1984.gov

Todd Leventhal is the professional State Dept. propagandist whose job it is to pooh-pooh "conspiracy theories" -- except for the government's conspiracy theory. He's online at America.gov.

The web site employs the old propaganda trick of associating a silly idea -- the notion that the moon landings were a hoax -- with the theory that is the real target, the idea that the 9/11 attacks required complicity by federal forces. The site also links to snopes.com, the urban myth buster, as a reliable source. And, btw, we are assured that the CIA is still innocent of JFK's assassination.

I'm not terribly convinced that snopes is the repository of all truth. But anyway, it's good to know that the State Dept. and al Qaeda agree on one point: their conspiracy theory of how 9/11 happened.

A good commentary is found at moneyteachers.org/Conspiracy.gov.htm.

Meanwhile, Philip Zelikow, who had been executive director of the 9/11 commission, told Fox News that he though Congress should re-investigate 9/11, using subpoena power. He questioned the reliability of the information given to the commission by the CIA concerning Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's purported statements. The commission was only given summaries of what he supposedly told interrogators and was not told that videotapes of the interrogations existed.

The America.gov anti-conspiracy page doesn't mention, of course, that a special prosecutor is investigating the CIA's erasure of those tapes.

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South African Muslims sued the Mail and Guardian newspaper to try to block publication of a Zapiro cartoon showing Mohammed on a psychiatrist's couch saying, "Other prophets have followers with a sense of humor."

The paper ran the cartoon, death warnings notwithstanding.

In Sweden, two Muslims have been charged with intending to burn down the residence of Lars Vilks, whose cartoons of Mohammed have upset a number of Muslims.

And last week's "glitch" that took down a Facebook Mohammed cartoon site occurred because of a hacker's activities, according to one writer .The hacker compromised personal information about one of the organizers of the page and, as a result, he deleted the page. Other organizers, however, soon had the page back up, we're told.

This is disturbing because the individual could easily become a murder target.

Last week, when asked about the page's temporary disappearance, Facebook told a reporter that a technical "glitch" had occurred, saying nothing about privacy violation.

Facebook has been under pressure over privacy problems and today the Washington Post published a letter from Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, who said Facebook would make it easier for users to safeguard privacy. The Post's chairman, Donald E. Graham, is a Facebook director.

In another Muslim cartoon issue, Richard Shulman  tells of the heavy handed Canadian government intrusion -- citing Canada's "hate speech" law -- against a Canadian who published the Lars Vilks cartoons. Though the various authorities decided to do nothing, their investigation was itself a form of censorship by intimidation. Others will beware publishing "hate" ideas; but who defines "hate speech"?

The Dalai Lama scolded Chinese communists over censorship. "Openness and freedom of speech are essential," he told New York City collegians yesterday. Harmony can't be had by fear tactics, he said. "Harmony by gun -- impossible."

The question that President Obama refused to answer at the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act bill signing: Do you trust BP? That's according to a CBS blog, which noted that press "wranglers" were herding reporters out of the Oval Office with no question-and-answer period permitted.