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Awesome Books -
Dangerous Words
Exclusive to Rense.com

By Douglas Herman
8-5-5
 
"The Concord Public Library has decided to exclude Mark Twain's latest book from the library. One member of the committee says that, while he does not wish to call it immoral, he thinks it contains but little humor, and that of a very coarse type. He regards it as the veriest trash. The librarian and other members of the committee entertain similar views, characterizing it as rough, coarse, and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people."
 
--Boston Transcript, March 17, 1885
 
Recently, I came across Counterpunch's Top Non-Fiction Works in English while browsing the Internet. I looked at the list, somewhat surprised Smedley Butler's early expose' of the Military Industrial Complex hadn't made the list. Neither had a handful of other books that impressed me, at least one that had been censored in America for many years.
 
Farewell America: The Plot to Kill JFK, ostensibly written by the French CIA under the name of James Hepburn, claimed to tell the truth about the JFK assassination. The book broadly accused the American power structure of a clever yet diabolical coup, one that resulted in an escalation of the Vietnam War, not incidently, and further entrenching of the Military Industrial Complex in power, where it remains today.
 
Awesome books, dangerous words. If the truth indeed sets us free, we almost always have to search for it. I asked my local librarian if the Broward County Library had Butler's controversial book, War Is A Racket, by the two-time Medal of Honor winner. The Broward System, in south Florida, is the sixth largest in the country. I knew the book was recently reprinted by Feral House publishers and so she couldn't claim it was out-of-print. Still, she couldn't find it. Neither could she locate three other recent titles I requested.
 
Mike Ruppert's Book, Crossing the Rubicon, written by a former cop, accuses Dick Cheney of masterminding the 9-11 attack, and using this false flag operation as an excuse to grab a few pivotal Middle Eastern nations in the process. A big thick book, filled with references and sources and stats, the weighty tome has the heft of a law book. No wonder the Neocons fear the dangerous words inside, daring not to even sue Ruppert for libel. Nope, this book wasn't available either.
 
Likewise Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack. This is the ultimate coffee table book to own if you want to start a riot or conflagration at a cocktail party. The predictable uproar is well worth the price of the book. Filled with high-resolution photos, which cost the author $6,000 out of his own pocket, plus countless diagrams and data, PQ presents a colorful argument that 9-11 was an inside job, a "scam," as the author refers to it. Eric Hufschmid must have asked 500 rhetorical "painful questions" but, of course, the good little graduates of the Joseph Goebbels school of propaganda in the American media remain mute.
 
Not surprisingly, the book didn't exist in the library system.
 
Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza, likewise wasn't available. This slim little volume, written by a former US Marine sniper, blows away the entire Warren Commission report. I read this compelling book after finishing my novel, The Guns of Dallas, and was struck by the similarity of our observations. Four teams, armed with high powered rifles, operated in Dealey Plaza that day. The way that author, Craig Roberts, unravels the crime and fingers the perpetrators, reads like a masterful suspense novel, which in a way it is. Once again, this dangerous book is nowhere to be found in the Broward system.
 
Censorship takes many forms, even in a so-called "free society." Controversial books are not burned today, but ignored. Simply ignoring obvious but painful questions works wonderfully well for the mainstream media. When was the last time (or first!) that anyone saw or heard an outspoken, dissenting voice debating a Seam Hannity or some rent-a-general on prime time news? That would have been like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, (the greatest novelist and truth teller of the 20th century IMHO) publicly debating some Pravda hack or Tass minion on Soviet TV in the 'Seventies.
 
Awesome books, dangerous words. Read them. Discuss the ideas there. Be as outspoken as Mark Twain defending his radical views. When the priggish Louisa May Alcott condemned Huck Finn, "If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them," Twain replied: "Those idiots in Concord (hometown of Emerson and Thoreau!) are not a court of last resort, and I am not disturbed by their moral gymnastics."
 
Moral gymnastics! What an appropos phrase for those who control the flow of ideas today, especially in the mainstream media, editors, publishers, agents, reviewers. One may counter the flow, at any time, by reading awesome books and dangerous words.
 
Essayist Douglas Herman write regularly for the Internet and is the author of the controversial, suspense thriller, The Guns of Dallas.
 

 

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