Reviews/ Order Form - Popular Paranoia/ Shadow Govt

REVIEWS/ ORDER FORM FOR "POPULAR PARANOIA" AND "SHADOW GOVERNMENT"

REVIEW by Robin Ramsay, Fortean Times:

Steamshovel is the magazine edited/published by FT columnist Kenn Thomas. Some issues ago Thomas adopted the slogan - or mission statement - 'all conspiracy - no theory'; and that is on the front cover of Popular Paranoia, along with: 'Conspiracy! UFOs! True Crime! Mind Control! Parapolitics!'; a pulp crime scene painting, sprawling woman, man with gun in hand; and the title, in pulp magazine typeface, 'Popular Paranoia'. Is Thomas telling us that Steamshovel is the successor to the pulp 'true cime/true confessions' mags of the 1950s and 60s?

This soft-back, A4, 314 page book is issues 14 to 18 of Steamshovel, with the text reset but with the illustrations retained. This typographic change makes it appear more serious, much less 'pulp' than the magazine originals.

Thomas's list of nouns and exclamation marks above kind of covers the contents but doesn't catch his particular bent. Thomas's heroes are the likes of Wilhelm Reich, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac - counter-culture figures of the 60s and 70s. And it was in that counter-culture, rather than in the orthodox American left, that the political cultural fringe - including Kenn's subject list above - what is now perceived as today's conspiracy culture, began to appear. Despite the book's cover, Steamshovel is an incarnation not of the true crime/true confessions genre but of the 60s and 70s underground press, with the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll replaced by paranoia about the American state. All of which may convey less than the following, the first four articles in the anthology: AIDS heretic Alan Cantwell ruminating on 'paranoia/paranoid: buzz words to silence the political incorrect'; an interview with assassination/conspiracy writer John Judge from the Committee on Political Assassinations (Judge comes out with something very good: 'Michael McClure said years ago that even paranoids have enemies. But that doesn't mean that the paranoids know who their enemies are') ; a portrait of Elizabeth Clare Prophet, a New Age Christian mystic. Heresy! Assassination! Mysticism! UFOs!

Len Bracken writes for Steamshovel and his book would slip easily into it. Bracken thinks there is something fishy about 9/11 and the anthrax incident which swiftly followed, though he hasn't decided if those events were 'facilitated or engendered by [American] statesmen' (p. 34), 'something of an inside job' (p. 115), or that 'the United States allowed it to happen' (p. 142). Bracken rehearses the main elements of the conspiratorial view of 9/11 in the context of many historical examples, going from the Greeks in 400 BC through to the 'strategy of tension in Italy in the 1970s', showing that states have always been prepared to perpetrate acts of terror against their own citizens.

The best place to pursue the 9/11 story remains the Internet but Bracken's rather slim book - 268 pages but big type, double-spaced - is infinitely better than the two by Thierry Meysann, Pentagate and 9/11: The Big lie (London: Carnot) on the same subject.

REVIEW by Jaye Beldo of Lone Nutter News:

The best of Kenn Thomas's Steamshovel Press, one of the most potent rags around, can be found within the covers of Popular Paranoia, chock full of articles, letters and interviews with such outlaw luminaries as William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and others. Get the scoop on just about every unsavory ploy imagined, real and somewhere in between in this timely and conspirational anthology. Popular Paranoia serves as a much needed reminder that the world of alternative 'zines , not to mention the vibrant underground they come from, is alive and well in a revolutionary and sustainable way. If you are looking for some politically viable option to the corporate pablum being churned out by the media whores and their pimps, I suggest ordering Popular Paranoia ASAP. I particularly enjoyed the articles on Rajneesh, Elizabeth Claire Prophet and Uri Dowbenko's interview with John Coleman author of Conspirator's Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300. I actually found out why I never liked The Beatles very much: they were possibly a product of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations who used the (con)fab four to stimulate drug usage amongst American youth (Rock n' Roll as a Tavistock plot). Coleman describes Theo Adorno's experiments with Baal-inese music of a discordant, atonal nature which would make people disoriented, a necessary prerequisite for MK of various kinds. Apparently Adorno had access to sensitive information on this kind of music, tucked away in the British Museum and was commissioned by the Committee of 300 to 'prepare the way for their huge drug invasion of America.' Intrigues like these abound in Popular Paranoia. I suggest ordering a copy pronto if you want to be in the conspiratorial know in an impressively pervasive way.

In The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror recently published by Adventures Unlimited Press we are given ample opportunity to study the sordid and manifold intrigues of various terrorist states as embodied not only in the ersatz Bush administration, but in Caesar's Rome, Churchill's England and elsewhere. Len Bracken and Andrew Smith conjoin their talents, with obvious political sophistication, to remind us that not all acts of terrorism originate from marginal realms as the global media Moloch would like us to believe. The authors provide an impressive historical overview of state sponsored terrorism, backing up their Machiavellian claims that violence on a grand scale is often used to further preserve/promote the bottom line agendas of the ruling class. Citing incidences such as the sinking of the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma City Bombing(s) and of course the premiere act of terrorism of recent times: 9-11, it is most encouraging that these conspiracy researchers are dedicated to exposing the ongoing, high level transgressions perpetrated by the state. Such a command of historical facts as well as a facile talent for weaving cohesive, potentially indicting arguments together makes this book a worthwhile read indeed. I'll be amazed if the publisher isn't ordered by the feds to shred all existing copies of The Shadow Government because of the ultimately incriminating data within. Just imagine members of the Supreme Court being handed copies of this potentially incendiary book by some courageous renegade lawyer and watch how much trouble the almighty nine have glossing over administrative crimes with their glib rhetoric. The knees of the shadow government itself may start buckling if this important book starts to get the mainstream scrutiny it deserves.

