by David Montoute

[this article first published under the title 9/11: Beyond the Seal of Approval by israelshamir.net is undated]

“Today’s mass media… are the foundation of the totalitarian ‘gestalt’ which the privileged impose on the mentality of the masses…a ‘seal of approval’ that authorizes the reality of events”. – Din Vantari

Given the impact of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington five years ago, and the events that they helped to unleash – the declaration of a war which “may not end in our lifetimes” and the acceleration of a global police-state agenda – it is no easy task to discern or exploit positive countertrends. One such trend, however, may be emerging. With a reported 36% of the US population rejecting the official account of September 11th 2001, something unexpected appears to be taking place. The collapse in public confidence with respect to the official “War on Terror” narrative could illustrate the beginning of a wider breakdown in elite brainwashing and mass submission to the top-down dictation of reality. For this new process has affected not only the corporate media. It has opened up a huge breach between the comfortable ‘alternative’ media of the traditional US Left, and a new, more diverse community that pursues the harder task following where the evidence leads.

With the new phenomenon of Internet publishing allowing for a surge of unregulated media, networking, responding instantly to events, and unconstrained by corporate censorship, independent researchers have, in the last five years especially, lifted the lid on the heretofore-suppressed world of Deep Politics.

Peter Dale Scott coined this term, defining it as “the constant, everyday interaction between the constitutionally elected government and forces of violence, forces of crime, which appear to be the enemies of that government.” (1) From the revolving door between Wall Street’s financial institutions and US intelligence agencies, to state sponsorship of private armies and death squads; to secret societies such as Skull & Bones and P2, to election rigging and the private looting of national treasuries, to government-protected drug trafficking networks recycling cash into the global banking system, this is the dark underbelly of our modern ‘rational’ world. But it is as integral to the global economic system as are the formal institutions that, in theory at least, are subject to public oversight.

Over time, certain key events have provided a window onto this world, and these are precisely the events that are most thoroughly lied about, protected from exposure by the stigmatization of those that examine them as ‘conspiracy theorists’. If scrutiny of this netherworld is off limits to mainstream news, traditional ‘alternative’ media has been no less averse to dealing with it. To illustrate, an inestimable contribution to our early understanding of the events of 9/11/01 was made by Canadian economist Michel Chossudovsky in his exposés of CIA-ISI-Taliban collusion. M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky had previously written a forward to one of Chossudovsky’s books and yet “America’s leading dissident” acted for months as if the findings of Chossudovsky and others simply didn’t exist. When finally asked point-blank about their implications, Chomsky deemed the idea of US complicity “hopelessly implausible” and not even worthy of discussion.

Speaking of the US anti-war movement’s ongoing partisan support of the pro-war Democratic Party, activist Charles Shaw sees such positions as “part of a larger pattern of “regulated resistance”, a system by which dissent is carefully managed and constrained by self, overt, or covert censorship; denial-based-psychology; fear of personal or professional criticism and reprisal; and pressure from powers above including elected officials and those establishment foundations which flood millions into the not-for-profit activist sector.” (2)

Though Chomsky is famed for his Propaganda Model of the mass media, a demonstration of how corporate ownership dramatically influences content, he is also a resolute anti-conspiracist. In Chomsky’s world, Lee Oswald alone murdered President Kennedy, Saddam Hussein ‘misunderstood’ the US position on Kuwait in 1990 and Osama bin Laden broke ties with his patrons following the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. Even as Hollywood stars speak openly on CNN about self-inflicted US terrorism, Chomsky and his colleagues have not deviated from their stance. For them, it is axiomatic of the current conflict that a) there is an entity known as ‘Al Qaeda’, international in scope and pursuing its own goals independent of US policy, b) said entity was responsible for the attacks of 9/11/01, and c) there exists a consequent ‘War on Terror’ which, whilst it may be exploited for ulterior motives, stems from legitimate security concerns. Exhaustive investigations, sometimes even by mainstream sources (3) have shown the complete emptiness of these propositions.

