[GJM] Fw: Michael Hasty: Paranoid shift

Fri Feb 2 19:11:40 MST 2007

Thanks Richard for a most revealing article. 

The comment I have to make about this is that it began 
centuries ago with the secular "cattle culture consciousness"
of the Kurgan's, aided and abetted by religious factions who
conspired with them to "social engineer society" for the benefit 
of a few.  I've written this before and I'll write it again until enough 
of us get it to do something about it. 

  More recommended reading on this is:  "Rule by Secrecy" by
Jim Marrs. It's the "Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral
Commission, The Freemason's and The Great Pyramids".  But 
don't miss:  "Beyond Beef - The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture" 
as the book that brings it all together. I'm currently working on a 
synopsis of this to publish.   

 Richard Moore is an American living in Ireland, who, like many
of us grandparents, contributes thousands of hours to "revealing 
the truth".  Richard is host of the online "Cyberjournal.org" and
author of "Escaping the Matrix". 

-------Original Message-------

From: Richard Moore
Date: 02/02/07 11:53:23
To: cj at cyberjournal.org; renaissance-network at cyberjournal.org
Cc: newslog at cyberjouårnal.org at dish12.net.ibizdns.com
Subject: Michael Hasty: Paranoid shift
 : Cyber
Original source URL:
http://onlinejournal.org/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html

Opinion
Paranoid shift
By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer
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January 10, 2004-Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the
legendary chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence
Agency, was a bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had
worked for all his life. In the end, he had come to realize that they
were never really interested in American ideals of "freedom" and
"democracy." They really only wanted "absolute power."

Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the
counterintelligence job in the first place was by agreeing not to
submit "sixty of Allen Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test
concerning their business deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life
despair, Angleton assumed that he would see all his old companions
again "in hell."

The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy
League cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a
phenomenon I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon,
because something similar happened to me.

Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked
at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s.
This was at the same time I was beginning to question the
government's actions in Vietnam. In fact, my personal "paranoid
shift" probably began with the disillusionment I felt when I realized
that the story of American foreign policy was, at the very least,
more complicated and darker than I had hitherto been led to believe.

But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I
nevertheless held faith in the basic integrity of a system where
power ultimately resided in the people, and whereby if enough people
got together and voted, real and fundamental change could happen.

What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer
believe this to be necessarily true.

In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower,"
William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of
"conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule." This prevents
the media from ever having to investigate the many strange
interconnections among the ruling class-for example, the relationship
between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy,
banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are
usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective
tool-silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have
to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly
becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.

On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words
"conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually means
someone is getting too close to the truth.

Take September 11-which I identify as the date my paranoia actually
shifted, though I didn't know it at the time.

Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all that George W.
Bush, commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20
minutes after he was informed that a second plane had hit the World
Trade Center, listening to children read a story about a goat. Nor
does it make sense that the Number 2 man, Dick Cheney-even knowing
that "the commander" was on a mission in Florida-nevertheless sat at
his desk in the White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service
dragged him out by the armpits.

Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon-well over
an hour after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking
in progress. It also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in a Senate office for two hours while
the 9/11 attacks took place, after leaving explicit instructions that
he not be disturbed-which he wasn't.

In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top
of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world
sat at various desks, inert. Why weren't they in the "Situation
Room?" Don't any of them ever watch "West Wing?"

In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here
on this side of the paranoid shift, it's business as usual.

Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American
forces to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for
various imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent
upon "a catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor,"
to gain the majority support of the American public to set the plans
into motion. When the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked
the other way . . . and presto, the path to global domination was
open.

Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous
evidence that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored's
annual list of underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a
New American Century (now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime),
whose report, published in 2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor"
quote.

Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly
warned us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the
masses?" Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he
warned of the extreme "danger" to democracy of "the military
industrial complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just being a quaint
old-fashioned John Bircher when he said that the Trilateral
Commission was "David Rockefeller's latest scheme to take over the
world, by taking over the government of the United States?" Were
Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy just being class
traitors when they talked about a small group of wealthy elites who
operate as a hidden government behind the government? Especially
after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we believe the late CIA
Director William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA "owns everyone
of any major significance in the major media?"

