“The chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.”
– RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882) American poet, Unitarian minister, philosopher
Dr. Daniele Ganser starts his lecture before a packed auditorium.
istory Professor Daniele Ganser is a teacher many have wished they had while in school, and one suspects they will become joined by many others after hearing him speak. To accentuate our admiration for Dr. Ganser, we would say his teaching style is simple, direct and shows a concern for reaching the student or listener with a maximum of facts and minimum of extraneous or irrelevant tangential information.
To use a baseball hitting analogy, one might suggest that Daniele Ganser has an extremely high batting average as a teacher, where comparisons to the great Boston Red Sox .400 hitter Ted Williams – Williams nicknamed “The Splendid Splinter” – are perfectly in order.
We would like to share a selection of some of our comments on YouTube from the past (3) months illustrative of our strong alignment to the worldview of Professor Ganser, and to help emphasize our equally strong appreciation for his peace activism efforts and moral courage.
Don’t ask how the world’s daily fossil fuel usage became connected with a beer-drinking song, as that question can only, perhaps, be answered by psychiatrists. However, one has to admit that the title of this post is at least a little catchy. With the 13th anniversary of September 11, 2001 in a few days, the search for any current happenings on a new investigation of 9/11 events commenced, and there was found a very good 20-minute documentary made by Danish journalist Tommy Hansen on YouTube. Mr. Hansen shares the view held by many that a real investigation has never occurred, and that the official 9/11 Commission Report was a whitewash.
For those interested in viewing the short documentary, just go to “Journalist Tommy Hansen” channel at YouTube. The film was the original video for this post but, after looking at Tommy Hansen’s other uploads, the following interview of Swiss historian Daniele Ganser became the choice instead. Perhaps some readers are familiar with Dr. Ganser’s research and work, and have made a conscious effort to hear him speak. As this is a somewhat difficult to find 2014 interview in English, the chance to share it with others came to the forefront.
In trying to find a general description for Daniele Ganser, the first thought which came to mind is he is this generation’s equal to the late historian Howard Zinn – famous for his book “A People’s History of the United States”. Like Howard Zinn before him, Ganser is a history scholar who has lectured at the university level for many years, and both focus(ed) on the true history as opposed to “sanitized” versions most men and women become exposed to in their history classes. During the 90-minute interview with Tommy Hansen, Dr. Ganser delivers a history lesson filled with facts more and more people around the world, fortunately, are rapidly becoming aware of.
Ganser begins the interview pointing out that the world needs 88 million barrels of oil per day. His view is that energy, particularly fossil fuel energy, has been the basis for most wars in recent history; he understands the world hasn’t converted to renewables so for the time being needs fossil fuels, except that humanity should “have energy, but don’t kill for it”. He and Mr. Hansen talk about Iraq War 2 where the American and British governments under Bush and Blair fixed the facts around the policy of going to war on Iraq.
This part of the interview focuses on government/mainstream media war propaganda, using the example of then U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney warning Americans of Saddam Hussein’s “mad wish” to build nuclear weapons, supply terrorists with those nuclear weapons, and the potential for those weapons to become detonated on an American city – all lies intentionally told to induce fear and manipulate acceptance of war on Iraq. Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after watching George W. Bush speak on television to the nation about “Saddam Hussein acquiring yellow cake from Niger for making nuclear weapons”, personally traveled to Africa and Niger but found no evidence of Bush’s claim, then upon return to the U.S. wrote an article published in the Washington Post titled: “What I Didn’t Find In Africa”.
Shortly after that article shocked the international community, Wilson’s wife Valerie had her CIA cover blown by the Bush administration as a “warning” to any other person who exposed the lies. Such actions by government against men and women whose only “infraction” was telling the truth about events have become even more retributive since the days of Bush/Cheney but, fortunately, more and more people are choosing to side with the truth-tellers.
Mr. Hansen asked Dr. Ganser, now 41 years old, when he first became aware of mainstream media and government propaganda and Ganser replied “20 years ago”. During the time he studied history in Switzerland, he was taught to “think for yourself” and, at the age of 25, he started asking his professors questions about “secret services”/covert actions/wars, after he researched into plots by the U.S. against Cuba and Fidel Castro. Ganser found that professors were very reluctant to engage in discussions with him about “these important, delicate issues”, but that he found one professor willing to spend eight hours discussing the topic, and learned things the mainstream media had not reported or professors of history, for fear of retribution, didn’t speak or write about.
Until that point in his life Dr. Ganser says he “believed for 20 years that governments would not kill for taking resources”. He shares the example of the Vietnam War, where the Vietnamese fought the French colonialist system and won their independence in the 1950’s, only to later in the 1960’s become the victims of U.S. military aggression which resulted in 3 million deaths. Ganser pointed out that Lyndon Johnson went on national television after a “false flag” now known as the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” and told Americans “We’ve been viciously attacked”. The Gulf of Tonkin incident never happened, yet Lyndon Johnson told Americans that because of the “vicious attack” America must “retaliate”, and Johnson began escalation of violence in one of the saddest chapters of American – and world – history: the Vietnam War.
