nearing its end. There are only so many acres of farmland, after all, and only so many acre-feet of water to irrigate it.

Don’t misinterpret this, however, of thinking that I support some sort of population reduction measures a la Ted Turner and Bill Gates (http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_v…) or the secretive, sordid history of eugenics sponsored by the world’s elite.

Unlike the world’s leaders, I don’t believe in killing off human beings just to reduce global population. Rather, it makes more sense to teach sustainable living practices along with good parenting.  But realistically, even this will not suffice eventually. People concerned with this issue need to start reconsidering space colonization in the vein of T.A. Heppenheimer and his Colonies In Space. There is no need for everyone to stay on this planet if we can find somewhere safe and sustainable. And considering some of the aforementioned crises and the individualistic youth who are fed up with conforming to the tyrannical dictate’s of society’s corrupt leaders, many would probably voluntarily take the trip.

10) Fossil water consumption for agriculture

In one example, the Ogallala Aquifer is running dry, threatening the agricultural output of Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and even parts of Colorado and Texas (http://www.naturalnews.com/031658_a…).

This is a global issue, affecting India, China, North America, South America and nearly every nation that produces any significant agricultural yields. Fresh water is running out all across the world, and while additional water supplies can always be created through desalination, for example, that’s a very expensive way to replenish the water, and it’s almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels (see below). Even if you could build enough desalination plants to irrigate the world’s croplands, the resulting food prices would still result in mass starvation by those who couldn’t afford the food which might cost ten times the current price.

Imagine paying $20 for a loaf of bread and you get the idea of what’s coming. But that’s only to pay for the water, then add the hyperinflation from the devaluation of the currency and it becomes a literal nightmare.

11) Fossil fuel consumption

I realize this is a highly contentious issue, with some people claiming that there’s an “unlimited supply of oil” in our planet because it’s replenishing itself all the time. This idea simply doesn’t square with what we know: The Earth is a finite object, occupying finite space. Inside it can only be a finite amount of fossil fuels. The recharge rate of fossil fuels is on the scale of millions of years, meaning we can’t simply wait around for more fuel to reappear if we use up the current reserves.

There is convincing evidence right now that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, has been lying about its output capacity for at least the last decade. It can’t reach its production targets, and there is reasoned speculation that its own best-producing oil wells are approaching their end. Even if oil remains available for a few more decades, it still becomes increasingly expensive oil, meaning that everything else down the supply chain becomes more expensive, too: Food, fuel, consumer goods, etc.

The era of cheap fossil fuels is coming to an end. Although fossil fuels will no doubt be around for several decades more, the cheap stuff is long gone, it seems. The citizens of Earth will soon need to find an alternate way to power their cities, cars and businesses in the 21st century.

Solar probably isn’t the answer, as solar panels depend on rare earth metals that are entirely dependent on Chinese mining operations. Wind energy also hasn’t panned out as it should have. And the governments of the world continue to suppress all kinds of so-called free energy experiments and technologies, some of which have been proven to work by even the U.S. Navy.

12) The widespread destruction of animal habitat

Here’s one that makes a lot of people really made. What? We can’t keep clear-cutting the rainforests to plant genetically engineered soybeans?

Not if you want the planet to survive, actually. There’s a delicate web of life on our planet upon which human life ultimately depends. The more animal habitat we destroy, the more it ultimately comes back to haunt us.

Now, I’m not in favor of the insane fascist “green police” and the UN’s freedom-stealing efforts to pigeon-hole human beings into centrally-controlled behavior boxes. The key here is finding ways for people to voluntarily live in balance with nature while still maintaining their freedoms. This requires education, not more government.

We need to continue to teach people how to make sound decisions about where they buy their wood furniture (to avoid the slashing of old-growth forests). We need to teach people who eat meat to buy truly free-range, grass-fed meat rather than factory-farmed meats that depend on disgusting corporate mega-farms. And of course, we also need to make people aware of the benefits of getting more plant-based foods into their diets where possible, because when properly prepared, plant foods provide a lot of nutrients with less waste than most meats.

I just think that people need to consider where their food comes from no matter what they’re eating, and then take steps to reduce the waste of the food they’re choosing to consume. The best answer to this is to buy local food. In fact, I would argue that eating some beef steaks from a local farmer is more ecologically sound than juicing up organic fruits and vegetables grown and imported from Chile (unless you live in Chile, of course).

That’s an arguable point, of course, and opinions differ sharply on this, but I believe that we really need to focus on eating local foods just as much as we do on what we’re eating.

While we’re at it, one of the best ways to reduce the destruction of animal habitat is to grow your own food by turning your yard into a garden. Reduce your demand for store-bought food.

The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

Those are 12 of the biggest things that are entirely unsustainable on our planet right now. Human life depends on most of them. It makes you wonder: How will humans survive when these systems and resources upon which we depend have run out or collapsed?

That is a question we’d all better be asking ourselves right now. Because the age of cheap fuel, cheap money, cheap water and cheap food is fast ending. The future of life on our planet will require something far more evolved than the infantile, selfish and self-destructive mindset that humanity has so far demonstrated.

Debt-based money systems don’t cut it. Burning up all the fossil fuels is only a fool’s abundance. Medicating the humans and animals with toxic, synthetic pharmaceuticals is a form of medical insanity. These things will all come to an end.

The question is: Who will survive the end of these things and be around to help shape the next society which must operate with far greater humility and wisdom?

European pilgrims came to this nation looking for a place filled with opportunities. Some came for religious freedom. Some came to start over. But all came with the hopes of prosperity. Upon arriving, the pilgrims found an abandoned village which soon became their own settlement. It was hard work building a new life and their Calvinistic work ethic wasn’t enough to carry them through. Thankfully, they made friends with a local who already spoke English (Squanto) because he had learned the language while serving as a slave to Europeans abroad. Squanto helped these early colonists survive.
As time passed, the settlers formed an uneasy peace with the Wampanoag nearby, who at that time numbered at least 12,000. But in the years that followed, they were almost wiped out,, like many other peoples, suffering genocide under self-proclaimed “Christians” who longed to fulfill their “Manifest Destiny”. As their numbers increased, the Native population decreased. Our “blessings” came at great price for those who previously dwelt these lands.

The Thanksgiving holiday, although held for many years, was popularized in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln.

According to Lincoln:

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

However, truth be told, when we believe that such abundance comes from the will of God, rather than through our own sins, we sanction our evil. Now, that isn’t to say that we should not be thankful for the blessings we have received. It is to say, however, that if we are going to be thankful, we must also be angstful. We must lament and repent for the ways in which our affluence has come unjustly. If we believe that the various empires who oppressed the Israelites deserved their judgment, yet overlook the same abuses by “America”, we are living in a double-standard that God, immutable as He is, does not share.

In the writings of the early disciples, blessing is rarely ever tied to material wealth. In fact, it is often the poor who are called “blessed”. We are told to be content because of things such as suffering and persecution and salvation.

So let this day be one where we see without illusions, where we lament the sins of the nations in which we reside as we honestly thank Jesus for those things that are truly blessings from Him.

“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as “making the World safe for capitalism”, reducing social tensions by helping to comfort the afflicted, provide safety valves for the angry, and improve the functioning of government (McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson (1961-1966), President of the Ford Foundation, (1966-1979))

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122 )

“Under the New World Order, the ritual of inviting “civil society” leaders into the inner circles of power –while simultaneously repressing the rank and file– serves several important functions. First, it says to the World that the critics of globalization “must make concessions” to earn the right to mingle. Second, it conveys the illusion that while the global elites should –under what is euphemistically called democracy– be subject to criticism, they nonetheless rule legitimately. And third, it says “there is no alternative” to globalization: fundamental change is not possible and the most we can hope is to engage with these rulers in an ineffective “give and take”.

While the “Globalizers” may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this “civil society mingling” does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement. An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City [1999-2001] are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer.

This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the “Globalizers” to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who plunder the Globe.” (Michel Chossudovsky,  The Quebec Wall, April  2001)

“Manufacturing consent” describes a propaganda model used by the corporate media to sway public opinion and “inculcate individuals with values and beliefs…” It was initially coined by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky:

The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda. (Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky)

“Manufacturing consent” implies manipulating and shaping public opinion. It establishes conformity and acceptance to authority and social hierarchy. It seeks compliance to an established social order. “Manufacturing consent” describes the submission of public opinion to the mainstream media narrative, to its lies and fabrications.

