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Above is my interview with Karin Brothers commemorating the 30th anniversary of the 1990 World Trade Center false flag bombing. Below is her new article, followed by an older one.

-Kevin Barrett

The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center: the betrayal 30 years later

by Karin BrothersFebruary 26th, 2023 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City -- a widely misunderstood false flag operation that paved the way for 9/11 by portraying Muslims as terrorists and introducing Islamophobic racism to the U.S.When I watched the three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings disintegrate on September 11, 2001, I assumed that there would be no interest in the story of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; but when I realized Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Osama bin Laden were being blamed for it, I realized the real facts had to come out.At the time of the bombing, the West's 40-year Cold War against Communism had recently ended with the disintegration of the USSR; unidentified western investors were said to have been scooping up its assets as its public resources were becoming privatized.  The U.S. military needed a new enemy to replace Communism in order to maintain its budget and protect it from any "peace dividend".  A classified Congressional document around 1991 (also sent to selected media) identified the new enemy as "Islamic Fundamentalists"; this expanded the target of the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, which called for (legal) Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation to be criminalized internationally as "terrorism".   President George H.W. Bush's 1991 "Madrid Peace Talks", to end Israel's 25-year military occupation of Palestinian territory, were continuing. A massive bomb exploded under the Vista Hotel in the WTC at noon on Friday, February 26, 1993, killing 6, injuring 1000, and causing chaos throughout New York City for the rest of the day.  The WTC complex covered 16 acres of lower Manhattan; the unforgettable twin towers rose one half mile into the sky.  The damage under the hotel took out an area 2/3 the size of a football field and went down six floors to the PATH train station, underneath the level of the Hudson River.

The owner, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, thought that the bomb was so perfectly placed to cause maximum damage to the life support system that it had to be an inside job.  This was confirmed by an extraordinary New York Times (NYT) graphic two days later which showed that the damage was not circular, but oblong, with the two ends hitting a corner of each tower: the bombers had to have had access to the Trade Center blueprints. The big question was, what country had the ability to pull off such a sophisticated operation when the only real U.S. enemy at that time was Iraq, which the US had invaded in 1991 and still basically controlled.The damage was so massive that police estimated it would take six months to gather clues from the black abyss.  It took a month to find the body of the Vista Hotel employee who had been working on the floor above the bomb; his body was found underneath all seven floors of rubble.  That weekend, however, an ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) agent entered the top edge of the abyss with a flashlight and came out with a load of vehicle parts that he claimed must have come from the bomb-laden van.  An FBI agent immediately worked to decipher a Vehicle Identification Number and quickly identified it as coming from a Ryder van: a van that a Mohammad Salameh had rented.Mohammad Salameh paid $400 to rent a Ryder van to help move work mates who were soon to leave the New York area.  That Thursday evening, he used it to bring friends shopping at a local mall; when they came out with their groceries, the van had disappeared.  Horrified, Salameh called the police to report the van missing.  An officer Badiak responded but was unable to put out an immediate warrant for the van because it had an out-of-state license and there seemed to have been a mistake in Ryder's handwritten license number that they gave to Salameh.  Badiak didn't bother to track the number down that evening, but he made out the report and drove Salameh to his home at 24 Kensington, where he lived with an Israeli woman called Josie Haddas.  Or maybe Gosie Hadass: she apparently spelled her name differently whenever she wrote it.  Mohammad Salameh spent days on busses trying to get his $400 deposit back from the Ryder shop, which kept giving him a run-around. On the fourth attempt, on Wednesday, March 5th when he had been told he could pick up his refund, he was met with a small army of media and police, who arrested him as a suspect in the WTC bombing.  (Ryder records reportedly indicated that Salameh's van was returned!)

Salameh's court-appointed lawyer had a hard time trying to explain to Salameh, a recent Jordanian immigrant who had difficulty with English, why he had been arrested.  Salameh had faith in American justice; he wanted a fast trial so that he could get on with his life (stocking grocery shelves).  NYT reporter Chris Hedges contacted Salameh's parents in Jordan; he had recently called them and they expected another call soon to announce his coming marriage.The New York Times, which produced the most extensive coverage of this story, was fast off the mark claiming that Mohammad Salameh -- who they suspected had probable terrorist connections -- was an "Islamic fundamentalist".  Its description of the WTC bombing as "sophisticated" turned to primitive, and the key graphic describing the pattern of damage disappeared from NYT archives, along with other information that did not fit the official government narrative. Several other Muslim immigrants would join Salameh as defendants: gutsy Egyptian cabbie Mahmoud Abuhalima who, with his young family, had permanent resident status; Nidal Ayyad, a recently graduated (and married) Kuwaiti chemical engineer who had become an enthusiastic U.S. citizen, and  Palestinian refugee claimant Ahmad Ajaj who had been incarcerated from the previous September until March on immigration charges and had never even met the other defendants. The New York Times noted that, except for the cabbie, the defendants were all of Palestinian descent, which it found significant. The four men faced a broad conspiracy charge for moving weapons across state lines.  A fifth man was wanted with a reward: Ramzi Yousef had entered the U.S. five months before the explosion to join what was obviously the bombing plot and left the day it occurred.  The court protected the identities of -- and access to -- an estimated two dozen other facilitators of the bombing, including Israelis such as Josie Haddas (whose name was on Salameh's Ryder van contract).

Several months later, the FBI was called in by its asset Emad Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence officer and bomb expert, to raid what he claimed was bomb-making to attack New York City landmarks and transportation hubs.  Some of the men weren't sure what they were mixing stuff for and one who was charged, New Yorker Clement Hampton-El, smelled a rat and had been avoiding the group.  Weeks later, the world- famous, blind Egyptian cleric (a 1990 refugee claimant) Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman was arrested.  As the leader of local mosques that all of the defendants belonged to, prosecutors claimed the sheikh was the "mastermind" not only of the latest "bomb-making" but of the WTC explosion as well as the 1991 killing of terrorist rabbi Meir Kahane, (despite the fact that a New York State trial had found El Sayid Nosair not guilty!)  Fifteen men in all would face a "seditious conspiracy" charge that included the WTC bombing (with an acknowledgment that that was being tried separately); the four defendants of the first WTC trial were "unindicted co-conspirators" of this second trial, which made both trials appear to be related.  The conspiracy charges for both trials had such low requirements for conviction that guilty verdicts could have been regarded as virtually meaningless.  Competent legal counsel (which the courts tried to bar) should have been able to get all of them off. The New York Times coverage was racist, biased and inflammatory; it tried to ensure convictions by painting the defendants as shadowy Muslim criminals who refused to admit their involvement and who were bringing treacherous jihadi terrorism to threaten all Americans.  At the end of October, 1993, the NYT published articles with verbatim parts of Emad Salem's taped conversations with his FBI handler Nancy Floyd and her boss John Anticev in which both of them acknowledged that the FBI had overseen the Trade Center bombing plot, which a "higher up" had decided to make live instead of using planned fake explosives for the entrapment.At the first WTC trial, the defense counsel couldn't imagine that the defendants could be found guilty.  Because the four defendants had alibis, no motive, no means of doing it, and there was no evidence that they had done it, their defense counsel didn't see the point of calling defense witnesses. They were all convicted, apparently because jurors assumed that the lack of witnesses meant they had no defense!  All those who would be tried in connection to the WTC bombing would be convicted, and most sentenced to life, including Ramzi Yousef and the real driver of the van (Salameh had also been charged as the driver), who had been an unwitting accomplice. Yousef was the only defendant of all of the WTC-related trials who was aware of the WTC bombing plan.  The appeals, at least one of which got to the Supreme Court, were of no use despite the Constitutional violations that they documented.As a result of the Islamophobia generated by the media during these related trials, important Constitutional and judicial protections were jettisoned, which paved the way for the government's future "war on terror":The sheikh's sermons were used against him, despite First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and belief; The Fourth Amendment freedom from unwarranted searches was jettisoned by allowing the use of illegal search warrants;  The Sixth Amendment right to counsel was abandoned in various trials, including raids on the sheikh's legal staff, tape recordings of private meetings with lawyers, and ultimately the use of secret evidence, which encourages the fabrication of evidence; and  The Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment is violated by the Special Administrative Measures ("SAMs"), (which were applied to the sheikh and Ramzi Yousef, among others), which isolates and hides from public scrutiny not only those convicted, but even those merely accused of a crime.  Defense counsel, like the sheikh's lawyer Lynn Stewart, are also vulnerable to being criminally charged and incarcerated for violating SAMs.In 1993, the only obvious motives behind the WTC bombing appeared to be destroying American sympathy for the Palestinians during the ongoing Mideast peace talks, and using the Trade Center trials to undermine Constitutional rights.After the events of September 11, 2001, other motives for the '93 bombing became evident.  To justify NATO members joining the U.S.' "war on terror", the U.S. used, as further supposed evidence of a sustained foreign attack by Al Qaeda: the 1993 WTC bombing, including several names of those associated with it (Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, Ali Mohamed, Abdul Yasin, and Ramzi Yousef); references to the African Embassy bombing (Ali Mohamed and a minor participant); along with the USS Cole explosion and the Millenium shoe bomb plot, neither of which appeared to be connected to Al Qaeda.  Despite the fact that Bin Laden denied any responsibility for 9/11, that Al Qaeda was a recognized asset of the US government, and that the FBI was already on record as having admitted to overseeing the WTC bombing, the drama of the September 11th events was shocking enough that every NATO member agreed to joining the US' multi-year "war on terror".The motive of 9/11 first appeared to be the "war on terror's" regime change of countries to benefit the U.S. or Israel; the "seven countries in five years" told to General Wesley Clark were clearly intended targets.  It also became evident that there were financial motives, such as the destruction of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon, which was investigating billions of missing funds, along with other government-related financial fraud; its backup records at the WTC were also destroyed.  A financial motive for both the World Trade Center and Pentagon destruction became apparent with the publication of an extensively- referenced article called "Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001" by a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence using the pseudonym E.P. Heidner.  Heidner claims that on September 12, 2001, 10-year bonds worth $240 billion became mature and could be cleared only then because the Security and Exchange Commission, invoking emergency powers because of 9/11, suspended the requirement for identification to cash in securities for 15 days.  The detailed information -- with stunning implications that include the asset-stripping of the USSR -- indicate that this plot had started by September, 1991.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this story, along with the loss of Americans' Constitutional rights, and the crimes that have gone unpunished, is the impact of the politically- generated Islamophobia, which has been compared to anti-Semitic racism before WW II.  The U.S. government has betrayed all of its citizens -- particularly Muslims -- by virtually defining "terrorism" as Muslim, and destroying the lives of many of the Muslims who came to the US to raise their families and make their own contribution to the United States.  This includes the innocent defendants of this story who have endured tortuous incarceration, and their children and grandchildren for whom they are irreplaceable.Karin Brothers is a freelance writer.

Requiem for a Martyr: The "Blind Sheik", Omar Abdel-Rahman, Innocent Victim of Seditious Conspiracy Trial

