Customer Reviews

The Greatest Sedition Is Silence: Four Years in America

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This fascinating book reveals many extraordinary facts about present-day America, most importantly about its current war on terrorism. An Executive Order signed by Bush authorised secret military tribunals to try suspected terrorists: US citizens can be arrested and held without charge, without access to a lawyer, without trial and without limit. The Attorney-General says that those who oppose these tribunals are aiding the terrorists: dissent equals treason and terrorism!

Capitalism ... has discovered a fatal cancer in its guts. Deregulation allowed asset-stripping (theft), as at Enron. There is much evidence of Bush and Cheney doing the same. As Pitt writes, the pirates have seized this ship of state, and have two of their own at the helm.

The core of the book is a riveting account of the provenance of 9/11. From January 2001 to August, Bush held talks with the Taliban government in Afghanistan to get them to agree to Unocals proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan. The Taliban rejected the deal. The Bush administration then threatened them with war, while watering down anti-terrorism measures. Before 9/11, Israel, Russia, Egypt, France and Germany had all specifically warned US security agencies of imminent terrorist attacks using hijacked airplanes against US landmarks. The Bush administration did not pass these warnings on to airport security agencies. When this was revealed, Bush responded that he did not order heightened airplane security because it would have cut industry profits!

Stanley Hilton, a former aide to Republican Senator Bob Dole, charges that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen on purpose, so that he could make political gains from the tragedy. Bush has consistently refused to allow a public inquiry into the events surrounding 9/11, and last November he signed an Executive Order sealing all presidential documentation. After 9/11, US forces replaced the Taliban with a government friendly to the USA and its oil interests: Afghanistan is now, nominally, run by Unocals man on the spot.

Saudi Arabia is the USAs key ally in the Middle East, supplier of most of the USAs oil and of 80% of Al Qaidas recruits, and chief funder and sponsor of Al Qaida. Yet Cuba is part of Bushs Axis of Evil, and Saudi Arabia is not! The CIA did not investigate the roots of Al Qaida terrorism in Saudi Arabia because this could have harmed US oil companies interests. As John ONeill, Deputy Director of the FBI before he resigned in protest, said,  The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were US oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it. (Incidentally, George Bush Senior is on the advisory board of the Carlyle Group, a huge multinational heavily involved in the oil business.) Pitt writes, a blind spot developed in our anti-terrorism preparations out of deference to these business interests. The USA has now withdrawn its troops from the very country where it should be focusing its war on terror.

On 16 May 2002, the Boston Globe revealed that the CIA had warned Bush months before 9/11 that Al Qaida planned to hijack planes. Four days later, on 20 May, the government issued warnings of more terrorist threats: Donald Rumsfeld, for example, said that terrorists would definitely use nuclear or biological weapons in the USA. The next day, 21 May, the Toronto Globe and Mail reported, the White House acknowledged that the threats are not urgent and that they are partly motivated by political objectives. ... the blunt warnings issued yesterday and Sunday do not reflect a dramatic increase in threatening information but rather a desire to fend off criticism from the Democrats. In Britain, we too have been lied to about fictitious threats to our national security. How could anything be more irresponsible than to play politics with national security and peoples fears?

I read William Rivers Pitt's book "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence" in June of 2003. It is every bit as important (and terrifying) now as it was then.

As an outside, neither American citizen nor resident (though I am a frequent visitor), I read the book with a detachment that I think helps me avoid some of the emotion and concern that I would have if I actually lived in the States. That said, in many ways it reads like a horror story of a regime that one would never countenance in your fair and beautiful country. Detailing incidents of government fear-mongering and suppression of free speech, such as university students told that they would be suspended if they did not clap George W. Bush at a speech on their campus, would have just a few years ago been thought impossible in the United States.

I recommend this book thoroughly to anyone who has even a slight interest in just what it is that's going on in your backyard. Having read this book and others addressing similar issues, I find myself believing more and more that the great American Experiment might very well be over.

I've only recently become aware of how the Bush administration has used the tragic events of 9/11 to push their own hegemonious agenda. Mr. Pitt's book succinctly presents all the facts relating to the current crisis facing our nation, and presents them in a linear, easy to follow fashion. This book is for those whose mind is fully open to examining all facets of our current political and sociological circumstances - freepers need not apply.

Great book!

It makes me wonder why our media and our elected politicans are not demanding these same questions answered.

What more can one say... the truth hurts, but it needs to be said. As a researcher I know a thing or two about how hard it is to find the facts. It's not just documentation, itself a major task that goes well past the norm of a 9-5 type of job. Rather, it takes dedication, long sleepless nights, and what's even harder is putting your work into words. Mr. Pitts is and always will be this American Historians' journalist hero. If his name is on the book, it's as close to the truth as one can ever expect.

In a world where hero's are far and in between, just having the guts to write the factual truth should be enough, but if anyone can step up to the plate and prove Pitts is wrong, well, I'd like to see it. Thanks Mr. Pitt for giving me the truth when no other media had the nerve or cared to.

I am only halfway through this book and with each page my heart sinks further. For the last fews years, I've closely followed the news in the American and International media and Mr. Pitt's book only confirmed my analyses and the conclusions I'd drawn.

