To: WSFAlist at WSFA.org
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:16:50 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Warning to writers
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 01:31:18 -0400 Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net> writes:
> Strong, Lee wrote:
> ...  This is leftwing paranoia.  ...  The only thing that this citation

> proves is how gullible some people become when hatred replaces reason.
> >

>
> There have been enough other documented cases (remember the Ramirez
> cartoon?) that it's not totally out of the question.
>

After reading the account at

necessarydissent.blogspot.com/2004/10/patriot-act-strikes-again.html ,

I'm inclined to agree that the story is probably not true.  For me the
tipoff is the lack of a mainstream press citation.  That type of story
would, if true, be of interest to any number of established news
organizations, e.g. CBS's 60 Minutes.  If no such news agency has
reported it, after some months, it's probably because the story is just
not true.  But for those who would accept the truth of the story, the
failure of the mainstream press to confirm it would only provide grounds
for believing in a conspiracy of silence, a coverup of a growing pattern
of such violations of persons' rights by the Federal government under the
widely feared and hated Patriot Act.

An obvious issue that is raised by this story is whether or not similar
violations are ongoing and are widespread, and are the result of
conscious policy.  To that question, I think the answer is no, because
otherwise we would have heard widespread complaints and protests.  We
still have freedom of speech, and of the press, so there is little doubt
that people are not afraid to talk about such things, as they were in the
Soviet Union under Stalin.  And even under Stalin, people knew about the
purges and deportations by word of mouth.

If the story is true, but it was just an isolated event, a bizarre
aberration from ordinary investigative procedure, it would not be
anywhere near as frightening as the unspoken implication that if it could
happen to her, it could happen to any of us.  It is frightening to
contemplate the possibility of a totalitarian government, but there are
plenty of _true_ stories to spark such fear, without needing that one
which has so little credibility.

Ruby Ridge, Waco, the 'Move' assault in Philadelphia, the Montana
Militia, the California landowner killed in a raid when the government
wanted the land, the Elian Gonzales raid - the list of (pre 9-11)
disturbing events goes on and on - and most of them happened under
Democratic administrations, not Republican.  For each story, there is a
viewpoint that the government did nothing wrong beyond perhaps making
tactical errors, that they were merely enforcing the law.  But the
overall pattern suggests to many a disturbing trend.  My point is that
all, or almost all, of these events which actually happened were covered
in the press, not covered up by the press - that the press is generally,
in due time, a useful (albeit imperfect) source of information about such
things, and a good indicator of which alleged events did or did not in
fact happen.

Take the TWA 800 crash.  Claims were made that the Navy shot down the
plane with a missile, that the FBI and other agencies covered up the
truth for reasons of national security, or, more bizarrely, because the
administration was embarrassed to admit an accidental shootdown shortly
before an election.  There was one theory that terrorists had downed the
plane with a missile, or attempted to do so, and that the Navy missile
was actually an anti-missile missile dispatched to protect the plane.  It
is claimed that a Long Island housewife witnessed a missile hit the
plane, and was later visited by agents who frightened her into silence.
It's said that the FBI confiscated the air traffic control tapes, never
to be seen again, that the re-assembled wreckage was kept off limits to
reporters and independent investigators, including those who should be
entitled to information in connection with liability lawsuits.

It's all very entertaining.  But as for the simple question of whether or
not the airliner was downed by a Navy missile, it just seems incredible
that such a newsworthy event, if true, could long be kept secret from the
press.  Too many people would have had more or less direct knowledge of
the missile's deployment or firing to begin with, and too many people
would have had to be involved in the subsequent coverup, including
intimidated civilians (if the claims of an elaborate coverup were true),
for information not to have leaked to the press.  The fact that no one in
the mainstream press (Pierre Salinger aside) ever took the conspiracy
theories seriously suggests that the press never got any hard evidence to
support a conspiracy theory, otherwise the press would have launched
intensive investigations of their own.  And perhaps the press did
investigate, and found - nothing, nothing beyond what the authorities had
publicly concluded.

Ron Kean

.

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