See also Requiem for a martyr (Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman): https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/By Karin Brothers | Global Research | March 5, 2017"[America's treatment of me] is a crime that history will never forgive." – Omar Abdel RahmanSheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "blind sheik", died on the morning of February 18, 2017, near the 24th anniversary of the 1993 WTC bombing. He was an innocent victim of the US agenda to create a new enemy by engineering events that would make terrorism virtually synonymous with "Islamic fundamentalism".Sheik Abdul-Rahman attained national fame in Egypt while he was on trial for inciting the 1981 assassination of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. With a passionate moral integrity, he courageously attacked the government during his two days on the stand; the intensive trial media gave him a national platform that made him famous throughout the Muslim world. His sermons were taped and traded throughout Egypt.While he was vindicated of the charges against him, President Mubarak's government ominously refused to give the necessary certification of the verdict and eventually drove Sheik Abdul-Rahman out of Egypt. The Sheik went to Afghanistan, where he helped the CIA recruit Arab fighters to serve with the US-backed mujahadeen (he would lose at least one of his own sons there), and the Sheik was reportedly on the CIA payroll.Sheik Abdul-Rahman came to the US in 1990, hoping to remain until he could safely return to Egypt. According to Benjamin Begin in a 1993 Israel Today newsletter, Abdul-Rahman's mosques were infiltrated by FBI and Mossad operatives and would be the source of recruitment for their operations.The World Trade Center explosion occurred on Friday, February 26th, 1993. The Sheik was soon declared deportable when some of those charged were identified as members of his mosques. The sheik was in the FBI's crosshairs; the FBI offered Egyptian intelligence agent Emad Salem over one million dollars to entrap him.The cagey Salem, who had become a trusted member of the Sheik's inner circle, was aware of the obligation that the Sheik had as spiritual leader to respond to congregants' needs. Salem blindsided the sheik by going to his home after midnight on a Sunday, pretending to be in a spiritual crisis. He claimed that he felt guilty for his years in the Egyptian military and needed to atone for his actions by attacking a target in the US — such as the United Nations. The sheik tried to fob him off and talked him out of that terrorist target; he suggested that a US military target would be more appropriate, but he told Salem to "slow down" — to cool off. Salem went home happy.The Joint Anti-Terror Task Force and the Justice Department were allegedly dubious about whether they had evidence that would convict Abdul-Rahman. The Sheik had repeatedly and publicly denounced the bombing of the WTC and claimed that he had nothing to do with it. Those who heard Emad Salem's recorded attempt to incriminate the Sheik didn't think it was persuasive enough to stand up in court. The FBI had tapped the Sheik's telephones from two weeks before the WTC explosion until June, 1993; there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. The INS said he was complying with the requirements of his deportation appeal. Authorities noted that incarcerating the Sheik would be expensive because of his diabetes. A detention until appeals were completed could have lasted for months — if not for years.Attorney General Janet Reno, who had publicly been reluctant to charge the Sheik, finally succumbed to the political pressure: pressure that also came from the Egyptian government, which still felt threatened by the Sheik's popularity. Egyptian officials, afraid that Abdul-Rahman would be deported to Egypt, wanted him safely incarcerated in the US. On July 1st, 1993, the Justice Department, while avoiding making any criminal charge, decided to take the Sheik into custody – "indefinite administrative detention" — on immigration charges.The Egyptian conundrumEgyptian President Hosni Mubarak was afraid of Abdul-Rahman's popularity and influence; he appeared to be worried about suffering the same fate as the Shah of Iran, deposed by a popular religious leader. Mubarak banned tapes of Sheik Abdul-Rahman's sermons; those found with copies were subject to up to five years in jail. Three thousand copies of a newspaper Al-Hayat that featured a March interview with Abdul-Rahman were confiscated, and Abdul-Rahman's mosque in Fayoum was empty, guarded by a police agent.While the Egyptian government had initially asked the Clinton administration to hold the Sheik to make sure he was not deported to Egypt, they changed their minds when they were informed that under the immigration charges, the sheik could accept his deportation voluntarily and go to any country that would take him, which could make him even more of a threat to the Mubarak government. After intense discussions, the US agreed to accept Egypt's official extradition request, which it claimed would take precedence over the deportation charge. The only hitch was that appeals might take as long as eight years.Mubarak was livid. He reminded the U.S. that he had hosted an Arab summit before the 1991 US-led invasion of Iraq which brought most of the Arab world onside, providing important "optics" for the engineered invasion.Egyptian authorities were also outraged that two employees of the US Embassy had met earlier that year with prominent members of the Islamic Group, which regarded Sheik Abdul-Rahman as their spiritual leader. The US seemed to be hedging its bets on Egyptian leadership so that it would not be caught out in Egypt as it had been in Iran, when Khomeini was swept into power. To add insult to injury, there was even a Congressional effort to cut back on US aid to Egypt.President Mubarak then demonstrated to the Clinton administration who was in charge of Egypt. On July 8th, the Egyptian government hanged seven followers of Sheik Abdul-Rahman for attacks against foreign tourists and for conspiring to overthrow the Mubarak government. It was the largest number of executions for a political crime in more than four decades, and it would be the start of a brutal campaign against dissidents that would last until the 2011 Arab Spring.After witnessing Mubarak's treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood, it was evident that Abdul-Rahman's supporters were powerless; Abdul-Rahman was expendable.US rejects political asylum for Abdul-Rahman but can't extradite him to EgyptMeanwhile there were unforeseen complications with U.S. efforts to extradite Abdul-Rahman to Egypt. While the Board of Immigration Appeals rejected Abdul-Rahman's appeal for political asylum, it appeared that his appeals would eventually reach the Supreme Court. Also, State Department officials realized that the 100-year old extradition treaty between the US and Egypt did not permit extradition based on "any crime or offense of political character." While one official claimed that US courts were not limited by treaties, another noted that the treaty strengthened Rahman's case for political asylum.The Egyptian plan to ensure that Sheik Abdul-Rahman would be placed under their control hit another challenge at the end of July when Afghanistan's Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar offered his country as a refuge for the Sheik. The Sheik's lawyers realized that deportation might be the only way for the sheik to regain his freedom, so they contacted the office of U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White to request his deportation.  White's office sat on the sheik's deportation request while trying to accommodate Egypt's demand for permanent control of the sheik. The problem was that those who were deported were free to go to any country that would accept them, but Egypt did not want the sheik in Afghanistan, where he would be free to communicate with his followers.The "seditious conspiracy" solutionThe sheik's lawyers were still waiting for a response when, a week later, on August 25th, 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno issued an indictment for Sheik Abdul-Rahman along with 14 others for "seditious conspiracy", an obscure charge employed against political dissidents.The 20-count, 27-page indictment claimed that one terrorist organization [which started in 1989, the year before the sheik arrived in the U.S.] was behind all of the plots and that Sheik Abdul-Rahman, while not directly involved with the acts, was the "mastermind" who explicitly gave the orders. The listed plots included: plans to attack American military installations; plans to murder F.B.I. agents; plans to seize hostages to help release jailed conspirators; the 1990 killing of Rabbi Meir Kahane; the 1991 killing of Alkifah Center President Mustafa Shalabi; the 1993 WTC bombing [ambiguously included, since there was currently a separate trial for that]; the June "landmarks bombing plot"; and the plot to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak. The New York Times featured a map of the presumed terrorist targets; it appeared that New York City was under a Muslim siege.The "seditious conspiracy" charge, which had been created to target Confederates at the end of the Civil War, was defined as when two or more people "conspire to overthrow, put down, or destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them." Experts noted that the broad nature of the conspiracy indictment, which did not require connecting a defendant to any specific act of violence and allowed prosecutors to bring in evidence not related to terrorist acts, made it possible to convict people with little proof (let alone evidence) of guilt. Criminal defense experts claimed that the Government was framing the case as much on the defendants' beliefs as on any acts they may have committed.Defense lawyers were also disturbed by the Government's piling up of charges on a socially-isolated and demonized group, especially reviving the Kahane case just two years after El Sayid Nosair had been acquitted. Claiming that the indictment was an attempt to "create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation", defense lawyer Ronald Kuby noted that, "What they have done is take every allegation, every rumor, every loose end and created a vast mythical Islamic conspiracy. They have created a case that is so big and complicated that it is impossible to defend, impossible to understand, and impossible for any of these defendants to get a fair trial."Emad Salem's tapesDefense lawyers claimed that Emad Salem entrapped their clients by hiring them for his plots, then taped them making incriminating statements. Salem's tapes, on which most of this trial would be based, would also include two FBI admissions of overseeing the provision of the WTC explosives. Ron Kuby requested that all of Salem's tapes collected as evidence (which also showed the FBI's unsavory ways of doing business) be released in their entirety to the public to expose the case as a conspiracy to frame the defendants. Judge Michael B. Mukasey, (who would be named Attorney General in 2007), refused to allow the tapes to be made public.The seditious conspiracy trial would be delayed until January, 1995, and corresponded in time to the televised O.J. Simpson trial, which contributed to its lack of media coverage, despite being touted as the terror trial of the century. The year and a half between the defendants' arrests and their trial gave the Government and courts time to strip the sheik and other defendants of Constitutional rights, including the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, the Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted search and seizure, and other basic freedoms. The homes of two of Rahman's paralegals would be raided for information against him, and dissident reading material found in defendants' homes that was deemed "anti-American" or showed "hatred of Jews" could be used as evidence against them.The seditious conspiracy trial

As with the first World Trade bombing trial, there would be no change of venue, the jury would be unsequestered and — supposedly to protect them from Muslim terror threats — would be identified only by number; their names would never be made public. None of the jury was Muslim.

The media during the entirety of this trial would be filled with various terror stories. The seditious conspiracy trial had barely started when the "mastermind" of the WTC bombing, Ramzi Yousef, arrived in New York with huge media fanfare. Mukasey asked the jury on the day after Yousef's arrival if their opinions were changed by this media coverage. He immediately determined that they weren't, but ignored the subsequent barrage of prejudicial media exposure that lasted throughout this trial. Some of Yousef's publicity should have helped the defendants because Yousef, who didn't know sheik Abdul-Rahman, made statements that should have exonerated Abdul-Rahman and others. Unfortunately Yousef refused to testify at this trial and Judge Mukasey would not permit the defense counsel access to Yousef's documents that the FBI had taken.The Oklahoma City bombing, which occurred six weeks later in mid-April, was initially claimed to be similar to the WTC bomb, and due to Muslim terrorism. Mukasey "assumed" that the jury would not be affected by the anti-Muslim media, although the defendants received heightened physical protection in their detention center.That June, the actual driver of the bomb-laden Ryder van came to media attention and in August, there was media fanfare with his extradition to the U.S.Sheik Abdul-Rahman's (nonexistent) Constitutional rights

Prosecution attention turned to the Sheik's sermons to show his attitude towards the U.S. as well as his leadership in the Muslim community. Many of the Sheik's sermons, which encouraged the devout to fight enemies of Islam and God, were read out in an effort to criminalize what should have been his freedoms of speech and belief.Mukasey barred witnesses that would have shown the role of politics behind the arrest of Sheik Abdul-Rahman, that would have testified that Rahman was not the radical that the media had described, and that would have provided a clearer understanding of Muslim terms (such as jihad and fatwa) that were being used against the defendants. Mukasey's rulings were devastating to the Sheik's defense.The defense lawyers tried to introduce sealed material from the previous WTC trial that would show the lengths to which the FBI had gone to implicate as well as convict the previous defendants in the World Trade Center trial. Although that material was not produced, FBI scientist Fredrick Whitehurst's subsequent testimony about the FBI's incompetence, perjury and obstruction of justice that facilitated the convictions of the four charged in the WTC bombing did tell part of that story.

The Government's desperation to find damaging information on Sheik Abdul-Rahman was evident in the arrest of his paralegal at the end of April. The authorities' claim that Nasser Ahmed's overstay on a student visa "just came to our attention", was contradicted by an FBI agent's message to Ahmed that if he did not cooperate with the FBI, he would be deported to Egypt. After being charged with "secret evidence" and spending three years in solitary confinement, Ahmed would not be released until 1999.The verdicts

Since this trial showed that there was little evidence that any of the defendants were guilty of any untried crime that had taken place, the prosecution tried to criminalize Islam; it described the defendants as a frightening "jihad army": foreigners of a mysterious, militant culture. Judge Mukasey assured the jurors they could find that there was a single conspiracy despite the differing defendants and plots, "so long as you find that some of the conspirators continued for the entire duration of the conspiracy to act for the purposes charged in the indictment."

After deliberating for seven days, the jury returned on October 1, 1995 with guilty verdicts for 48 out of the 50 charges. Sheik Abdul-Rahman's lawyer Lynne Stewart broke down and cried.The defense cries "foul" and calls for a mistrial

The defense counsel immediately called for a mistrial because they believed that the problems with the trial were so egregious. It was clear that the FBI made use of Egypt's intelligence agent as an agent provocateur to carry out its own agenda. Some defendants claimed that exculpatory conversations were missing from the tapes; the FBI admitted that they had "briefly" returned the tapes to Salem after they had been entered as evidence.Judge Mukasey told the defense lawyers that he would consider their request to hold a post-trial hearing on the issue of whether he should overturn the convictions. But on January 10, 1996, he rejected the defense motion to throw out the convictions of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others, claiming that there was no proof that the evidence that Salem had destroyed would have helped exonerate the defendants. Mukasey ignored Salem's obvious motive for destroying evidence and the FBI's interest in wanting him to do it.Mukasey was determined to make an example of these "terror" defendants. While the sentence for seditious conspiracy was 20 years, Mukasey used that as a starting point, and added the other charges on top of that. He used his discretionary powers to make each part of the sentences sequential rather than concurrent; the sentences ranged from 30 years to life.Sheik Abdul-Rahman was sentenced to life. Worse, the government silenced Abdul-Rahman even further by new "Special Administration Measures" which allowed them to essentially isolate him totally. To facilitate that agenda, it taped what were supposed to be his private conversations with his lawyer Lynne Stewart, and would imprison her for trying to circumvent the restrictions.The obscure conspiracy law came into its own

The prosecution congratulated itself on its use of the seditious conspiracy charge. The verdict showed that the conspiracy law provided them with an easy venue to obtain verdicts with little evidence and for which no crimes had occurred. The conspiracy charge would become the mechanism to convict Muslims in future terror trials because of the low standards required of any individual's involvement.The price

This trial demonstrated how the efforts of the government, the courts and the media — particularly the New York Times — ensured that the Muslim defendants could not obtain a fair trial.  The New York Times enabled convictions in all of these related trials by maligning the defendants with anonymous government leaks, generally using biased and inflammatory language to describe them, and invariably assuming their guilt.The injustice of these convictions and the fruitless appeals have been clear to those following the cases. While few Americans seem to be aware of the injustice, it has not been lost on the worldwide Muslim community. There were various actions designed to free Sheik Abdul-Rahman, including the 2005 kidnapping of the four Christian Peacemaker Team members in Iraq: Tom Fox (who died), James Loney, Norman Kember and Harmeet Singh Sooden.The world lost a passionate voice for moral integrity with the silencing of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, and his death before attaining justice was tragic. His passing should provide Americans the opportunity to understand how FBI-monitored acts were used to eliminate Constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of belief, the right against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to counsel, and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. By ignoring the elimination of Muslim rights, Americans are laying the groundwork for the elimination of their own.Karin Brothers is a freelance writer.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Video link

Mainstream media depictions of Iran have always been notoriously unreliable. But they have gotten much, much worse (if such a thing is possible) during the past six months.