The Chomskyite Left’s connivance in the corporate media’s whitewash of problematic events, and worse, its unremitting hostility to alternative interpretations, led researcher Bob Feldman to investigate the sources of ‘alternative’ media’s funding. His discoveries revealed a complex financial trail originating with huge establishment foundations. The Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy and the Trilateral Commission, George Soros and many others, were found to be generously sustaining allegedly ‘alternative’ media in the US. (4)

When aspects of independent 9/11 research threatened to penetrate mainstream awareness in 2002, these media cliques signed on to a savage attack of key figures in the 9/11 Truth Movement. (5) But this gatekeeper Left was not able to suffocate 9/11 questions except by amputating a part of their erstwhile collaborators and alienating much of its audience. Whereas those outside of its fold (for example Mike Ruppert) could be subjected to interminable ad hominem attacks, Professor Chossudovsky’s work would simply be ignored. Further confirmation of the gatekeepers’ entrenched interests is the fact that increasing public awareness and acceptance of a 9/11 ‘inside job’ has not influenced the gatekeepers’ coverage in the slightest. From recent firings at (Rockefeller-funded) Pacifica Radio, to Counterpunch’s excommunication of ‘conspiracy nut’ Kurt Nimmo, the line has been clearly drawn: ‘responsible’ critique on one side, ‘conspiracy theory’ on the other.

Slipping under the radar at Counterpunch, Anis Shivani (6) ascribed a more benign motive to the Left’s rejection of ‘conspiracy’ findings, seeing it as an effort to preserve its rationalist credentials. But since this meant giving a pass for the enabling event of the current war, it was, Shivani observed, a losing move. The gatekeepers’ response to the Truth Movement’s has been to emphasize a flawed “structural analysis” of society, one that would diminish the importance of individual conspiracies. The value of structural analysis, as applied to the media, is that it allows us to identify news corporations as part of the overall edifice of power, rather than merely another social actor. Ironically, when structural analysis is applied to Establishment Left media, the latter are revealed to be scarcely less compromised than The New York Times or CNN. But ultimately, any analysis that ignores the truly determinative structures in today’s world, i.e. the powerful financial dynasties that unleash wars and destabilization, make or break governments at will, is of little use.

It goes without saying that all of the limits to dialogue with the Left gatekeepers are multiplied many times over when dealing with the corporate media. Here self-interest is a bigger factor, since a career in mass media is at once more lucrative and provides a much higher personal profile in the world. The mass media is additionally insulated from ‘Deep Politics’ by decades of depoliticisation and marginalization of non-mainstream ideas. Ideas that are plausible to independent researchers frequently sound like delirious ravings to mainstream journalists.

Robert Fisk is exemplary in this regard. The UK Independent’s fearless correspondent has justifiably earned a widespread respect and admiration for his on the spot, critical coverage of today’s most terrible conflicts. Fisk, however, has poured scorn on the ‘childish conspiracy theories’ of remote-controlled aircraft, endorsed by many Arabs. Of course, our correspondent doesn’t share his own theories, so we do not learn exactly how amateur pilots could steer planes wildly off-course and, on visual inspection alone, find individual target buildings in cities they had never flown to, cutting through a web of civilian air traffic, whose flight paths they could not possibly have known, only to enter the world’s most exclusive no-fly zones without opposition and without incident. But since this is how an Administration of proven liars describes the events in question, what else remains but to believe it? And yet, it must be remembered that Fisk represents the outer limits of tolerable dissent in the corporate media.

From the true origins of the Gulf War to the pre-planned dismemberment of Yugoslavia and Iraq, from Wall Street money laundering to the murder of David Kelly, from depleted uranium to ‘false flag’ terrorism, there is now an open-ended list of taboo subjects that the mainstream media and the foundation-funded ‘alternatives’ cannot address. The limits of Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model are clear. The most serious distortions of today’s world lie not in the ‘spin’ given to events, but in the very ‘reality’ of those events. The startling proliferation in ‘black ops’ does not permit us the luxury of innocence when assessing a “people’s revolution” (coup d’etat) such as that orchestrated in Tbilisi in 2003. Nor can assassinations, such as that of Rafik Hariri, be automatically assigned to the “obvious” culprit.

