Censored 2014 (42 page)

Moving forward with such an orientation toward the intersections of history, biography, and society can only aid in addressing the ongoing truth emergency. And so is it also a central underlying theme guiding the endeavors of Project Censored—namely the undaunted use of reason toward the identification and reaffirmation of truth as a fundamental tenet in public deliberation, to authentically inform and sustain the human condition.

JAMES F. TRACY, PHD
, is associate professor of media studies at Florida Atlantic University. His scholarly and critical writings have appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and analysis outlets. Tracy is editor of the Union for Democratic Communications' journal
Democratic Communiqué.
He is also a regular contributor to the Center for Research on Globalization's website GlobalResearch.ca, and a contributor to Project Censored's previous publication,
Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution.

Notes

^1.
This chapter draws in part on two previously published essays I have authored. “Social Engineering and the 21st Century Truth Emergency,” Global Research, March 19, 2013,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/false-flags-fake-media-reporting-deceiving-the-public-social-engineering-and-the-21st-century-truth-emergency/5325982
; and “Media Disinformation and the Conspiracy Panic Phenomenon,” Global Research, May 24, 2013,
http://globalresearch.ca/media-disinformation-and-the-conspiracy-panic-phenomenon/5336221
. Thanks to Project Censored director Mickey Huff for additional edits and sourcing for publication in this volume.

^2.
Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, “Truth Emergency and Media Reform,”
Daily Censored,
March 31, 2009,
http://www.dailycensored.com/truth-emergency-and-media-reform/
. For more on the Truth Emergency, see Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, et al., “Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform,” in eds. Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth,
Censored 2009
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), 281–295; Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, “Truth Emergency: Inside the Military Industrial Media Empire,” in eds. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff,
Censored 2010
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2009), 197–220; and Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips, eds.,
Censored 2011,
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2010), sec. 2, “Truth Emergency,” 221–352; Mickey Huff, Andy Lee Roth, and Project Censored, eds.,
Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), sec. 2 , “Truth Emergency,” 213–331; and the Truth Emergency conference website from 2008 at
http://truthemergency.us
.

^3.
Edward Bernays,
Propaganda
(New York: Ig Publishing, 2005 [1928]), 48, 71, 72.

^4.
Eliane Glaser, “The West's Hidden Propaganda Machine,”
Guardian,
May 17, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/17/west-hidden-propaganda-machine-social-media
.

^5.
J. S. McClelland,
A History of Western Political Thought
(New York: Routledge, 1996), 25.

^6.
The tentative transition from community to society examined by Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and their contemporaries suggests the basis for such myths as the individual's faith in religion and collective ties was eclipsed by acceptance of the narratives from those representing civil society's apparent rationality. This faith, however, is groundless and devoid of the moral dimension accompanying the myths arising from communal existence. For Tönnies, “community is the true and lasting common life; society is only temporary.” In other words, the community provides the concrete basis for human existence and involvement while society is characterized by a tentative expression arising from an industrial-metropolitan milieu. Julien Freund, “German Sociology in the Time of Max Weber,” in Tom Bottomore and Robert Nisbet, eds.,
A History of Sociological Analysis
(New York: Basic Books, 1978), 154.

^7.
David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney,
The Lonely Crowd,
abridged ed. (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1961 [1950]), 192–197; C. Wright Mills,
The Sociological Imagination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), 171–173.

^8.
Maggie Koerth-Baker, “Why Rational People Buy Into Conspiracy Theories,”
New York Times,
May 21, 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/magazine/why-rational-people-buy-into-conspiracy-theories.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
.

^9.
For some of the latest research on this subject, read Lance deHaven-Smith,
Conspiracy Theory in America
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013), 1-52.

^10.
Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in
Georg Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms,
ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 335. “That we follow the laws of our inner nature—and this is what freedom is—becomes perceptible and convincing to us and to others only when the expression of this nature distinguish themselves from others; it is our irreplaceability by others which shows that our mode of existence is not imposed upon us from the outside.”

^11.
Erich Fromm,
The Sane Society
(New York: Rinehart & Company, 1955), 63. On issues relating to objectivity in previous Project Censored publications, see Mickey Huff, Andy Lee Roth, and Project Censored,
Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution
(New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), sec. 2, “Truth Emergency,” 214–15.

^12.
Slavko Splichal,
Principles of Publicity and Press Freedom
(Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 98, 102.

^13.
C. Wright Mills,
The Sociological Imagination
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000[1959]), 174. Hans-Georg Gadamer similarly analogizes such a psycho-social “situation” in terms of the “standpoint that limits the possibility of vision. Hence an essential part of the concept of situation is the concept of ‘horizon' . . . A person who has no horizon is a man who does not see far enough and hence overvalues what is nearest to him. Contrariwise, to have an horizon means not to be limited to what is nearest, but to be able to see beyond it.” The rule similarly persists “[i]n the sphere of historical understanding.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Historicity of Under-standing,” in Paul Connerton, ed.,
Critical Sociology
(New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 118.