Why can't we believe James Jesus Angleton-a man staring eternal
judgment in the face-when he says that the founders of the Cold War
national security state were only interested in "absolute power?"
Especially when the descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles
now holds power in the White House.

Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and
grandfather of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen
Dulles, CIA director, president of the Council on Foreign Relations,
and international business lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles'
law firm. As such, he was the beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous
ability to scrub the story of Bush's treasonous investments in the
Third Reich out of the news media, where it might have interfered
with Bush's political career . . . not to mention the presidential
careers of his son and grandson.

Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October
by investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire
Gazette, reveal that Prescott Bush's involvement in financing and
arming the Nazis was more extensive than previously known. Not only
was Bush managing director of the Union Banking Corporation, the
American branch of Hitler's chief financier's banking network; but
among the other companies where Bush was a director-and which were
seized by the American government in 1942, under the Trading With the
Enemy Act-were a shipping line which imported German spies; an energy
company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl fuel; and a steel
company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz
concentration camp.

Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug
in the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these
revelations have been largely ignored, with the exception of a single
article in the Associated Press. And there are those, even on the
left, who question the current relevance of this information.

But Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a
family pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering-from George
Senior's sale of TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling
biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany
misadventures in crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.

More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph
Hitler and George W. Bush:

A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in
military uniform (which no previous American president has ever done
while in office). Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception.
Open assaults on labor unions and workers' rights. Preemptive war and
militant nationalism. Contempt for international law and treaties.
Suspiciously convenient "terrorist" attacks, to justify a police
state and the suspension of liberties. A carefully manufactured image
of "The Leader," who's still just a "regular guy" and a "moderate."
"Freedom" as the rationale for every action. Fantasy economic growth,
based on unprecedented budget deficits and massive military spending.

And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism-including the violent
suppression of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture,
assassination and concentration camps; and most important, Benito
Mussolini's preferred definition of "fascism" as "corporatism,
because it binds together the interests of corporations and the
state."

By their fruits, you shall know them.

What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues
most paranoiacs: why don't other people see these connections?

Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like
Online Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research,
and the Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing
conspiracists and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists
like Chris Floyd at the Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at
Buzzflash. But we know we are only a furtive minority, the human
remnant among the pod people in the live-action, 21st-century version
of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits
into our system, why more people don't see the connections we do.
Fortunately, there are a number of possible explanations.

First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the
"cave art of the electronic age:" advertising. Joseph Goebbels,
Hitler's Karl Rove, gave credit for most of his ideas on how to
manipulate mass opinion to American commercial advertising, and to
the then-new science of "public relations." But the public relations
universe available to the corporate empire that rules the world today
makes the Goebbels operation look primitive. The precision of
communications technology and graphics; the century of research on
human psychology and emotion; and the uniquely centralized control of
triumphant post-Cold War monopoly capitalism, have combined to the
point where "the manufacture of consent" can be set on automatic
pilot.

A second major reason people won't make the paranoid shift is that
they are too fundamentally decent. They can't believe that the
elected leaders of our country, the people they've been taught
through 12 years of public school to admire and trust, are capable of
sending young American soldiers to their deaths and slaughtering tens
of thousands of innocent civilians, just to satisfy their
greed-especially when they're so rich in the first place. Besides,
America is good, and the media are liberal and overly critical.

Third, people don't want to look like fools. Being a "conspiracy
theorist" is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of
eminent experts on every TV and radio network is that any discussion
of "oil" being a motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out
of bounds, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy
theorist." We can trust the integrity of our 'no-bid" contracting in
Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." Of
course, people sometimes make mistakes, but our military and
intelligence community did the best they could on and before
September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy
theorist."

Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who thinks
otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."

Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the paranoid
shift is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that
an inner circle of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful
military and intelligence system; controls the international banking
system; controls the most effective and far-reaching propaganda
network in history; controls all three branches of government in the
world's only superpower; and controls the technology that counts the
people's votes, we might be then forced to conclude that we don't
live in a particularly democratic system. And then voting and making
contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't be enough. Because
then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving as a loyal
opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"-like the Republicans
in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the resistance to
fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather than the
government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into the
empire's hands, it would be doomed from the start.

Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might
mean forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless
require a lot of work. It would mean educating ourselves and others
about the nature of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would
mean organizing at the most basic neighborhood level, face to face.
(We cannot put our trust in the empire's technology.) It would mean
reaching across turf lines and transcending single-issue politics,
forming coalitions and sharing data and names and strategies, and
applying energy at every level of government, local to global. It
would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a time when the Bush
regime is starting to classify that action as "terrorism." In the
end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern
ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental
Congress. It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.

It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A
paradigm shift.

But as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main
reason is I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a
"theory."

That the US House of Representatives Select Committee on
Assassinations concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
was "probably" the result of "a conspiracy," and that 70 percent of
Americans agree with this conclusion, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the Bay of Pigs fiasco, "Operation Zapata," was organized by
members of Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret society
at Yale University whose membership also included Prescott, George
Herbert Walker and George W Bush; that two of the ships that carried
the Cuban counterrevolutionaries to their appointment with absurdity
were named the "Barbara" and the "Houston"-George HW Bush's city of
residence at the time-and that the oil company Bush owned, then
operating in the Caribbean area, was named "Zapata," is not "theory."
It's fact.

That George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what were
estimated to be hundreds of American journalists, considered to be
CIA "assets," from the Church Committee, the US Senate Intelligence
Committe chaired by Senator Frank Church that investigated the CIA in
the 1970s; that a 1971 University of Michigan study concluded that,
in America, the more TV you watched, the less you knew; and that a
recent survey by international scholars found that Americans were the
most "ignorant" of world affairs out of all the populations they
studied, is not a "theory." It's fact.

That the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on
official US government foreign policy; that the protection of US
supplies of Middle East oil has been a central element of American
foreign policy since the Second World War; and that global oil
production has been in decline since its peak year, 2000, is not
"theory." It's fact.

That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral Commission
published a report which recommended that, in order for
"globalization" to succeed, American manufacturing jobs had to be
exported, and American wages had to decline, which is exactly what
happened over the next three decades; and that, during that same
period, the richest one percent of Americans doubled their share of
the national wealth, is not "theory." It's fact.

That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the US Treasury
Department, the Federal Reserve Banks are profit-making corporations,
whose beneficiaries include some of America's wealthiest families;
and that the United States has a virtual controlling interest in the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade
Organization, the three dominant global financial institutions, is
not a "theory." It's fact.

That-whether it's heroin from Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, or
cocaine from Central America and heroin from Afghanistan in the '80s,
or cocaine from Colombia in the '90s, or heroin from Afghanistan
today-no major CIA covert operation has ever lacked a drug smuggling
component, and that the CIA has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers,
arms smugglers, mass murderers, perverts, sadists, terrorists and the
Mafia, is not "theory." It's fact.

That the international oil industry is the dominant player in the
global economy; that the Bush family has a decades-long business
relationship with the Saudi royal family, Saudi oil money, and the
family of Osama bin Laden; that, as president, both George Bushes
have favored the interests of oil companies over the public interest;
that both George Bushes have personally profited financially from
Middle East oil; and that American oil companies doubled their
records for quarterly profits in the months just preceding the
invasion of Iraq, is not "theory." It's fact.

That the 2000 presidential election was deliberately stolen; that the
pro-Bush/anti-Gore bias in the corporate media had spiked markedly in
the last three weeks of the campaign; that corporate media were then
virtually silent about the Florida recount; and that the Bush 2000
team had planned to challenge the legitimacy of the election if
George W had won the popular, but lost the electoral vote-exactly
what happened to Gore-is not "theory." It's fact.

That the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was
deceptively "cooked" by the Bush administration; that anybody paying
attention to people like former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter,
knew before the invasion that the weapons were a hoax; and that
American forces in Iraq today are applying the same brutal
counterinsurgency tactics pioneered in Central America in the 1980s,
under the direct supervision of then-Vice President George HW Bush,
is not a "theory." It's fact.

That "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New American
Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard," a book published a
few years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew
Brzezinski, both recommended a more robust and imperial US military
presence in the oil basin of the Middle East and the Caspian region;
and that both also suggested that American public support for this
energy crusade would depend on public response to a new "Pearl
Harbor," is not "theory." It's fact.