Jaye Beldo may be reached at netnous@aol.com

REVIEW by Joan d'Arc, PARANOIA Magazine:

The dangerous schemes our statesmen use to obtain what they by no means deserve prevent us, for the moment, from relaxing or writing about men and women who set good examples.

A new book from Adventures Unlimited, The Shadow Government: 9-11 and State Terror, is an astute political thesis on state orchestrated terror. Taking the reader on a tour of three continents, spanning a century of terrorist events, political historian Len Bracken finally lands in the present day to examine whether the state "attacked itself" on September 11.

Exploring numerous historical precedents for such a bold assumption, Bracken winds a treacherous tale of travesty and incomprehensible malfeasance on the part of governments worldwide and throughout history. Be prepared to go on an historical journey from Caesar to George W. Bush, and from Pearl Harbor to the Oklahoma City bombing to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and up to the September 11 horror and the following anthrax mailings, all of which according to Bracken fall under the CIA nomenclature, "false flag" operations.

As Kenn Thomas writes in the foreword to Shadow Government, "of all conspiracy theories put forth since 9-11, the state terror thesis is the simplest, most elegant and most easily followed." This is true. Bracken's thesis combines anarchistic philosophy and history with conspiracy journalism to bring the reader to an exceptionally heightened state of awareness. Rather than showing us one smoking gun, Bracken steps back, way back, and allows us to see guns firing all over the place. With his wide-sweeping historicity, he paints a picture of widespread political 'crimes of the state' in which we the people become pawns on a great chessboard.

Bracken defines defensive terrorism as "direct use of terrorism by the state, that is, open displays of violence by the state or paramilitary organizations acting on its behalf [to] terrorize the public into subordination." Outlining the historical baiting of anarchists by countries such as Italy, Bracken asks a question we should all be asking: are we dealing with a fringe group or a state? Are we being led to point a finger at fringe groups and rogue nations rather than our own Shadow Gestapo?

In one Italian example, Bracken shows how defensive terrorism is accomplished in a "false flag" covert operation in a way that is "designed to make citizens feel more dependent on the state." Is this beginning to sound a little too familiar? As has become clear since 9-11, the state used international operatives, anarchists and radical militia members to do their dirty work in the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center bombing, and on 9-11. These are the activities of the state that breed all social violence as the children learn to emulate the father: a depraved state that would sicken even Machiavelli.

Bracken asserts that "the massacres in New York and Virginia were engendered or facilitated by statesmen in order to silence opposition, consolidate power, and rally the population behind a war favorable to military and oil industries." As proof, Bracken points to "the way terrorists and their financiers were repeatedly protected and the way statesmen deceived us."

It is downright ridiculous that the government had no idea that terrorists would use skyjacked planes as missiles, considering that the idea was mentioned in reports and memos, and used in video games and in a Tom Clancy novel, Debt of Honor. Was the FBI simply inept, as has been admitted by the media's limited disclosure, known as "limited hangout" by the CIA? This is only possible in the universe of the terminally naīve.

With his sweeping timeline in the back of the book, which begins with the sinking of the USS Maine in Cuban waters on February 15, 1898 and carries us to June 13, 2002, we graduate from the playpen into the real world. The blinders are gone. We realize the truth of Bracken's words: "Terrorism, which fails as a long term strategy for small groups with big demands, can be an effective if messy tactic when used defensively by states."

We can no longer afford to be naīve. As Bracken writes, "Self-inflicted wounds, or what amount to them, become the rationale for expanded roles and funding for agencies that routinely dissimulate and deploy ruses on civilians, namely the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence." For instance, we now know that J. Edgar Hoover withheld information from the White House regarding Japanese plans to attack the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. And as Canadian political prisoner Vreeland claimed he saw on a memo before 9-11: "Let one happen, stop the rest!"

Although conspiracy theories are today marginalized by an elite owned and state aligned press (which tells you not to believe anything you read on the internet), the first conspiracy in history, Bracken points out, is noted in the first chapter of Histories, by Herodotus. As Bracken also points out, all contemporary covert ops would be considered conspiracies by Prince Machiavelli, whom Bracken quotes as saying: "Many more princes have lost their lives and their states in this way than by open war."

Yet, historians and media alike are thwarted from holding this point of view, therefore, Bracken and Smith must offer a semi-apology: "Merely by broaching the subject of the state indirectly attacking or allowing an attack on citizens it should defend, we stand accused of being conspiracy theorists, a label we neither accept nor reject because we are independent historians and strategic theorists who do not share the widespread academic prejudice against conspiracies."

Yet, as Bracken points out, 9-11 plane hijacker Moussaoui is on trial on conspiracy charges, so the system somehow "recognizes the event for what it was" although it "may limit the scope to protect the state." To read Bracken is to realize this event was actually nothing new in history. Bracken believes the 9-11 acts, just like any other colonizing venture, were a pretext for war over oil in Afghanistan, and were facilitated by the states of U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing, from our point of view. But for the elite it's another story. As Bracken, also an economist, points out:

"History shows that the costs for infrastructure and security to colonize a country can exceed the riches gained by the empire in raw materials. For example, costs associated with the September 11 attacks and the US response should be added to the defense budget because they were at many levels the consequences of US troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia and US military support for Israel. While the masses pay back war debts, the elite almost always profit from the extraordinary military consumption that feeds our rulers' greed and lust for dominion."

Len Bracken would rather be relaxing, or writing about "men and women who set good examples." We are grateful that he felt compelled to write this book and hopeful that when he's old and gray he will have many more principled men and women to write about in the next generation. It is the only real hope we have left.

Joan d'Arc may be reached at http://www.paranoiamagazine.com or joandarc@compuserve.com

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