^14.
Jack Z. Bratich,
Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture
(Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2008).

^15.
See CIA Document 1035-960, “Concerning Criticism of the Warren Commission Report,” JFK Lancer, n.d.
http://www.jfklancer.com/CIA.html
.

^16.
See deHaven-Smith,
Conspiracy Theory in America.

^17.
Bratich,
Conspiracy Panic
s, 11.

^18.
See the work of deHaven Smith,
Conspiracy Theory in America,
especially 1–52, and the works of Peter Dale Scott.

^19.
This despite some of the findings of the “Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the US House of Representatives” (1979) that admitted problems with the earlier government reports on JKF's death, as did the previous Church Committee (1976). Oliver Stone's new book and Showtime series with Peter Kuznick,
Untold History of the United States,
continues to challenge conventional interpretations and official narratives of US history in the twentieth century.

^20.
That was the coroner's official report. Some have argued it was a possible murder by elements within the US government, but that evidence is not conclusive. For example, Charlene Fassa,
“Gary Webb: More Pieces in the Suicide Puzzle, Pt. 1,”
Rense.com
, December 11, 2005,
http://rense.com/general69/webbi.htm
.

^21.
Robert Parry, “CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s,”
Consortium News,
June 8, 2000,
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html
.

^22.
Death Certificate of Timothy James McVeigh, June 11, 2001,
http://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/deathcert/mcveigh,%20timothy.pdf
.

^23.
Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee,
Final Report on the Bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, April 19, 1995,
2001. See also
Oklahoma City: What Really Happened?
Chuck Allen, dir., 1995,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmBrMpcd_2k
.

^24.
The film,
A Noble Lie,
argues the April 19, 1995 bombing that destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building involved far more revealing evidence than the Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains,
http://www.anoblelie.com/articles/the-noble-lie-in-oklahoma-city
. For more on historical issues regarding controversial and potentially dubious dealings of the FBI and the post 9/11 war on terror, see Trevor Aaronson,
The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism
(New York: Ig Publishing, 2013), which is based on Aaronson's article, “The Informants,”
Mother Jones,
September/October 2011,
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/fbi-terrorist-informants
. Aaronson's story was #4 in
Censored 2013.

^25.
See James F. Tracy, “State Propaganda, Historical Revisionism, and Perpetuation of the 911 Myth,” Global Research, May 6, 2012,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-9-11-myth-state-propa-ganda-historical-revisionism-and-the-perpetuation-of-the-9-11-myth/30721
.

^26.
Emily Wax, “Report of bin Laden's Death Spurs Questions From Conspiracy Theorists,”
Washington Post,
May 2, 2011,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/report-of-bin-ladens-death-spurs-questions-from-conspiracy-theorists/2011/05/02/AF90ZjbF_story.html
. For an academic review and analysis on previous reports of the death of Osama bin Laden, see David Ray Griffin,
Osama bin Laden: Dead of Alive?
(Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2009).

^27.
Gen. Mark Kimmitt on CNN Breaking News, “Osama bin Laden is Dead,” CNN, May 2, 2011.

^28.
Glenn Beck, “Beck for May 2, 2011,” Fox News, May 2, 2011.

^29.
See Norman Soloman,
War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
(Hoboken: Wiley, 2006). See the film online at
http://www.warmadeeasythemovie.org
.

^30.
“Florida Conspiracy Theory Professor Who Said that the Sandy Hook Shooting May Not Have Happened Now Argues that the Government Was behind the Boston Marathon Bombing,”
Daily Mail,
April 24, 2013,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2314370/James-Tracy-Florida-conspiracy-theory-professor-said-Sandy-Hook-shooting-happened-argues-government-Boston-Marathon-bombing.html
. [Editors' note: the professor in question is the author of this chapter. Also, it should be noted that Tracy has been quoted out of context often and attacked both in and by the media. That is one of the main focal points of this chapter—how corporate media work to discredit unpopular views and play “shoot the messenger” rather than report factually and transparently about controversial matters and how the press often fail to question the very people in power who craft official historical narratives.]

^31.
For more on the notion of pseudo-events, see Daniel J. Boorstin,
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
(New York: Athenum, 1962); and for analysis on how this phenomenon impacts news reporting and public consciousness in the present, see Mickey Huff, Andy Lee Roth, et al., “American Idle: Junk Food News, News Abuse, and the Voice of Freedumb,” in
Censored 2013,
151–176.