That, in the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously approved a
plan called "Operation Northwoods," to stage terrorist attacks on
American soil that could be used to justify an invasion of Cuba; and
that there is currently an office in the Pentagon whose function is
to instigate terrorist attacks that could be used to justify future
strategically-desired military responses, is not a "theory." It's
fact.

That neither the accusation by former British Environmental Minister
Michael Meacher, Tony Blair's longest-serving cabinet minister, that
George W Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to justify an oil
war in the Middle East; nor the RICO lawsuit filed by 9/11 widow
Ellen Mariani against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Council on
Foreign Relations (among others), on the grounds that they conspired
to let the attacks happen to cash in on the ensuing war profiteering,
has captured the slightest attention from American corporate media is
not a "theory." It's fact.

That the FBI has completely exonerated-though never identified-the
speculators who purchased, a few days before the attacks (through a
bank whose previous director is now the CIA executive director), an
unusual number of "put" options, and who made millions betting that
the stocks in American and United Airlines would crash, is not a
"theory." It's fact.

That the US intelligence community received numerous warnings, from
multiple sources, throughout the summer of 2001, that a major
terrorist attack on American interests was imminent; that, according
to the chair of the "independent" 9/11 commission, the attacks "could
have and should have been prevented," and according to a Senate
Intelligence Committee member, "All the dots were connected;" that
the White House has verified George W Bush's personal knowledge, as
of August 6, 2001, that these terrorist attacks might be domestic and
might involve hijacked airliners; that, in the summer of 2001, at the
insistence of the American Secret Service, anti-aircraft ordnance was
installed around the city of Genoa, Italy, to defend against a
possible terrorist suicide attack, by aircraft, against George W
Bush, who was attending the economic summit there; and that George W
Bush has nevertheless regaled audiences with his first thought upon
seeing the "first" plane hit the World Trade Center, which was: "What
a terrible pilot," is not "theory." It's fact.

That, on the morning of September 11, 2001: standard procedures and
policies at the nation's air defense and aviation bureaucracies were
ignored, and communications were delayed; the black boxes of the
planes that hit the WTC were destroyed, but hijacker Mohammed Atta's
passport was found in pristine condition; high-ranking Pentagon
officers had cancelled their commercial flight plans for that
morning; George H.W. Bush was meeting in Washington with
representatives of Osama bin Laden's family, and other investors in
the world's largest private equity firm, the Carlyle Group; the CIA
was conducting a previously-scheduled mock exercise of an airliner
hitting the Pentagon; the chairs of both the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees were having breakfast with the chief of
Pakistan's intelligence agency, who resigned a week later on
suspicion of involvement in the 9/11 attacks; and the
commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States sat in a
second grade classroom for 20 minutes after hearing that a second
plane had struck the towers, listening to children read a story about
a goat, is not "theoretical." These are facts.

That the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt to
independently investigate the events of 9/11, is not a "theory."

Nor, finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single name
that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military
industrial complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol'
boys, the Illuminati, Big Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami
Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI, the JFK assassination, the New World
Order, Watergate, the Republican National Committee, Eastern European
fascists, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral
Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters, the October
Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute,
Manuel Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads,
Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of
innocents, the savings and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International, the "Octopus," the "Enterprise," the Afghan
mujaheddin, the War on Drugs, Mena (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung
Moon, the Carlyle Group, Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family,
David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and
vice-presidency of the United States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.

"Theory?" To the contrary.

It is a well-documented, tragic and-especially if you're
paranoid-terrifying fact.

Michael Hasty is a writer, activist, musician, carpenter and farmer.
His award-winning column, "Thinking Locally," appeared for seven
years in the Hampshire Review, West Virginia's oldest newspaper. His
writing has also appeared in the Highlands Voice, the Washington
Peace Letter, the Takoma Park Newsletter, the German magazine
Generational Justice, and the Washington Post; and at the websites
Common Dreams and Democrats.com. In January 1989, he was the media
spokesperson for the counter-inaugural coalition at George Bush's
Counter-Inaugural Banquet, which fed hundreds of DC's homeless in
front of Union Station, where the official inaugural dinner was being
held.

Permission to reprint is granted, provided it includes this
autobiographical note, and credit for first publication to Online
Journal.
--

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