Tenth Anniversary of War by Deceit
Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
Center for Christian Nonviolence
Each one deceives the other, no one speaks the truth. They have accustomed their tongues to lying… A murderous arrow is their tongue. It speaks deceitfully; with his mouth each speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he lays an ambush for him … Jeremiah 9: 4, 7
“When virtually all major authority-bearing and communications institutions in a society act in concert to sell a well-packaged web of lies to that society, the
truth will seem absurd. Those who point out that the laws of logic, science, and mathematics—as well as eyewitness testimony—utterly contradict the conclusions drawn by the deceivers will be subject to whatever form of demeaning and/or silencing that is required to maintain the “big lie.”
The underlying assumption of these deceivers is that a lie told often enough, on a large-enough stage, in fact becomes the truth. However, it does not
become the truth.“
“All human beings desire to know, and truth is the proper object of that desire. While each must be respected in his or her search for truth, there exists a primordial moral obligation to seek the truth and to adhere to it once found. People cannot be genuinely indifferent to the question of whether what they know is true or not. One may define the human being as the one who seeks truth. The thirst for truth is so deeply rooted in the human heart that to be obliged to ignore it would cast existence into jeopardy.” -John Paul II
We have come to an unprecedented moment in time. Thanks to the capabilities of contemporary mass media and the deceitfulness of those who control their content, over the next several days more lies will be told to more people more often than arguably during any other period in the history of the world. The pandemic of deceit—on which the current economic and political rulers of the United States depend for the public political validation they need if they are to keep their hands on the controlling levers of the nation's operations of organized violence, e.g., military, police, FBI, TSA, IRS, CIA, etc.—will reach a crescendo on the days leading up to September 11, 2011, as an unparalleled propaganda blitz is orchestrated in order to nail down unquestioning acceptance of the US Government’s shabby explanation of the events of 911.
Lies, known falsehoods, misinformation, distorted information, misdirection, half truths, fabrications, fictions, disinformation galore, and plain old in-your-face deceitfulness will reign supreme. And their “Father, who is a murderer and a liar from the beginning,” will be giddy with ugly, cacophonous cackling over what he, and those who are his agents within the human community, have wrought in the human condition. Endless emotional presentations will be made about the 911 event as it unfolded, and of the tragic suffering of those who innocently fell victim to those who cruelly planned and executed this destruction and misery. But empathy for victims and revulsion at re-viewing the events of that day constitutes proof of nothing about who planned and
executed this suffering, let alone what caused three massive buildings to collapse at near-free-fall speed directly into their own footprints. In other words, empathy and revulsion in no way validate the US Government’s story regarding who caused 911 and why these buildings are no longer standing as they should be.
Those whose consciousnesses, understanding, and values have been developed primarily from watching, listening to, and/or reading big-time US corporate news media, and who have thereby been hardwired into a normalized state of craving the “excited delirium of the breaking news” fillip, will no doubt experience every replay of the collapse of each WTC building and every interview of every distraught victim as self- evident justification for all the death, misery, and destruction that the US has rained down on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya over the last ten years. Such nurtured, gut emotional reactions will also serve to validate all the “post-Reichstag-fire” organizations, the creation of some laws and the ignoring of others, the paramilitary operations, and privacy-destroying programs that have sprung up within the US since 911. The problem with all this is that such induced emotional experiences have absolutely no evidentiary value in determining who was behind the attack on the WTC, and why buildings that were constructed to easily withstand such airplane hits several times over all collapsed at near-free-fall speed directly into their own footprints.
In terms of the Nonviolent Jesus and His teaching of Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies, and the steely obstinate refusal of practically all the leaders of all the Christian Churches to teach it as Jesus’ Way, I have often thought of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s reflection: “We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because the lie is more comfortable.” It seems that most human beings have, just about always, preferred to live in a make-believe world, where truth is sacrificed to vanity, comfort, and/or self-interests. Three hundred years before Solzhenitsyn, Diderot wrote, “We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little, if at all, at a truth we find bitter.”
But if all human beings by nature desire to know and if the object of that desire is truth, and if ignoring truth casts one’s existence in to jeopardy, then what is the prognosis for a person or a society infected with a pandemic of deceit?
At this hour, the economic and political powers-that-be in the US are revving-up a major media public relations campaign to sell—just as they would sell toothpaste—the idea that the 911 Commission Report tells the true story about the cause of the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings. Don’t buy it. There is overwhelming evidence that refutes, indeed renders invalid, their story beyond any reasonable doubt—evidence that the US Government and US corporate media refuse to attend to, to air, to investigate, to discuss. They refuse to even admit it exists.
That governments, corporate mass media, politicians, business moguls, and the military lie ceaselessly, whenever they feel it is in their interests to do so, is just a fact of life as old as recorded history. Consider the prophet Jeremiah (c.650 BC) writing about the powers-that-be of his day, long gone these 2,500 years, and long forgotten, except for the evil they rained down on their fellow human beings:
Jeremiah 5:27: There are among my people criminals; like fowlers they set traps but it is men they catch. Their houses are as full of deceit as a bird cage is of birds. Thereby they grow powerful and rich, fat, and sleek, and go their wicked way…How is that for a contemporary presentation and description of the ten years since 911?
Or this. Jeremiah 9: 4, 7: Each one deceives the other, no one speaks the truth. They have accustomed their tongues to lying… A murderous arrow is their tongue. It speaks deceitfully; with his mouth each speaks peace to his neighbor, but in his heart he lays an ambush for him … Bingo! Long before 911, and since 911, “making war by deceit” has been the US modus operandi in relation to the Arab countries of the Middle East and in relation to the middle class and poor of the United States.
