- "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."
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- --Boston Transcript, March 17, 1885
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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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