“Manufacturing dissent”

This article focuses on a related concept, namely the process of “manufacturing dissent” (rather than “consent”), which plays a decisive role in serving the interests of the ruling class.

Under contemporary capitalism, the illusion of democracy must prevail. It is in the interest of the corporate elites to accept dissent and protest as a feature of the system inasmuch as they do not threaten the established social order. The purpose is not to repress dissent, but, on the contrary, to shape and mould the protest movement, to set the outer limits of dissent.

To maintain their legitimacy, the economic elites favor limited and controlled forms of opposition, with a view to preventing the development of radical forms of protest, which might shake the very foundations and institutions of global corporatism. In other words, “manufacturing dissent” acts as a “safety valve”, which protects and sustains the New World Order.

To be effective, however, the process of “manufacturing dissent” must be carefully regulated and monitored by those who are the object of the protest movement.

“Funding Dissent”

Essentially by “funding dissent”, namely by channelling financial resources from those who are the object of the protest movement to those who are involved in organizing the protest movement.

Co-optation is not limited to buying the favors of politicians. The economic elites –which control major foundations– also oversee the funding of numerous NGOs and civil society organizations, which historically have been involved in the protest movement against the established economic and social order. The programs of many NGOs and people’s movements rely heavily on both public as well as private funding agencies including the Ford, Rockefeller, McCarthy foundations, among others.

The anti-globalization movement is opposed to Wall Street and the Texas oil giants controlled by Rockefeller, et al. Yet the foundations and charities of Rockefeller et al will generously fund progressive anti-capitalist networks as well as environmentalists (opposed to Big Oil) with a view to ultimately overseeing and shaping their various activities.

The mechanisms of “manufacturing dissent” require a manipulative environment, a process of arm-twisting and subtle cooptation of individuals within progressive organizations, including anti-war coalitions, environmentalists and the anti-globalization movement.

Whereas the mainstream media “manufactures consent”, the complex network of NGOs (including segments of the alternative media) are used by the corporate elites to mould and manipulate the protest movement.

Following the deregulation of the global financial system in the 1990s and the rapid enrichment of the financial establishment, funding through foundations and charities has skyrocketed. In a bitter irony, part of the fraudulent financial gains on Wall Street in recent years have been recycled to the elites’ tax exempt foundations and charities. These windfall financial gains have not only been used to buy out politicians, they have also been channelled to NGOs, research institutes, community centres, church groups, environmentalists, alternative media, human rights groups, etc. “Manufactured dissent” also applies to “corporate left” and “progressive media” funded by NGOs or directly by the foundations.

The inner objective is to “manufacture dissent” and establish the boundaries of a “politically correct” opposition. In turn, many NGOs are infiltrated by  informants often acting on behalf of western intelligence agencies. Moreover, an increasingly large segment of the progressive alternative news media on the internet has become dependent on funding from corporate foundations and charities.

The Anti-Globalization Movement

The Seattle 1999 counter-summit is invariably upheld as a triumph for the anti-globalization movement: “a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anti-corporate movement.” (See Naomi Klein, Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up, The Nation, November 13, 2009).

Seattle was an indeed an important crossroads in the history of the mass movement. Over 50,000 people from diverse backgrounds, civil society organizations, human rights, labor unions, environmentalists had come together in a common pursuit. Their goal was to forecefully dismantle the neoliberal agenda including its institutional base.

But Seattle also marked a major reversal. With mounting dissent from all sectors of society, the official WTO Summit desperately needed the token participation of civil society leaders “on the inside”, to give the appearance of being “democratic” on the outside.

While thousands of people had converged on Seattle, what occurred behind the scenes was a de facto victory for neoliberalism. A handful of civil society organizations, formally opposed the WTO had contributed to legitimizing the WTO’s global trading architecture. Instead of challenging the WTO as an an illegal intergovernmental body, they agreed to a pre-summit dialogue with the WTO and Western governments. “Accredited NGO participants were invited to mingle in a friendly environment with ambassadors, trade ministers and Wall Street tycoons at several of the official events including the numerous cocktail parties and receptions.” (Michel Chossudovsky, Seattle and Beyond: Disarming the New World Order , Covert Action Quarterly, November 1999, See Ten Years Ago: “Manufacturing Dissent” in Seattle).

The hidden agenda was to weaken and divide the protest movement and orient the anti-globalization movement into areas that would not directly threaten the interests of the business establishment.

Funded by private foundations (including Ford, Rockefeller, Rockefeller Brothers, Charles Stewart Mott, The Foundation for Deep Ecology), these “accredited” civil society organizations had positioned themselves as lobby groups, acting formally on behalf of the people’s movement. Led by prominent and committed activists, their hands were tied. They ultimately contributed (unwittingly) to weakening the anti-globalization movement by accepting the legitimacy of what was essentially an illegal organization. (The 1994 Marrakech Summit agreement which led to the creation of the WTO on January 1, 1995). (Ibid)

The NGO leaders were fully aware as to where the money was coming from. Yet within the US and European NGO community, the foundations and charities are considered to be independent philanthropic bodies, separate from the corporations; namely the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, for instance, is considered to be separate and distinct from the Rockefeller family empire of banks and oil companies.

With salaries and operating expenses depending on private foundations, it became an accepted routine: In a twisted logic, the battle against corporate capitalism was to be be fought using the funds from the tax exempt foundations owned by corporate capitalism.

The NGOs were caught in a straightjacket; their very existence depended on the foundations. Their activities were closely monitored. In a twisted logic, the very nature of anti-capitalist activism was indirectly controlled  by the capitalists through their independent foundations.

“Progressive Watchdogs”

In this evolving saga, the corporate elites whose interests are duly served by the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO, will readily fund (through their various foundations and charities) organizations which are at the forefront of the protest movement against the WTO and the Washington based international financial institutions.

Supported by foundation money, various “watchdogs” were set up by the NGOs to monitor the implementation of neoliberal policies, without however raising the broader issue of how the Bretton Woods twins and the WTO, through their policies, had contributed to the impoverishment of millions of people.

The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Network (SAPRIN) was established by Development Gap, a USAID and World Bank funded NGO based in Washington DC.

Amply documented, the imposition of the IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) on developing countries constitutes a blatant form of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states on behalf of creditor institutions.

Instead of challenging the legitimacy of the IMF-World Bank’s “deadly economic medicine”, SAPRIN’s core organization sought to establish a participatory role for the NGOs, working hand in glove with USAID and the World Bank. The objective was to give a “human face” to the neoliberal policy agenda, rather than reject the IMF-World Bank policy framework outright:

“SAPRIN is the global civil-society network that took its name from the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI), which it launched with the World Bank and its president, Jim Wolfensohn, in 1997.

SAPRI is designed as a tripartite exercise to bring together organizations of civil society, their governments and the World Bank in a joint review of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) and an exploration of new policy options. It is legitimizing an active role for civil society in economic decision-making, as it is designed to indicate areas in which changes in economic policies and in the economic-policymaking process are required. ( http://www.saprin.org/overview.htm SAPRIN website, emphasis added)

Similarly, The Trade Observatory (formerly WTO Watch), operating out of Geneva, is a project of the Minneapolis based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), which is generously funded by Ford, Rockefeller, Charles Stewart Mott among others. (see Table 1 below).

The Trade Observatory has a mandate to monitor the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas  (FTAA). (IATP, About Trade Observatory, accessed September 2010).

The Trade Observatory is also to develop data and information as well as foster “governance” and “accountability”. Accountability to the victims of WTO policies or accountability to the protagonists of neoliberal reforms?

The Trade Observatory watchdog functions does not in any way threaten the WTO. Quite the opposite: the legitimacy of the trade organizations and agreements are never questioned.

Table 1 Minneapolis Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) largest donors
(for complete list click here)

Source: http://activistcash.com/organization_financials.cfm/o/16-institute-for-agriculture-and-trade-policy

The World Economic Forum. “All Roads Lead to Davos”

The people’s movement has been hijacked. Selected intellectuals, trade union executives, and the leaders of civil society organizations (including Oxfam, Amnesty International, Greenpeace) are routinely invited to the Davos World Economic Forum, where they mingle with the World’s most powerful economic and political actors. This mingling of the World’s corporate elites with hand-picked “progressives” is part of the ritual underlying the process of  “manufacturing dissent”.