Jeremiah 9:5: Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, declares the Lord … Whether it be Christians in the United States and England, or Jews in the United States, England, or Israel; whether they worship Jesus or consider the worship of Jesus idolatry or false worship; whether they zealously, and of course piously, believe in Adonai (Yahweh) or the Holy Trinity, a huge number of Jews and Christians since 911 have heaped oppression upon oppression on the Arab people of the Middle East or supported its imposition. Their respective national political masters have also—in relation to this oppression, torture, and murder—engaged in deceit after deceit after deceit, ad nauseam, via the communication instruments each controls. And, since 911, both Jews and Christians have acted in this way, all the while declaring that they know the Lord! Well, if they do, then either Jeremiah is a fraud, or there is more than one God, or they are liars.
Deceit, and the oppression and murder of Arab people for oil and water, are the legacy of the “new Pearl Harbor” “prophesied” by The Project for a New American Century in 1997, whose twenty-six founders include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Weigel, I. “Scotter” Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Elliot Abrams, and Fred C. Ikle. In the name of God and truth, do not believe such people or their media prevaricators and professional religious mercenaries. “Their throats are open graves. They deceive with their tongues. The venom of asp is on their lips. Their feet are quick to shed blood; ruin and misery are their way. But the way of peace they know not” (Rom 3:13). Again, Saint Paul, 2,000 years ago, like Jeremiah 2,600 years ago, is speaking truth—truth that most contemporary bishops, priests, ministers, and rabbis say they cannot see. Or, if they can see it, they are too concerned with their vanity, comfort, and/or self-interests to risk confronting perpetual political liars and mass murderers.
When virtually all major authority-bearing and communications institutions in a society act in concert to sell a well-packaged web of lies to that society, the truth will seem absurd. Those who point out that the laws of logic, science, and mathematics—as well as eyewitness testimony—utterly contradict the conclusions drawn by the deceivers will be subject to whatever form of demeaning (they are just “truthers” and conspiracy nuts) and/or silencing (e.g., WSS, Witness Suicide Syndrome) that is required to maintain the “big lie.” The underlying assumption of these deceivers is that a lie told often enough, on a large-enough stage, in fact becomes the truth. However, it does not become the truth, it only becomes a socially accepted truth. The difference is this: 1+1=2, not 7, even if and entire society is gulled into believing 1+1= 7. And, if a society builds itself, its bridges, its buildings, its life on the “truth” 1+1=7, it will, and must,
bring great misery down upon its people. Biblically, this is called judgment.
It is, in fact, oftentimes nearly impossible to undermine the well-embedded societal lie that the economic and political powers-that-be want to keep operative. Since these classes of people have spent their lives being mendacious and oppressing people, they are expert at planning how to cover well their tracks before they even leave their tracks. Usually there is no “smoking gun” to be found. Usually there is no single sound/video-bite complete refutation of the lie being sold, although countless sound/video-bite pieces often can be produced that powerfully identify irreconcilable discrepancies between, say, the US Government’s story of what happened on 911 and what one can see and hear with his or her very own eyes and ears. In addition with regards to 911, there are two sources of scholarly critique of the Government’s 911 story that show clearly why the government’s story is impossible: Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth (AE911Truth.org) and the writings and DVDs of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the most renowned theologian in the United States over the last thirty-five in the area of Process Theology.
But, for example, in a Christian Cannibal Society where Justified Christian Cannibalism in the name of Jesus is a social “truth,” it is no easy task to prove to one’s fellow Christian Cannibals that their social “truth” is a de facto falsehood. Especially is this so when the “gatekeepers” of Gospel truth in the Church will not even discuss the matter or permit its presence on any of the Church’s instruments of mass communication. Ditto the contemporary US Government and media created social “truth,” myth, of 911.
The pandemic of deception that is out of control in the United States among the economic, political, military, religious elite and their respective sycophants, and which is daily resulting in the large scale and ever growing destruction of ordinary people and their children and their children’s children at home and abroad—as it must since its Father is a liar and a murder from the beginning—is statistically far more extensive and humanly destructive than the pandemic of deception in relationship to pedophilia that was unchecked and rampant in the Catholic Church prior to being exposed. Again, ditto the social “truth,” the lie, the government-media propagated myth of 911. Exposure is the only antidote to untruth. The motivations for refusing to expose the truth of the pedophilia deception or the 911 deception are legion, especially among those who created and profited from the orchestrated lie. But also, even among those who are
being bamboozled and fleeced by the “big lie” there is a reluctance to pursue the truth of the matter. Remember, Diderot? We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little, if at all, at a truth we find bitter.”
However, the extreme and dreadful problem with not pursuing and exposing the truth in such matters is innocent victims, and more innocent victims, and still more innocent victims, and ever more innocent victims, and innocent victims without end at home and abroad until the third and fourth generation and beyond. Such is the unspeakable power of contagion within an unaddressed pandemic of deception. Exposing lies that destroy is mercy. Ignoring lies that destroy is mercilessness (Mt 25:31-46).
Knowingly and freely supporting lies that destroy human life is the evil of murder.
Center for Christian Nonviolence
The full embracing of Gospel Nonviolence calls for a radical alteration in thought patterns, verbal patterns, behavioral patterns, and emotional patterns. That is, it requires a completely different reality orientation and self-understanding. To a mind grounded primarily in the logic of the temporal and conditioned by a seemingly endless stream of examples in which violence is portrayed as a legitimate means of conflict resolution, the acceptance of nonviolence as truth does not come easily. There is no doubt that a significant change of mind is indispensable for embracing the Nonviolent Jesus of the Gospel – a process which
necessitates an alteration in consciousness made possible only through grace and a patterned, repetitive exposure to ideas and images consistent with the Nonviolent Love of friends and enemies as taught and lived by Jesus
