“What I’m saying … is that the Bush Administration knew the attacks were going to take place, and made a conscious decision that the casualty levels were acceptable to secure access to Central Asian oil for the major oil companies and for the U.S. economy, and to secure control of the drug trade.”

– Michael C. Ruppert, March 14, 2002 roundtable (from this week’s program.)

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As Canadian journalist and media critic Barrie Zwicker explained in his 2006 book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11, mainstream journalists throughout Canada and the Western world failed spectacularly in their role to critically examine the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 and its consequences. [1]

Pertinent questions as to ulterior motives for a deadly military invasion of Afghanistan, or about the failure to scramble military aircraft to intercept the hijacked airplanes when they veered off course were never asked in the prominent newspapers, television networks and other major media organs of the day. Any skeptical inquiry of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the months immediately following the attacks was confined to ‘limited hang-outs’ along the lines of the CIA ‘never getting its act together’ and ‘controversies’ about the crime possibly being ‘blow-back’ from America’s oppressive policies in the Middle East and elsewhere. [2]

One national broadcaster in Canada, however, proved to be an exception to this trend. VISION TV is a Canadian cable and satellite specialty channel based in Toronto reaching an estimated 10 million homes. It was largely due to Zwicker’s influence as VISION TV’s resident media critic that the provocative discussion featured on this week’s show ever made it to the public airwaves.

On the evening of March 14, 2002, the network broadcast a round table on the 2001 terrorist attacks on a special installment of VisionTV Insight: Mediafile. This discussion would include one of the few appearances in Canadian media by U.S. based investigative journalist Michael C. Ruppert.

Ruppert was, along with Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization, one of the very first figures in the world to intelligently refute the official story of the September 11th attacks. He had outlined his key arguments in a hard hitting monthly newsletter called From The Wilderness, as well as on his online site fromthewilderness.com. He had also given a series of talks across the United States and Canada detailing his problems with the official story.

The conversation featured in this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program as it debuts its eighth regular broadcast season sees Ruppert face critical, albeit respectful push-back from at least two of the panelists. The discussion delved not only into the unanswered questions mentioned above, but also put them into the context of America’s imperial conquest of oil resources, and the role of drug money, including the proceeds of Afghanistan’s illicit opium trade, in financing the global economy. Questions relating to the vulnerability of Canadian sovereignty, the anti-democratic nature of ‘anti-terrorism’ legislation, and the role of journalists in the face of these developments likewise rise to the fore.

The audio of this conversation and video of the discussion had been discarded by the network years ago, and has since been recovered and restored. The show is being rebroadcast on the Global Research News Hour radio program with the full consent of VISION TV, whom we warmly thank for their generosity in this regard.

An online link to some of the recovered video footage of the conversation can be found here or watch right below.

https://youtu.be/uWc9G9p3fcw

Screenshot of March 2002 programme

Michael Craig Ruppert (1951-2014) is a former investigative journalist and the publisher/editor of the now defunct From The Wilderness newsletter and website. A former LAPD officer and CIA whistle-blower, Ruppert had broken numerous stories related to government corruption, illegal U.S. covert operations, the reality and impact of Peak Oil, and perhaps most famously, the evidence of U.S. conscious complicity in the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. He is author of the Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (2004) and A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money (2009) which was reworked into a follow-up volume Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World (2009). Ruppert was featured in the 2009 documentary film Collapse and hosted The LifeBoat Hour on the Progressive Radio Network until his tragic death by suicide in April 2014. Ruppert is a past guest of this radio program and has had articles re-posted to Global Research. A complete archive of his FTW articles can be found at FromTheWilderness.net.

Peter Hullett Desbarats, OC. (1933-2014) was a Canadian author, journalist and playwright. From 1981 to 1997 he served as the Dean of Journalism at the University of Western Ontario. He also served as one of the commissioners of the Somalia Inquiry convened to investigate Canadian military violence against Somalian civilians in the early 1990s.

Ronald George Atkey, PC, QC. (1942-2017) was a lawyer, law professor and former Canadian Federal cabinet minister. From 1984 to 1989 he served as Chairman of Canada’s Security Intelligence Review Committee which oversaw the activities of the newly established Canadian Security Intelligence Service. A lecturer on national security law and international terrorism, he was appointed Amicus Curiae to the Arar Commission in 2004, where he played a role testing government requests made on the grounds of national security confidentiality.

Phyllis Creighton is an award-winning peace campaigner having been active with many justice and peace organizations over the course of 3 decades, including Science for Peace, Project Ploughshares, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, the International Peace Bureau and the Toronto Raging Grannies. She is also an ethicist who has served on the Health Canada board on reproductive technologies.

Rita Shelton Deverell, C.M., Ed.D. is a theatre artist, playwright, independent television producer/director, a founder of and executive producer with Vision TV, and was the first woman to lead a journalism program in Canada as acting Director of the University of Regina’s Journalism School in the 1980s. A former occupant of Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount St. Vincent University, her many honours include two Geminis, the Black Women’s Civic Engagement Leadership Award, and membership in the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. She is also recipient of the 2005 Order of Canada.

Be sure to check out Global Research’s dossier on 9/11:

THE 9/11 READER. The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks

(Global Research News Hour Episode 267)

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Notes: