| PHILOSOPHER John McMurtry |
9/11: THE UNDENIABLE UNIFYING FRAMEWORK - John McMurtry (part 1 of a series)
Philosopher John McMurtry notes that 9/11 is appropriately recognized as a major turning point in modern history, perhaps western civilization. It is therefore of great importance that 9/11 be properly understood. McMurtry calls attention to the most prominent left gatekeeper, Noam
Chomsky, who is 'normally critical of established official stories,' but holds on to the official conspiracy theory, the 'least plausible conspiracy theory,' despite its many 'gaping holes.' As such, McMurtry states, left gatekeepers 'are blocking out the same things the official mainstream media and governments are blocking out which is...what in fact went on on 9/11?' The absolute falsity of the official story is undeniable, the philosopher says. "It's scientifically confirmable; we have evidence for it and we don't have good evidence against it...it's a scientific hypothesis...we can regard as valid.'
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Part two - 9/11: THE UNDENIABLE UNIFYING
FRAMEWORK - McMURTRY In Sept. 2000, the PNAC published an article which observed that the "process of transformation...is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." The principal author of that article was Thomas Donnelly, who shortly after 9/11 went to work for Lockheed Martin.
In part 2 of this series, Professor John McMurtry explains why 9/11 happened when it did, and calls attention to Canadian media cover-up of the crime which accepts and promotes the implausible conspiracy theory. Illustrating the restrictions on public debate in Canada, McMurtry recalls the March 18, 2003 CBC TV debate between himself and Thomas Donnelly, who's identified as a PNAC founder and AEI "fellow." To charges that Donnelly was advocating war crimes by calling for and planning for the invasion of Iraq, Donnelly offers this mantra-like defense, "The use of American power in the world has been, as a matter of practical and historical fact, the sole reliable instrument, first of all, for bringing peace and stability and freedom to the European continent. Secondly, we hope now to do the same sort of thing in Iraq."
Within the media, the upshot of this debate was that the CBC producer who brought McMurtry on the program was fired, demoted out. Word of such corporate response gets around quickly and self-censorship tends to follow. Official media contributes to the life-blinding of the public, and itself. (Part 3 concludes with a structural analysis of the structural analysts).
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The Shadow Subject of History
UNDERSTANDING 9-11 and THE 9-11 WARS
John McMurtry PhD, FRSC
“The system works”
- U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld1
Decoding the Compulsion to Disconnect
In May 2004, leading Americans and the international community were
indignant at the tortures of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. occupying forces
when undeniable pictures were published. Yet no-one in the media of
record or anyone else in a position of public trust scrupled to
observe what had started it all - the lawless U.S. invasion of Iraq in
March 2003, “the supreme crime ” under international law, the crime
which the judges at Nuremberg described as “only differing from other
war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of
the whole”.2 The torture was, as the judges at Nuremberg had foreseen,
a predictable consequence of “the supreme crime”. Yet all in official
culture remained disconnected from the cause. (more) |
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Oh, Canada!
The life and death game we are in.
There is no question that we live in a new game. It is called “globalization”
but it is really globalization of transnational corporate rights. No other
rights are recognised - not of the working people of the home society, not of
environmental protection anywhere, not of the world’s children, not even of our
right to breathe the air free from ever more pollution and climate destabilization. In fact, even the right of elected governments to set policies
which conflict with the rules of the new game are prohibited with big trade
penalties for disobedience.
Protecting global life is rejected as “too costly” because it increases the
costs of transnational investors seeking to maximize private profits - the only
right now protected under trade law. Providing unconditional foreign corporate
access to and control of everything which can be bought and sold for profit is
the name of the game. The mass media don’t criticize this because they are
owned and advertised in by the same corporations.
Where Canada fits in…
Where Canada fits in this new global game is that its ruling political parties
are generally financed and advised by the same transnational corporate lobbies
as other countries. You heard the leader of Canada’s number one corporate
lobby. His job is to make everything seem rosy, and so he says completely false
things like Canada’s investment in higher education has increased and
protestors throw Molotov cocktails. Manipulating public opinion to discredit
the opposition is all that matters. It works so well that even the protestors
end up debating whether they are too violent - even when all the tear gas,
assault weapons and beatings are coming from one side.
Still, Canada has maybe the world’s leading voices of dissent. Canada is a kind
of swing country in the world, but Canadians don’t realise it. The business and
political leaders have branchplant mind-sets. But ordinary citizens don’t like
the foreign corporate takeover of our economies, the loss of job security, and
the privatisation and defunding of their healthcare and education. They want
their hard-won social infrastructure, their public broadcasting and Canadian
culture, their water and what’s left of their fishstocks and forests. These
Canadians are actually leading the world in protecting their life economy.
The Deeper Game…
This is the deeper game we need to be aware of. Basically it is between those
who believe in the magic of the global market to cure all problems even as they
become worse, and those who see what is happening before their eyes and want to
protect the greatest value of all - global life and human wellbeing. This is
the life-and-death game we are now in whether we are aware of it or not.
This statement was taken from Prof. John McMurtry’s remarks for a Canadian film, not released yet,
called “The Globalization Game.”
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BLOWIN’ FIRE/ REVEALING GROUP THINK: GOD/GOOD IS ON OUR SIDE
In this 9-minute CBC Sunday television clip, Canadian philosophy professor John McMurtry debates Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute/ Project for a New American Century (AEI/
PNAC).
The show’s hosts startle the hired corporate apologist with their opening question: comment on the fact that so many Europeans and others think George W. Bush is a bigger threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein.
