WBAI and conspiracy theorists

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

One of the most depressing things about the hijacking of Pacifica has 
been the tendency to rely on conspiracy theory to explain the world. 
I think this is what happens when you purge conscious Marxists like 
Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez and others from the news team.

(I should mention, by the way, that the settlement at Pacifica is off 
the table. The board reneged.)

During the fund-drive that just ended, Gary Null (a big conspiracy 
theorist himself, as well as a new-age, vitamin and health-food guru) 
hosted special programming on the aftermath of 9/11. Along with some 
good guests like Michael Parenti, Alex Cockburn and Howard Zinn (who 
urged the station to return to the good old days), Null allowed one 
of his guests, who I'd never heard of, to ramble on for 20 minutes 
about how 9/11 was part of a century-long pattern of psychiatric 
plotting to create genocide. The terrorists, you see, were subjects 
of mind-control techniques that were first used on Hitler, when he 
was in the hospital recovering from wounds received during WWI. 
Basically, he was hypnotized into becoming a fascist. The guest was 
so utterly bizarre, I tracked down her website, which is at: 
www.psychassault.com. This innocuously named "Citizens Commission on 
Human Rights International" is a front group for Scientology!

And on Friday afternoon, during the last day of fund-raising, they 
turned over the entire day to Michael Ruppert, whose ideas on 9/11 
can be seen at www.guerrillanews.com/counter_intelligence/192.html. 

For a $50 contribution to the station, you can get tapes of Ruppert 
or a subscription to his newsletter. This is a sample of his beliefs 
from the guerrillanews.com interview:

===
Q: OK. So then please explain who would have directly benefited from 
his tragedy and how will the ensuing domino effect of military 
escalation play into the hands or interests of those people? 

A: First of all, just two days before the attack, on September 9, I 
issued an urgent bulletin to all of my subscribers indicating a 
pending economic collapse of unbelievable proportions. Based upon 
what I had already predicted and what was already occurring, a rapid 
deflation of the Dow, having lost 900 points in three weeks before 
the attack. And two other factors, one of which is an artificially 
suppressed gold price which is, according to a suit filed in Boston 
by GATA - the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee - a design by the U.S. 
Treasury and major banks to keep gold prices low so that investor 
confidence would stay high but also because gold, physical gold, had 
been leveraged forward in multiples to an amount many times greater 
on paper than there is gold in actual existence. This is a suit that 
was threatening to come to the surface. Historically, investor 
confidence is gauged, is pegged to gold because if gold prices remain 
low, investors will assume no inflation and healthy markets. The 
minute gold prices rise, investor confidence sinks. And this has been 
an artificial ploy by the U.S. government which surfaced actually and 
was exposed in 1998 with the collapse of a company called Long Term 
Capital Management which almost toppled the U.S. economy and forced 
the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury to intervene, exposing 
artificial manipulation of gold prices. 
===

If you go to his website http://www.copvcia.com/, you'll discover the 
following about Ruppert. 

"Mike Ruppert, 49, was born in Washington, D.C. An Honors graduate of 
UCLA in Political Science, he comes from a family rooted in 
intelligence and the military. As an undergraduate he interned for LA 
Police Chief Ed Davis and worked at 5 LAPD Divisions before 
graduating and becoming an officer in 1973.

"In 1992, after speaking with Ross Perot during the course of his 
investigations, Mike served as the LA County Press Spokesman for the 
Perot Presidential Campaign. This led to an appearance in the Feature 
Documentary THE LAST PARTY with Robert Downey, Jr. and Sean Penn."

And during the fund-raising marathon prior to this one, WBAI was 
interviewing and giving premiums for books written by one Bill Marrs. 
Bill Weinberg, who is a WBAI dissident, explained where Marrs was 
coming from:

RULE BY IDIOCY: WBAI FALLS FOR RIGHT-WING CONSPIRACY THEORY!
by Bill Weinberg

Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral 
Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. The title itself 
reads like a self-parody. The fact that it is not is a sad comment on 
our times. The fact that HarperCollins chose to publish this 
amateurish potboiler is even sadder. But saddest of all is that it 
was offered as a premium in the last fund-raising marathon by New 
York City?s ?progressive? WBAI Radio. 

WBAI, whose leadership was purged in a notorious ?Christmas Coup? 
last year, once offered premiums by the likes of Noam Chomsky. But it 
was the voice of Jim Marrs that issued from the station?s transmitter 
in relentless interviews during the May marathon. Marrs was chosen as 
the latest political guru by morning show host Marjorie Moore and 
approved by WBAI?s Interim General Manager Utrice Leid. Both 
repeatedly praised his ?research? over the air. That WBAI is now 
promoting Marrs, a peddler of the most vulgar anti-Semitic conspiracy 
theory, loans credence to those who argue that the station has 
assumed a rightward trajectory since the ?coup.?.

full: http://shadow.autono.net/sin001/wbai2.htm


-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx on 11/11/2001

Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org



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