In this interview, Setareh Sadeqi reports from Isfahan, Iran, and Christopher Weaver discusses his fact-finding trip to that country. Their article “Iran’s unrest triggers explosion of fake news” exposes a list of fake-news propaganda stories from such outlets as BBC, CNN, The New York Post, Newsweek, and (CIA-infiltrated) social media.

For more information, check out these articles published during my trip to Iran two weeks ago:

“That Chinese Balloon Looks Different from Tehran”

“Hybrid War on Iran Stalling?”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Video link

Mainstream media depictions of Iran have always been notoriously unreliable. But they have gotten much, much worse (if such a thing is possible) during the past six months.

In this interview, Setareh Sadeqi reports from Isfahan, Iran, and Christopher Weaver discusses his fact-finding trip to that country. Their article “Iran’s unrest triggers explosion of fake news” exposes a list of fake-news propaganda stories from such outlets as BBC, CNN, The New York Post, Newsweek, and (CIA-infiltrated) social media.

For more information, check out these articles published during my trip to Iran two weeks ago:

“That Chinese Balloon Looks Different from Tehran”

“Hybrid War on Iran Stalling?”

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Video link

The late Richard Belzer wasn't just a celebrity, but also a journalist and info-activist. MSM obituaries don't do him justice. In this interview, recorded May 29, 2017, he discusses a long list of controversial topics that the media doesn't want you to know about. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of the interview.

Spoilers: Roughly halfway through the interview Belzer lets slip that he’s a fan of Veterans Today. At the end, we argue about Israel-Palestine.

Kevin Barrett Interviews Richard Belzer

Kevin Barrett: Hello, this is Kevin Barrett. After I published We Are Not Charlie Hebdo two years ago, I was attacked by the think tank of the President of France, banned from entering Canada, and banned from speaking at the Unitarian Church in Berkeley, California. They took down my GoFundMe database. (And stole over $1,000.) And now I've been banned from the Left Forum in New York City. Last year I did a talk on why Noam Chomsky is wrong about 9/11 at the Left Forum. And apparently they don't want me back, but I'm going anyway. For details, you can check out my website and go to the Veterans Today rubric. That's TruthJihad.com. Click on the Veterans Today rubric and you'll find the story about how the Left Forum tried to stop the discussion of 9/11 Truth, false flags and fake terror. Well, I have to somehow survive in the face of all this opposition. If you'd like to help, please go to TruthJihad.com and subscribe to these radio shows or make a one time contribution through the PayPal button. Once again, that's TruthJihad.com, waging the all out struggle for truth on the Internet airwaves since 2006.

We're living in a corporatocracy, a plutocracy, an oligarchy, whatever you want to call it. It's pretty much a word for rule of the wealthy and powerful few over the rest of us. And they're getting more and more bold and more dastardly every minute. And I just came across an excellent new book that covers a whole lot of this huge problem that we're facing, and it's called Corporate Conspiracies by Richard Belzer and David Wayne. They're the same guys who did the book on the killings of the JFK Witnesses. Richard Belzer, welcome to the show. And remind me the name of your book on the JFK thing.

Richard Belzer: Oh, it was Hit List.

Kevin Barrett: Hit List. That's right. Yeah. Great book.

Richard Belzer: There's another book called Dead Wrong about JFK and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and all these major deaths, famous deaths that were all all involved in coverups.

Kevin Barrett: Right. It's really fascinating stuff. I'm glad you're covering this because there's a pretty serious lid put on all of this in the mainstream. And now with the Internet, people are gradually waking up to it. But this is a real big-picture book. You cover the waterfront on the corporate takeover.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Well, we've been doing this for a long time. I used to be a reporter before I was an actor, so actually I'd be a journalist if I wasn't in show business. So this is kind of my first love, really. And this book is more of a history, a journalistic history book. The other books, people can debate us about, even though they're full of factual information. But this—we have an amazing bibliography in this. My partner, David Wayne, is a great researcher. And we just really cover the waterfront, as you said. And one of the things that we want is: don't take our word for it! I never take anybody's word for anything. I'm sure you guys are the same way. You have to get corroboration, find out where the information is coming from. Not everybody has time to do that. But fortunately, we do as researchers delve into this stuff for long periods of time. You don't have to make anything up, Kevin. You know, reality is horrific and beautiful and scary enough.

Kevin Barrett: Absolutely. Well, I appreciate your courage in this book in taking up the 9/11 issue. That's the one that got me chased out of academia. And your segment on Building 7 in the chapter on mainstream media consolidation is excellent. And I imagine that the mainstream reviewers are probably not going to appreciate it, but they should, because this is such an obviously important thing.

Richard Belzer: It's funny, The New York Times doesn't review my books, but I make their bestseller list.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, well, someday they may have to notice you.

Richard Belzer: Oh, the irony. Well, you know, it's interesting. In the book, we talk about the term conspiracy theory, the phrase conspiracy theorist. It was actually invented by the CIA. I don't know if you know that.

Kevin Barrett: I sure do. Yeah, I hammer on that one as often as I can.

Richard Belzer: Oh, good. You know, it's a weaponized term that they used after the Warren Commission came out, and everybody was doubting the reputation of the American government. And if people want to look this up it's CIA document 1035-960. April 1st, 1967. Talk about April Fools!

Kevin Barrett: So that's the conspiracy theorist conspiracy.

Richard Belzer: It's funny. The term conspiracy theorist is is a conspiracy in itself!

Kevin Barrett: Right! It's kind of...irony? The concept of irony hardly does it justice. But the way it's been applied, post-9/11 is even more absurd. With 911, everybody admits it had to have been some kind of conspiracy, since it couldn't have been the work of one person acting alone as they claimed the JFK hit was. So they're applying this term in a ludicrously inappropriate way. And yet it still seems to work to shut people's minds down.

Richard Belzer: Well, it depends on who they're talking about. And I don't shy away from the term conspiracy theorist because we back everything up with facts. We're not talking about "We didn't go to the moon" or chemtrails, two things that are fascinating subjects. But this is hard facts that are suitable to put in the book, that can be checked. And we're very, very vehement about that: "Please look at this stuff up on your own!"

Kevin Barrett: Right. In this book, you put your finger on a really important issue for all of us in these kinds of cases: the role of money in virtually all of them. For instance, in your chapter on Perpetual War, America's Biggest Export. You make the case that we talk about geostrategy and we talk about ideology and American exceptionalism, Israeli exceptionalism, all this kind of stuff. But when you get right down to it, a whole lot of the reason that we have these 9/11-style publicity stunts to drag us into wars is that a whole lot of people are making a lot of money off it.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Eisenhower warned us, but I always felt that should have been his first State of the Union address and not as his farewell. You know, "the world is run by the worst people, good night." Thank you, Ike. But anyway, the United States spends more on defense, on weapons of war, than the rest of the world's nations put together. And we detail many wasteful programs in the book, such as the F-35. The F-35 cost $1.5 trillion. That's trillion with a T, which is $1,000 billion. You know, I always think of it that way, $1,000 billion on a plane that many experts say is already obsolete.

That's just one example of waste. There are many more in the book. But here's what's diabolical about the Pentagon or the defense industry. The Pentagon goes around to every congressional district, the nation's 535 congressional districts. And what they do is they have contracts in each of these districts. So any time that there is a threat of not funding one of their precious Pentagon programs, they blackmail that congressman and say that it would mean a huge loss of jobs in their district, a fact which they would make very public if necessary. And that's why these ridiculously wasteful Pentagon programs never, or rarely, get eliminated, as they should. It's a cute trick, isn't it?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, that's a good point. And there's a geographical element here, too. My friend and colleague, Dr. Bob Reuschlein here in Madison, Wisconsin, has done a bunch of work on what he calls peace economics. Looking at the economic aspect of the military industrial complex, what he finds is that the mainstream of the economics profession actually overstates the benefits and understates the downsides of military spending. And if you crunch the numbers properly, what you find is that there's a direct correlation between high military spending and all sorts of negative indicators, and that if you chart the economy before World War Two, for example, it wasn't really World War Two that pulled the U.S. out of the Depression. World War Two actually slowed our emergence from the Depression. And what Bob also points out is that the military industrial complex controls the states where they have a lot of investment, where they're important to the state economy. And those states tend to be along the coasts and to some extent in the south. Whereas here where I live in Wisconsin, that's part of what he calls "the hole in the doughnut" where there's not that much military spending. And so they're taking our taxes here and they're not putting anything back.

He also analyzes the way that the high military spending states are typically the ones that get the most attention politically, where the politicians are the most bought and paid for, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, it's interesting that Eisenhower made that warning more than half a century ago, and we still aren't paying attention.

Richard Belzer: Right after this started, after World War Two...when I think about the $1.5 trillion, it's like, how much of that could we have used to create millions of jobs, rebuild America's infrastructure? I mean, it's so obvious. And I think people are becoming more and more aware of the disparity. And, as the old saying goes, follow the money. Where do your tax dollars go and what can you do about the the misuse of them? And it's very frustrating for the average person to take this all in. But as we say in the book, there's a lot of stuff that people can do individually. It's not as hopeless and overwhelming as it seems.

Kevin Barrett: That's a good idea, to put in ways that people can actually do something positive. What are a couple of those?

Richard Belzer: As you know, the day after the inauguration, there were millions of people in the street and from all political persuasions. So that was really heartening, that people were galvanized and were demonstrating and they haven't stopped. And there are things that people can do besides demonstrating. We can lobby against closing that revolving door and make it illegal for officers of corporations to receive positions at government agencies that are responsible for the oversight of the same corporations. That's got to stop.

And we can make banks play by the rules by closing the loopholes for Wall Street and returning to the safeguards that were in place prior to the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act. And we can make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of tax—that everybody agrees on—that even some wealthy Americans and forced corporations should pay their fair share—by totally eliminating these elaborate tax breaks like deferrals and offshore capital that politicians are always giving them. And we can return to reasonable limits on campaign contributions—that I think also everyone agrees on—so that so that our political representatives can't be bought and sold so easily. And we can petition Congress to reduce the defense budget. And we'd still be armed to the teeth and kick everybody's ass in the world. And going green, there's so much money can be made by going green. It's not the end of the world to get off of oil. And we can eliminate the use of public money and pension funds to invest like in Vegas, in corporate corruption and stuff like that. So...People getting involved in the environment and in health care and in their local school boards. And so it's kind of heartening. Yeah.

Kevin Barrett: As I look at this, the two key issues that I would focus on if I were to run for Congress again, like I did in 2008—and of course that was on the 9/11 truth platform, so I wasn't expecting to win, or at least to win and live. But seriously, the two issues I would go for now would be: One public banking—that is, transparent currency. Right now we have a currency system in which private banksters create the currency out of nothing by lending it into existence at interest. All of our currency is debt! And then the second issue would be antitrust legislation. Let's actually bust up monopolies. We have some antitrust legislation, but it isn't clear and straightforward enough. We need to make all forms of monopolies illegal. Any form, any situation where there's not absolute full free competition should be illegal, and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department should go in and bust up the company. And that should be done to virtually all of the biggest companies in America, especially in the media.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, that's what Teddy Roosevelt, and even Franklin Roosevelt, did a little bit of. And you're right: People don't still don't know that the Federal Reserve is really not federal and it's not a reserve. It's private banks lending money to the United States.

John Kennedy wanted to end that. And that's one of the reasons that contributed to his demise, (his) ending the Federal Reserve. He wanted to, and actually he did start, using silver certificates to determine the value of the dollar, and he actually started printing them. And that ended, of course, after his assassination.

And Lincoln was against central banks. And and every once in a while people realize that the Federal Reserve or central bank is the cause of our problems. And then the central banks will cause a run on the dollar or a depression and convince people "you need a central bank." This vicious cycle happens every 15, 20, 30 years, starting in the 1890s—there was a depression that was manufactured—and then 1908, and then the creation of the Federal Reserve. It's been going on a long time and people are becoming more and more aware.

Kevin Barrett: I think so. And we are seeing some of that in the success of populist political campaigns. Trump and Bernie Sanders would not have been candidates that most people would have expected to do that well. In fact, it looks like Bernie might have been headed for the White House if he hadn't been swindled out of votes. You didn't really mention the election fraud issue in the book, did you?

Richard Belzer: No, that's not a really a corporate conspiracy.

Kevin Barrett: Maybe the voting machine manufacturers?

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Greg Palast—do you know Greg Palast? He's the greatest. I highly recommend his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. And he's been researching the Koch brothers for like 35 years. He's got stacks and stacks of stuff. And he's one of the great gumshoe reporters ever.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, he's doing great work. Well, you also talk about the prison industrial complex as legalized slavery. Maybe you could elaborate on that expression.

