by Kevin Barrett,
www.truthjihad.com
It is often said that knowledge is power. But this simple three-word sentence can mean different things to different people.
For the followers of Malcolm X, it means empowerment through self-education. For the followers of Foucault, on the other hand, there is no such thing as knowledge per se, apart from the workings of power; what we take to be knowledge is simply a shadow on the wall of our cave, cast by an infernal blaze of power that is always hidden somewhere behind us, just out of view.
The conflict between these two positions is what is really at stake in today's terror wars. The first position is the foundation not just of Islam, but of all true religions--and all true philosophy as well. Religion, after all, teaches us that (metaphysical) truth is indeed available to those who strive for it; while philosophy means "love of wisdom" and likewise involves the quest for truth, restricting itself (as religion does not) to critical methods.
The other position, that knowledge is an illusion created by the play of power, derives from Nietzche and reaches its absurd extreme in the judeo-nazism* of Leo Strauss. Strauss, the top student of leading Nazi philosopher Carl Schmidt, taught Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the rest of the neocons that there is no truth, no good, and of course no God, and that justice is simply what the strong seize for themselves. According to Strauss, the elite--that is, the neocons--are exempt from morality, and ought to take power covertly and rule by foisting big lies upon the masses.
The first position--that truth is real and available to those who sincerely seek knowledge--is a torch being carried today by many people of diverse outlooks--and also by the religion of Islam, the core of a (re)-expanding civilization. (In Islam, God is also known as al-haqq, "the Truth," and the Prophet Muhammad, pbuh, has famously urged us to "seek knowledge even unto China.")
The second position--that there is no truth, just power--is a dark message being broadcast not just by the neocons and postmodernists, but also by universities, think tanks, and the controlled corporate media, all of which unabashedly shy away from truths that cut too sharply against the grain of power. This situation reflects a decadent civilization's loss of faith in truth, in knowledge, even in existence itself.
The masters of illusion who fabricated the "clash of civilizations" often frame this alleged event as a clash of civilization per se, identified with the West, against the uncivilized barbarism of non-Western peoples, especially Muslims. The reality is rather the reverse. Civilization rests on a bedrock faith in truth and knowledge. When that bedrock is shaken, civilization collapses. Those who have fabricated the big lie known as the "war on terror" are the real barbarians. Like termites, they are gnawing away at the foundations of civilization. The civilized people, the defenders of civilization, are those who seek knowledge and proclaim the truth.
Nick Kollerstrom is among the planet's leading defenders of civilization, and his book on the London bombings is exemplary in its willingness to follow the truth wherever it leads. And here, as in the case of 9/11, it leads very quickly to a very uncomfortable place.
As Kollerstrom shows us, with regard to the 7/7 London bombings, knowledge is indeed Power--first name Peter. By simply googling "Peter Power 7/7" any bright twelve-year-old can quickly learn, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the 7/7 bombings were an obvious, bald-faced inside job.
Peter Power, for those who have not yet googled him, is the Scotland Yard terror chief who, on July 7th, 2005, was head of the British security firm Visor Consultants. In the evening of July 7th, 2005, Peter Power appeared on television and stated that on that very morning, he, Peter Power, as part of his work with Visor Consultants, had been running a "terror drill" that perfectly mimicked the actual terror attacks, including the exact times and locations where the bombs went off. Unfortunately Power did not reveal the name of the agency that hired him to run the drill. Subsequently, Power apparently realized his mistake, and began offering a series of ludicrously unconvincing retractions.
For the benefit of those unable to see that two and two make four, Kollerstrom painstakingly calculates that the odds of a terror attack randomly matching an exercise of this kind are about one in a billion.
Unlike Nafeez Ahmed, the author of the only other critical work on the London bombings, Kollerstrom follows the ugly truth exposed by Power's revelation (and by reams upon reams of other evidence) to its logical conclusion: We now know that 7/7 was an inside job designed to frame Muslims and hype the bogus "war on terror."
