KPFA's Larry Bensky hosts Chip "Dulles" Berlet

Bensky seems to be really out of touch with anything left of center these days. I used to listen because the 2000 election coverage was good, but now he just seems defensive toward anything original, which makes him appear afraid, very very afraid.

Useful URL's about the actual guidelines for dealing with hijackings, show what crap Berlet was dishing out (and Bensky eagerly swallowing)
Joint Chiefs on the policy:
<http://www.dtic.mi/doctrine/cjcsidirectives.htm>
Scroll down to CJCSI 3610.01A, 6/1/01

FAA:
<http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/ATC/Chp10/atc1002.html#10-2-5>
<http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html/#5-6-4>

And does anyone seriously think the Air Force, which never seems to bother with public safety/ecological concerns, is going to avoid scrambling aircraft in an *emergency* out of worries over *noise complaints*?

The established Left, be it Berlet, Bensky,Chomsky, Herman, Mike Albert, David Corn or ChuckO or... is desperate!!

http://www.faa.gov/ATpubs/AIM/Chap5/aim0506.html#5-6-4

Before I heard this latest travesty, I gave up on Larry Bensky simply because his hoarse voice is unbearable. Further, when people call in, he always cuts them off as he seems to "know better" about just about everything. Herr Bensky ought to spell "retire" with all deliberate speed.

Part of the problem with some of the people at KPFA is that they are registered Democrats. I have no idea of L. Bensky is or not. In any event, KPFA is definitely not a socialist radio station, although being a socialist is not a criteria for realizing that Sept 11 was another Reichstag Fire.

My own observation is that people who question official government stories on what would otherwise be a crime, but in this case, is a political outrage, are people who often have some legal background, or simply people who distrust "authority," which is usually the workingclass. Anyone who has experience with crime at any level distrusts the government's Sept 11 story.

I am glad to hear the people who called in are not sheep, following the government line. To all who are doing the hard work of exposing the government's lies: Keep plugging away. We are all with you; we are all reading the Internet revelations and putting two and two together. Collectively, we will certainly come up with who did it and the evidence substantiating our conclusions. As far as I am concerned, the day it happened, "who did it" was the US government, the CIA and Israel, and the proof is being revealed daily. A proper investigation, of course, works from the evidence to the conclusion. Either way, we seem to be arriving at the same conclusion!

The "Socialist" above fits the stereotype of a myopic know-it-all. He says "Collectively, we will certainly come up with who did it and the evidence substantiating our conclusions."

So in other words, come to a conclusion and then find evidence that fits. Ignore anything else. Paint as government agents anyone who points out inconvenient facts. Sounds like a Washington insider to me.

"Socialist" then tries to back-pedal.
"A proper investigation, of course, works from the evidence to the conclusion." Uh, yeah.

No wonder the left is useless. They're too bust gossipping about Dubya to get out there and really change things.

I give up.

It's good to know who's lining up where, plus you provided some good information from the show. And you provided my favorite quote of the day: "Agents, Assets or Assholes. It doesn't matter which, they all serve the same purpose."

I'm sick of Liberals who are happy to point out logical fallacies in the "conspiracy theories" and spend only enough time scrutinizing the conventional story to say either "a U.S. President would never kill so many of his own people" ... or "we need to be focussing on real/systemic problems and not individual acts of evil" while REFUSING to consider the systemic function, aka: Moral Imperative, 9-11 serves in the US War of Terror that Liberals pretend they actively oppose. The Official 9-11 Story is the carpet this Neverending War stands on.

And, I always wonder about people who sit at their computer, belligerently exhorting others to get out there and DO SOMETHING that really matters. What are *you* doing?

In a word, like Chomsky and like Cockburn, the Professional Left, is more Professional than Left.

Respectability comes first, then outrage.

And that is why we need Indy Media! No more control of the media!

Anyone know if there are recordings of this show online anywhere? I'd like to hear it for myself.

I think these two are wrong. I think they may be too conservative in their analysis. But I will not attack them in a generalized, reactionary matter. I look to these types to help me work through my miscalculations and mistakes. Their analysis may not be far from the truth. Instead of attacking them like your bullies on a play ground, lets discuss the weaknesses and strenghts of our and their arguments. Dont react, think.

Mort, is that you?

Chip Berlet on Larry Bensky's Sunday Salon provided convoluted and erroneous responses as to why military planes weren't scrambled the moment it was known that a hijacking was in progress.

Said Berlet, "Why weren't there plans in place to scramble jets…why wasn't there an assumption that hijackers would seize planes and fly them into buildings?" And if you research every one of those questions, what you find is information that goes back, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years about discussions about the cost effectiveness of changing the way that hijackings are responded to. Remember that the air traffic controllers were out of New Hampshire, and they were sitting with a book in front of them, telling them what to do in what order, okay? And if you look…and this is all stuff that you can find, not on the web, but if you go to government repositories, you'll look at documents, and they'll say things like, 'You don't scramble planes until you've made contact with the hijackers.' Now why? Because the assumption, which turns out to be false, is the hijackers are either going to make a demand or want to land. And that if you hijack [sic] planes before you're talking to them, they could freak out and shoot the pilot. So you don't want planes flying next to hijacked airliners until you're talking to the hijackers. Now is that a bad idea, in retrospect? Sure it is, but it goes back 7 or 8 years."

Talk about pulling stuff from thin air. The FAA's and Joint Chiefs of Staff's instructions pertaining to hijackings say nothing about communicating with hijackers before taking action. To the contrary, it is the absence of communication with a plane that makes the situation an emergency. Has Berlet forgotten that in October 1999, when a twin-engine Lear jet carrying golf champion Payne Stewart and four others lost contact with ground controllers, shortly after taking off from Orlando International Airport in Florida for what was supposed to be a routine flight to Dallas, the FAA requested help from the military? Two Air Force F-16s were dispatched and followed the runaway plane as it raced across a half-dozen states, then ran out of fuel and crashed in central South Dakota, killing all aboard.

It gets better: "'Why weren't the planes flown out of New Jersey instead of the Cape?' Well, because the citizens of New Jersey who live around the air force base, which is being dismantled little by little, McGuire Air Force Base and several other air force bases which have been being deconditioned and lowered in status for the last 30 years because suburbs grew up around them, and they don't want jet fighters scrambling from those bases all the time."

All the time? How many planes have been hijacked or lost contact with ground controllers in the last 10 years? Is there something else we don't know about? And a New Jersey community's sensitivity to noise would hardly be a factor in such circumstances.

Yes, it is possible we could be wrong about the way the dots seem to connect. But September 11 did not occur in a vacuum and more and more keeps coming out each day. Moreover, the nonelected occupant of the Oval Office and his cronies by manipulating energy costs—oil, gas, electricity—started the economy on a downward spiral even before they were handed the White House. Now we not only have an economy in tatters, an empty treasury, the Social Security trust fund and the federal workers' pension fund tapped out to hide the fact Washington has defaulted on its loans, an illegal war that has been decreed to go on into perpetuity, but an administration that in a little more than 16 months has broken the record for scandals.

So how do we explain this behavior of the lily-livered left? If the Ivory Tower gentlemen are leaving it to us in the trenches to get to the truth, because they won't dirty their hands to help us collect the bits and pieces to connect the dots, why then are they so ferociously attacking our efforts? Are they currying favor with someone? Is it time for us to start following the money?