The ploy is to selectively handpick civil society leaders “whom we can trust” and integrate them into a “dialogue”, cut them off from their rank and file, make them feel that they are “global citizens” acting on behalf of their fellow workers but make them act in a way which serves the interests of the corporate establishment:

“The participation of NGOs in the Annual Meeting in Davos is evidence of the fact that [we] purposely seek to integrate a broad spectrum of the major stakeholders in society in … defining and advancing the global agenda … We believe the [Davos] World Economic Forum provides the business community with the ideal framework for engaging in collaborative efforts with the other principal stakeholders [NGOs] of the global economy to “improve the state of the world,” which is the Forum’s mission. (World Economic Forum, Press Release 5 January 2001)

The WEF does not represent the broader business community. It is an elitist gathering: Its members are giant global corporations (with a minimum $5 billion annual turnover). The selected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are viewed as partner “stakeholders” as well as a convenient “mouthpiece for the voiceless who are often left out of decision-making processes.” (World Economic Forum – Non-Governmental Organizations, 2010)

“They [the NGOs] play a variety of roles in partnering with the Forum to improve the state of the world, including serving as a bridge between business, government and civil society, connecting the policy makers to the grassroots, bringing practical solutions to the table…” (Ibid)

Civil society “partnering” with global corporations on behalf of “the voiceless”, who are “left out”?

Trade union executives are also co-opted to the detriment of workers’ rights.  The leaders of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), among others, are routinely invited to attend both the annual WEF meetings in Davos, Switzerland as well as to the regional summits. They also participate in the WEF’s Labour Leaders Community which focuses on mutually acceptable patterns of behavior for the labor movement. The WEF “believes that the voice of Labour is important to dynamic dialogue on issues of globalisation, economic justice, transparency and accountability, and ensuring a healthy global financial system.”

“Ensuring a healthy global financial system” wrought by fraud and corruption? The issue of workers’ rights is not mentioned. (World Economic Forum – Labour Leaders, 2010).

The World Social Forum: “Another World Is Possible”

The 1999 Seattle counter-summit in many regards laid the foundations for the development of the World Social Forum.

The first gathering of the World Social Forum took place in January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This international gathering involved the participation of  tens of thousands of activists from grass-roots organizations and NGOs.

The WSF  gathering of NGOs and progressive organizations has been held simultaneously with the Davos World Economic Forum (WEF). It was intended to voice opposition and dissent to the World Economic Forum of corporate leaders and finance ministers.

The WSF at the outset was an initiative of France’s ATTAC and several Brazilian NGOs’:

“… In February 2000, Bernard Cassen, the head of a French NGO platform ATTAC, Oded Grajew, head of a Brazilian employers’ organisation, and Francisco Whitaker, head of an association of Brazilian NGOs, met to discuss a proposal for a “world civil society event”; by March 2000, they formally secured the support of the municipal government of Porto Alegre and the state government of Rio Grande do Sul, both controlled at the time by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT)…. A group of French NGOs, including ATTAC, Friends of L’Humanité, and Friends of Le Monde Diplomatique, sponsored an Alternative Social Forum in Paris titled “One Year after Seattle”, in order to prepare an agenda for the protests to be staged at the upcoming European Union summit at Nice. The speakers called for “reorienting certain international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO… so as to create a globalization from below” and “building an international citizens’ movement, not to destroy the IMF but to reorient its missions.” (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)

From the outset in 2001, the WSF was supported by core funding from the Ford Foundation, which is known to have ties to the CIA going back to the 1950s: “The CIA uses philanthropic foundations as the most effective conduit to channel large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source.” (James Petras, The Ford Foundation and the CIA, Global Research, September 18, 2002)

The same procedure of donor funded counter-summits or people’s summits which characterized the 1990s People’s Summits was embodied in the World Social Forum (WSF):

“… other WSF funders (or `partners’, as they are referred to in WSF terminology) included the Ford Foundation, — suffice it to say here that it has always operated in the closest collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency and US overall strategic interests; the Heinrich Boll Foundation, which is controlled by the German Greens party, a partner in the present [2003] German government and a supporter of the wars on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (its leader Joschka Fischer is the [former] German foreign minister); and major funding agencies such as Oxfam (UK), Novib (Netherlands), ActionAid (UK), and so on.

Remarkably, an International Council member of the WSF reports that the “considerable funds” received from these agencies have “not hitherto awakened any significant debates [in the WSF bodies] on the possible relations of dependence it could generate.” Yet he admits that “in order to get funding from the Ford Foundation, the organisers had to convince the foundation that the Workers Party was not involved in the process.” Two points are worth noting here. First, this establishes that the funders were able to twist arms and determine the role of different forces in the WSF — they needed to be `convinced’ of the credentials of those who would be involved. Secondly, if the funders objected to the participation of the thoroughly domesticated Workers Party, they would all the more strenuously object to prominence being given to genuinely anti-imperialist forces. That they did so object will be become clear as we describe who was included and who excluded from the second and third meets of the WSF….

… The question of funding [of the WSF] does not even figure in the charter of principles of the WSF, adopted in June 2001. Marxists, being materialists, would point out that one should look at the material base of the forum to grasp its nature. (One indeed does not have to be a Marxist to understand that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”.) But the WSF does not agree. It can draw funds from imperialist institutions like Ford Foundation while fighting “domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism” (Research Unit For Political Economy, The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum, Global Research, January 20, 2004)

The Ford Foundation provided core support to the WSF, with indirect contributions to participating “partner organizations” from the McArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the W. Alton Jones Foundation,  the European Commission, several European governments (including the Labour government of Tony Blair), the Canadian government, as well as a number of UN bodies (including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, ILO and the FAO) .(Ibid).

In addition to initial core support from the Ford Foundation, many of the participating civil society organizations receive funding from major foundations and charities. In turn, the US and European based NGOs often operate as secondary funding agencies channelling Ford and Rockefeller money towards partner organizations in developing countries, including grassroots peasant and human rights movements.

The International Council (IC) of the WSF is made up of representatives from NGOs, trade unions, alternative media organizations, research institutes, many of which are heavily funded by foundations as well as governments. (See Fórum Social Mundial). The same trade unions, which are routinely invited to mingle with Wall Street CEOs at the Davos World Economic Forum (WSF) including the AFL-CIO, the European Trade Union Confederation and the  Canadian Labor Congress (CLC) also sit on the WSF’s International Council (IC). Among NGOs funded by major foundations sitting on the WSF’s IC is the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) (see our analysis above) which oversees the Geneva based Trade Observatory.

The Funders Network on Trade and Globalization (FTNG), which has observer status on the WSF International Council plays a key role. While channelling financial support to the WSF, it acts as a clearing house for major foundations. The FTNG describes itself as “an alliance of grant makers committed to building just and sustainable communities around the world”. Members of this alliance are Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, Heinrich Boell, C. S. Mott, Merck Family Foundation, Open Society Institute, Tides, among others. (For a complete list of FTNG funding agencies see FNTG: Funders). FTNG acts as a fund raising entity on behalf of the WSF.

Western Governments Fund the Counter-Summits and Repress the Protest Movement

In a bitter irony, governments including the European Union grant money to fund progressive groups (including the WSF) involved in organizing protests against the very same governments which finance their activities.

“Governments, too, have been significant financiers of protest groups. The European Commission, for example, funded two groups who mobilised large numbers of people to protest at EU summits at Gothenburg and Nice. Britain’s national lottery, which is overseen by the government, helped fund a group at the heart of the British contingent at both protests.” (James Harding, Counter-capitalism, FT.com, October 15 2001)

We are dealing with a diabolical process: The host government finances the official summit as well as the NGOs actively involved in the Counter-Summit. It also funds the anti-riot police operation which has a mandate to repress the grassroots participants of the Counter-Summit.

The purpose of these combined operations, including violent actions committed by anti-riot police forces (including larcen and vandalism), is to discredit the protest movement and intimidate its participants. The broader objective is to transform the counter-summit into a ritual of dissent, which serves to uphold the interests of the official summit and the host government. This logic has prevailed in numerous counter summits since the 1990s.

At the 2001 Summit of the America in Quebec City, funding from the Canadian federal government to mainstream NGOs and trade unions was granted under certain conditions. A large segment of the protest movement was de facto excluded from the People’s Summit. This in itself led a second parallel venue, which some observers described as a “a counter-People’s Summit. In turn, organizers agreed with both the provincial and federal authorities that the protest march would be move towards a remote location some 10 km out of town, rather than towards the historical downtown area were the official FTAA summit was being held behind a heavily guarded “security perimeter”.

