Wednesday, May. 26, 2004 - 4:41 p.m.

The Turning of the Tide

It looks like Amy Goodman has finally caved to pressure from her listeners. Today's Democracy Now! broadcast had as a guest, David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. And on Friday's broadcast, she had on Ellen Mariani, a widow of 9-11 who's suing the Bush Administration for complicity in the attacks. Also on that program was Gore Vidal who made similar strong allegations 43 minutes into the show. This marks the first time the notion of the intentional complicity of the government was mentioned on this show. This could trigger a phase shift in which the progressive left accepts this as a valid topic for investigation, and an acceptable opinion to hold. I take hope from this because I think it could lead the progressive crowd to challenge the power structure on a far deeper level than they're used to. This won't bring about a FunSmart way of life, but could bring more people to question authority, preparing people for deeper critiques. At least that's my hypothesis.

Griffin was countered by Chip Berlet, who poked holes in certain parts of the evidence Griffin presented, but I thought Griffin did an adquate job of refuting Berlet's refutations, saying that his cumulative case is not significantly undermined if a few parts turn out to be invalid. I liked how he denied being a conspiracy theorist by saying that he was not proposing an alternative theory, merely demonstrating that the official story must be false. On Friday's show, however, there was no point/counterpoint. It was all from the point of view of intentional complicity, and Amy herself uttered some of the strongest arguments:

AMY GOODMAN: "The questions, again, on your open letter to President Bush, why were 29 pages of the 9/11 Committee Report personally censored at your request? Where are the black boxes from Flight 11 and Flight 175? Where are the voice recorders from Flight 11 and 175? Why can't we gain access to the complete air traffic control records for Flight 11 and Flight 175? Where are the airport surveillance tapes that show the passengers boarding the doomed flights? When will complete passenger lists for all the flights be released? Why did your brother Jeb Bush, as Juan read, go to Hoffman Aviation School and order the flight records be removed?"

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they attack you, then you win. The ignore stage is over, and perhaps the ridicule stage as well.

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