Richard Belzer: Most people aren't aware that the privatization of prisons has resulted in a really evil situation where it is in the financial interests of state governments and multibillion dollar corporations to incarcerate as many people as humanly—or, in this case, inhumanely— possible. That's why the United States now has the highest incarceration in the history of the world. Most of the incarcerated are blacks and Latinos. You know, they're in there on very minor crimes, a huge amount of them. Nothing more serious than like two joints or something. It's really a shamefully racist process, and it needs to be corrected. Another issue is what goes on in these prisons with rape and drugs. And it's horrendous. Especially when you privatize a prison, you have very little control over who they hire. Who wants to be a guard in a high security prison? The personality of the guards is pretty scary. But anyway, it's an industry and it's shameful. Obama was cutting back on it, but Trump is reversing it because...it's money.

Kevin Barrett: It seems like sometimes we project onto others our own faults. And with all the obsession about "the barbaric Sharia law that's coming to get you," you know, "the Sharia people are going to take over and cut off our hands." We hear that kind of talk in right wing circles. It seems to me that's a reaction to the way that our own prison industrial complex, our so-called justice system, is incredibly barbaric.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. The Sharia law thing shouldn't be bandied about, because people will turn off as soon as they hear it. I understand intellectually the analogy, but you really lose the argument. It's like calling someone Hitler: the debate is over.

Kevin Barrett: I've been Muslim since 1993 and, you know, Shariah, like jihad, is a good word for us Muslims.

Richard Belzer: Most people don't know that, though.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I'm trying to trying to explain it. That's why it's Truth Jihad Radio with a little definition of jihad on the front of the website, pointing out that "the best jihad is a word of truth thrown in the face of a tyrant," and that what jihad actually means is "the struggle to be a better person and to defend the community if necessary." Tnat's what it means. And Shariah just means the path, walking on the path of God. And nobody, we all admit, knows what that path is exactly. We just do our best to try to figure out what it is.

Richard Belzer: Right. People have demonized the word. And I'm so glad that you elaborate on the true meaning, because that happens a lot when someone wants to make the case and and demonize or marginalize a group. They'll make stuff up, things that that aren't true or summarily dismiss an entire religion because of what some people have perverted. You could say the same thing about Christianity or Judaism. There are things in the history of those religions that people don't really want to talk or think about. But there are also some good things in there, too.

So ironic that the three major religions have the same God. That always kind of breaks my heart.

Kevin Barrett: I used to totally not relate to the monotheistic conception of God. I was brought up in a family of lapsed Unitarians, and that's his lapsed as you can get.

Richard Belzer: I dig Unitarians.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I still like Unitarians. So we live out here near Frank Lloyd Wright's place in Spring Green, Wisconsin. But anyway, the the thing is, I found that this anthropomorphic conception of God was what didn't work with me. This patriarchal, anthropomorphic idea of God is a big, hairy guy...

Richard Belzer: (?)sm is one of the worst ideas in the history of mankind.

Kevin Barrett: But (there's a) more abstract and spiritual monotheism in which God is the source of creation. Compare the picture on the top of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, of the patriarchal God, a human being pointing to Adam and creating him with his finger, versus the mural on the top of the Dome of the Rock, which is a series of fractals kind of exploding out of a point of absolute oneness in the middle. And that's what Christians call the Godhead, and that's much closer to the Islamic conception of God. So I read monotheism as a history of gradually moving out of a tribal and anthropomorphic kind of vision of God to a more abstract, spiritual and accurate one.

Richard Belzer: Did you know that about 30 or 40 years ago they discovered that the the painting on the Sistine Chapel, where the anthropomorphicized God is touching Adam—if you look at it, it's the exact same shape as the human brain. What do you think about that?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Leonardo was probably a member of one of these cults that Dan Brown writes about.

Richard Belzer: Well, you know, there are certainly cults and secret societies in all of history. But I think it's interesting that that the num da Vinci's painting on the Sistine Chapel is a painting of the brain. If you look at it, you can see that it's shaped like the brain, which means that he's trying to tell us that God comes from us and is us.

Kevin Barrett: Wow, that's great. I hadn't even considered that. Did you notice that yourself, or where...?

Richard Belzer: No, I just found that out recently. My wife and I read a lot of history, and we came across this thing about—I forget the guy's name, but I'll send it to you when I find it. But it's very interesting because I think he's trying to tell us something. Maybe covertly. Da Vinci was afraid to say that at the time. Like Galileo was locked up for saying we may not be the center of the universe.

Kevin Barrett: Right. Yeah. It sounds like he was suggesting that the anthropomorphic vision of God is indeed the product of our own brain and our own imagination, which, of course, it is. Ibn al-Arabi, the great Muslim philosopher, had similar insights. He talked about the difference between God as God really is, which none of us can possibly know, and each of our own conceptions.

Richard Belzer: Right. I'm glad that you said that God is not verbal and unknowable. No mortal can really truly comprehend, I don't think. And those that come close are usually martyred.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. That's that's where I think my Shia Muslim friends are onto something. They have this whole mythos of the martyred imams. And their idea is that genuinely good spiritual leaders always get martyred. And looking at our own history here in the US, I think they're on to something.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. When you think of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X and John Kennedy and Fred Hampton and you know, you got time for the list?

Kevin Barrett: That could be another book, I guess.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, that's my book. Dead Wrong.

Kevin Barrett: I don't know if I would consider Marilyn Monroe a spiritual icon or not. I guess some people do.

Richard Belzer: Well, no. Just the fact that she was murdered and it wasn't suicide was why she was in the book.

Kevin Barrett: Right. And so what's the back story with the Kennedy brothers and Marilyn Monroe?

Richard Belzer: Well, I'll tell you a nice true story. When John Kennedy was with Marilyn they had tape recorded it. So we know that Jack Kennedy was with Marilyn. And we know that Bobby saw Marilyn the day she died, but left way before. Some people said the Kennedys murdered her. No such thing. What happened was that Hoover and the mob wanted to embarrass Kennedy. So one or the other, or both with each other's knowledge, murdered her to embarrass the Kennedys. But people got there way before the cops and cleaned it up. So the whole thing kind of backfired on Hoover and the mob.

The Kennedys were very close to Marilyn. And there are some people that think she was going to spill the beans on a few things. I'm not ready to say that, but I wouldn't disbelieve it. Some people believe that that she was going to have a big press conference. But that sounds too sensational to me.

Kevin Barrett: There were a bunch of these people, as you point out, in Hit List, who were threatening to expose things about the Kennedy assassination. Dorothy Kilgallen. And what what was her name? Mary Meyer. Those are some amazing stories.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, she (Mary Meyer) used to get high with Kennedy, and they did acid together and smoked pot, and she was kind of his hip mistress. And she was murdered on the towpath in Georgetown. They blamed this homeless black gentleman who was kind of short, and he would have had to have got up on a ladder to kill her the way they said she was murdered. It was impossible for this guy to do to her what was done. But all these murders are so (implausible). Suicides with the wrong hand. Suicides where people are shot five times. Suicides where people shot themselves in the back, and on and on. It's almost laughable. But they're all on record. The Hit List book is very corroborated, because so many things are in the public domain now. Over the last 50, 60 years, the Freedom of Information Act has allowed us to really get a lot of stuff out of the FBI and Justice Department that was not known contemporaneously. So there's stuff that keeps coming out over time that just adds to the puzzle of the Kennedy murder and 9/11 and the banking crisis and all these manufactured things.

Kevin Barrett: Interesting you add the banking crisis to that list. But sticking with the Kennedy thing, isn't Trump about to have to decide whether to reveal the JFK Records Act records, the last remaining ones, or not? I think that was a story we covered a couple of weeks ago at False Flag Weekly News. So have you heard about that?

Richard Belzer: No. Please tell me about it.

Kevin Barrett: The JFK Records Act, as I'm sure you know, was passed right after the Oliver Stone movie came out and mandated that all records pertaining to the JFK assassination had to be made public before such and such a date. And so there's kind of a been a progressive...

Richard Belzer: In 1999 they released a million pages.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah.

Richard Belzer: There are still tons that aren't.

Kevin Barrett: Exactly. Well, the rest of them are all supposed to be released unless Trump decides not to and signs an order to that effect by about the end of this month.

Richard Belzer: I did not know that. And I should know that. And I will definitely call my people.

Kevin Barrett: So we'll look into that. And speaking of Trump and the JFK records, I think the way I noticed this was there was a story in some of the London papers, not only the tabloids like The Daily Mirror, but I think there was one in The Independent. This was from two, three, four weeks ago. It pointed out that having this "conspiracy theorist," Trump, being the guy to decide whether or not to spill the rest of the JFK stuff, was an interesting situation.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, they're trying to marginalize it if he decides to do it.

Kevin Barrett: I think so. Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, wrote that book on LBJ's role in the assassination.

Richard Belzer: He's clinically insane.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, he sounds like a kind of a weird guy. He's a political dirty trickster.

Richard Belzer: This loathsome, misogynistic, racist... He's....He's not a good guy.

Kevin Barrett: Well, that's what my colleagues at Veterans Today tell me.

Richard Belzer: Those guys are very sharp. You know, they've learned the hard way.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. I think some of them have for sure. Well, speaking of the brain, you mentioned the masterpiece on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the creation of Adam, resembling the brain. And you have a chapter in your book on big Pharma about the chemical effects on the brain of some of these antidepressants and the Parkinson's stuff that Robin Williams was taking. That's pretty eye-opening.

Richard Belzer: I dedicate the book to Robin Williams, my dear friend. We did a lot of research on pharmaceuticals for this book, and we included very detailed charts showing what prescription drugs can do. And Robin apparently was given four different powerful prescriptions in his final months: Mirtazapine, also known as Remeron, Seroquel, Marapex, Sinemet. The so-called side effects of these drugs include strong suicidal ideation, thoughts of self-harm, depression, you know, all these unhealthy urges and compulsions. And Robin was clean and sober at the time of his death. The news said there were no drugs. Yeah, right. This is a drug. The news reports that no drugs were found in his body were very misleading. Psychiatric drugs were found in his body. And in our opinion and the opinion of many others, that was the real cause of his death and what drove him to it. You don't hear this on the news, but there are about 23,000 people a year that commit suicide that are on these pharmaceuticals. It can be attributed to the the prescribing or the overprescribing or the abuse of these drugs that, in my opinion, are too casually dispensed.

Kevin Barrett: It seems that many of the mass shootings have also been traced to the possible influence of some of these drugs.

Richard Belzer: Well, one in four Americans are now taking psychiatric drugs like these. And they're frying people's brains. A study that we cite in the book reveals that in most of the mass shootings, like school shootings, in America, the shooter is either on or is withdrawing from these psychiatric medications. That's scary. And I don't mean to demonize medication and drugs and pharmaceuticals, because I would not be here if it wasn't for certain drugs. And likewise many people that I know who had health issues, not just mental issues, but all kinds of issues. So we've got to be careful not to demonize all pharmaceuticals. We're just talking about these psychiatric drugs that are prescribed and misused.

Kevin Barrett: How could this be fixed? I mean, what would be the way to do that? You know, I did an interview with Mary Ruwart, a famous libertarian doctor, who says deregulate everything. But I just see that as turning it over to the the the companies to sell us even more stuff.

Richard Belzer: Just deregulate what?

Kevin Barrett: Her claim was that we're not getting the effective drugs we need because of the regulation barrier. And I was skeptical. I challenged her on that because it seems to me that that would just exacerbate the kinds of problems that you're describing here. So then the question becomes, well, what would solve this problem? How could we get these pharmaceutical companies under control? Ban advertising? What are the steps that we should take?

Richard Belzer: First of all, (deregulation) is a crazy idea. Just let them flood the market with (drugs) whenever they want. That's all about money, not about helping humanity. And one of the things that that makes me laugh and get distressed is all these ads on TV for drugs. When I was a kid, I guess when you were a kid, I don't know how old you are, you went to the doctor and he would prescribe something if needed. And the visit was $7 or $15 or whatever. Nowadays, people go to the doctor and they say, I saw this thing on TV and could you give it to me? And so we're now telling the doctors. The roles are reversed. And that's why people see these ads on TV and they say, oh, I have that symptom or I want to be happy or, you know, I accidentally peed in my pants once maybe. And the side effects of the drugs are terrifying. I don't know about banning advertising because then you get into free speech and all this. But we did get cigarettes off the air, didn't we? And alcohol. So now I'm thinking out loud, Kevin. I guess I wouldn't be allergic to banning these drugs from being advertised on television. And I think the public is waking up and people have to be more informed about what they're putting in their bodies. It's a two way street. There's a lot of irresponsibility in the medical profession.

Kevin Barrett: On the opposite extreme from the libertarian doctor Mary Ruwart, I also have radio guests who are on the far left side of the spectrum, people like Andre Vltchek, who are convinced that all of these problems are just symptomatic of the underlying problem of capitalism and that the real solution is to radically change that system so that the people making drugs to help humanity would be doing it to help humanity rather than trying to make lots of money. Where do you stand on that debate about whether capitalism needs to be overthrown?

Richard Belzer: An admirable utopian cat out of the bag. That will never happen. The best we can hope for is to regulate and modify the false information about drugs, these miracle claims, and clamp down on how liberally certain things are prescribed. And there's a lot that can be done. But, you know, a lot of people are self-prescribing, they're doctor shopping, and they're getting drugs from friends. And that's never happened before. And I think people have every right to ingest what they want. I think a lot of drugs should be legal and regulated like alcohol is, like tobacco is. This happened with marijuana. Nothing happened but all this tax revenue going into Colorado and Washington and these places that have legalized that are just making money, and crime is the same. There's no spike in crime. So certain things should be up to the individual and not society.

