We live in an age of information Wars. perhaps it was always like this, but the advent of social media and the internet has changed the dynamic fundamentally.
Whereas before you used to have to find out forbidden knowledge from underground book stores, pamphlets mailed to you by subscription, or friends and relatives with amazing collections that you have no idea how they got their hands on. I remember those days well and fondly.
This is how I used to find Malcolm X speeches, radical pamphlets, and information about how the FBI and CIA carried out their heinous agendas both within the US and throughout the world.
Now, however, all this information is freely presented to you on the internet, at least before the massive move to censor the internet that started 2 years ago.
Even events that I lived through in the eighties and nineties, I now realize there were crucial things that I had no idea about, that only now I am finding out because old documents and old information that were otherwise suppressed can now be found online.
I went from being a Clinton supporter in the 90s, for example, to now understanding how much of today's problems whether it be the West's relationship to Russia, the rise of the security state, the development of Casino capitalism, the expansion of liberal imperialism with NATO as a key element, the huge rise in income inequality, and so many other things, can be clearly traced back to that pivotal administration.
Mainstream Academia and mainstream news have fought back hard against this attack on their information monopoly. They have also been joined by radical, violent activists on the left, especially Antifa, who try to shut down any platform or anybody who voices opinions or presents information that they don't approve of.
One of the most effective ways of shutting down conversation and inquiry is the use of the phrase "conspiracy theory". Once one is labeled a "conspiracy theorist" then one can dismiss anything that is said.
However, I still believe in the old-fashioned notion that an argument should be judged on its own merits, by evidence and by logic, by anybody, whether it is approved thinking or not. We live in an age where people are prosecuted for thoughtcrimes. And I suppose, I've always being somewhat of a thoughtcriminal.
With that in mind, I am pleased to have as my guest today author Philip Cross Key, whose 5th novel "11/9 and the Terrorist Who Loved Bonsai Trees" makes obvious allusions to 9/11.
We discuss:
- the life of an American expat in Spain
- the line between "acceptable" dissident and "unacceptable" dissident thought
- the use of the epithet "conspiracy theory" to prevent free inquiry
- exploring alternative theories of 9/11 in fiction
- being able to question the physics of 9/11 without getting into so-called "conspiracy theories"
- how the "War on Terror" (vs. a war on Al-Qaeda) supports endless war
- Trump's anti-war agenda
- Why most people will never accept alternative theories of 9/11
- the marginalisation of opinion makers who have different views from the mainstream, e.g. Stephen Cohen, Paul Craig Roberts, Max Blumenthal, Willian Pfaff
- The improbability of Iran attacking Saudi Arabia's oil facilities
- the uneasy relationship between fiction and politics, art vs. propaganda
- Vietnam veterans left behind by the US Government
- how whistleblowers are suppressed by the mainstream media