This week’s guests are Bill Beeman and John Loftus
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Bill Beeman
Bill Beeman is Author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other. He is the Professor of and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is a specialist in Middle East Studies, Japanese Studies, Central Asian Studies, linguistics, performance studies, and a professional opera singer.
He joins The Monitor to talk about Wikileaks, diplomatic communications and Iran.
Quote: “These dispatches represent communications in diplomatic circles. They don’t necessarily represent truth on the ground, and they frequently seem to represent posturing and the same kind of bluffing and chicanery that is the bread and butter of diplomatic negotiations. So, if the Ambassador to the UAE says ‘Iran is a nuclear danger,’ that doesn’t mean that Iran is actually a nuclear danger — only that he said so for whatever reason. Diplomatic assessments are only as good as the underlying information that prompts them. In many cases the underlying information is purposely misleading or inaccurate. Just because a diplomat said something doesn’t make it any more true. Much of the material relating to Iran and the Persian Gulf is the result of a concentrated propaganda campaign by the United States, spearheaded during the Bush administration, to ensure U.S. influence in the Gulf region by frightening local leaders into fearing Iran. The documents are more interesting for pointing out the ways in which nations at the top levels tried to influence each other’s opinions about world affairs.”
His blog: Culture and International Affairs
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John Loftus
John Loftus is an author, former US government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer. He is a president of The Intelligence Summit and a president of the Florida Holocaust Museum, the first Irish Catholic president of that institution. Loftus serves on the Board of Advisers to Public Information Research.
He has written several controversial books on Nazis, espionage, and similar topics including The Belarus Secret (1982), Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican’s Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets (1992), The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People (1994), Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks (1998).
He joins The Monitor to talk about his most recent book America’s Nazi Secret
Book:
America’s Nazi Secret An Insider’s History of How the United States Department of Justice Obstructed Congress by: Blocking Congressional Investigations into Famous American Families Who Funded Hitler, Stalin and Arab Terrorists; Lying to Congress, the GAO, and the CIA about the Postwar Immigration of Eastern European Nazi War Criminals to the US; and Concealing from the 9/11 Investigators the Role of the Arab Nazi War Criminals in Recruiting Modern Middle Eastern Terrorist Groups.