Kevin Barrett: I recently had a guest, Dr. James Petras, who's one of the world's top sociologists, and he did an article on the working class dependence on opioids, these artificial legal painkillers. It's a huge epidemic and apparently causing a lot of problems, including a collapse in life expectancy. So there's another example. And with the opioids, I don't know about full legalization with treatment for people to try to get off them, (whether that is) a good idea. But modern science can invent stuff ...like when you give rats cocaine, they just keep pushing the button to get the cocaine injection to change their brain, and they wither up and die happy. And you don't really want people doing that. In Aldous Huxley's dystopian society...

Richard Belzer: No, I totally agree. And, you know, heroin was invented by the Bayer Company.

Kevin Barrett: They were involved in Nazi Germany.

Richard Belzer: Oh, yeah. But that's another show, another five shows. But they created it because after the Civil War, a lot of soldiers were on morphine. And they called it the soldiers' disease. They became addicted. And so Bayer said, "we came up with this stuff that will get them off the morphine." And it was heroin. So I'm all for finding something to replace opioids. But I can tell you from personal experience, from after surgery, when used as prescribed, they're they're great for pain, but of course, they're open for abuse. And if you notice it's the Confederate states, Appalachia, where the highest use of opiates is reported. And I find that fascinating.

Kevin Barrett: Why do you think that is? It's too hot down there?

Richard Belzer: No, I think despair, economic despair, feeling left out. You know, terrible health care, no jobs, loss of hope. I think that has a lot to do with it.

Kevin Barrett: So the solution isn't just changing drug laws. It's changing society so that people have decent jobs and something to live for.

Richard Belzer: I think there has to be a spiritual awakening. Not in a corny kind of way, but in a way that slowly informs. Everyone wants the same thing. If you think about it, they want good health care. They want clean air. They want to make sure their food doesn't have s**t in it. And there are basic things that everybody wants. They want the disenfranchised to be taken care of. And it's just that the messaging and the venality and the contentiousness that has popped up since the eighties particularly has really gotten out of hand. Civility—I'm a big believer in manners and civility, and that's kind of going out the window. People can't talk to each other anymore if they have different beliefs. I always believe the marketplace of free ideas. Everybody—there's room for everybody because we all believe in the same thing, I thought. And then the messages get perverted and people like...Roger Ailes just passed away and his legacy is poisoning the atmosphere of politics and civil discourse, and glorifying misogyny and overtly flirting with racism. When you have one person that powerful who creates an entity that becomes the arm of a political party and is on 24 hours a day for years and shapes the thoughts of millions of people, that's Orwellian. Unfortunately, 1984 goes both ways. They may be watching us, but we're watching them, too.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I remember when I was first dragged on to Fox News for a so called interview with Hannity. I'd never actually watched Hannity. I had no idea what I was getting into. But you mentioned the decline in civility. My goodness. A couple of minutes into the interview, he's calling me names. So it made it a good two or three minute YouTube. But as far as exchanging ideas, there's no way you can do that in that format.

Richard Belzer: I've always said if these guys are right and I don't mean right wing, I mean they're right, then why do they constantly demonize and yell at and turn off the mic of people? It's just poison. I never watch Fox News because it's poison. You get upset if you watch it. And who needs that? You know what they're doing. You know what they're going to say. And it's a sorry-ass place to get your information. As a matter of fact, two years ago, there was a survey taken. And it turns out that people who don't watch any news know more about current events than people who watch Fox News.

Kevin Barrett: So it's a negative source.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Isn't it amazing?

Kevin Barrett: Drains your brain.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Literally. I mean, it's like, wait a minute.

Kevin Barrett: But I don't know if it's just the right wing. I agree that the right wing is at the cutting edge of this.

Richard Belzer: Right. "Fox on the left."

Kevin Barrett: This breakdown of civility, this unwillingness to hear ideas that you disagree with, that's very much spread to the left. Here's a case in point. They just banned three panels at the Left Forum—which is the biggest event for the left, happening in New York, June 2nd to 4th—because I was on them. At least that's what I'm hearing. I'm Muslim and I'm a 9/11 truth guy. I got chased out of the academy for talking about that issue. And naturally I went down various rabbit holes, including the rabbit hole of, Hey, is the state of Israel really such a good idea? And I discovered, well, no, it's not. And so I've been talking about that and I've been labeled an evil anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. And apparently there are enough people involved with the left forum that can get your panels canceled.

Richard Belzer: It's not just the left that you would upset by saying that about Israel.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Even before I was saying anything about Israel, when I was just talking about 9/11, it was the Republicans that got me chased out of the University of Wisconsin. So I'm not very popular among certain quarters of either side.

Richard Belzer: Well, you you mean only because of 9/11 you were thrown out?

Kevin Barrett: Because I went on a radio show and expressed my belief that it was an inside job. That was it. That's that was enough to get the state legislature up in arms. And 61 Republicans signed on to a letter demanding that I be fired.

Richard Belzer: What year?

Kevin Barrett: That was in 2006. So then I was all over Fox and CNN for for a summer and and part of the fall because the university refused to cancel the class. But I never could get hired again after that because I was an adjunct on semester to semester hiring. So I became financially toxic to all American universities. And I haven't able to work in the Academy ever since.

Richard Belzer: Well, not because of 9/11 or because of your—you don't think Israel is a good idea?

Kevin Barrett: No, (just) 9/11. I didn't even start really talking about Israel until years after that.

Richard Belzer: Well, I'd be very careful if I were you. Intellectually, spiritually, historically. And it's a very complex thing. You can't really, in this day and age, make that statement..

Kevin Barrett: So. So let's have a conversation. Tell me why Israel could be considered a good idea, why the people of Palestine should be ethnically cleansed.

Richard Belzer: Why it's a good idea? Why isn't it a good idea?

Kevin Barrett: The people of Palestine—some of them were Jews, Arab Jews—Arabs were living in Palestine, and invaders from outside came in and ethnically cleansed them and mass murdered them to get them out. And now the majority are either exiled or living in de facto concentration camps. And all of this for what? Because I guess the rationale is, depending on who you are, from one quarters, it's that "God gave us this land thousands of years ago and we're going to keep taking more and more of it till we get everything from the Nile to the Euphrates," and in other quarters, it's that "we are a persecuted group and the world owes us something, so we're going to take this, even though it wasn't the Palestinians that did it to us." And neither of those rationales withstands critical scrutiny.

Richard Belzer: Also, I think that a lot of the people...you're talking about the Balfour agreement in 1914.

Kevin Barrett: 1917.

Richard Belzer: 1917. I am not a fan of a lot of the things that Israel does to the Palestinians. And I you know, I'm Jewish. And it's very hard for Jews to criticize Israel. But I don't think that's rational. I think you should be able to. And there are certain things that everyone would agree that Israel does that are way over the line. Inarguably. And when you consider that they're surrounded by 50 million people that want to kill them all, it's a very touchy situation.

Kevin Barrett: Wait, wait a minute. Where do you—what's the evidence that anybody wants to kill them all? I agree that the entire Middle East, other than Jewish people in Israel, doesn't want a Jewish state there. They want one Palestine for everybody there on an equal basis. But I mean, I go to conferences in Iran with the hardcore anti-Zionist contingent. Nobody wants to kill everybody. Nobody wants to kill anybody. They just want fair treatment for everybody.

Richard Belzer: Want to drive them into the sea.

Kevin Barrett: Somebody wants to drive somebody into the sea. But I'm not sure if you've got the the characters straight, who's driving who.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, well, that's a good question. I'm not a fan of the settlements at all. I'll tell you that up front. And Zionism has changed since its inception. The original genesis of it was after the Holocaust. The Jews were looking for a home and...

Kevin Barrett: The Zionist movement colonized and came in against the will of the Palestinians in the 1920s and 1930s. There was no Holocaust then.

Richard Belzer: No, you're right. But there was a tremendous amount...there was a diaspora and there were Jews from all over the world that were that did not have a homeland and have been persecuted for thousands of years, as you know. At any rate, the Holocaust, certainly would justify a state for those people, but not the means. A lot of the means by which it was came into existence.

Kevin Barrett: Should it be in Palestine? Why would that justify a state in Palestine? Why would that justify the genocide against the Palestinians?

Richard Belzer: I wouldn't call it genocide.

Kevin Barrett: Lawrence Davidson does. He's a Jewish professor at Westchester University. It's cultural genocide that meets the definition under international law of genocide.

Richard Belzer: Genocide?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah.

Richard Belzer: As opposed to?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, a people has been destroyed.

Richard Belzer: There's elimination of the people.

Kevin Barrett: Well, they're physically eliminated from their land and their way of life.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think it's too late to say that. I think. Do you think there should be two states?

Kevin Barrett: No, I think that there should be one state and everybody should be equal. And I think that that one state could be a tremendous success. I think it could become the economic and intellectual engine of the Middle East.

Richard Belzer: What would you call it? Israel-Palestine?

Kevin Barrett: Sure, why not? I don't think it matters.

Richard Belzer: I'll tell you what. If I would be for ending these settlements, because you have a few hundred people in them and thousands of soldiers that have to protect them. It doesn't make any sense. And there's a lot of Jews in Israel who aren't a fan of the settlements and who, you know, are not a fan of a lot of the things that are going on. And they all live there and they all don't hate the Palestinians, believe me.

Kevin Barrett: Well, wait, wait, wait a second, Richard. During Operation Cast Lead, a poll showed that 90% of Israelis—and that must have meant about 100%, virtually 100% of Israeli Jews—supported Cast Lead, the murder of more than 2000 people, white phosphorus, bombings of U.N. installations, ambulances, hospitals, refugee shelters, the mowing down of kids on the beach and so on and so forth. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Israel supported that. And sure, there are a very few holdouts and, you know, more power to them. But there's a real problem with public opinion in Israel toda.

Richard Belzer: I've never heard 90%.

Kevin Barrett: I can show you the polls.

Richard Belzer: No, I believe you. I just have never seen that or heard that.

Kevin Barrett: American Jews, by and large, I think are pretty have good intentions. The majority, vast majority of American Jews have good intentions, but are misinformed about the actual state of affairs and especially Jewish opinion in Israel itself. I think there's been a turn for the worse.

Richard Belzer: So I read a lot and I know a lot, and I know people that live in Israel or live in America and have relatives in Israel. And believe me, there's a tremendous amount of Israelis who are repelled by this, by the settlements and a lot of other things that we're talking about. So I wouldn't...the 90% figure. I'll take your word for it. But I wouldn't summarily dismissed all the Jews in Israel as having the same mindset and wanting the same thing. There are many, many people that work with Palestinians, and I know a doctor that does pro bono work over there and a couple of teachers. And so it's a very, very tricky issue. And I totally respect everything that you're saying and I certainly intellectually respect what you're saying.

Kevin Barrett: And I appreciate your willingness to have a conversation on this, which puts you one step ahead of the Left Forum.

Richard Belzer: Well, I think, a lot of people, left and right don't want to talk about this.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's amazing. ou know, you've you're open to stuff like 911 JFK.

Richard Belzer: Right wing Jews shut me down once on a panel because I was, you know, mildly criticizing Israel.

Kevin Barrett: You're too reasonable for those people.

Richard Belzer: Well, I think you're right. A lot of them really don't know what's going on and are misinformed.

Kevin Barrett: People are misinformed on so many things. Well, we're about at the end of the hour. So thank you so much because you've done more than your share at attempting to better inform people on a very wide range of critically important issues. You've done excellent work. I really do appreciate it.

Richard Belzer: Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for having me on.

Kevin Barrett: Okay. Thank you. Richard Belzer, keep up the great work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Video link

The late Richard Belzer wasn't just a celebrity, but also a journalist and info-activist. MSM obituaries don't do him justice. In this interview, recorded May 29, 2017, he discusses a long list of controversial topics that the media doesn't want you to know about. Below is a lightly-edited transcript of the interview.

Spoilers: Roughly halfway through the interview Belzer lets slip that he’s a fan of Veterans Today. At the end, we argue about Israel-Palestine.

Kevin Barrett Interviews Richard Belzer

Kevin Barrett: Hello, this is Kevin Barrett. After I published We Are Not Charlie Hebdo two years ago, I was attacked by the think tank of the President of France, banned from entering Canada, and banned from speaking at the Unitarian Church in Berkeley, California. They took down my GoFundMe database. (And stole over $1,000.) And now I've been banned from the Left Forum in New York City. Last year I did a talk on why Noam Chomsky is wrong about 9/11 at the Left Forum. And apparently they don't want me back, but I'm going anyway. For details, you can check out my website and go to the Veterans Today rubric. That's TruthJihad.com. Click on the Veterans Today rubric and you'll find the story about how the Left Forum tried to stop the discussion of 9/11 Truth, false flags and fake terror. Well, I have to somehow survive in the face of all this opposition. If you'd like to help, please go to TruthJihad.com and subscribe to these radio shows or make a one time contribution through the PayPal button. Once again, that's TruthJihad.com, waging the all out struggle for truth on the Internet airwaves since 2006.