This is no time for citizens to rest, comfortable in the knowledge that we live in a Democracy. Our Democratic rights are being stripped away daily- right under our very noses but unnoticed. This book is a must read! As you read it, ask yourself if it doesn't explain why we are fast becoming a Pariah nation and losing all moral authority we ever had on the international scene.

Kudo's to Mr. Pitt for his excellent book!

Shortly after September 11, 2001, Bill Moyers gave the keynote address for the Environmental Grantmakers Association in Brainerd, Minnesota. That address was entitled "Silence: the Greatest Sedition" and in it Mr. Moyers said:
"This catastrophe has reminded us of a basic truth at the heart of our democracy: no matter our wealth or status or faith, we are all equal before the law, in the voting booth, and when death rains down from the sky.

"We have also been reminded that despite years of scandals and political corruption, despite the stream of stories of personal greed and pirates in Gucci's scamming the treasury, despite the retreat from the public sphere and the turn toward private privilege, despite squalor for the poor and gated communities for the rich, we have been reminded that the great mass of Americans have not yet given up on the idea of 'We, the People,' and they have refused to accept the notion, promoted so diligently by our friends at the Heritage Foundation and by Grover Norquist and his right-wing ilk, that government  the public service  should be shrunk to a size where they can drown it in the bathtub (that's what Norquist said is their goal). These rightwingers at Heritage and elsewhere, by the way, earlier this year teamed up with the deep-pocket bankers who finance them, to stop the United States from cracking down on terrorist money havens.

"As TIME magazine reports, thirty industrial nations were ready to tighten the screws on offshore financial centers whose banks have the potential to hide and often help launder billions of dollars for drug cartels, global crime syndicates  and groups like Osama bin Laden's Al-Quaeda organization.

"Not all off-shore money is linked to crime or terrorism; much of it comes from wealthy people who are hiding money to avoid taxation. And right-wingers believe in nothing if not in avoiding taxation. So they and the bankers' lobbyists went to work to stop the American government from participating in the crackdown on dirty money, arguing that closing down tax havens in effect leads to higher taxes on the poor people trying to hide their money. I am not kidding; it's all on the record.

"The president of the Heritage Foundation spent an hour, according to the New York Times, with Treasury Secretary O'Neill, and Texas bankers pulled their strings at the White House, and presto, the Bush administration folded and pulled out of the international campaign against tax havens."

Mr. Pitt raises these seminal issues, every bit as cogently and with the passion and erudtion of one who teaches our children and informs our citizenry of the dangers to democracy we face today. No Chicken Little, Mr. Pitt is attuned to the realities of our times despite our national malaise in lingering within the Rockwellesque mental Disneyland that power-obsessed neoconservatives wish to mythically portray. The democratic house of civil liberties erected in our nation over two centuries ago harbors fascist arsonists -- and Mr. Pitt joins his voice with that of Mr. Moyers in raising the alarm. Will it be enough to raise us from our restless slumbers? Only time will tell. We must awaken, voice the alarm, and be our own fire department.

Even for those readers well versed in Chomsky, Herman, and the range of other leftists writing today there will still be new things for you in this book.

Essentially, Pitt explains in very certain terms how the Bush administration has recast 9/11 into an event that frames, and limits, the range of policy debate now. Additionally he details how several Bush initiatives are fundamentally repugnant to our Constitution and how the media all too willingly assists in the selling of the administration's message.

He concludes with an well thought out, if ever so slightly "ranty", section on how those who love the ideals of this country - those who no longer wish to see them betrayed - can begin to reclaim the institutions that are rightfully ours.

Overall, a nice rehashing of the issues that plauge many of us coupled with insight material and commentary on the post 9/11 failings of the administration. Easy to read in an afternoon.

From the reviews here you can tell he's good at what he does, as the one-star reviews are obviously from dittohead drones who don't wipe themselves until their Lord and Savior Limbaugh tells them to.

Will Pitt is the right's worst nightmare: someone who tells the truth. You wouldn't think that's much to fear, but in a world where 70% of people believe Iraq was involved in 9/11, people who tell the truth are a rare find indeed.

Will Pitt's views on the CEO scandals, how the media changed after 9/11, and on how that 2000 election we're always told to "get over" may not have been on the up-and-up after all (Who's father appointed those SCOTUS justices? Not Gore's.) are a must read for anyone who's interested in more than if Ben and J-Lo are back together again.

Its a shame that the world needs people like Will Pitt to state the obvious truths - like how Bush's economic plan is ruining the country while giving his richest friends a huge bonus- , its even more of a shame that places like Fox News has made it a needed service in these times.

If you're looking for a honest and unflinching view on the state of the world and how we got to the point we're at, Will Pitt is the author for you. If you prefer your books to be full of jingoistic flag-waving, I'm sure Hannity has a new screed in the works.

I just finished reading William Rivers Pitt's latest book (I doubt the negative reviewers even OPENED the book, let alone finished it), and I absolutely LOVED IT!

Thank you sir for your writing...I loved "War On Iraq", but this book was truly magnificent. You are correct, and we must NEVER be silent in this country.

Get out another book as soon as possible, please. We need voices like yours.