“Rather than marching toward the perimeter fence and the Summit of the Americas meetings, march organizers chose a route that marched from the People’s Summit away from the fence, through largely empty residential areas to the parking lot of a stadium in a vacant area several miles away. Henri Masse, the president of the Federation des travailleurs et travailleuses du Quebec (FTQ), explained, “I deplore that we are so far from the center-city…. But it was a question of security.” One thousand marshals from the FTQ kept very tight control over the march. When the march came to the point where some activists planned to split off and go up the hill to the fence, FTQ marshals signalled the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) contingent walking behind CUPE to sit down and stop the march so that FTQ marshals could lock arms and prevent others from leaving the official march route.” (Katherine Dwyer, Lessons of Quebec City, International Socialist Review, June/July 2001)

NGO Leaders versus their Grassroots

The establishment of the World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 was unquestionably a historical landmark, bringing together tens of thousands of committed activists. It was an important venue which allowed for the exchange of ideas and the establishment of ties of solidarity.

What is at stake is the ambivalent role of the leaders of progressive organizations. Their cozy and polite relationship to the inner circles of power, to corporate and government funding, aid agencies, the World Bank, etc, undermines their relationship and responsibilities to their rank and file. The objective of manufactured dissent is precisely that: to distance the leaders from their rank and file as a means to effectively silencing and weakening grassroots actions.

Most of the grassroots participating organizations in the World Social Forum including peasant, workers’ and student organizations, firmly committed to combating neoliberalism were unaware of the WSF International Council’s relationship to corporate funding, negotiated behind their backs by a handful of NGO leaders with ties to both official and private funding agencies.

Funding to progressive organizations is not unconditional. Its purpose is to “pacify” and manipulate the protest movement.  Precise conditionalities are set by the funding agencies. If they are not met, the disbursements are discontinued and the recipient NGO is driven into de facto bankruptcy due to lack of funds.

The WSF defines itself  as “an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and inter-linking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centred on the human person”. (See Fórum Social Mundial, accessed 2010).

The WSF is a mosaic of individual initiatives which does not directly threaten or challenge the legitimacy of global capitalism and its institutions. It meets annually. It is characterised by a multitude of sessions and workshops. In this regard, one of the features of the WSF was to retain the “do-it-yourself” framework, characteristic of the donor funded counter G7 People’s Summits of the 1990s.

This apparent disorganized structure is deliberate. While favoring debate on a number of individual topics, the WSF framework is not conducive to the articulation of a cohesive common platform and plan of action directed global capitalism. Moreover, the US led war in the Middle East and Central Asia, which broke out a few months after the inaugural WSF venue in Porto Alegre in January 2001, has not been a central issue in forum discussions.

What prevails is a vast and intricate network of organizations. The recipient grassroots organizations in developing countries are invariably unaware that their partner NGOs in the United States or the European Union, which are providing them with financial support, are themselves funded by major foundations. The money trickles down, setting constraints on grassroots actions. Many of these NGO leaders are committed and well meaning individuals acting within a framework which sets the boundaries of dissent. The leaders of these movements are often co-opted, without even realizing that as a result of corporate funding their hands are tied.

Global corporate capitalism finances anti-corporatism: an absurd and contradictory relationship.

“Another World is Possible”, but it cannot be meaningfully achieved under the present arrangement.

A shake-up of the World Social Forum, of its organizational structure, its funding arrangements and leadership is required.

There can be no meaningful mass movement when dissent is generously funded by those same corporate interests which are the target of the protest movement. In the words of McGeorge Bundy, president of the Ford Foundation (1966-1979),“Everything the [Ford] Foundation did could be regarded as ‘making the World safe for capitalism’”.

FAMILY MEMBERS AND FIRST RESPONDERS

A common criticism of those who question 9/11 is that they are being “disrespectful to the victims and their families”.

However, half of the victim’s families believe that 9/11 was an inside job (according to the head of the largest 9/11 family group, Bill Doyle) (and listen to this interview). Many family and friends of victims not only support the search for 9/11 truth, but they demand it (please ignore the partisan tone). See also this interview.

Indeed, it has now become so clear that the 9/11 Commission was a whitewash that the same 9/11 widows who called for the creation of the 9/11 Commission are now demanding a NEW investigation (see also this video).

And dying heroes, soon-to-be victims themselves, the first responders who worked tirelessly to save lives on and after 9/11, say that controlled demolition brought down the Twin Towers and that a real investigation is necessary.

PSYCHIATRISTS AND PSYCHOLOGISTS

Finally, those who attack people who question the government’s version of 9/11 as “crazy” may wish to review the list of mental health professionals who have concluded that the official version of 9/11 is false:

Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD

Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD

Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Ruters University Barry R. Komisaruk

Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward

Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino

Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther

Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner

Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor

Retired Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris

Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech

Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser

THOUSANDS OF OTHERS

The roster above is only a sample. There are too many Ph.D. scientists and engineers, architects, military and intelligence officials, politicians, legal scholars and other highly-credible people who question 9/11 — literally thousands — to list in one place. Here are a few additional people to consider:

The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

Former air traffic controller, who knows the flight corridor which the two planes which hit the Twin Towers flew “like the back of my hand” and who handled two actual hijackings (Robin Hordon) says that 9/11 could not have occurred as the government says, and that planes can be tracked on radar even when their transponders are turned off (also, listen to this interview)

Perhaps “the premiere collapse expert in the country”, who 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer referred to as a “very, very respected expert on building collapse”, the head of the New York Fire Department’s Special Operations Command and the most highly decorated firefighter in its NYFD history, who had previously “commanded rescue operations at many difficult and complex disasters, including the Oklahoma City Bombing, the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing, and many natural disasters worldwide” thought that the collapse of the South Tower was caused by bombs, because the collapse of the building was too even to have been caused by anything else (pages 5-6).

Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who’s who of liberals and independents) jointly call for a new investigation into 9/11

Former FBI agent (Robert Wright) says “The FBI, rather than trying to prevent a terrorist attack, was merely gathering intelligence so they would know who to arrest when a terrorist attack occurred.”

Former Minnesota Governor (Jesse Ventura) questions the government’s account of 9/11 and asks whether the World Trade Center was demolished

Former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and several senators have called extremely credible (free subscription required), said “If they were to do real investigations we would see several significant high level criminal prosecutions in this country. And that is something that they are not going to let out. And, believe me; they will do everything to cover this up”. She also is leaning towards the conclusion that 9/11 was an inside job. Some of her allegations have been confirmed in the British press.

And finally…roughly around 90 million U.S. citizens (roughly one-third) believe that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Zogby Poll: 51% Of Americans Want New 9/11 Investigation

Scientific Poll: 84% Say 9/11 Is A Cover Up

Zogby Poll: Half of New Yorkers Believe Government Complicity in 9/11

SCIENTISTS

A prominent physicist with 33 years of service for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC (Dr. David L. Griscom) said that the official theory for why the Twin Towers and world trade center building 7 collapsed “does not match the available facts” and supports the theory that the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition

A world-renowned scientist, recipient of the National Medal of Science, America’s highest honor for scientific achievement (Dr. Lynn Margulis) said:

“I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken.“

The former head of the Fire Science Division of the government agency which claims that the World Trade Centers collapsed due to fire (the National Institute of Standards and Technology), who is one of the world’s leading fire science researchers and safety engineers, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering (Dr. James Quintiere), called for an independent review of the World Trade Center Twin Tower collapse investigation. “I wish that there would be a peer review of this,” he said, referring to the NIST investigation. “I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they’ve done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. … I think the official conclusion that NIST arrived at is questionable.”

The principal electrical engineer for the entire World Trade Center complex, who was “very familiar with the structures and [the Twin Towers'] conceptual design parameters” (Richard F. Humenn), stated that “the mass and strength of the structure should have survived the localized damage caused by the planes and burning jet fuel . . . . the fuel and planes alone did not bring the Towers down.”

Former Director for Research, Director for Aeronautical Projects, and Flight Research Program Manager for NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, who holds masters degrees in both physics and engineering (Dwain A. Deets) says:

“The many visual images (massive structural members being hurled horizontally, huge pyroclastic clouds, etc.) leave no doubt in my mind explosives were involved [in the destruction of the World Trade Centers on 9/11].”

A prominent physicist, former U.S. professor of physics from a top university, and a former principal investigator for the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of Advanced Energy Projects (Dr. Steven E. Jones) stated that the world trade centers were brought down by controlled demolition

A U.S. physics professor who teaches at several universities (Dr. Crockett Grabbe) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition

An expert on demolition (Bent Lund) said that the trade centers were brought down with explosives (in Danish)

A Dutch demolition expert (Danny Jowenko) stated that WTC 7 was imploded

A safety engineer and accident analyst for the Finnish National Safety Technology Authority (Dr. Heikki Kurttila) stated regarding WTC 7 that “The great speed of the collapse and the low value of the resistance factor strongly suggest controlled demolition.”