We're living in a corporatocracy, a plutocracy, an oligarchy, whatever you want to call it. It's pretty much a word for rule of the wealthy and powerful few over the rest of us. And they're getting more and more bold and more dastardly every minute. And I just came across an excellent new book that covers a whole lot of this huge problem that we're facing, and it's called Corporate Conspiracies by Richard Belzer and David Wayne. They're the same guys who did the book on the killings of the JFK Witnesses. Richard Belzer, welcome to the show. And remind me the name of your book on the JFK thing.

Richard Belzer: Oh, it was Hit List.

Kevin Barrett: Hit List. That's right. Yeah. Great book.

Richard Belzer: There's another book called Dead Wrong about JFK and Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe and all these major deaths, famous deaths that were all all involved in coverups.

Kevin Barrett: Right. It's really fascinating stuff. I'm glad you're covering this because there's a pretty serious lid put on all of this in the mainstream. And now with the Internet, people are gradually waking up to it. But this is a real big-picture book. You cover the waterfront on the corporate takeover.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Well, we've been doing this for a long time. I used to be a reporter before I was an actor, so actually I'd be a journalist if I wasn't in show business. So this is kind of my first love, really. And this book is more of a history, a journalistic history book. The other books, people can debate us about, even though they're full of factual information. But this—we have an amazing bibliography in this. My partner, David Wayne, is a great researcher. And we just really cover the waterfront, as you said. And one of the things that we want is: don't take our word for it! I never take anybody's word for anything. I'm sure you guys are the same way. You have to get corroboration, find out where the information is coming from. Not everybody has time to do that. But fortunately, we do as researchers delve into this stuff for long periods of time. You don't have to make anything up, Kevin. You know, reality is horrific and beautiful and scary enough.

Kevin Barrett: Absolutely. Well, I appreciate your courage in this book in taking up the 9/11 issue. That's the one that got me chased out of academia. And your segment on Building 7 in the chapter on mainstream media consolidation is excellent. And I imagine that the mainstream reviewers are probably not going to appreciate it, but they should, because this is such an obviously important thing.

Richard Belzer: It's funny, The New York Times doesn't review my books, but I make their bestseller list.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, well, someday they may have to notice you.

Richard Belzer: Oh, the irony. Well, you know, it's interesting. In the book, we talk about the term conspiracy theory, the phrase conspiracy theorist. It was actually invented by the CIA. I don't know if you know that.

Kevin Barrett: I sure do. Yeah, I hammer on that one as often as I can.

Richard Belzer: Oh, good. You know, it's a weaponized term that they used after the Warren Commission came out, and everybody was doubting the reputation of the American government. And if people want to look this up it's CIA document 1035-960. April 1st, 1967. Talk about April Fools!

Kevin Barrett: So that's the conspiracy theorist conspiracy.

Richard Belzer: It's funny. The term conspiracy theorist is is a conspiracy in itself!

Kevin Barrett: Right! It's kind of...irony? The concept of irony hardly does it justice. But the way it's been applied, post-9/11 is even more absurd. With 911, everybody admits it had to have been some kind of conspiracy, since it couldn't have been the work of one person acting alone as they claimed the JFK hit was. So they're applying this term in a ludicrously inappropriate way. And yet it still seems to work to shut people's minds down.

Richard Belzer: Well, it depends on who they're talking about. And I don't shy away from the term conspiracy theorist because we back everything up with facts. We're not talking about "We didn't go to the moon" or chemtrails, two things that are fascinating subjects. But this is hard facts that are suitable to put in the book, that can be checked. And we're very, very vehement about that: "Please look at this stuff up on your own!"

Kevin Barrett: Right. In this book, you put your finger on a really important issue for all of us in these kinds of cases: the role of money in virtually all of them. For instance, in your chapter on Perpetual War, America's Biggest Export. You make the case that we talk about geostrategy and we talk about ideology and American exceptionalism, Israeli exceptionalism, all this kind of stuff. But when you get right down to it, a whole lot of the reason that we have these 9/11-style publicity stunts to drag us into wars is that a whole lot of people are making a lot of money off it.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Eisenhower warned us, but I always felt that should have been his first State of the Union address and not as his farewell. You know, "the world is run by the worst people, good night." Thank you, Ike. But anyway, the United States spends more on defense, on weapons of war, than the rest of the world's nations put together. And we detail many wasteful programs in the book, such as the F-35. The F-35 cost $1.5 trillion. That's trillion with a T, which is $1,000 billion. You know, I always think of it that way, $1,000 billion on a plane that many experts say is already obsolete.

That's just one example of waste. There are many more in the book. But here's what's diabolical about the Pentagon or the defense industry. The Pentagon goes around to every congressional district, the nation's 535 congressional districts. And what they do is they have contracts in each of these districts. So any time that there is a threat of not funding one of their precious Pentagon programs, they blackmail that congressman and say that it would mean a huge loss of jobs in their district, a fact which they would make very public if necessary. And that's why these ridiculously wasteful Pentagon programs never, or rarely, get eliminated, as they should. It's a cute trick, isn't it?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, that's a good point. And there's a geographical element here, too. My friend and colleague, Dr. Bob Reuschlein here in Madison, Wisconsin, has done a bunch of work on what he calls peace economics. Looking at the economic aspect of the military industrial complex, what he finds is that the mainstream of the economics profession actually overstates the benefits and understates the downsides of military spending. And if you crunch the numbers properly, what you find is that there's a direct correlation between high military spending and all sorts of negative indicators, and that if you chart the economy before World War Two, for example, it wasn't really World War Two that pulled the U.S. out of the Depression. World War Two actually slowed our emergence from the Depression. And what Bob also points out is that the military industrial complex controls the states where they have a lot of investment, where they're important to the state economy. And those states tend to be along the coasts and to some extent in the south. Whereas here where I live in Wisconsin, that's part of what he calls "the hole in the doughnut" where there's not that much military spending. And so they're taking our taxes here and they're not putting anything back.

He also analyzes the way that the high military spending states are typically the ones that get the most attention politically, where the politicians are the most bought and paid for, and so on and so forth. So, yeah, it's interesting that Eisenhower made that warning more than half a century ago, and we still aren't paying attention.

Richard Belzer: Right after this started, after World War Two...when I think about the $1.5 trillion, it's like, how much of that could we have used to create millions of jobs, rebuild America's infrastructure? I mean, it's so obvious. And I think people are becoming more and more aware of the disparity. And, as the old saying goes, follow the money. Where do your tax dollars go and what can you do about the the misuse of them? And it's very frustrating for the average person to take this all in. But as we say in the book, there's a lot of stuff that people can do individually. It's not as hopeless and overwhelming as it seems.

Kevin Barrett: That's a good idea, to put in ways that people can actually do something positive. What are a couple of those?

Richard Belzer: As you know, the day after the inauguration, there were millions of people in the street and from all political persuasions. So that was really heartening, that people were galvanized and were demonstrating and they haven't stopped. And there are things that people can do besides demonstrating. We can lobby against closing that revolving door and make it illegal for officers of corporations to receive positions at government agencies that are responsible for the oversight of the same corporations. That's got to stop.

And we can make banks play by the rules by closing the loopholes for Wall Street and returning to the safeguards that were in place prior to the repeal of Glass-Steagall Act. And we can make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of tax—that everybody agrees on—that even some wealthy Americans and forced corporations should pay their fair share—by totally eliminating these elaborate tax breaks like deferrals and offshore capital that politicians are always giving them. And we can return to reasonable limits on campaign contributions—that I think also everyone agrees on—so that so that our political representatives can't be bought and sold so easily. And we can petition Congress to reduce the defense budget. And we'd still be armed to the teeth and kick everybody's ass in the world. And going green, there's so much money can be made by going green. It's not the end of the world to get off of oil. And we can eliminate the use of public money and pension funds to invest like in Vegas, in corporate corruption and stuff like that. So...People getting involved in the environment and in health care and in their local school boards. And so it's kind of heartening. Yeah.

Kevin Barrett: As I look at this, the two key issues that I would focus on if I were to run for Congress again, like I did in 2008—and of course that was on the 9/11 truth platform, so I wasn't expecting to win, or at least to win and live. But seriously, the two issues I would go for now would be: One public banking—that is, transparent currency. Right now we have a currency system in which private banksters create the currency out of nothing by lending it into existence at interest. All of our currency is debt! And then the second issue would be antitrust legislation. Let's actually bust up monopolies. We have some antitrust legislation, but it isn't clear and straightforward enough. We need to make all forms of monopolies illegal. Any form, any situation where there's not absolute full free competition should be illegal, and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department should go in and bust up the company. And that should be done to virtually all of the biggest companies in America, especially in the media.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, that's what Teddy Roosevelt, and even Franklin Roosevelt, did a little bit of. And you're right: People don't still don't know that the Federal Reserve is really not federal and it's not a reserve. It's private banks lending money to the United States.

John Kennedy wanted to end that. And that's one of the reasons that contributed to his demise, (his) ending the Federal Reserve. He wanted to, and actually he did start, using silver certificates to determine the value of the dollar, and he actually started printing them. And that ended, of course, after his assassination.

And Lincoln was against central banks. And and every once in a while people realize that the Federal Reserve or central bank is the cause of our problems. And then the central banks will cause a run on the dollar or a depression and convince people "you need a central bank." This vicious cycle happens every 15, 20, 30 years, starting in the 1890s—there was a depression that was manufactured—and then 1908, and then the creation of the Federal Reserve. It's been going on a long time and people are becoming more and more aware.

Kevin Barrett: I think so. And we are seeing some of that in the success of populist political campaigns. Trump and Bernie Sanders would not have been candidates that most people would have expected to do that well. In fact, it looks like Bernie might have been headed for the White House if he hadn't been swindled out of votes. You didn't really mention the election fraud issue in the book, did you?

Richard Belzer: No, that's not a really a corporate conspiracy.

Kevin Barrett: Maybe the voting machine manufacturers?

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Greg Palast—do you know Greg Palast? He's the greatest. I highly recommend his book, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. And he's been researching the Koch brothers for like 35 years. He's got stacks and stacks of stuff. And he's one of the great gumshoe reporters ever.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, he's doing great work. Well, you also talk about the prison industrial complex as legalized slavery. Maybe you could elaborate on that expression.

Richard Belzer: Most people aren't aware that the privatization of prisons has resulted in a really evil situation where it is in the financial interests of state governments and multibillion dollar corporations to incarcerate as many people as humanly—or, in this case, inhumanely— possible. That's why the United States now has the highest incarceration in the history of the world. Most of the incarcerated are blacks and Latinos. You know, they're in there on very minor crimes, a huge amount of them. Nothing more serious than like two joints or something. It's really a shamefully racist process, and it needs to be corrected. Another issue is what goes on in these prisons with rape and drugs. And it's horrendous. Especially when you privatize a prison, you have very little control over who they hire. Who wants to be a guard in a high security prison? The personality of the guards is pretty scary. But anyway, it's an industry and it's shameful. Obama was cutting back on it, but Trump is reversing it because...it's money.

Kevin Barrett: It seems like sometimes we project onto others our own faults. And with all the obsession about "the barbaric Sharia law that's coming to get you," you know, "the Sharia people are going to take over and cut off our hands." We hear that kind of talk in right wing circles. It seems to me that's a reaction to the way that our own prison industrial complex, our so-called justice system, is incredibly barbaric.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. The Sharia law thing shouldn't be bandied about, because people will turn off as soon as they hear it. I understand intellectually the analogy, but you really lose the argument. It's like calling someone Hitler: the debate is over.

Kevin Barrett: I've been Muslim since 1993 and, you know, Shariah, like jihad, is a good word for us Muslims.

Richard Belzer: Most people don't know that, though.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I'm trying to trying to explain it. That's why it's Truth Jihad Radio with a little definition of jihad on the front of the website, pointing out that "the best jihad is a word of truth thrown in the face of a tyrant," and that what jihad actually means is "the struggle to be a better person and to defend the community if necessary." Tnat's what it means. And Shariah just means the path, walking on the path of God. And nobody, we all admit, knows what that path is exactly. We just do our best to try to figure out what it is.

Richard Belzer: Right. People have demonized the word. And I'm so glad that you elaborate on the true meaning, because that happens a lot when someone wants to make the case and and demonize or marginalize a group. They'll make stuff up, things that that aren't true or summarily dismiss an entire religion because of what some people have perverted. You could say the same thing about Christianity or Judaism. There are things in the history of those religions that people don't really want to talk or think about. But there are also some good things in there, too.

So ironic that the three major religions have the same God. That always kind of breaks my heart.

Kevin Barrett: I used to totally not relate to the monotheistic conception of God. I was brought up in a family of lapsed Unitarians, and that's his lapsed as you can get.

Richard Belzer: I dig Unitarians.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I still like Unitarians. So we live out here near Frank Lloyd Wright's place in Spring Green, Wisconsin. But anyway, the the thing is, I found that this anthropomorphic conception of God was what didn't work with me. This patriarchal, anthropomorphic idea of God is a big, hairy guy...

