posted 05-18-2003 12:38 PM            

From: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/051603_wash_post_ad.html

© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

May 16, 2003, 0500 PDT (FTW) – From The Wilderness today ran a full-page ad in the front section of The Washington Post intended to educate the American people, support heroic leaders and promote a number of independent media outlets which have made important contributions since 9/11. The ad was the direct result of a donation from a subscriber who had recently viewed FTW Publisher Mike Ruppert's video "The Truth and Lies of 9-11". The ad that ran today was actually a second version, the text of which had to be changed after the first version apparently caused some nervousness in Washington.

It's an interesting story.

The text of the first ad, which reached the Post on April 23rd, contained two sections of well-supported text that were sharply critical of Army Secretary Thomas White. White was suddenly fired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld three days after the ad reached the Post. FTW has not been able to confirm that the ad was leaked but publisher Michael Ruppert strongly suspects it.

"It started when we got a call from a retired business executive who was so incensed by what he had seen in the 9/11 tape that he decided he wanted to do something with his own good fortune to make a difference. He specifically said that he wanted to buy us a full-page in the Post and that we could write anything we wanted," said Ruppert. "His only condition was that he remain anonymous. FTW never handled any of the fee – in excess of $20,000 -- to purchase the space and not once did our subscriber try to influence its content. I wrote the ad and three wonderful human beings contributed to it."

The three contributors who wrote special statements for the ad were former Assistant Secretary of Housing and past managing Director of Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts, University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle, and former Democratic Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of Georgia.

Ruppert continued, "We knew that if FTW were to try to book the ad alone we would likely be turned down. Because the ad and its cartoon, conceived by FTW's General Manager Mike Leon and drawn for us by Canadian artist Blaine Machan, was critical of the major media and the US economy's corruption and reliance on drug money, we needed an edge," Ruppert continued. "So we turned to the L.A.-based More Than News agency and its owner Ken Levine for assistance. We had worked with Ken – a former L.A. area TV news director -- before and we trusted him."

Levine, working in concert with the FTW subscriber purchased the ad space through a major New York ad brokerage firm, with which Levine has had good relations. That firm actually books most of the Post's ad space and that provided the necessary clout to get the ad to the next stage.

The text of the ad was submitted to New York on April 15, well before White's firing. According to Levine, there was quite a reaction. "They had never seen anything like this. They liked it but they thought the Post would never approve it even though the Post has a decent history of running political ads."

In two places the ad featured statements highly critical of now-former Secretary White. In her statement Fitts criticized White for his inability to balance the Army's books at a time when the Department of Defense has admittedly "misplaced" more that $3 trillion of taxpayer money. Ruppert observed, "White's claim that residual damage from the attacks of September 11th was the cause for unbalanced books in the Army was ludicrous. The attack of 9/11 hit the Navy Wing of the Pentagon. How could that affect the Army?"

In the text of the ad itself White was also criticized for his role as an Enron executive which provided him with millions of dollars in income while stockholders were being defrauded. White was subsequently investigated for insider trading of Enron stock.

Boyle, a professor of international law has been the leader in a growing movement to impeach President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors related to his prosecution of the Iraqi invasion. Recently, articles of impeachment drafted by Boyle were reviewed by several members of congress. McKinney, widely criticized in the press for asking important questions about Bush administration foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and the possibility of excessive profiteering by corporations allied with the Bush administration, has since been vindicated by congressional intelligence hearings and recent major media stories concerning the Carlyle Group. She lost her 2002 primary election to a newcomer in what is now being labeled in a Georgia lawsuit as a demonstrably-illegal Republican crossover vote.

"I asked these three heroes to participate in the ad because they have all shown great courage in acting as responsible public servants and citizens and they have all suffered punishment as a result. Yet they are still standing, still in the ring and they deserve recognition for their perseverance," said Ruppert.

But there was to be more drama before the ad was printed.

The Washington Post advertising department approved the text of the first ad just a day after White's firing. According to Ruppert and Levine it was not possible after that to change the text of the ad without reopening the entire approval process and risking a rejection after the ad had apparently been leaked to government circles in Washington.

"And all we had was a window of about two weeks when the ad was supposed to run under the contract. We had no control over the exact day. So we decided to let the first ad run without trying to update it in the wake of White's firing," Ruppert observed. "It was just too risky otherwise. The only thing that could have blocked the ad -- which was purchased at a discount rate through the ad brokerage -- would have been if there was a sudden flurry of late advertisers who suddenly decided to purchase full-price ads."

"We were told that this was highly unlikely but, as it turns out, that's exactly what happened," said Ruppert with a chuckle. "One of our subscribers in the Washington area told us that he had never seen so many full-page ads in his life."