A 13-year professor of metallurgical engineering at a U.S. university, with a PhD in materials engineering, a former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Senior Staff Member (Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn), is calling for a new investigation of 9/11

A Danish professor of chemistry (Dr. Niels Harrit) said, in a mainstream Danish newspaper, “WTC7 collapsed exactly like a house of cards. If the fires or damage in one corner had played a decisive role, the building would have fallen in that direction. You don’t have to be a woodcutter to grasp this” (translated)

A former guidance systems engineer for Polaris and Trident missiles and professor emeritus, mathematics and computer science at a university concluded (Dr. Bruce R. Henry) that the Twin Towers “were brought down by planted explosives.”

A mechanical engineer with 20 years experience as a Fire Protection Engineer for the U.S. Departments of Energy, Defense, and Veterans Affairs, who is a contributing Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Department of Energy Fire Protection Engineering Functional Area Qualification Standard for Nuclear Facilities, a board member of the Northern California – Nevada Chapter of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, currently serving as Fire Protection Engineer for the city of San Jose, California, the 10th largest city in the United States (Edward S. Munyak) believes that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition.

The former Chief of the Strategic and Emergency Planning Branch, U.S. Department of Energy, and former Director of the Office of Engineering at the Public Service Commission in Washington, D.C., who is a mechanical engineer (Enver Masud) , does not believe the official story, and believes that there is a prima facie case for controlled demolition of the World Trade Center.

A professor of mathematics (Gary Welz) said “The official explanation that I’ve heard doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t explain why I heard and felt an explosion before the South Tower fell and why the concrete was pulverized”

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS AND ARCHITECTS

A prominent engineer with 55 years experience, in charge of the design of hundreds of major building projects including high rise offices, former member of the California Seismic Safety Commission and former member of the National Institute of Sciences Building Safety Council (Marx Ayres) believes that the World Trade Centers were brought down by controlled demolition (see also this)

Two professors of structural engineering at a prestigious Swiss university (Dr. Joerg Schneider and Dr. Hugo Bachmann) said that, on 9/11, World Trade Center 7 was brought down by controlled demolition (translation here)

Kamal S. Obeid, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Berkeley, of Fremont, California

Ronald H. Brookman, structural engineer, with a masters degree in Engineering from UC Davis, of Novato California

Graham John Inman, structural engineer, of London, England

Paul W. Mason, structural engineer, of Melbourne, Australia

Mills M. Kay Mackey, structural engineer, of Denver, Colorado

David Scott, Structural Engineer, of Scotland

Nathan Lomba, Structural Engineer, of Eureka, California

Edward E. Knesl, civil and structural engineer, of Phoenix, Arizona

David Topete, civil and structural engineer, San Francisco, California

Charles Pegelow, structural engineer, of Houston, Texas (and see this)

Dennis Kollar, structural engineer, of West Bend, Wisconsin

Doyle Winterton, structural engineer (retired)

Michael T. Donly, P.E., structural engineer

William Rice, P.E., structural engineer, former professor of Vermont Technical College

An architect, member of the American Institute of Architects, who has been a practicing architect for 20 years and has been responsible for the production of construction documents for numerous steel-framed and fire-protected buildings for uses in many different areas, including education, civic, rapid transit and industrial use (Richard Gage) disputes the claim that fire and airplane damage brought down the World Trade Centers and believes there is strong evidence of controlled demolition (many other architects who question 9/11 are listed here)

LEGAL SCHOLARS

Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Inspector General, U.S. Department of Transportation; former Professor of Aviation, Dept. of Aerospace Engineering and Aviation and Professor of Public Policy, Ohio State University (Mary Schiavo) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign; a leading practitioner and advocate of international law; responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, the American implementing legislation for the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention; served on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-1992), and represented Bosnia- Herzegovina at the World Court, with a Doctor of Law Magna Cum Laude as well as a Ph.D. in Political Science, both from Harvard University (Dr. Francis Boyle) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former prosecutor in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Justice Department and a key member of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s anti-corruption task force; former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois (J. Terrence “Terry” Brunner) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor Emeritus, International Law, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University; in 2001 served on the three-person UN Commission on Human Rights for the Palestine Territories, and previously, on the Independent International Commission on Kosovo (Richard Falk) questions the government’s version of 9/11., and asks whether the Neocons were behind 9/11.

Bessie Dutton Murray Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Director, Center for Human Rights, University of Iowa; Fellow, World Academy of Art and Science. Honorary Editor, Board of Editors, American Journal of International Law (Burns H. Weston) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former president of the National Lawyers Guild (C. Peter Erlinder), who signed a petition calling for a real investigation into 9/11. And see petition.

Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Troy University; associate General Counsel, National Association of Federal Agents; Retired Agent in Charge, Internal Affairs, U.S. Customs, responsible for the internal integrity and security for areas encompassing nine states and two foreign locations; former Federal Sky Marshall; 27-year U.S. Customs career (Mark Conrad) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Professor of Law, University of Freiburg; former Minister of Justice of West Germany (Horst Ehmke) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Director of Academic Programs, Institute for Policy and Economic Development, University of Texas, El Paso, specializing in executive branch secrecy policy, governmental abuse, and law and bureaucracy; former U.S. Army Signals Intelligence officer; author of several books on law and political theory (Dr. William G. Weaver) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Famed trial attorney (Gerry Spence) questions the government’s version of 9/11.

Former Instructor of Criminal Trial Practice, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California at Berkeley 11-year teaching career. Retired Chief Assistant Public Defender, Contra Costa County, California 31-year career (William Veale) said:

“When you grow up in the United States, there are some bedrock principles that require concerted effort to discard. One is the simplest: that our leaders are good and decent people whose efforts may occasionally warrant criticism but never because of malice or venality… But one grows up. … And with the lawyer’s training comes the reliance on evidence and the facts that persuade… After a lot of reading, thought, study, and commiseration, I have come to the conclusion that the attacks of 9/11 were, in their essence, an inside job perpetrated at the highest levels of the U S government.”

Continued…

9/11 COMMISSIONERS

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission (Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton) said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”.

The co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission also said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements, yet didn’t bother to tell the U.S. populace.

Indeed, the co-chairs of the Commission now admit that the Commission largely operated based upon political considerations.

9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, that the 9/11 debate should continue, and that the 9/11 Commission report was only “the first draft” of history.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

Former 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”.

9/11 Commissioner John Lehman said that “We purposely put together a staff that had – in a way – conflicts of interest“.

The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry, said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

U.S. CONGRESS

According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, a U.S. government informant was the landlord to two of the hijackers for over a year (but the White House refused to let the 9/11 inquiry interview him).

Current U.S. Senator (Patrick Leahy) states “The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush’s watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?”

Current Republican Congressman (Ron Paul) calls for a new 9/11 investigation and states that “we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on”

Current Democratic Congressman (Dennis Kucinich) hints that we aren’t being told the truth about 9/11

Former Democratic Senator (Mike Gravel) states that he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don’t know the truth about 9/11

Former Republican Senator (Lincoln Chaffee) endorses a new 9/11 investigation

Former U.S. Democratic Congressman (Dan Hamburg) says that the U.S. government “assisted” in the 9/11 attacks, stating that “I think there was a lot of help from the inside”

Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee (Curt Weldon) has shown that the U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job

MILITARY LEADERS

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that the official story of 9/11 is “the dog that doesn’t hunt” (bio)

Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” space defense program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, who was a senior air force colonel who flew 101 combat missions (Col. Robert Bowman) stated that 9/11 was an inside job. He also said:

“If our government had merely [done] nothing, and I say that as an old interceptor pilot-I know the drill, I know what it takes, I know how long it takes, I know what the procedures are, I know what they were, and I know what they’ve changed them to-if our government had merely done nothing, and allowed normal procedures to happen on that morning of 9/11, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive. [T]hat is treason!“

U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director, decorated with the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal (Capt. Daniel Davis) stated:

“there is no way that an aircraft . . . would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control … Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State.’ “

President of the U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board, who also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer and as a member of the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, and who was awarded Distinguished Flying Crosses for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals (Lt. Col. Jeff Latas) is a member of a group which doubts the government’s version of 9/11

U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said “We’ve never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I’ve seen that for a long time.”

Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official (Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski) finds various aspects of 9/11 suspicious

Lieutenant colonel, 24-year Air Force career, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the Defense Language Institute (Lt. Colonel Steve Butler) said “Of course Bush knew about the impending attacks on America. He did nothing to warn the American people because he needed this war on terrorism.”

Two-Star general (Major General Albert Stubbelbine) questions the attack on the Pentagon

U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, former instructor at the USAF Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program, with a 20-year Air Force career (Lt. Colonel Guy S. Razer) said the following:

“I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government … Those of us in the military took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it. We owe it to those who have gone before us who executed that same oath, and who are doing the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. Those of us who joined the military and faithfully executed orders that were given us had to trust our leaders. The violation and abuse of that trust is not only heinous, but ultimately the most accurate definition of treason!”

U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, a fighter pilot with over 300 combat missions flown and a 21-year Marine Corps career (Lt. Colonel Shelton F. Lankford) believes that 9/11 was an inside job, and said:

“This isn’t about party, it isn’t about Bush Bashing. It’s about our country, our constitution, and our future. … Your countrymen have been murdered and the more you delve into it the more it looks as though they were murdered by our government, who used it as an excuse to murder other people thousands of miles away. If you ridicule others who have sincere doubts and who know factual information that directly contradicts the official report and who want explanations from those who hold the keys to our government, and have motive, means, and opportunity to pull off a 9/11, but you are too lazy or fearful, or … to check into the facts yourself, what does that make you? …. Are you afraid that you will learn the truth and you can’t handle it? …”

U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot (Commander Ralph Kolstad) who questions the official account of 9/11 and is calling for a new investigation, says “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story”.

The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a massive cover-up instead of accepting responsibility

Additionally, numerous military leaders from allied governments have questioned 9/11, such as:

Canadian Minister of Defense, the top military leader of Canada (Paul Hellyer)

Assistant German Defense Minister (Andreas Von Bulow)

Commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy (Anatoli Kornukov)

Chief of staff of the Russian armed forces (General Leonid Ivashov)

INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS

Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg recently said that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers“. He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath.

A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said “I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”, and is open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job.

A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said “I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … All three [buildings that were destroyed in the World Trade Center] were most probably destroyed by controlled demolition charges placed in the buildings before 9/11.” (and see this).

20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer (David Steele) stated that “9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war”, and it was probably an inside job (see Customer Review dated October 7, 2006).

A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called “perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that“the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job .

The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 – 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 – 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said “The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup.”

Professor of History and International Relations, University of Maryland. Former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency, former military attache in China, with a 21-year career in U.S. Army Intelligence (Major John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army) questions the government’s version of the events of 9/11.

The head of all U.S. intelligence, the Director of National Intelligence (Mike McConnel) said “9/11 should have and could have been prevented”

A number of intelligence officials, including a CIA Operations Officer who co-chaired a CIA multi-agency task force coordinating intelligence efforts among many intelligence and law enforcement agencies (Lynne Larkin) sent a joint letter to Congress expressing their concerns about “serious shortcomings,” “omissions,” and “major flaws” in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation (they were ignored).

Continued…

Did you know?

Hundreds of eye witnesses including first responders, fire captains, news reporters, and police, all described multiple explosions in both towers before and during the collapse.

Eyewitness accounts of bombs and explosions can be found at the following links.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/eyewitnesses.html

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/people.html

As well as this recent video (September 14, 2010)

http://911blogger.com/news/2010-08-31/international-center-911-studies-secures-release-thousands-photos-and-videos-nist

And here is a video just (October, 2010) released by NIST under FOIA from the International Center for 9/11 Studies. It records two firefighters discussing how secondary explosions occurred immediately before the collapse of the twin towers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO1ps1mzU8o

An astounding video uncovered from the archives shows BBC News correspondent Jane Standley reporting on the collapse of WTC Building 7 over twenty minutes before it fell at 5:20pm on the afternoon of 9/11. Tapes from earlier BBC broadcasts show news anchors discussing the collapse of WTC 7 a full 26 minutes in advance. The BBC at first claimed that their tapes from 9/11 had been “lost” before admitting that they made the “error” of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it happened without adequately explaining how they could have obtained advance knowledge of the event.

In addition, over an hour before the collapse of WTC 7, at 4:10pm, CNN’s Aaron Brown reported that the building “has either collapsed, or is collapsing.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNK1V6S2cbo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1LetB0z8_o

Solicitor General Ted Olson’s claim that his wife Barbara Olsen called him twice from Flight 77, describing hijackers with box cutters, has become a central plank of the official 9/11 story and almost everyone who was alive during that time is familiar with it.

However, the credibility of that claim was completely undermined after Olsen kept changing his story about whether his wife used her cell phone on the airplane phone.

Furthermore, the technology to enable cell phone calls from high-altitude airline flights was not even created until 2004, and even by that point it was only in the trial phase. In other words, calls from cellular phones which formed an integral part of the official account of events were technologically impossible at the time.

Aviation Week (07/20/04) described this new technology in an authoritative report published in July 2004:

“Qualcomm and American Airlines are exploring [July 2004] ways for passengers to use commercial cell phones inflight for air-to-ground communication. In a recent 2-hr. proof-of-concept flight, representatives from government and the media used commercial Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) third-generation cell phones to place and receive calls and text messages from friends on the ground.“

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO408B.html

American Airlines confirmed that Flight 77 was a Boeing 757 and that this plane did not have airplane phones on board.

According to the FBI, Barbara Olsen attempted to call her husband only once and the call failed to connect, therefore Olsen must have been hallucinating or lying when he claimed he had spoken to his wife from Flight 77.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8514

The size of a Boeing 757 is approximately 125ft in width and yet images of the impact zone at the Pentagon supposedly caused by the crash merely show a hole no more than 16ft in diameter. The engines of the 757 would have punctured a hole bigger than this, never mind the whole plane. Images before the partial collapse of the impact zone show little real impact damage and a sparse debris field completely inconsistent with the crash of a large jetliner, especially when contrasted with other images showing airplane crashes into buildings.

http://www.thepentacon.com/Topic10.htm

http://www.thepentacon.com/Topic1.htm

Seeking to quell speculation, the authorities released an official video segment from a nearby Pentagon security camera  in 2006 consisting of the last 5 seconds until impact. What it actually depicts is anyone’s guess due to the poor quality of the video and the refusal of the government to release longer segments from closer cameras.

What is the meaning behind the following quote attributed to Dick Cheney which came to light during the 9/11 Commission hearings? The passage is taken from testimony given by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta.

“During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, ‘The plane is 50 miles out.’ ‘The plane is 30 miles out.’ And when it got down to ‘the plane is 10 miles out,’ the young man also said to the Vice President, ‘Do the orders still stand?’ And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, ‘Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?’

As the plane was not shot down, in addition to the fact that armed fighter jets were nowhere near the plane and the Pentagon defensive system was not activated, are we to take it that the orders were to let the plane find its target?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y

In May 2003, the Miami Herald reported how the Bush administration was refusing to release a 900-page congressional report on 9/11 because it wanted to “avoid enshrining embarrassing details in the report,” particularly regarding pre-9/11 warnings as well as the fact that the hijackers were trained at U.S. flight schools.

http://www.truthout.org/article/white-house-refuses-release-sept-11-info

Top Pentagon officials cancelled their scheduled flights for September 11^th on September 10^th. San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, following a security warning, cancelled a flight into New York that was scheduled for the morning of 9/11 as well.

Newsweek twice reported that top Pentagon officials had got a warning of the impending attack on September 10th, and cancelled their flights for the next day. This confirms that these officials knew both the general locations of the attack and the method of using jetliners as bombs.

“On Sept. 10, NEWSWEEK has learned, a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.“

http://www.newsweek.com/id/76065/output/print

“Could the bombers have been stopped? NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill.“

http://www.newsweek.com/id/75993/page/2

Mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown was set to fly into New York on the morning of September 11. However, he got a call from what he described as his “airport security” late September 10th advising against flying due to a security threat. Pacifica Radio later reported that the source of the warning was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/09/12/MN229389.DTL

On April 29, 2004, President Bush and V.P. Cheney would only meet with the commission under specific clandestine conditions. They insisted on testifying together and not under oath. They also demanded that their testimony be treated as a matter of “state secret.” To date, nothing they spoke of that day exists in the public domain.