As the disconnect between popular perceptions and ‘responsible’ criticism grows, the surge in unregulated media could pose a fundamental challenge to the hierarchical organization of society, since it allows each and every person to bypass the established channels of discourse and trespass on the hallowed grounds of Truth. Meanwhile, the stultifying discourse of foundation-funded ‘alternative’ media will ultimately be sidelined as its ineffectualness is laid bare in the intensifying crisis. Awareness that we have entered a new historical phase has mandated the emergence of a new generation of activists. Finger wagging and moral point-scoring are not the required tools for understanding our current predicament. As with Thomas Hardy’s dictum that a full inventory of the worst must be made in order to clear a path to the better, so the lid must now be lifted on the most sordid aspects of our agonizing world.

Whilst false flag operations are not new (see Operation Gladio) the exigencies of continuous warfare in the Eurasian energy basin have led to a rapid acceleration in their use. From Bali to Madrid to London, nowhere now escapes the dead hand of intelligence operatives. And despite the trends previously discussed, progress in understanding is still slow. Isolated, random outrages may be of infinitely more use to the promoters of the ‘War on Terror’ than they are to putative Muslim radicals, but many residents of Madrid and London who understand the 9/11 montage will nevertheless vehemently deny that their home town has experienced the same. It is never explained why something that worked so well in the US would not be repeated elsewhere. Here, the essentially a-national character of the world’s elites must be understood, because a police state in the US cannot function in isolation. The rapidly accelerating trends toward convergence in ‘national security’ go beyond politics in the usual sense. In the 1970s, urban planner Paul Virilio examined this convergence, and identified its consequence as an impending transition to global military jurisdiction. (7)

At a time when global elites scramble for diminishing hydrocarbon reserves, terrorise their populations into submission, and unleash ever more catastrophic wars, the essential challenge to consensus reality is more important than ever. Whether global oil production is peaking right now or does so in 15 or 20 years is not the point. The global capitalist class and its population-cull-promoters are responding to it now (8). Whether ‘overshoot’ is an objective reality or just another Malthusian fantasy, the owners of the world will act upon the idea regardless.

From Baghdad to Caracas, the Empire is in retreat. And yet this makes the recourse to extreme ‘solutions’ more, not less likely. According to Michael Ruppert, the emerging American-led global police state is not merely about private control over the legal system, but is rather “a crisis-induced transition from a deeply compromised legal system to a society where force and surveillance completely supplant that system.” (9)

The seriousness of current developments cannot be underestimated. But as the disjuncture between events and their representation widens further, it impels the broader population to reorder their mental maps, thus opening new possibilities for radical alternatives. To exploit and reinforce this development, the evidence-based community must avoid turf wars and internal disputes. Now more than ever, it is necessary to share everything we know with everyone we know. Practical alternatives cannot emerge whilst the great mass of people remain somnambulant, which is why systematic deconstruction and demythologization of events is the precondition for liberating and reconstructing our world.

When the mask finally falls, reality can be what we make it.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

Notes:

1. Quoted in: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061704_conspiracy_union.html

2. “The Gatekeepers of the So-Called Left” Charles Shaw, Newtopia Magazine, May 16th, 2005

3. See Adam Curtis’s “The Power of Nightmares” The Rise of the Politics of Fear BBC Television 2004

4. http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html

5. http://www.insteadofwar.org/site/news_more.php?id=A667_0_2_0_M

6. “Progressive Irrelevance” Anis Shivani

http://www.counterpunch.org/shivani0829.html

7. Paul Virilio, Popular Defense and Ecological Struggles and Speed and Politic, Semiotext(e) 1990, 1986

8. http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=626

http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/malthsay.htm

“…There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. “There is no other way. “There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease are nature’s ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene…. “To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world.” –Robert McNamara, Oct. 2, 1979

9. Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon (pg.15) New Society Publishers, 2004

Copyright David Montoute, IsraelShamir.net 2015