When the two week contract period was not met by the Post, FTW then had the opportunity to change the text to what ran today without risking a rejection. On Levine's advice the ad was rebooked for another week and the second version was published today.

From the start Ruppert was skeptical that the ad would be allowed to run under any circumstances. He views it's publication today as something of a much needed miracle.

"When people see the kind of reaction this ad produces and the power that they have to stir the public and get real responses out of government, I think we're going to see a lot more efforts like this. It's one thing when one individual in a position to do it pays for an ad like this. But twenty thousand dollars isn't an unreachable amount for a hundred or a thousand people. Pretty soon you might see people forming coalitions to purchase commercials on television or blocks of ads in major newspapers. That's how you reach the people and keep good and accurate information from being marginalized.

"It was also extremely important that we recognized and gave energy to a number of independent media sources that have made great contributions since 9/11. While much of America may not know how much these organizations have influenced events, they should. Independent media is filling a huge vacuum left by the needlessly obedient mainstream press.

"It's called taking full advantage of those aspects of free speech that the government hasn't taken away yet. It's learning how the money works and using it to your advantage. As Fitts always says, 'Vote with your money.'"

THE ACTUAL AD THAT RAN IN THE WASHINGTON POST

PDF:
http://www.copvcia.com/FTW_AD_2-page.pdf

posted 05-18-2003 11:18 PM               

WH

"During the recent visit to Athens, Greece, of Bernard Cassen, director of Monde Diplomatique and founding-member of the citizens’ movement ATTAC, to speak at the French Institute on "Social Europe and its Prospects", I had the opportunity to begin a discussion with him on such questions as the political careers of Jean-Pierre Chevenement and Charles de Gaulle, the French and British nuclear arsenals, the "new social movements" of the eighties and the elements of continuity between those movements and today's anti-war movement and movement against neo-liberal globalism. Given the renewed relevance of "weapons of mass destruction" in the debate preceding the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, I thought it might be appropriate to outline why it is that I believe the anti-nuclear-weapons concerns of the European "New Social Movements" of the 80s have their part to play in the project of a "Social Europe" today.

The great slogans of the non-aligned anti-nuclear movements of the eighties were, of course, "A Europe Free of Nuclear Weapons", "A Nuclear-Free Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals". These are slogans which point to an anti-nuclear agenda different from that contained in the United-Nations-supported anti-nuclear initiatives such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Limited Test Ban Treaty, or indeed the bilateral arms control treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union like the SALT treaties and the now defunct ABM Treaty, an agenda for a nuclear-weapons-free Europe unrelated to the future which American governments and American citizens project for their own country's nuclear arsenal.

They are slogans predicated on the arguable view that it is not the task of non-Americans to dictate to the United States government the outlines of that country's nuclear weapons policy. This, de facto, is what United States governments - as indicated by their insistence on nuclear disarmament of countries such as Iraq and North Korea - are in any case already demanding, and it is a demand which probably enhances whatever legitimacy present-day United States "unilateralist" policies continue to enjoy in the eyes of a section of the American public.

I have been asked to explain why I - a non-American - am not interested in trying to change the mind of Americans who insist on their own country's (but not other countries') "right" to possess weapons of mass destruction, and I would like here to do just that.

Ever since the Second World War the ruling elite of the United States has been playing a many-sided game exploiting the belief of a large American electoral clientele that nuclear weapons, like all other substantial questions of US domestic and foreign policy, are a matter for Americans and only Americans to make decisions about, and that to demand otherwise is to challenge American national sovereignty.

The Soviet Union, with its repeated calls throughout the Cold War for universal nuclear disarmament, challenged this conception of American national sovereignty. It did this while simultaneously developing its own nuclear arsenal, presumably because it thought this was the only way it could protect itself from the fate of the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Anti-nuclear movements outside the US and the USSR, particularly in Europe, through the fifties and sixties began to be attracted to the view that, whatever justifications were advanced for the "defensive" nature of Soviet nuclear weapons, the Soviet nuclear arsenal was as much a threat to humanity as the American nuclear arsenal. ("There are no good and bad nuclear weapons" was a popular slogan of the time). I became a member of the non-aligned European peace movement from the early eighties onward, and this was the central plank of our politics. We were absolutely intolerant of the Moscow-controlled World Peace Council’s assertions that there was a qualitative difference between Soviet and American nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons policies.