“President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have placed strict limits on the private interviews they will grant to the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, saying that they will meet only with the panel’s top two officials and that Mr. Bush will submit to only a single hour of questioning, commission members said Wednesday.“

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/26/us/bush-to-limit-testimony-before-9-11-panel.html

A few days after the attack, several newspapers as well as the FBI reported that a paper passport had been found in the ruins of the WTC. In August 2004, CNN reported that 9/11 hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s visa was found in the remains of Flight 93 which went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

At least a third of the WTC victim’s bodies were vaporized and many of the victims of the Pentagon incident were burned beyond recognition. And yet visas and paper passports which identify the perpetrators and back up the official account of events miraculously survived explosions and fires that we are told melted steel buildings.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2004/230804visafound.htm

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-16-Sun-2001/news/17011253.html

Worse still, many of the so-called hijackers were later reported by Western media outlets to still be alive. Some were even interviewed!

http://guardian.150m.com/september-eleven/hijackers-alive.htm

In honor of the 9th anniversary of September 11, 2001, in memory of those whose lives were taken for reasons that have yet to be fully understood and in the hope that such despicable acts will never be allowed to occur again by those who value liberty and truth…

I have posted what I hope is a clear, concise and yet documented indictment of fraud against the U.S. federal government for their publicized account of that atrocious day.

The information which follows is a ordered collage of facts which have come to light that I, and many others, feel place the “official story” under suspicion of being in several ways incomplete, covered-up or outright fabricated. Some of the information may seem innocuous at first and some of the sources may seem less reputable than others–but the information reported in those sources can be intelligently verified (they simply happen to be the only outlets that cared to report on such sensitive information) and taken as a whole, it reveals deep-seated inconsistencies, troubling connections and continually unanswered questions about that fateful day.

Quick Facts

• The 9/11 Commission’s co-chairs said that the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials misrepresented the facts to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements (free subscription required)

• 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says “I don’t believe for a minute we got everything right”, that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .” He also said that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking

• And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – recently said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened”. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.” And he said: “It’s almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA’s New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened”.

Did you know?

Osama Bin Laden is not charged with the crimes of 9/11.

In June 2006, Muckraker Report investigative reporter Ed Haas contacted the FBI to ask why 9/11 was not specifically mentioned on Bin Laden’s wanted page on the FBI website.

“The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Osama Bin Laden’s most wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” he was told by FBI agent Rex Tomb.

http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/topten/fugitives/laden.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/280806binladen.htm

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, was dismissed and gagged by the D.O.J. after she revealed that the government had foreknowledge of plans to attack American cities using planes as bombs as early as April 2001. During a court case that arose out of her dismissal and the evidence surrounding 9/11, reporters were barred from recording any details of the case, and Edmonds herself was barred from even entering the court room. When Edmonds’ case was dismissed in May 2005, no reason was provided, and no opinion cited.

http://www.justacitizen.com/articles_documents/May14-05-Gagged%20but%20not%20Dead.htm

During an interview on the Mike Malloy Show In July 2009, Edmonds stated, “To say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban – those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7332

http://www.prisonplanet.com/bombshell-bin-laden-worked-for-us-until-911.html

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/31/whistleblower-bin-laden-was-us-proxy-until-911/

The following is a quote from Mayor Giuliani during an interview on 9/11 with Peter Jennings for ABC News. “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the Police Commissioner, the Fire Commissioner, the Head of Emergency Management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.”

Who told him this? To this day, the answer to this question remains unanswered, completely ignored and emphatically DENIED by Mayor Giuliani on several public occasions.

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vCg8Fp8aw8

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/wtc_giuliani.html

In April 2004, USA Today reported, “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.” One of the targets was the World Trade Center.

In addition, the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise for the morning of 9/11 that was based around a corporate jet crashing into the agency’s headquarters.

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm

On September 12th 2007, CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360′, reported that the mysterious “white plane” spotted and videotaped by multiple media outlets, flying in restricted airspace over the White House shortly before 10am on the morning of 9/11, was in fact the Air Force’s E-4B, a specially modified Boeing 747 with a communications pod behind the cockpit; otherwise known as “The Doomsday Plane”.

Though fully aware of the event, the 9/11 Commission did not deem the appearance of the military plane to be of any interest and did not include it in the final 9/11 Commission report.

“CNN acknowledges that, despite its identification, the absence of the aircraft from official investigations, together with the Pentagon’s denial that it was a military plane and the insistence by the Pentagon, Secret Service, and FAA that they have no explanation for the incident, may continue to raise suspicions,” reported Raw Story.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_investigates_secret_911_doomsday_plane_0913.html4

In addition, two military aircraft were flying at high altitude near the Pentagon around the time it was hit on 9/11, but the identities of these aircraft and what they were doing over the Pentagon are unknown.

The planes had the call signs “Bobcat 14″ and “Bobcat 17.” A partial transcript of air traffic controller communications reveals they were communicating with the control tower at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, which is less than a mile from the Pentagon, between at least 9:31 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. on September 11 (the attack on the Pentagon took place at 9:37 a.m.). Radar data has shown that the two aircraft flew “in trail” (in single file, with one directly behind the other) at an altitude of 21,000 feet, and were overhead in the few minutes before the Pentagon was hit.

Furthermore, there were at least two other military aircraft near the Pentagon at the time it was hit. A C-130 cargo plane that took off from Andrews Air Force Base, which is 10 miles from the Pentagon, was airborne by 9:33 a.m., and was seen by numerous witnesses above the Pentagon just after the attack there.

“Partial Transcript; Aircraft Accident; AAL77; Washington, DC; September 11, 2001.” Federal Aviation Administration, September 20, 2001.

9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 10.

“Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower.” 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003.

“AA 77 Radar-Based Timeline and Maps.” 9/11 Commission, n.d.; “9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Witnesses See Military Cargo Plane Near Flight 77; Pilot Later Implies he is Far Away.” Complete 9/11 Timeline.

Three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, DC, were conducting training exercises in North Carolina 207 miles away as the first plane crashed into the WTC. Even at significantly less than their top speed of 1500 mph, they could still have defended the skies over Washington well before 9am, more than 37 minutes before Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, however, they did not return until after 9:55am.

Andrews AFB had no armed fighters on alert and ready to take off on the morning of 9/11.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a846carolinafighters#a846carolinafighters

World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed in a ‘free-fall’ in 7 seconds despite the fact that it was not hit by a single plane.

Compilation of videos showing collapse of WTC 7:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atbrn4k55lA

Flight 93 was the fourth plane to crash on 9/11 at 10:03am. V.P. Cheney only gave the shoot down order at 10:10-10:20am and this is not communicated to NORAD until 28 minutes after Flight 93 has crashed.

Fueling further suspicion on this front is the fact that three months before the attacks of 9/11, Dick Cheney usurped control of NORAD, and therefore he, and no one else on planet Earth, had the power to call for military sorties on the hijacked airliners on 9/11. He did not exercise that power. Three months after 9/11, he relinquished command of NORAD and returned it to military operation.

“A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were scrambled, but ineffectively, as they did not know where to go or what targets they were to intercept. And once the shootdown order was given, it was not communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters circling above them had been instructed to ‘take out’ hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to ‘ID type and tail’.”

http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Exec.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17.html

In mid 2004, the team of researchers on the 9/11 Commission that were investigating the events of the morning of September 11 came to believe that a key part of Vice President Dick Cheney’s account is false. The team, led by John Farmer, were convinced that the decision to authorize the military to shoot down threatening aircraft on 9/11 was made by Cheney alone, not by President Bush. According to journalist and author Philip Shenon: “If Farmer’s team was right, the shootdown order was almost certainly unconstitutional, a violation of the military chain of command, which has no role for the vice president. In the absence of the president, military orders should have been issued by Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld, bypassing the vice president entirely.”

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a04doubtscheney#a04doubtscheney

Scores of main stream news outlets reported that the F.B.I. conducted an investigation of at least FIVE of the 9/11 hijackers being trained at U.S. military flight schools. Those investigations are now sealed and need to be declassified.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/75797

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/us/traces-of-terrorism-the-warnings-fbi-knew-for-years-about-terror-pilot-training.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2121480.stm

In 2004, New York firefighters Mike Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi went public to say they had found the black boxes at the World Trade Center, but were told to keep silent by FBI agents. Nicholas DeMasi said that he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October 2001 and helped them locate the devices, a story backed up by rescue volunteer Mike Bellone.