But what good is it to know something like that? Isn't it more advantageous to simply "raise questions about the official version of events" as Ahmed pretends to be doing--even as the questions he raises, and the information he presents, blow the official story out of the water and reveal the event as an obvious false-flag operation? After all, by pretending to be simply raising questions, Ahmed has been able to undermine the "war on terror" while keeping his university teaching position. Some of us who have spoken more plainly have not been not so lucky.
Despite its pecuniary drawbacks, plain speaking has the advantage of enabling action in a way that "simply raising questions" does not. In ordinary life, when we know something, we are prepared to take action. For example, if mere questions have been raised about the likelihood of rain, we may not yet feel compelled to find an umbrella before venturing outside. When we finally conclude that we know it is raining--perhaps by looking for ourselves--we take appropriate action.
Likewise, it is fairly easy to question the official version of 9/11 or 7/7 without feeling the need to act. "It will turn out to be like the JFK case," such people often say. "We will never really know what happened." The unspoken corollary to this position is: If I knew it was an inside job, I would have to take action. Taking action would be uncomfortable, even painful. Therefore I must ensure that I don't really know that it was an inside job. I had better not learn too much about this case. And I had better use every available psychological defense mechanism to remain unconvinced by those who claim they do know. I will begin by believing that anyone who knows something like this must be a "conspiracy theorist." That way I can dismiss the whole argument without even having to consider it, simply by mindlessly accepting a pejorative portrayal of the person who advances it. And if anyone tells me I'm falling for the ad hominem fallacy, I'll just say I don't speak Latin.
Kollerstrom's book is not for that kind of person. Only those brave enough to risk their easy equanimity will dare approach it.
The knowledge that we have been lied to so horribly is heartbreaking. So are all the horrors that grew from the lie: The mass murder of more than a million innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan, the assault on freedom, the torture and persecution of tens of thousands of people whose only crime is to profess the religion of Islam. The only way to even begin to atone for such horrors is to confront the lies that produced them. And we must confront those lies head on, with no equivocation or blathering excuses.
Kollerstrom's forthright discussion of 7/7 is followed by an equally acerbic look at the fake terror show trials that followed. As a chemist, Kollerstrom is in a good position to know that even Muslims, with all the power of Allah behind them, cannot turn drugstore hydrogen peroxide into a high explosive by fiddling with it in the lavatory of an airliner. Everyone who has been inconvenienced by the insane "no liquids or gels" so-called security measures adapted in the wake of the liquid bomb hoax needs to read Kollerstrom and weep--whether with grief, laughter, or some combination thereof.
In the end, the reader of this book will understand that the post-Cold War West is being terrorized not by Muslims, but by the Western state apparatus itself. This is hardly surprising, since we now know that it was NATO (under the command of the Pentagon) that was carrying out the worst "terrorist attacks" against Europeans during the Cold War. What makes it even less surprising, for those capable of independent thought, is that the very definition of the state is "that bureaucracy which can plausibly claim a monopoly of violence in a given territory."
How can we make the transition to a form of civilization not based on violence? That is the question that must be answered, and soon, if humanity is to succeed in its role as God's vice-regent on earth, preserving our planetary home as a garden paradise, and venturing forth to explore other worlds.
By exposing the fact that the expression "state terror" is redundant--virtually all the terror that humans inflict on each other is inflicted by states--Nick Kollerstrom and his colleagues in the truth movement are laying the foundations of a Copernican revolution in consciousness and social organization. Once we find that we can do without the terror of the state, and that we can live together in joy rather than apart in fear, we will look back at the so called war on terror as the last gasp of a psychopathic elite. And we will look back on Nick Kollerstrom as one of the brave pioneers who first stepped outside the fear-mongerers' illusion into the light of truth...and beckoned for us to join him.
Nick Kollerstrom was my second-hour guest today on Truth Jihad Radio, 5-7 pm Central, www.AmericanFreedomRadio.com. The show will be archived a few days later here. My complete radio schedule is here. [Note: the last half-hour of the show did not broadcast because I lost my internet and phone service from 6:30 to 7:10 p.m. Charter Communication tells me that over 100 houses in my neighborhood, including mine, lost service for some unknown reason at that time. Maybe somebody in NSA/MI6/Mossad doesn't like Nick?]