After 1988 and the signing of the INF agreement on intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe, the World Peace Council's politics took a big blow. Gorbachev was no longer asserting a principle of "balance". Henceforth two standards were being applied: American nuclear weapons were to be judged by one set of criteria. Soviet nuclear weapons were to be judged by another set of criteria. Internal critics in the Soviet Union who were unabashedly hostile to Soviet (and only Soviet) nuclear weapons, irrespective of questions of "deterrence" of US nuclear weapons, began to be tolerated. Their views were even officially encouraged by the politicians of 'perestroika', with the calculation that they could be used to exert pressure on the Soviet military lobby.

To be consistent with their previous positions, at the time of the August 1991 coup against Gorbachev, the non-aligned peace movements should have demanded the complete abolition of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. There is much evidence that Gorbachev and even moreso Yeltsin would have liked to see such a demand coming from the Western anti-nuclear movements because it would have strengthened their own hand against the Soviet military. But towards the end of the eighties the non-aligned peace movements started going quiet, and/or moving onto other concerns (such as racism and nationalism).

Thus American official policy, which was for denuclearisation of the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus but not Russia, went unchallenged. The right of Ukrainians, Kazakhs and Belarus citizens to live in nuclear-weapons-free states was respected but the right of Russians was not. Yeltsin’s most radical anti-nuclear proposals were ignored.

The policies of the non-aligned anti-nuclear movements were thus successfully subverted. The Cold War model of social mobilisation through manipulation of enemy-image stereotypes (the non-aligned peace movement had accused both sides of the Cold War of manipulating enemy-image stereotypes) went unchallenged.
As a result, the model began to be extended. It was applied not just to Communists, but also to politicians deemed too nationalistic (or 'racist'), then to 'terrorists'. Now we also see experiments with the manufacturing of threats in the form of diseases (SARS), with the politicisation of the medical profession [after the promising start made by Doctors without Borders] foreshadowing a Brave New World beyond the wildest dreams of Huxley or Orwell.

The American nuclear weapons/Star Wars lobby would have received a severe setback if the Soviet nuclear arsenal had been successfully abolished after 1991 at the initiative of the non-aligned anti-nuclear movements. Now, with recomposition of political-military collaboration long established in Russia, it is too late for such demands. The best one could hope for would be a bilateral European/Russian nuclear disarmament initiative on Brazilian/Argentinian lines, to serve as a model for similar Russian/Chinese, Indian/Pakistani, and Middle Eastern initiatives including Israel.

The only way there can be any hope for this spiralling politics of threat to be subverted is by tracing it all back to its origins, and to its prototype, which was the Cold War nuclear threat predicated on manipulating American fears that an enemy (whether Communists, the United Nations, the European Union or whatever) is going to try to deprive American citizens of their sovereign right to arm themselves in any way they judge necessary.

Who at the moment is addressing this problem, at its roots? Not people who merely regurgitate United Nations policies on WMD that seem purposely designed to arouse the paranoia of "patriotic" Americans that some hostile outside agency is going to try to take away their nukes.

Not Noam Chomsky, who in a recent indescribably stupid or cynical interview with an Indian journalist said that following the occupation of Iraq there will be a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, because the lesson that has now been conveyed is that only states armed with nuclear weapons can be sure of not being attacked by the United States.

Will Chomsky be reminded of this interview if the United States attacks North Korea? No, he will not. No more than supporters of the nuclear disarmament of Iraq will ever ask themselves why, if it was such a good idea for e.g. Iraq to be disarmed, they never demanded that the Soviet Union be disarmed.

At the beginning of his "Green History of the World" Clive Ponting tells the story of the people of Easter Island, which to me has great interest as a parable of the nuclear arms race. This remote Polynesian people had developed a technologically and culturally advanced mini-civilisation on their island, centred on the ceremonial construction and erection of the stone idols that are the surviving emblems of this now vanished race. When the Polynesians came to the island it was apparently covered with dense forest. When Europeans encountered the degraded remnants of the Easter Island civilisation in the seventeenth century it was bare of trees. They had all been cut down so that the logs could be used to roll the huge stone idols into position. The various mini tribes of the island had competed in the performance of the ceremony of constructing and installing the idols. When resources began to run out there was an acceleration in the construction and installation of the idols, as the idol ceremonial was apparently perceived as a potential solution to the ecological and social problems the islanders faced. There was also a permanent state of warfare as each tribe attempted to destroy the idols of other rival tribes. It is because of this acceleration in idol building and warfare towards the end of the Easter Island civilisation that the island is strewn with the ruins of half-completed and destroyed idols.

It is time for the nuclear weapons debate to be reopened, as I attempted in Athens to reopen it with M. Bernard Cassen. And a very good idea for present-day anti-hegemonic citizens' movements would be to take up the discussion where it was abandoned at the end of the eighties by the citizens' movements of that time.
May 2003