Representative Press Blog

Dear Josef,

I hope you have had time to look into the points I raised. You wrote about supposed "conspiracy theories" on my web site. May I suggest that the term "conspiracy theory" is simply a way to avoid looking at the facts. I have seen it used by people who want to abort discussion of things they don't want challenged. I am not suggesting a conspiracy and I do not write about conspiracies at my web site. The facts I point out are not presented for the most part in mainstream media and popular culture not because of a conspiracy but rather because of the way individuals are inclined to act. Inclined to conform the way people do, ideas that challenge the status quo get marginalized or suppressed. And people not inclined to conform are weeded out by simple factors of selection by hiring or rejection because of incompatibility of views.

I can give you a specific example that points out not just Thomas Friedman's dishonesty but how the example gets suppressed and not because of a conspiracy. What I am saying is I gave this specific example to a Mr. Doug Harper ( http://dougharper.blogspot.com/ ) and he omitted it from the email that he quoted on his blog. See how that worked? Friedman lied and this guy Harper is in effect covering for him. Harper doesn't like the fact and so he omits it, he didn't conspire with Friedman or someone else. Harper doesn't like a fact so he omits it and doesn't deal with it.

Here is the example: Friedman writes in his latest book "Longitudes & Attitudes" that Osama bin LAden had not mentioned Palestine until AFTER 9/11. Here is what I pointed out to Mr. Harper: Thomas Friedman is one of the people deceiving the public. Friedman writes, "the fact is that bin Laden never focused on this issue. He only started talking about "Palestine" after September 11, when he sensed that he might be losing the support of the Arab street." (p311 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) and "Osama bin Laden never mentioned the Palestinian cause as motivating his actions until he felt he was losing support in the Arab world." (p361-362 of Longitudes & Attitudes ) What Friedman has written is a flat out lie. To give just one example that disproves what Friedman wrote: "Your position against Muslims in Palestine is despicable and disgraceful. America has no shame. " - Osama bin Laden May 1998
I also have to wonder how in this invented scenario Friedman knows what bin Laden "sensed" about the Arab street.

The above is another example of Friedman's manipulative lies. What does Harper do when he quotes my email? He leaves the above info out. You could contact him yourself and ask him why he does this. He gets very defensive when his assumptions are challenged, a trait I have seen many people have. As far as how certain facts end up suppressed, George Orwell explained it is not an official ban, facts are kept out of the press "not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact."

I hope that gives you an idea how suppression of facts works for the most part. Friedman suppresses the fact that Osama bin Laden has mentioned Palestine several times before 9/11 by outright lying. Harper does so by omission. He is obviously sympathetic to the same agenda Friedman is and he doesn't want to help expose Friedman so he omits the facts. No central command told him to do so, he wants to keep a lid on it so he does so. Notice how this contributes to the ongoing suppression, once again an opportunity for the truth to be spread is squelched. And no, I don't think Friedman "innocently made a mistake" when he wrote that bin Laden never mentioned Palestine until after 9/11. He has been exposed to too many facts and has easy access to bin Laden's interviews and writings as anyone with an Internet connection does.

I think some people know and "play the game" and others are ignorant and conform with the prevailing views because they are under the impression that they are true. Again, I am not putting forth a "conspiracy theory" as you claim.

So much misery could be ended if people made more of an effort. A critical part of the effort has to be a willingness to examine the assumptions we hold. There are people that see particular wrongs and there are people that can't see them for some reason. If you do the research and take an honest look at the facts, I think you will see that there is a problem.

text of Orwell's Preface to Animal Farm Make sure you buy a copy of Animal Farm with the preface. "Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals." CLICK HERE: This copy does include Orwell’s proposed but unpublished preface to the original edition

Chomsky has explained (see p 112 of Understanding Power" ) "So take Tom Wicker at the New York Times: when you talk to him about this kind of stuff, he gets very irate and says, "Nobody tells me what to write." And that's perfectly true, nobody tells him what to write-but if he didn't already know what to write, he wouldn't be a columnist for the New York Times." Chomsky explains that people are either in those positions because they have internalized the understanding that there are certain things not proper to say so they "play the game" automatically or of course sometimes there are people who consciously "play the game."