Subject: Six-month anniversary of 9/11
Commentary by Barrie Zwicker, media critic, Vision TV

Today is exactly six months since September 11^th. It’s a doubly sad anniversary, not only because of the lives lost, but also because it’s an occasion for the U.S. government and the mainstream media to shore up the official story of what happened. And that’s the topic of my commentary this week.

An American cultural critic once said: “Anniversaries are reservoirs of sacred power.”

Take Pearl Harbor. This special commemorative edition of Life magazine embodies the official and media version, more than sixty years old, of what happened on December 7^th, 1941. Clean cut innocent Americans caught unawares. The spectacle of pyrotechnic destruction. The conspicuous recollection of American boys lost. The patriotic flag-waving citizens. The gallant firefighters. The foreign devils who executed the sneak attack.

These words and images – reinforced annually -- are the power. This is the official and media version of Pearl Harbor – that the Japanese attack caught the U.S. government and military completely unawares. But this version itself now itself lies in tatters.

Half a dozen reputable historians now agree that the heart of the official and media version is fiction. The recent book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, is by Robert B. Stinnett. Stinnett spent 17 years researching the book. In it, a series of newly declassified documents show conclusively that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted the attack to happen.

His motive was to galvanize American public opinion into support for U.S. entry into World War II, something Americans at the time strongly opposed.

This typical top secret letter to a U.S. army officer in the Pacific, created on the orders of Roosevelt, says:

“…the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.”

Roosevelt maneuvered to encourage the attack. “Throughout the spring and summer of 1941, the White House manipulated…oil negotiations (between Japan and the Netherlands).” The “strategy (was to frustrate) Japanese acquisition of petroleum products…” The Americans had broken the codes of the Japanese admirals wide open. In radio messages intercepted not later than November 5^th Japan’s chief of Naval General Staff made clear that Japan would attack America “in the first part of December.”

 

Roosevelt knew the Japanese fleet set sail November 26^th. Roosevelt before notifying Army Chief of Staff George Marshall of crucial warnings, delayed 15 hours. Then, instead of picking up his scrambler phone, Marshall chose a slow method of communicating to the commander on the scene. The final sentence in Stinnett’s book: “After years of denial, the truth is clear: we knew.”

Roosevelt also knew the loss of American lives would swing public opinion decisively. The final human sacrifice was 2,403 souls. It worked brilliantly.

The attack on the World Trade Center has been compared to Pearl Harbor. If the comparison extends to the same foreknowledge and deception -- and it has every appearance of that -- it will not take 50 years to emerge. But emerge it will, even against a powerful Hollywood-style propaganda Blitz that props up the official version. Such as last night’s documentary, 9-11, on CBS, narrated by Robert De Niro.

It’s mind-boggling to me that celebrities, the entertainment industry, and especially the news media, apparently have not the slightest curiosity as to why the White House has not to this day ordered any investigation into what happened on the day they commemorate. No inquiry into the jet interceptors that never turned a wheel until too late. No inquiry into years-long and close links between known terrorists and the CIA. No inquiry into prior inside trading in United and American Airlines stocks.

The U.S. president has not called a single person, even a scapegoat, to account, for what has to be at the least the most colossal, catastrophic incompetence ever. The White House in fact is exerting its fullest efforts to limit investigation.

But the giant weapons conglomerates, some of which own media corporations (GE’s ownership of NBC is but one example), the intelligence and security and police forces, the military and many others including, yes, decent citizens, have a vested interest in the official story. Which is that one evil man and his network did it, and the CIA, Pentagon and White House were caught completely off guard.

In the case of the media, the longer they overlook the clanging anomalies in the official version, the more incompetent they’re going to eventually look. So they’re in denial too.

I also commemorate on this day the victims of September 11^th. Within my commemoration, I choose in addition to honour the larger number of victims already killed in Afghanistan in what President Bush promises is just the first battle in the so-called war on terrorism. I grieve for the many more to be delivered to their deaths.

The tone of my commemoration is sadness but more anger. The aim of my commemoration is to rededicate the rest of my life to restoring justice and peace. Neither is possible with corruption and deceit rampant.

The form of my commemoration is to join with all others of goodwill and critical faculties who understand our inescapable first and most urgent task is to pierce the thicket of lies and confusion about what really happened on September 11^th.

There’s a pressing need for a cleansing cloudburst of disclosure.

The official version will remain the bedrock of the so-called war on terrorism until the official version is exposed to the sunlight of vigorous questioning.

The stakes are high. That ill-defined war is the cover for the Blitzkreig stage of U.S. world domination. It feeds perversely on the memories of New York fire fighters and others.

The mainstream media so far stubbornly refuse to ask any questions even as they drone on about a “war on terrorism” in the face of an unprecedented U.S. military buildup and actions and threats worldwide that some are calling the start of World War III.

Happy anniversary.

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Reasonable Doubts: Do we know what really happened on September 11^th?
A special roundtable edition of Mediafile.

Rita Deverell moderates a panel of guests that includes investigative journalist Michael Ruppert who questions a number of anomalies and inconsistencies regarding the official story about what happened on September 11^th. Ruppert’s research suggests foreknowledge on the part of the U.S. government. Other panelists disagree.

The other panelists are:

• Peter Desbarats - Journalist, playwright, former Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario and member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia.
   

• Phyllis Creighton - An ethicist specializing in reproductive technologies, peace activist and member of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada.
   

• Ron Atkey - Lawyer, former member of parliament and former chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the agency responsible for CSIS.

Link to Michael Ruppert’s research here

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Taking Stock
September 11^th was the biggest media event of the season, but there were many other significant stories, domestic and international, which our media panel examined. This week our panel of journalists (Marianne Meed Ward, Lorrie Goldstein, Zuhair Kashmeri) takes a look back at the media highs and lows of the season.

High Speed Connection
Are we becoming alienated from each other as more and more Canadians sit in front of their computers using the internet? Our popular culture commentator Andrew Younger doesn’t believe so. He thinks that eBay, the on-line auction service, actually brings people together and promotes trust.

Skeptical Optimist
Summer is on the way; but even as we take a time out, the the media does not. As Barrie Zwicker’s groundbreaking commentaries have shown over the season, viewers become genuinely engaged when serious questions are raised. In his final commentary of the season, Zwicker says it pays to keep a skeptical eye in the media.

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