As the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time, “Their story raises the question of whether there was some type of cover-up at Ground Zero.”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2004/281004blackbox.htm

http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-cover-up-connection-black-boxes-found-15-hours-after-buffalo-crash.html

Continued…

In about 1550, about 80 years before the birth of John Locke, a Frenchman named Etienne de La Boetie, about 20 years old, posed what Murray Rothbard would later describe as “the central problem of political philosophy: the mystery of civil obedience. Why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of the government, which always constitutes a small minority of the society?”

La Boetie saw, Rothbard wrote, that

“every tyranny must necessarily be grounded upon general popular acceptance. In short, the bulk of the people themselves, for whatever reason, acquiesce in their own subjection. If this were not the case, no tyranny, indeed no governmental rule, could long endure. Hence, a government does not have to be popularly elected to enjoy general public support; for general public support is in the very nature of all governments that endure, including the most oppressive of tyrannies. The tyrant is but one person, and could scarcely command the obedience of another person, much less of an entire country, if most of the subjects did not grant their obedience by their own consent.“

This, then, becomes for La Boétie the central problem of political theory: why in the world do people consent to their own enslavement?

Rothbard wrote this passage as part of a lengthy and fascinating introduction to a then-new edition of Etienne de La Boetie’s youthful essay on political philosophy. This new edition (which presented a modern English translation originally brought out in the 1940s) was published in 1975 under the title The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. That very same year, 1975, a rival edition of La Boetie’s book was issued by another small scholarly publisher, this one presenting an 18th-century British translation with the 16th-century French text on facing pages. This rival edition was published under the title The Will to Bondage and featured a brief but extremely interesting preface by the libertarian historian and editor James J. Martin.

Martin thought he knew the answer to the question that had so perplexed La Boetie and now perplexed Rothbard: Why do people, in all times and places, obey the commands of the government, acquiesce in their own subjection, consent to their own enslavement? Martin’s answer was that they’re born that way. We should ask ourselves, he wrote, whether “at bottom all political, ethical and philosophic convictions” might not be “due to personal temperament and incapable of being accounted for by reason.” This hypothesis, he maintained, “is of critical importance to a detached view of this business of tyranny, its persistence, and its opponents.” For

“temperament brings up the matter of genetics, not propaganda, education, psychic persuasion or intimidation, and a whole schedule of related phenomena. It remains to be proven whether there has ever been a genuine case of a person temperamentally congenial to tyranny who has ever been “converted” to the opposite tendency, or vice versa, by any device known to the arts of persuasion.”

At the time he wrote this, Martin had spent more than 20 years teaching at the high-school and college levels. And his considered opinion was that schools, in particular, persuaded nobody of anything. “They largely succeed,” he wrote, “in entrenching sentiments already there in the people they process, though they may develop adversaries by awakening contradictory reactions among those temperamentally hostile to what they are exposed to.” This is why “the members of libertarian persuasions remain at just about the same levels year after year relative to the total community, despite the most wondrous attempts via literature, communication and action to swell them.” The plain fact is, Martin insisted, that those “who crave the comforts and security of subordination outnumber the ‘free souls,’ and there is no credible evidence that this relationship is likely to change in any appreciable degree now or at any calculable time in the future.”

As the simultaneous appearance in 1975 of competing translations of Etienne de La Boetie’s essay in political philosophy suggests, the ’70s was a time when such ideas were “in the air,” a time when many people were drawn to consider and discuss such ideas.

Consider the case of Stanley Milgram, the social psychologist at the City University of New York whose book Obedience to Authority was published in 1974. The book was Milgram’s summary of and reflections upon a series of experiments he had begun conducting back in 1961, when he was a newly minted Harvard PhD in the second year of his first teaching assignment, as an assistant professor of psychology at Yale. Milgram advertised for volunteers who would be willing to participate in a psychological experiment in return for a small payment — “four dollars for one hour of your time,” according to the ad reproduced in Milgram’s 1974 book. When the volunteers reached Milgram’s laboratory, they were told they would be participating in a study of how memory and learning were affected by punishment.

They were told that in the experiment each of them would play the part of a “teacher.” Each of them was then paired with another volunteer, who was playing the part of a “learner.” The rules were simple. The learner was strapped into a chair by a white-coated “experimenter” and connected to electrodes. In an adjoining room, with a window through which the teacher and the experimenter could see and make eye contact with the learner, the teacher read a list of words arranged in pairs aloud into a microphone. The teacher’s voice was audible to the learner through speakers on the walls of the adjoining room. In similar fashion, the learner’s voice was audible to the teacher and the experimenter through speakers mounted on the walls on their side of the glass.

If the learner repeated the word pairs in correct sequence, the experiment would go on. If the learner made an error, the teacher would administer an electric shock to the learner by remote control, pressing a button on a control console. Each electric shock administered would be stronger than the one before.

At some point in the proceedings, the volunteer “teachers” discovered, the volunteer “learners” began to show discomfort, then increasing evidence of feeling serious pain, when the shocks were administered. It wasn’t long before the learners began demanding, then begging, to be released from the experiment. It wasn’t long before they began struggling to escape from the chairs into which they had been strapped by the experimenter. It wasn’t long before the learners began pleading with the teachers to help them free them.

And, as the severity of the shocks the experimenters ordered the teachers to administer grew greater and greater, the console from which the teachers administered these shocks began to display warnings that the selected voltages were dangerously high. Still, any teachers who protested to the experimenters or even raised questions about whether the experiment should proceed were sternly ordered by the experimenters to continue. They were told by the experimenters that everything was all right.

And, in fact, everything was all right. The learners were not really volunteers, but actors. They were not really receiving any shocks at all. But the teachers did not know this. They believed themselves to be inflicting excruciating and possibly life-threatening pain on the learners. And most of them went right on doing so, despite the struggles and protests of their victims. Only one of Milgram’s first 40 volunteers refused to inflict any more shocks beyond what his console told him was 300 volts. But by that time, according to Milgram, the learner’s “response can be described only as an agonized scream. Soon thereafter, he makes no sound at all.”

Yet all but one of Milgram’s first 40 volunteers went right on administering shocks. Two-thirds of them went on administering shocks right up to what their consoles told them was 450 volts, the highest voltage the equipment could produce, even though by that time, the learners were totally unresponsive and apparently either unconscious or dead.

Milgram’s experiment really had nothing to do with memory, learning, and punishment, of course. It was rather, as he described it in 1974,

“a simple experiment … to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.”

Yet, at any point in the proceedings, all any of the teachers had to do was refuse to continue. All any of them had to do was stand up and walk out of the laboratory. It is rather like the situation Etienne de La Boetie describes in his essay on the politics of obedience. Because the ruled always outnumber the ruler, La Boetie wrote, the ruled can free themselves at any time “merely by willing to be free.”

It was really that simple, La Boetie wrote. In his words,

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.”

Would the experimenter in Stanley Milgram’s lab have fallen of his own weight and broken in pieces if the teachers had walked out on him? As Milgram himself put it,

“a reader’s initial reaction to the experiment may be to wonder why anyone in his right mind would … not simply refuse and walk out of the laboratory? But the fact is that no one ever does. Since the subject has come to the laboratory to aid the experimenter, he is quite willing to start off with the procedure. There is nothing very extraordinary in this, particularly since the person who is to receive the shocks seems initially cooperative, if somewhat apprehensive. What is surprising is how far ordinary individuals will go in complying with the experimenter’s instructions. Indeed, the results of the experiment are both surprising and dismaying….

Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out. This was seen time and again in our studies and has been observed in several universities where the experiment was repeated. It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”

Milgram believed there were two explanations for his results. I call them the psychological explanation and the sociological explanation. The psychological explanation is that under certain circumstances the ordinary individual is both able and willing to “view himself as the instrument for carrying out another person’s wishes,” so that “he therefore no longer considers himself responsible for his actions.” The sociological explanation is that under certain circumstances most individuals abandon any attempt at independent thinking and simply conform to what they feel is expected of them — what they have absorbed, mostly unthinkingly, from the culture in which they have grown up and now live.

So what was the solution to this problem of authority, as one might call it? To his credit, Milgram wrote,  “It would seem that the anarchist argument for universal dismantling of political institutions is a powerful solution to the problem of authority.”

As metaphysics scholar and science fiction author Philip K. Dick wrote,

“Should we have a leader or should we think for ourselves? Obviously the latter, in principle. But – sometimes there lies a gulf between what is theoretically right and that which is practical.”

Of course, the precise manner in which such a “dismantling” is accomplished and the tenacity of such a society afterward are matters of heated debate.