Donnelly blubbers incredulous that anyone (except, of course, The Enemy) could possibly think that the US was anything but GOOD. He explains that such governments and people who believe otherwise have “lost their moral compass.”
McMurtry calls Donnelly’s advocacy of the Bush Doctrine and war on Iraq in itself a war crime -- outside of international law and in violation of the UN Security Council. McMurtry lists several US violations and acts of blatant contempt for international law and says that those who occupy the White House are a “rogue administration.”
In defense of the US, Donnelly cites the destruction of the Soviet Union and the cold war occupation of Japan, South East Asia and Europe as obvious indications of the rightness of the American cause. McMurtry accuses him of identifying the US with God – and that anything Caligula Bush says or wants is ipso facto good.
In defense, Donnelly attempts to create a straw man (“You said that anybody who talks about war is guilty of a war crime!” “That’s not what I said.” Yes, you did… ). Donnelly then attempts to use ad hominem (“Argument!” McMurtry cuts him short.), and gives up by pleading that after the US commits its invasion, the world will see how right the US was.
For those who believe, facts that don’t conform to the belief-structure (or group-think) are filtered out, discarded as anomalies, or are suppressed (or acknowledged) as necessary evils when Good is at war with Evil.
500,000 Iraqi children, McMurtry cries out. The sequence ends and the media speeds on to other topics (9.5 minutes).
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UNDERSTANDING THE U.S.
WAR STATE
John McMurtry
-printed via Science
For Peace Toronto
Emergency Forum on Iraq
Genocide used to be a crime without a name. Although the most
heinous all crimes, the concept was not introduced into
international language until after World War 2. Until then, military
invasion and destruction of other peoples and cultures masqueraded
under such slogans as “progress” and “spreading civilization”.
I was shocked many years ago when I heard Noam Chomsky say
that genocide was America’s “defining political tradition”.
Then I realized that the United States (like Canada to a much lesser
extent) was based on destroying the lives and cultures of the 25
million or so first peoples who had lived in America for millennia.
In the case of the U.S., the story continued with the forcible
seizure of Texas in 1845 from Mexican farmers and indigenous
peoples, and Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California and other state
territories shortly afterward in 1849. U.S. troops under the
slave-owning General Zachary Taylor unilaterally invaded its
southern neighbor under the false pretext of avenging “American
blood”, and General Taylor soon vaulted into the White House as a
presidential “war hero” - even though a young Congressman,
Abraham Lincoln, exposed the pretext, and connected it to a
Anglo-British business strategy to impose “free trade” on the
regions by financing the prior president, James Polk, into the White
House as General Taylor’s commander. (more) |
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Reply to John McMurtry PhD, FRSC Regarding Investigating What Bush Knew When...
by Michael Albert - June 08, 2002 TERROR WAR
McMurtry concludes his piece saying that I was sectarian in arguing that it isn't useful for leftists to pursue the question "what did Bush know, when?" Oddly for someone concerned [sic] about sectarianism, however, McMurtry begins his piece by lumping me with "corporate media," the "Republican Party," and the "Washington establishment" as if the article I wrote defended the government and its policies.
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APPOINTMENT IN BAGHDAD:
AMERICA’S WAR ON THE LIFE-WORLD
John McMurtry ( bio
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A crucial fact has been repressed about the “Iraq crisis”. No mainstream medium reports that the Bush-government plans to attack Iraq already constitute a war crime under international law. “Planning, preparation and initiation of a war of aggression” is prohibited by the Nuremberg Charter, the basis of instituted international law after the defeat and trial of the leaders of the last major imperial aggressor, Nazi Germany.
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Response to Michael
Albert (ZNet) Commentary:
"What Did Bush Know, When?" (link)
Michael Albert’s ZNet commentary of May 22
discouraged leftists [from] getting caught up in "the hypocritical
democratic party and media maven hoopla," wasting time, drawing
them away from the important issues.
While clearly there is much hoopla and hypocrisy and a great deal of
disinformation around 9/11, to disassociate ourselves from critical
interest in the inquiry seriously undermines public support for the
questions being asked by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) and a
few others in Congress (as well as the independent press and
progressive journalists within the corporate press), and further to
take progressives out of the picture altogether, leaving inquiry to
those who have little or no intention to do serious investigation.
John McMurtry’s books include: The Structure of Marx’s World-View
(Princeton, 1978), Unequal Freedoms: the global market as an
ethical system (Kumarian Press, 1998), The Cancer Stage of
Capitalism (Pluto Press, 1999), Value Wars: The Global Market
Versus The Life Economy (Pluto Press, Aug. 2002). ( bio
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video
offline text
version
(here)
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Decoding 9-11
Philosopher
John McMurtry ( bio
) reads from an article adapted from the Preface of
his new book, VALUE WARS:
The Global Market Versus the Life
Economy (Pluto Press, August 2002). See text also (punch
here). See also The War on
Freedom: Causes and Consequences of 9-11,
Nafeez Mosaddeq
Ahmed, Dir., Institute for Policy Research, Brighton, U.K
www.globalresearch.org
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John McMurtry:
Deep background on 9-11.
reading from the preface of his new book
Value
Wars
21 minutes -
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McMurtry: Finding One's Moral Ground
The de-coupling from our moral ground is
our amnesia and disorder
-- an opportunistic relativism of money sequencing.
Finding a value ground is the most necessary thing in today's
world...The founder [of Christianity]
was an exemplar that some Christians understand.
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