^32.
Eric L. Dey, Molly C. Ott, Mary Antonaros, and Matthew A. Holsapple,
Engaging Diverse Viewpoints: What is the Campus Climate for Perspective Taking?
(Washington DC: American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2010), 7,
http://www.aacu.org/core_commitments/docu-ments/Engaging_Diverse_Viewpoints.pdf
.

^33.
Mills,
The Sociological Imagination,
186.

John Pilger

How does censorship work in liberal societies? When my film,
Year Zero: The Silent Death of Cambodia,
was banned in the United States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened, but what?
Year Zero
had already alerted much of the world to the horrors of Pol Pot, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of Cambodia.

Six months later, a PBS official denied this was censorship. “We're into difficult political days in Washington,” he said. “Your film would have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry.”
²

In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, deniable censorship. The investigative journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of forty-eight television films in Britain that were never shown or indefinitely delayed. The word “ban” was rarely used, and those responsible would invariably insist they believed in free speech.
³

The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free speech. The Foundation's website (
Lannan.org
) says it is “dedicated to cultural freedom, diversity and creativity.” Authors, filmmakers, and poets make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford. Lannan also awards “grants” to America's liberal media, such as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (which publishes
Mother Jones
magazine), the Nation Institute, and the TV and radio program
Democracy Now!
In Britain, until 2011, Lannan was a supporter of the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

The Lannan Foundation was set up in 1960 by J. Patrick Lannan, who amassed a fortune, much of it in art, while he was majority shareholder of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT). Founded in the 1920s, ITT had extensive interests in Europe. In the 1930s, ITT's companies in Germany expanded; an ITT subsidiary owned 25 percent of the aircraft company Focke-Wulf, which supplied the Luftwaffe; at the height of the Second World War, this was a majority holding.

During the American invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s, ITT produced navigation systems for laser-guided bombs and developed surveillance systems for what the Pentagon calls the “automated battlefield.” In 1971, President Salvador Allende nationalized ITT's 70 percent interest in the Chilean Telephone Company. As declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) files show, ITT's response was an eighteen-point covert “action plan” to overthrow Allende. According to
The CIA's Greatest Hits
by Mark Zepezauer, the CIA “sponsored demonstrations and strikes, funded by ITT and other US corporations with Chilean holdings,” prior to General Augusto Pinochet's September 1973 military coup. ITT funded
El Mercurio,
the Chilean daily that opposed Allende and backed Pinochet.
⁴

J. Patrick Lannan died in 1983. On the Lannan Foundation's website, he is described as a “liberal thinker.” His son, Patrick, runs the Foundation today.

On June 15, 2011, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a platform with David Barsamian, whose interviews for his
Alternative Radio
program have brought him acclaim, notably those with Noam Chomsky. The subject of my talk was the role of American liberalism in a permanent state of war and in the demise of freedoms, such as the right to call government to account. I intended to make the case that Barack Obama, a liberal, was as much a warmonger as George W. Bush and had prosecuted more whistle-blowers than any US president, and that his singular achievement had been to seduce, co-opt, and silence much of liberal opinion in the United States.

The Lannan Foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film,
The War You Don't See,
which investigates the role of the media in war-making, especially liberal media such as the
New York Times
and the BBC. It is a film about censorship that does not speak its name.

The organizer of my visit was Barbara Ventrello, Lannan's director of Cultural Freedom Public Events, with whom I had been in frequent contact. “We're all looking forward to seeing you here,” she said. “Your events are proving very popular.” On June 9, as I was about to leave for Santa Fe, I received this email:

David Barsamian was driving down from Boulder, Colorado, when he was reached and advised to turn back. He, too, was given no explanation. A frequent guest at Lannan events, he said he had never known anything like it. “I was there a couple of weeks ago,” he told
the
Santa Fe New Mexican,
“and Patrick said, ‘Wow, looking forward to this. It's going to be great.' I didn't have a hint of any unease.”
⁵

I replied to Barbara Ventrello that Lannan was committed to staging the US premiere of my film at The Screen cinema in Santa Fe, and such an abrupt cancellation left me with no alternatives; the film's national promotion was linked to the Santa Fe premiere. I asked that the screening go ahead. I received this reply:

“All” was in italics and underlined. Again, no reason was given. Patrick Lannan had phoned her from California, she said, without explanation.

I emailed Lannan himself several times and got no reply. I phoned him and left messages. A strange, unsettling silence followed. I phoned the manager of The Screen cinema in Santa Fe. “I'm baffled,” he said. “I was expecting a sellout, then late on the night before the online advertising was due to go up, I had a call from a Lannan person telling me to stop everything. She gave no explanation.”

