Harvard: The Best and Brightest – 9/11 Truther Edition

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University’s stated mission is to "to promote and elevate the standards of journalism in the United States". Like most journalistic organizations it has a decidedly left wing audience, staff and editorial policy. Not that it should surprise anyone, an organization run by journalists for journalists being left wing isn’t exactly a man bites dog story.

However I was struck by an article on the Nieman Foundation’s website about the Time magazine cover depicting a young girl disfigured by the Taliban for running away from an abusive husband and his family.

The author of the Nieman article, Ralph Lopez, performs a dizzying array of rhetorical back flips to play the “blame America first card”, including a “history lesson” on how the US destabilized a “progressive” regime through our backing of the Afghan Mujahedeen:

In 1979, the CIA started secretly aiding opponents of the pro-Soviet government in Kabul, increasing the likelihood that the Soviet Union would be drawn into what Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski hoped would be "their own Vietnam." The young socialist government, which had overthrown a centuries-old monarchy, was cosmopolitan, outward-looking, and stressed the education of women as well as men. This was a time when women in Kabul could wear mini-skirts. In its search for proxies to attack the Kabul regime, Brzezinski and the Cold Warriors turned to the conservative warlord elements in the countryside. They were of all ethnicities; Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek. What they had in common was their ability to raise and organize fighters – and their Medieval attitudes toward women.

It’s a simple enough story to lefties like Mr Lopez: America was interfering in the internal affairs of a “progressive” regime. Never mind that in 1978, the year that the “progressive” KGB run People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan launched its coup on the Afghan government, the new “progressive” government instituted a widespread agriculture collectivization scheme, forced the closure of all religious houses of worship, assassinated every tribal and religious leader they could get their hands on, and brought in thousands of KGB advisors to help with re-education. Minor details that Mr Lopez could have included.

After reading this piece of shit left wing apologia I thought, “there they go again”. On a hunch though, I decided to Google Ralph Lopez, not knowing much about the guy, and boy oh boy was I surprised with what I found.

It seems that Lopez writes for Opednews.com and he wrote a delightful article on April 3, 2008 titled: It Has Happened: I'm a 9/11 Truther; A New Investigation, Broad Amnesty, and Forgiveness.

It was happening to me. Reading all that two and four-star brass saying it looked like a conspiracy put me face-to-face with it. I was becoming a 9/11 Truther. Kooks, lunatics, nuts. Everyone knows this. But these experts were just too credible, something the movement hadn't been before. I didn't need to be an expert or do much more research. It had been done, by military personnel with more flying time and expertise than I would have in a dozen lifetimes. And if they said there were a hell of lot of questions that needed to be answered in a new commission, That was good enough for me. I am now a 9/11 Truther. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

So is this what Harvard’s Nieman Foundation found when it scraped the barrel of lefty writers in its pursuit to cobble together another blame America first hot piece ..... a fucking truther?

If this is what Harvard and Yale (since it seems that Lopez is a Yaley), the mills producing America’s political and cultural elite ..... our “Best and Brightest”, are churning out, then we are seriously fucked.

I wonder though, would Harvard’s Nieman Foundation ever give space on its prestigious pages for a Birther, or does being a good left really mean never having to say you’re sorry ..... about anything.