In less than three weeks it will be 20 years since the misreported terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. There is so much competition for the public consciousness that Sept. 11, 2021, could pass with untold millions still not questioning the Executive Branch myths about them. Competing events include the current U.S. exit from the war they kicked off, continuing planetary heating and consequent climate change throughout the Earth, which continue to change economies and living patterns worldwide and generate ever more severe weather — and the megastory of the last 17 months, Covid.
Each of these in turn generates its own stories out of every continent to keep news consumers busily occupied paying attention to them . . . rather than to attacks that, after all, killed fewer than 3,000 people on American soil at the start.
Someday, perhaps well past next month’s anniversary, vital truths about those attacks, their causes and their coverups may be widely known. For now, however, for the powers-that-be driving the mainstream media and usually succeeding in driving public consciousness . . . now is not the time. Now is never the time. There’s too much else going on. To watch or read on various screens, to read on newsprint or listen to on the radio.
For now, the whos, whats, wheres, hows, whys and whens of the attacks will have to wait. Or, on or around the 11th of next month, the efforts to reveal important truths about what happened 20 years before will begin to bear fruit despite coordinated efforts to keep them buried. Or not.
There is still news and commentary about the topic. Here is some of it:
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What Will the Supreme Court Do? Is the Lawyers’ Committee’s “Certs” petition to the Supreme Court going anywhere? It may not yet have been placed on the court’s docket, or official summary of proceedings. That is, there is apparently no record of the petition having been filed.
As readers of this blog know, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry reported that on July 16 it filed a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the high court concerning the FBI’s failure to heed a “mandate from Congress to assess all evidence in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” We had follow-ups on July 21, July 23 and Aug. 7.
Questions: How political is the FBI? How political is the Supreme Court — or any of the lower courts whose inactions necessitated the Writ? Congress has acted, only to have its actions entirely ignored by the news media, effectively nullifying its actions. Was the Congressional action only perfunctory? Was the Writ properly filed? Or does it take a while for such a petition to find its way onto the docket (what with Covid and all)? Would the news media pay any attention if it could avoid it?
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Snowden on the March to War: Last Tuesday, Edward Snowden posted “A Hell Of Our Own Making: Reflections on the road to Kabul.” This retrospective by the renegade intelligence consultant now living in Moscow is well worth reading.
Among other things, Snowden notes that this war, the longest in U.S. history, was undeclared. He also describes how he, like nearly all Americans, was misled about the alleged culprits of the September 2001 attacks by the media serving as megaphones for “official sources.”
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The ‘Post-9/11 Era’ Is Over? More typical of mainstream commentary on the war (but not its causes) is this analysis found the next day on page 1 of the New York Times by Roger Cohen under the bland and misleading headline “Post-9/11 Era Ends Painfully, for America and Afghanistan.” It’s a masterpiece of deflection. The curtain has come down on the post-9/11 era. It’s over. Time to move on.
It’s not for the New York Times or Roger Cohen to note that this country’s military-industrial-newsmedia-entertainment complex was thrown into action by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others of an administration bent on war. The analyst had the good sense not to mention any of them or even Osama bin Laden or al Qaeda. To mention Bin Laden or his gang could cause some people to inquire about their origins in the whole scheme of things. That’s not for now.
Non-subscribers to the Times can find the article HERE.
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Externalize Costs, Maximize Profits: Events that followed the September 2001 attacks are textbook examples of cost-externalizing, of how businesses maximize profits by off-loading negative effects to third parties — including other societies, the environment, taxpayers. When thinking of “9/11” and its consequences, it helps to remember this standard business concept, which is summarized HERE, HERE and HERE.
— Mark Channing Miller