Global Research

Nearly 12 years after the event, the official account of 9/11 continues to be actively studied by academics around the world.  The idea of 9/11 as a false-flag operation to build support for an aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East is steadily gaining ground, suggesting that a policy change is overdue.

This essay provides a brief overview of recent academic evidence, high-level conferences, and media documentaries that raise fresh questions regarding the official account of 9/11.  It then describes the 9/11 Consensus Panel as an up-to-date source of evidence-based research for any investigation that may be undertaken to settle 9/11’s  unanswered questions.

Finally, this essay argues that mortality from all terror events combined lags far behind annual mortality from preventable common causes such as obesity, smoking, and impaired driving.  More importantly, all these causes together will be dwarfed by the mortality from predicted “business as usual” global warming events — which cry out for a unified emergency response.

Today is the second anniversary of the day the United States announced the destruction and disposal of Osama bin Laden during a special military operation.

In spite of this announcement, worldwide skepticism and research continue to dog the official account of 9/11.

Had the United States Government called an immediate investigation (it did not form the 9/11 Commission until late 2002) and provided consistent and transparent proof of its claims against Osama bin Laden and the 19 alleged hijackers, things might have been different.

In the wake of the officially failed evidence, NGO’s continue to dig into the disturbing and unanswered questions that haunt this world-changing event.  Year by year, these research bodies have been delving ever more deeply into new photographic, FOIA, and witness evidence.

Recent high-level conferences in Kuala Lumpur,[1] Bremen, Germany,[2]  and Toronto, Canada,[3] have raised public awareness of the urgent need to revisit the watershed event behind the global war on terror.

An issue of the international magazine Nexus, which sold on news-stands across France in March and April this year, devoted 12 pages to the work of the 9/11 Consensus Panel (www.consensus911.org) and its 28 peer-reviewed Consensus Points of evidence against elements of the official story.[4]

In late 2012, PBS aired one of its most-watched documentaries, “Experts Speak Out,” in which 40 architects and engineers demonstrate that the structural collapses of the Twin Towers and WTC 7 could only have been caused by controlled demolition.[5]

Indeed many serious investigations have been undertaken by the major media, including Canada’s flagship CBC program, The Fifth Estate.[6] These explorations were summarized in my 2010 essay reporting that “eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11.[7]

In February, 2010, the American Behavioral Scientist published six articles introducing the concept of “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCADS), including “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crimes in American Government.”[8]

 Why has all this effort to establish the truth about 9/11 persisted for nearly 12 years?

1.     First, because many high officials have cast doubt on the official story. To name just one, a dismayed General Wesley Clark reported in a 2007 interview with Amy Goodman that on September 20, 2001, and again later in November, his former Pentagon staff told him that the US was going to “take out” seven Middle East countries in the next five years, beginning with Iraq; then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan.[9]

 2.     In carrying out these operations, the “global war on terror” spawned by 9/11 has maintained an unprecedented degree of fear and divisiveness in the world;

3.     This war has been justified by a pervasive, shadowy enemy that can only be countered by flawless surveillance, suspension of civil rights, and unlimited military spending;

4.     This “forever war” has redefined world relationships (Muslim and Christian) and given the West a new kind of entitlement to occupy lands that might foster terror against it;

5.     It has virtually bankrupted the West through trillions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq that are roughly equivalent to the bank bailouts;

6.     September 11th and its offspring terror war have wrecked our confidence in the first principles of democracy.  Ever-reminded that terror lurks all around, we must cower and surrender freedoms to contain it.

7.     Worst of all, preoccupation with terror has taken our attention off the vital need to address global warming and planetary survival.  War-on-terror hawks have done quite the opposite, having manufactured public consent to occupy the very lands that house the cheap oil that is cooking the planet as it approaches 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2.[10]

 How do we get back to first principles and return to global, survival-oriented priorities?

The central question is:  “Do we choose to act from what we want our world to be, or from what we fear it might become?”

Do we design a harmonious world fit for all humanity, or do we stifle our vision and hopes for peace behind fear, prisons, martial law, and infinite military spending?

All great periods of history – the golden ages of optimism, learning, culture and prosperity — have been inspired by the creative, expansive human imagination.  This imagination is inspired by the belief that a civilized world is possible because we can make it so.  It is inspired by a vision of human beings as a world family whose spirits embrace justice, order, and decency.

As President John F. Kennedy said in his famous speech of 1963:

  “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”[11]

 Because of 9/11, however, our new century has been dominated by an obsessive fear of Muslim peoples.  This fear, fueled daily by the Western media, has persuaded America to compromise its fundamental democratic rights and principles in favor of a “security” that has not yet become evident.

Thus it is crucial to know whether 9/11 transpired as we have been told — and for this we need the means to identify the best evidence possible.

  The 9/11 Consensus Panel and its Approach to Evidence

The 9/11 Consensus Panel was formed in May, 2011.  Its purpose and procedures are briefly outlined below:

·        The media has claimed for a decade that it is unable to evaluate the technical evidence being presented against the official story of  9/11.

·        A parallel problem existed in medicine during the years when there were contradictory, unranked approaches to evaluating the 22 million articles in the biomedical literature databases.

·        This problem was greatly reduced by the introduction of “evidence-based” medicine, which applied formal rules of evidence in evaluating the clinical literature.

·        Using widely accepted tools such as the Delphi Method, medicine has now developed hundreds of standard Consensus Statements to guide physicians in diagnosis and treatment.

 
·        Similarly, 20 expert members[12] of the new 9/11 Consensus Panel have now developed Consensus Points of “best evidence” opposing the official account of 9/11.

·        The Panel Members, who remain blind to one another throughout the process, provide three rounds of review and feedback that are refined into 28 Points (thus far) of “best evidence”.

·        This scientific process has yielded an unprecedented degree of credibility for points of evidence relating to 9/11 that can be trusted by the media and the public.

·        The 9/11 Consensus Points provide a ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other investigative body or institution.

Conclusion:

We have seen that the evidence supporting the official story of 9/11 has become increasingly open to question.  We have also seen that preoccupation with 9/11 has continued unabated through the ever-present war on terror.

But to keep things in perspective:  lives lost to the sum total of terror events are far fewer than those lost annually to preventable deaths from obesity, smoking, and impaired driving.[13]

This should translate into the media giving more time to the prevention of obesity, traffic accidents, and smoking, and less time to preventing terror events.

That would be fine except that all these things taken together pale by comparison with the disease and mortality[14] that will ensue if we continue with “business as usual” in the face of recent evidence that “observed [fossil fuel] emissions continue to track the top end of all scenarios.”[15]

In order to steel ourselves to confront global warming — the most serious challenge ever faced by civilization — we need to reframe our priorities.

We need to wage war on our own behaviour, and it’s time to gear up, impose discipline, and win the planet back.

This means taking our declared “war on global warming” to the front page of every newspaper, to the top of all social media discussions, and to the Number One item in every town hall meeting on Platform Earth.