ब्रेकिंग थे taboo

Breaking the taboo
Cool people aren't supposed to suggest that 9/11 was an inside job. A howling brigade of smear artists and name callers has had a deterrent effect on the breaking of that taboo, despite the fact that such a large chunk of the public and numerous people with scientific backgrounds believe a conspiracy occurred.

According to presidential aspirant Fred Thompson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi are actually aiding the enemy by blurring the line between prewar intelligence problems and the issue of 9/11 conspiracy. So, taking Thompson at face value, the Democrats are finding a way to break the taboo. For background, see http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/19/thompson-reid/

If Thompson is attacking Reid and Pelosi for implying 9/11 treason, then 9/11 treason has become an open political issue. Obviously, the corporate media don't want to notice that point. But they will. Because politicians like Thompson are acutely aware of the way the blogosphere is running rings around the establishment media on critical wedge issues.

One Democratic congressman who recently broke the taboo is Keith Ellison, a black Muslim and former member of the Nation of Islam. OK, so he's not typical of the U.S. Congress. He's easy to blow off because he'll be taken for a radical by many. But it's the allegedly marginal voices that are often the forerunners when a taboo is beginning to fail.

Ellison told an atheist rights group in Minnesota earlier this month that the 9/11 attacks were "almost like the Reichstag fire; kind of reminds me of that" and pointed out that the Nazis had seized absolute power based on the claim that the communists had been behind it. Ellison said Vice President Dick Cheney's refusal to answer congressional questions was the "very definition of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship."

The congressman avoided saying that he believed 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush bunch. "You know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box, dismiss you."

In fact, a Google search shows scores of blogs dedicated to vicious attacks on Ellison as a wingnut conspiracy theorist; his reticence didn't work because many of the bloggers weren't overly interested in logic. For the original article, go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk and search Keith Ellison.

Most of the attack blogs made a big issue of Ellison's religion. I'd just like to point out that feminist Naomi Wolf, a Jew, and GOP insider Vic Gold, who I am guessing is Jewish, made exactly the same point. Please see my posts on Wolf and Gold by searching Reichstag and insider.