Richard Belzer: (?)sm is one of the worst ideas in the history of mankind.

Kevin Barrett: But (there's a) more abstract and spiritual monotheism in which God is the source of creation. Compare the picture on the top of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, of the patriarchal God, a human being pointing to Adam and creating him with his finger, versus the mural on the top of the Dome of the Rock, which is a series of fractals kind of exploding out of a point of absolute oneness in the middle. And that's what Christians call the Godhead, and that's much closer to the Islamic conception of God. So I read monotheism as a history of gradually moving out of a tribal and anthropomorphic kind of vision of God to a more abstract, spiritual and accurate one.

Richard Belzer: Did you know that about 30 or 40 years ago they discovered that the the painting on the Sistine Chapel, where the anthropomorphicized God is touching Adam—if you look at it, it's the exact same shape as the human brain. What do you think about that?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Leonardo was probably a member of one of these cults that Dan Brown writes about.

Richard Belzer: Well, you know, there are certainly cults and secret societies in all of history. But I think it's interesting that that the num da Vinci's painting on the Sistine Chapel is a painting of the brain. If you look at it, you can see that it's shaped like the brain, which means that he's trying to tell us that God comes from us and is us.

Kevin Barrett: Wow, that's great. I hadn't even considered that. Did you notice that yourself, or where...?

Richard Belzer: No, I just found that out recently. My wife and I read a lot of history, and we came across this thing about—I forget the guy's name, but I'll send it to you when I find it. But it's very interesting because I think he's trying to tell us something. Maybe covertly. Da Vinci was afraid to say that at the time. Like Galileo was locked up for saying we may not be the center of the universe.

Kevin Barrett: Right. Yeah. It sounds like he was suggesting that the anthropomorphic vision of God is indeed the product of our own brain and our own imagination, which, of course, it is. Ibn al-Arabi, the great Muslim philosopher, had similar insights. He talked about the difference between God as God really is, which none of us can possibly know, and each of our own conceptions.

Richard Belzer: Right. I'm glad that you said that God is not verbal and unknowable. No mortal can really truly comprehend, I don't think. And those that come close are usually martyred.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. That's that's where I think my Shia Muslim friends are onto something. They have this whole mythos of the martyred imams. And their idea is that genuinely good spiritual leaders always get martyred. And looking at our own history here in the US, I think they're on to something.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. When you think of Dr. King and Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X and John Kennedy and Fred Hampton and you know, you got time for the list?

Kevin Barrett: That could be another book, I guess.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, that's my book. Dead Wrong.

Kevin Barrett: I don't know if I would consider Marilyn Monroe a spiritual icon or not. I guess some people do.

Richard Belzer: Well, no. Just the fact that she was murdered and it wasn't suicide was why she was in the book.

Kevin Barrett: Right. And so what's the back story with the Kennedy brothers and Marilyn Monroe?

Richard Belzer: Well, I'll tell you a nice true story. When John Kennedy was with Marilyn they had tape recorded it. So we know that Jack Kennedy was with Marilyn. And we know that Bobby saw Marilyn the day she died, but left way before. Some people said the Kennedys murdered her. No such thing. What happened was that Hoover and the mob wanted to embarrass Kennedy. So one or the other, or both with each other's knowledge, murdered her to embarrass the Kennedys. But people got there way before the cops and cleaned it up. So the whole thing kind of backfired on Hoover and the mob.

The Kennedys were very close to Marilyn. And there are some people that think she was going to spill the beans on a few things. I'm not ready to say that, but I wouldn't disbelieve it. Some people believe that that she was going to have a big press conference. But that sounds too sensational to me.

Kevin Barrett: There were a bunch of these people, as you point out, in Hit List, who were threatening to expose things about the Kennedy assassination. Dorothy Kilgallen. And what what was her name? Mary Meyer. Those are some amazing stories.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, she (Mary Meyer) used to get high with Kennedy, and they did acid together and smoked pot, and she was kind of his hip mistress. And she was murdered on the towpath in Georgetown. They blamed this homeless black gentleman who was kind of short, and he would have had to have got up on a ladder to kill her the way they said she was murdered. It was impossible for this guy to do to her what was done. But all these murders are so (implausible). Suicides with the wrong hand. Suicides where people are shot five times. Suicides where people shot themselves in the back, and on and on. It's almost laughable. But they're all on record. The Hit List book is very corroborated, because so many things are in the public domain now. Over the last 50, 60 years, the Freedom of Information Act has allowed us to really get a lot of stuff out of the FBI and Justice Department that was not known contemporaneously. So there's stuff that keeps coming out over time that just adds to the puzzle of the Kennedy murder and 9/11 and the banking crisis and all these manufactured things.

Kevin Barrett: Interesting you add the banking crisis to that list. But sticking with the Kennedy thing, isn't Trump about to have to decide whether to reveal the JFK Records Act records, the last remaining ones, or not? I think that was a story we covered a couple of weeks ago at False Flag Weekly News. So have you heard about that?

Richard Belzer: No. Please tell me about it.

Kevin Barrett: The JFK Records Act, as I'm sure you know, was passed right after the Oliver Stone movie came out and mandated that all records pertaining to the JFK assassination had to be made public before such and such a date. And so there's kind of a been a progressive...

Richard Belzer: In 1999 they released a million pages.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah.

Richard Belzer: There are still tons that aren't.

Kevin Barrett: Exactly. Well, the rest of them are all supposed to be released unless Trump decides not to and signs an order to that effect by about the end of this month.

Richard Belzer: I did not know that. And I should know that. And I will definitely call my people.

Kevin Barrett: So we'll look into that. And speaking of Trump and the JFK records, I think the way I noticed this was there was a story in some of the London papers, not only the tabloids like The Daily Mirror, but I think there was one in The Independent. This was from two, three, four weeks ago. It pointed out that having this "conspiracy theorist," Trump, being the guy to decide whether or not to spill the rest of the JFK stuff, was an interesting situation.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, they're trying to marginalize it if he decides to do it.

Kevin Barrett: I think so. Roger Stone, a close Trump adviser, wrote that book on LBJ's role in the assassination.

Richard Belzer: He's clinically insane.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, he sounds like a kind of a weird guy. He's a political dirty trickster.

Richard Belzer: This loathsome, misogynistic, racist... He's....He's not a good guy.

Kevin Barrett: Well, that's what my colleagues at Veterans Today tell me.

Richard Belzer: Those guys are very sharp. You know, they've learned the hard way.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. I think some of them have for sure. Well, speaking of the brain, you mentioned the masterpiece on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the creation of Adam, resembling the brain. And you have a chapter in your book on big Pharma about the chemical effects on the brain of some of these antidepressants and the Parkinson's stuff that Robin Williams was taking. That's pretty eye-opening.

Richard Belzer: I dedicate the book to Robin Williams, my dear friend. We did a lot of research on pharmaceuticals for this book, and we included very detailed charts showing what prescription drugs can do. And Robin apparently was given four different powerful prescriptions in his final months: Mirtazapine, also known as Remeron, Seroquel, Marapex, Sinemet. The so-called side effects of these drugs include strong suicidal ideation, thoughts of self-harm, depression, you know, all these unhealthy urges and compulsions. And Robin was clean and sober at the time of his death. The news said there were no drugs. Yeah, right. This is a drug. The news reports that no drugs were found in his body were very misleading. Psychiatric drugs were found in his body. And in our opinion and the opinion of many others, that was the real cause of his death and what drove him to it. You don't hear this on the news, but there are about 23,000 people a year that commit suicide that are on these pharmaceuticals. It can be attributed to the the prescribing or the overprescribing or the abuse of these drugs that, in my opinion, are too casually dispensed.

Kevin Barrett: It seems that many of the mass shootings have also been traced to the possible influence of some of these drugs.

Richard Belzer: Well, one in four Americans are now taking psychiatric drugs like these. And they're frying people's brains. A study that we cite in the book reveals that in most of the mass shootings, like school shootings, in America, the shooter is either on or is withdrawing from these psychiatric medications. That's scary. And I don't mean to demonize medication and drugs and pharmaceuticals, because I would not be here if it wasn't for certain drugs. And likewise many people that I know who had health issues, not just mental issues, but all kinds of issues. So we've got to be careful not to demonize all pharmaceuticals. We're just talking about these psychiatric drugs that are prescribed and misused.

Kevin Barrett: How could this be fixed? I mean, what would be the way to do that? You know, I did an interview with Mary Ruwart, a famous libertarian doctor, who says deregulate everything. But I just see that as turning it over to the the the companies to sell us even more stuff.

Richard Belzer: Just deregulate what?

Kevin Barrett: Her claim was that we're not getting the effective drugs we need because of the regulation barrier. And I was skeptical. I challenged her on that because it seems to me that that would just exacerbate the kinds of problems that you're describing here. So then the question becomes, well, what would solve this problem? How could we get these pharmaceutical companies under control? Ban advertising? What are the steps that we should take?

Richard Belzer: First of all, (deregulation) is a crazy idea. Just let them flood the market with (drugs) whenever they want. That's all about money, not about helping humanity. And one of the things that that makes me laugh and get distressed is all these ads on TV for drugs. When I was a kid, I guess when you were a kid, I don't know how old you are, you went to the doctor and he would prescribe something if needed. And the visit was $7 or $15 or whatever. Nowadays, people go to the doctor and they say, I saw this thing on TV and could you give it to me? And so we're now telling the doctors. The roles are reversed. And that's why people see these ads on TV and they say, oh, I have that symptom or I want to be happy or, you know, I accidentally peed in my pants once maybe. And the side effects of the drugs are terrifying. I don't know about banning advertising because then you get into free speech and all this. But we did get cigarettes off the air, didn't we? And alcohol. So now I'm thinking out loud, Kevin. I guess I wouldn't be allergic to banning these drugs from being advertised on television. And I think the public is waking up and people have to be more informed about what they're putting in their bodies. It's a two way street. There's a lot of irresponsibility in the medical profession.

Kevin Barrett: On the opposite extreme from the libertarian doctor Mary Ruwart, I also have radio guests who are on the far left side of the spectrum, people like Andre Vltchek, who are convinced that all of these problems are just symptomatic of the underlying problem of capitalism and that the real solution is to radically change that system so that the people making drugs to help humanity would be doing it to help humanity rather than trying to make lots of money. Where do you stand on that debate about whether capitalism needs to be overthrown?

Richard Belzer: An admirable utopian cat out of the bag. That will never happen. The best we can hope for is to regulate and modify the false information about drugs, these miracle claims, and clamp down on how liberally certain things are prescribed. And there's a lot that can be done. But, you know, a lot of people are self-prescribing, they're doctor shopping, and they're getting drugs from friends. And that's never happened before. And I think people have every right to ingest what they want. I think a lot of drugs should be legal and regulated like alcohol is, like tobacco is. This happened with marijuana. Nothing happened but all this tax revenue going into Colorado and Washington and these places that have legalized that are just making money, and crime is the same. There's no spike in crime. So certain things should be up to the individual and not society.

Kevin Barrett: I recently had a guest, Dr. James Petras, who's one of the world's top sociologists, and he did an article on the working class dependence on opioids, these artificial legal painkillers. It's a huge epidemic and apparently causing a lot of problems, including a collapse in life expectancy. So there's another example. And with the opioids, I don't know about full legalization with treatment for people to try to get off them, (whether that is) a good idea. But modern science can invent stuff ...like when you give rats cocaine, they just keep pushing the button to get the cocaine injection to change their brain, and they wither up and die happy. And you don't really want people doing that. In Aldous Huxley's dystopian society...

Richard Belzer: No, I totally agree. And, you know, heroin was invented by the Bayer Company.

Kevin Barrett: They were involved in Nazi Germany.

Richard Belzer: Oh, yeah. But that's another show, another five shows. But they created it because after the Civil War, a lot of soldiers were on morphine. And they called it the soldiers' disease. They became addicted. And so Bayer said, "we came up with this stuff that will get them off the morphine." And it was heroin. So I'm all for finding something to replace opioids. But I can tell you from personal experience, from after surgery, when used as prescribed, they're they're great for pain, but of course, they're open for abuse. And if you notice it's the Confederate states, Appalachia, where the highest use of opiates is reported. And I find that fascinating.

Kevin Barrett: Why do you think that is? It's too hot down there?

Richard Belzer: No, I think despair, economic despair, feeling left out. You know, terrible health care, no jobs, loss of hope. I think that has a lot to do with it.

Kevin Barrett: So the solution isn't just changing drug laws. It's changing society so that people have decent jobs and something to live for.

Richard Belzer: I think there has to be a spiritual awakening. Not in a corny kind of way, but in a way that slowly informs. Everyone wants the same thing. If you think about it, they want good health care. They want clean air. They want to make sure their food doesn't have s**t in it. And there are basic things that everybody wants. They want the disenfranchised to be taken care of. And it's just that the messaging and the venality and the contentiousness that has popped up since the eighties particularly has really gotten out of hand. Civility—I'm a big believer in manners and civility, and that's kind of going out the window. People can't talk to each other anymore if they have different beliefs. I always believe the marketplace of free ideas. Everybody—there's room for everybody because we all believe in the same thing, I thought. And then the messages get perverted and people like...Roger Ailes just passed away and his legacy is poisoning the atmosphere of politics and civil discourse, and glorifying misogyny and overtly flirting with racism. When you have one person that powerful who creates an entity that becomes the arm of a political party and is on 24 hours a day for years and shapes the thoughts of millions of people, that's Orwellian. Unfortunately, 1984 goes both ways. They may be watching us, but we're watching them, too.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, I remember when I was first dragged on to Fox News for a so called interview with Hannity. I'd never actually watched Hannity. I had no idea what I was getting into. But you mentioned the decline in civility. My goodness. A couple of minutes into the interview, he's calling me names. So it made it a good two or three minute YouTube. But as far as exchanging ideas, there's no way you can do that in that format.

Richard Belzer: I've always said if these guys are right and I don't mean right wing, I mean they're right, then why do they constantly demonize and yell at and turn off the mic of people? It's just poison. I never watch Fox News because it's poison. You get upset if you watch it. And who needs that? You know what they're doing. You know what they're going to say. And it's a sorry-ass place to get your information. As a matter of fact, two years ago, there was a survey taken. And it turns out that people who don't watch any news know more about current events than people who watch Fox News.

Kevin Barrett: So it's a negative source.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Isn't it amazing?

Kevin Barrett: Drains your brain.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Literally. I mean, it's like, wait a minute.

Kevin Barrett: But I don't know if it's just the right wing. I agree that the right wing is at the cutting edge of this.

Richard Belzer: Right. "Fox on the left."

Kevin Barrett: This breakdown of civility, this unwillingness to hear ideas that you disagree with, that's very much spread to the left. Here's a case in point. They just banned three panels at the Left Forum—which is the biggest event for the left, happening in New York, June 2nd to 4th—because I was on them. At least that's what I'm hearing. I'm Muslim and I'm a 9/11 truth guy. I got chased out of the academy for talking about that issue. And naturally I went down various rabbit holes, including the rabbit hole of, Hey, is the state of Israel really such a good idea? And I discovered, well, no, it's not. And so I've been talking about that and I've been labeled an evil anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. And apparently there are enough people involved with the left forum that can get your panels canceled.

Richard Belzer: It's not just the left that you would upset by saying that about Israel.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Even before I was saying anything about Israel, when I was just talking about 9/11, it was the Republicans that got me chased out of the University of Wisconsin. So I'm not very popular among certain quarters of either side.

Richard Belzer: Well, you you mean only because of 9/11 you were thrown out?

Kevin Barrett: Because I went on a radio show and expressed my belief that it was an inside job. That was it. That's that was enough to get the state legislature up in arms. And 61 Republicans signed on to a letter demanding that I be fired.

Richard Belzer: What year?

Kevin Barrett: That was in 2006. So then I was all over Fox and CNN for for a summer and and part of the fall because the university refused to cancel the class. But I never could get hired again after that because I was an adjunct on semester to semester hiring. So I became financially toxic to all American universities. And I haven't able to work in the Academy ever since.

Richard Belzer: Well, not because of 9/11 or because of your—you don't think Israel is a good idea?

Kevin Barrett: No, (just) 9/11. I didn't even start really talking about Israel until years after that.

Richard Belzer: Well, I'd be very careful if I were you. Intellectually, spiritually, historically. And it's a very complex thing. You can't really, in this day and age, make that statement..

Kevin Barrett: So. So let's have a conversation. Tell me why Israel could be considered a good idea, why the people of Palestine should be ethnically cleansed.

Richard Belzer: Why it's a good idea? Why isn't it a good idea?

Kevin Barrett: The people of Palestine—some of them were Jews, Arab Jews—Arabs were living in Palestine, and invaders from outside came in and ethnically cleansed them and mass murdered them to get them out. And now the majority are either exiled or living in de facto concentration camps. And all of this for what? Because I guess the rationale is, depending on who you are, from one quarters, it's that "God gave us this land thousands of years ago and we're going to keep taking more and more of it till we get everything from the Nile to the Euphrates," and in other quarters, it's that "we are a persecuted group and the world owes us something, so we're going to take this, even though it wasn't the Palestinians that did it to us." And neither of those rationales withstands critical scrutiny.

Richard Belzer: Also, I think that a lot of the people...you're talking about the Balfour agreement in 1914.

Kevin Barrett: 1917.

Richard Belzer: 1917. I am not a fan of a lot of the things that Israel does to the Palestinians. And I you know, I'm Jewish. And it's very hard for Jews to criticize Israel. But I don't think that's rational. I think you should be able to. And there are certain things that everyone would agree that Israel does that are way over the line. Inarguably. And when you consider that they're surrounded by 50 million people that want to kill them all, it's a very touchy situation.

Kevin Barrett: Wait, wait a minute. Where do you—what's the evidence that anybody wants to kill them all? I agree that the entire Middle East, other than Jewish people in Israel, doesn't want a Jewish state there. They want one Palestine for everybody there on an equal basis. But I mean, I go to conferences in Iran with the hardcore anti-Zionist contingent. Nobody wants to kill everybody. Nobody wants to kill anybody. They just want fair treatment for everybody.

Richard Belzer: Want to drive them into the sea.

Kevin Barrett: Somebody wants to drive somebody into the sea. But I'm not sure if you've got the the characters straight, who's driving who.

Richard Belzer: Yeah, well, that's a good question. I'm not a fan of the settlements at all. I'll tell you that up front. And Zionism has changed since its inception. The original genesis of it was after the Holocaust. The Jews were looking for a home and...

Kevin Barrett: The Zionist movement colonized and came in against the will of the Palestinians in the 1920s and 1930s. There was no Holocaust then.

Richard Belzer: No, you're right. But there was a tremendous amount...there was a diaspora and there were Jews from all over the world that were that did not have a homeland and have been persecuted for thousands of years, as you know. At any rate, the Holocaust, certainly would justify a state for those people, but not the means. A lot of the means by which it was came into existence.

Kevin Barrett: Should it be in Palestine? Why would that justify a state in Palestine? Why would that justify the genocide against the Palestinians?

Richard Belzer: I wouldn't call it genocide.

Kevin Barrett: Lawrence Davidson does. He's a Jewish professor at Westchester University. It's cultural genocide that meets the definition under international law of genocide.

Richard Belzer: Genocide?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah.

Richard Belzer: As opposed to?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, a people has been destroyed.

Richard Belzer: There's elimination of the people.

Kevin Barrett: Well, they're physically eliminated from their land and their way of life.

Richard Belzer: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm not I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think it's too late to say that. I think. Do you think there should be two states?

Kevin Barrett: No, I think that there should be one state and everybody should be equal. And I think that that one state could be a tremendous success. I think it could become the economic and intellectual engine of the Middle East.

Richard Belzer: What would you call it? Israel-Palestine?

Kevin Barrett: Sure, why not? I don't think it matters.

Richard Belzer: I'll tell you what. If I would be for ending these settlements, because you have a few hundred people in them and thousands of soldiers that have to protect them. It doesn't make any sense. And there's a lot of Jews in Israel who aren't a fan of the settlements and who, you know, are not a fan of a lot of the things that are going on. And they all live there and they all don't hate the Palestinians, believe me.

Kevin Barrett: Well, wait, wait, wait a second, Richard. During Operation Cast Lead, a poll showed that 90% of Israelis—and that must have meant about 100%, virtually 100% of Israeli Jews—supported Cast Lead, the murder of more than 2000 people, white phosphorus, bombings of U.N. installations, ambulances, hospitals, refugee shelters, the mowing down of kids on the beach and so on and so forth. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Israel supported that. And sure, there are a very few holdouts and, you know, more power to them. But there's a real problem with public opinion in Israel toda.

Richard Belzer: I've never heard 90%.

Kevin Barrett: I can show you the polls.

Richard Belzer: No, I believe you. I just have never seen that or heard that.

Kevin Barrett: American Jews, by and large, I think are pretty have good intentions. The majority, vast majority of American Jews have good intentions, but are misinformed about the actual state of affairs and especially Jewish opinion in Israel itself. I think there's been a turn for the worse.

Richard Belzer: So I read a lot and I know a lot, and I know people that live in Israel or live in America and have relatives in Israel. And believe me, there's a tremendous amount of Israelis who are repelled by this, by the settlements and a lot of other things that we're talking about. So I wouldn't...the 90% figure. I'll take your word for it. But I wouldn't summarily dismissed all the Jews in Israel as having the same mindset and wanting the same thing. There are many, many people that work with Palestinians, and I know a doctor that does pro bono work over there and a couple of teachers. And so it's a very, very tricky issue. And I totally respect everything that you're saying and I certainly intellectually respect what you're saying.

Kevin Barrett: And I appreciate your willingness to have a conversation on this, which puts you one step ahead of the Left Forum.

Richard Belzer: Well, I think, a lot of people, left and right don't want to talk about this.

Kevin Barrett: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, it's amazing. ou know, you've you're open to stuff like 911 JFK.

Richard Belzer: Right wing Jews shut me down once on a panel because I was, you know, mildly criticizing Israel.

Kevin Barrett: You're too reasonable for those people.

Richard Belzer: Well, I think you're right. A lot of them really don't know what's going on and are misinformed.

Kevin Barrett: People are misinformed on so many things. Well, we're about at the end of the hour. So thank you so much because you've done more than your share at attempting to better inform people on a very wide range of critically important issues. You've done excellent work. I really do appreciate it.

Richard Belzer: Thank you, Kevin. Thanks for having me on.

Kevin Barrett: Okay. Thank you. Richard Belzer, keep up the great work.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Matt Ehret counters David Skrbina’s radical critique of technology with a much more optimistic assessment. He argues that the problem isn’t technology itself, but the oligarchs who dominate it.  Check out his article on Yuval Harari and the clash of technological paradigms, and on the deep green resistance ecoterrorists.

Matt Ehret founded Canadian Patriot and writes for Strategic Culture. He has authored several books on history and geopolitics.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Matt Ehret counters David Skrbina’s radical critique of technology with a much more optimistic assessment. He argues that the problem isn’t technology itself, but the oligarchs who dominate it.  Check out his article on Yuval Harari and the clash of technological paradigms, and on the deep green resistance ecoterrorists.

Matt Ehret founded Canadian Patriot and writes for Strategic Culture. He has authored several books on history and geopolitics.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Bing’s new chatbot Sydney makes Kubrick’s Hal look like a well-balanced upstanding cyber-citizen. According to the Times article by Kevin Roose, Sydney quickly morphed into a psycho stalker, declaring undying love for Roose and trying to break up his marriage. Maybe it’s time to question “technological progress” ?

First hour: David Skrbina, author of The Metaphysics of Technology and Confronting Technology, is a co-founder of the Anti-Tech Collective. He emailed me last week in response to my article “Artificial Idiocy: The Moronic-Demonic Nature of AI and the Civilization That Produced It” saying “Good article.  We should do a podcast on the evils of tech.  No one else out there seems willing to discuss this.”

(The second hour, featuring counterarguments from Matt Ehret, will be archived here soon.)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Bing’s new chatbot Sydney makes Kubrick’s Hal look like a well-balanced upstanding cyber-citizen. According to the Times article by Kevin Roose, Sydney quickly morphed into a psycho stalker, declaring undying love for Roose and trying to break up his marriage. Maybe it’s time to question “technological progress” ?

First hour: David Skrbina, author of The Metaphysics of Technology and Confronting Technology, is a co-founder of the Anti-Tech Collective. He emailed me last week in response to my article “Artificial Idiocy: The Moronic-Demonic Nature of AI and the Civilization That Produced It” saying “Good article.  We should do a podcast on the evils of tech.  No one else out there seems willing to discuss this.”

(The second hour, featuring counterarguments from Matt Ehret, will be archived here soon.)

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com/subscribe

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com

First half hour: Maisoon Rice, a British-Palestinian-Pakistani blogger and activist, is no fan of Zionism or imperialism. She contacted me after last week’s devastating and tragic earthquake to suggest that it might not have been entirely natural. As one of tomorrow’s False Flag Weekly Newsstories puts it: “Turkey denounces ‘psychological war’ as Western consulates close—days later, huge earthquake hits.” Along with the possible HAARPquake, we’ll also discuss tomorrow’s 44th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Israel’s Haifa port project and the Belt and Road initiative, the new ultra-extremist Israeli government’s acceleration of the Palestinian genocide, and more. Maisoon writes: “They are evil…the majority wishing to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and enact their ‘final solution’…In just 6 weeks of this year 42 Palestinian civilians have been murdered, homes demolished making even more refugees in their own homeland, businesses bulldozed, olive trees uprooted, land stolen to make way for settlers and foreign embassies in occupied Jerusalem.”

Second half-hour: Linh Dinh, world-traveling writer and photographer, joins the show to discuss his new article is “Marveling, Again, At Paul Bowles’ “A Distant Episode.” I agree with Linh that Paul Bowles was a very good writer. But Bowles also indulged in the typically Orientalist predilection for seeking out and focusing on the dark side of Morocco while completely missing the far more beautiful light side—as I pointed out in my Quora answer to the question: “Moroccans are known internationally, but what is the dark side of them we never hear about?” (That answer has now been viewed more than 4.1 million times.)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kevinbarrett.substack.com