I suggested to the cinema manager that I come to Santa Fe anyway, but when I tried to buy the plane ticket Lannan had arranged for me, I was told by the travel agent: “I've contacted the Foundation, and they won't allow you to buy it, even though this ticket, when cancelled, will be worthless. I don't understand it.”

On the Lannan website, “Cancelled” appeared across a picture of me. There was no explanation. Not one of my phone calls and emails was returned. A Kafkaesque world of not-knowing descended. Of the 195 events staged by the Lannan Foundation, only one has been banned.

Like the cinema manager, the
Santa Fe New Mexican
had been called late on the night that a full-page interview with me by its arts reporter was about to go to press. “We had less than an hour to pull it,” said the arts editor. “They wouldn't say why.” The
New Mexican
's
weekly arts supplement,
Pasatiempo,
in which the interview would appear, is a primary source of local interest and ticket sales for all Lannan events.

The silence from Lannan lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the Foundation put out a brief statement that too few tickets had been sold to make my visit “viable” and that “the Foundation regrets that the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr. Pilger or to the public at the time the decision was made.”
⁶
The statement said that the film had been “secondary” and that I had “asked” for it to be shown. This was specious. With arrangements for a US premiere already under way, I
offered
an exclusive screening to Lannan. In March 2011, Barbara Ventrello had emailed me: “We would very much like to show your film. . . . We could possibly even schedule two showings. . . . We are sure there would be great interest in Santa Fe.”

According to Patrick Lannan's belated statement, there was little interest in any of my events. A Foundation spokesperson, Christie Mazuera Davis, told the
Santa Fe New Mexican:
“This doesn't reflect that great on John, whom we were trying to protect, but he's turned it into this situation . . . he could have very graciously taken his check and said, ‘I'm sorry it didn't work out.'”
⁷

In other words, it was I who should have apologized for having my event and the premiere of my film cancelled summarily without consultation or explanation.

A robust editorial in the
Santa Fe New Mexican
had this to say:

The manager of The Screen cinema told me that no one from the Foundation had contacted him to ask how ticket sales were going. Had they done so, he would have told them that, once the advertising had gotten under way, he expected a full house. At my suggestion, he rescheduled the film for June 23. This was a sellout, with a line around the block and many people turned away. Lannan's reason for the cancellation was demonstrably bogus.

“Something is going to surface,” said David Barsamian. “They can't keep the lid on this.”
⁹

I am not so sure.

When I made the banning known, many in the US offered their support. Project Censored showed
The War You Don't See
in Berkeley, CA and organized an audience conversation with me via Skype. Dennis Bernstein invited me on his KPFA/Pacifica Radio program,
Flashpoints.
Hundreds of people contacted me, suggesting the episode was symptomatic of a wider, insidious suppression. The great whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg called the ban “poisonous.” He wrote to me: “Please count on me to participate in any way I can help out. This really needs to be investigated, publicized and resisted: seems especially ominous (though not exactly surprising). It's an uphill, long, long struggle.”

However, other distinguished liberal voices remained silent or, when I sought their support, were all but affronted that I had dared whisper the word “censorship” in association with such a beacon of “cultural freedom” as the Lannan Foundation. What was striking was how readily they expressed deference to Lannan, as if evidence was irrelevant. The tone was sometimes resentful, even angry, as though I had embarrassed their patron, and them. I emailed a friend in New York, who had published my work and whose various endeavors were backed by Patrick Lannan. “I shall appreciate whatever solidarity you can give,” I wrote, expecting no more than a gesture. When I suggested to him that Lannan's action might be political, I was reminded of all the progressive people Lannan had invited to Santa Fe; my friend wrote that, anyway, Lannan “is not a liberal, but has much better poli
tics.” He was concerned not with Lannan's action but with puncturing various theories as to why Lannan had stopped my events. There was no solidarity. Defending Lannan was clearly a priority. The last message I received was in lawyer-speak. “Until I know the full story,” he wrote, “I am withholding any conclusive judgment.” At least, I began to understand the tentacular power of patronage.

Around this time, I was due in New York to appear on Amy Goodman's
Democracy Now!
to show clips of
The War You Don't See.
I had sent a copy of the film ahead and agreed to dates with a producer. Amy Goodman had often interviewed me in New York and down the line in London. Once, she had devoted most of her show to my work.
¹⁰
I admired what Amy Goodman did, and had presented her with a Lannan award in Santa Fe in 2002. On June 13, I emailed the producer and asked when the interview would take place. He replied: “Will discuss with other producers and Amy and get back to you.”

That was the last I heard from
Democracy Now!
None of my phone calls and emails to Amy Goodman and her staff were returned. A longstanding relationship evaporated without a word.
Democracy Now!
is backed by the Lannan Foundation.
¹¹