For peace activists to become effective in working to decrease or stop war, Dr. Ganser believes the focus needs to become a great deal more upon “the lies”. He and Mr. Hansen agree that the United States has become the latest empire in the line of empires through history, based on U.S. military spending of $700 billion/year, the U.S.’ being the nation with the largest gross domestic product, and the United States having the most military bases around the Earth.
When spending four years of research for a doctoral degree Dr. Ganser studied covert actions, including “Operation Gladio” in Europe. Gladio originated shortly after NATO became established in 1945, and consisted of “secret soldiers” armed with guns and explosives – essentially for the task of preventing communist groups in France and Italy from gaining political power. Gladio – ended as of the 1990’s according to Ganser – carried out “false flag” operations around what is today’s European Union in the period from 1945 to the 1990’s; in the 80’s an Italian investigative judge uncovered an Italian “false flag” terrorist attack which was to be blamed on the Italian left, then the right wing perpetrator of the attack was apprehended and admitted it was Gladio.
Professor Ganser uses the term “strategy of tension” to describe Gladio and other secret operations designed to overthrow democratically elected governments like Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953, Guatemala’s Arbenz in 1954, Lumumba of Congo in 1960, Chile’s Allende in 1973, up to Hussein in 2003 and Gaddafi in 2011, among others. He states Syria and Ukraine are the latest victims of this strategy, most likely referring to the “false flag” chemical attacks last August in Syria and destabilization in Ukraine leading to 100 deaths from snipers’ bullets and the removal of Viktor Yanukovych from power (this interview took place in April 2014, three months before MH17 became shot down in Eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 on board).
The number of people involved in using “the technique”, according to Ganser, is a very, very tiny élite group. He believes the connection between war and lies is not the exception, butthe rule. He goes on to talk about the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks on America, and why he thinks thousands of people died while the U.S. government could have prevented the attacks or at least warned those killed to evacuate beforehand.
He names Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security chief, as the key architect of secret wars around the world. The funding and training of “terrorists” began while Carter was president in the late 1970’s, when the U.S. created the Afghanistan mercenaries to topple a Russian-friendly government there. Ganser believes the “false flag”/destabilization technique has been successful, so it will most likely remain in use into the future”. After Mr. Hansen asked him about today’s ongoing war on terror, Ganser said the “so-called war on terror is nonsense”.
While terrorism involves blowing up a ship, truck, or building, war is violence on a much greater scale. All because of the remaining people on Earth (that tiny group of elites) who still profess that violence against violence creates less violence.
While the interview will strike those who’ve gotten their news about world events from the mainstream corporate media as containing shocking and perhaps unbelievable information, Ganser thinks the incidences of that kind of reaction are growing smaller thanks to what he calls “the information revolution”. He and interviewer Hansen have seen the internet evolve from slow-loading information with Netscape Navigator at the beginnings to around-the-Earth, instantaneous information transfers today.
He finds it amazing how there is always a “new Hitler” in the media and more media “terror and war” reports always coming around the corner. He is critical of journalism for failing to accurately inform the people, then brings up German Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), who said in 1933: “It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion”. Ganser said “Unfortunately, it’s not that we’ve overcome Goebbels, but made him more perfect”.
Daniele Ganser, toward the end of the interview, said there are many aspects of America that he likes, but he doesn’t like that America has bombed so many countries – more than any other country on Earth. Speaking to scholars, researchers, and academics who know the truth about what is occurring around the world with regard to propaganda, “false flags”, and the wars which start because of them, he says in general terms that silence is no longer an option, and that aware men and women must speak out.
Finally, he says we must “rid ourselves of the idea we have to have more bombs and kill more people”. Ganser says it is unfortunate but the wars associated with oil and natural gas will continue, while solutions – in the form of wind, sun, geothermal, water and other renewable energies – are already available and implementable on the largest scale.
It would be perfectly understandable, after listening to Daniele Ganser’s interview, if some felt an urge to grab one of those 88 bottles of beer on the wall.
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(Thank you to Journalist Tommy Hansen at YouTube) Length: 90 minutes
Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms.. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
This blog is devoted to legal, historical and human rights matters, in which issues of general concern are addressed freely and spontaneously. It is intended to further an informal exchange of views in the democratic spirit of freedom of opinion and respect for the opinions of others, in an effort to understand rather than condemn, to propose constructive solutions rather than grandstand. The perspective is both from inside and outside the box and the added value lies more in the questions than in the answers.
istory Professor Daniele Ganser is a teacher many have wished they had while in school, and one suspects they will become joined by many others after hearing him speak. To accentuate our admiration for Dr. Ganser, we would say his teaching style is simple, direct and shows a concern for reaching the student or listener with a maximum of facts and minimum of extraneous or irrelevant tangential information.
THE ONENESS of HUMANITY 