Censorship | The Everyday Concerned Citizen

Re-Think 9/11

Lately I have been led by various listservs, Facebook groups, and real-media (still termed alternative-media) websites to peruse many of the newly released accounts, videos, and articles on the subject of 9/11, the horrific event that led us in the US to the horrors of the Patriot Act and everything else in its train, further horrific legislation, the creation of “Homeland Security,” and all sorts of illegal and warrantless surveillance, policing, censorship, harassment.

It seems like there is a lot coming out currently, but I also found a lot already published, over the last few years, and only slowly becoming more widely known. You can just Google 9/11 and words like “story” and “truth” on the web, or on Youtube, to yield tons of information.

Perhaps this is something all of us in America need to do right now–mired as we are in illegal surveillance, censorship, and COINTELPRO harassment–peruse the evidence, think for ourselves, and figure out the truth for ourselves. Perhaps that could be the first step for more of us to stand up and demand change. The Patriot Act, the AUMF, the NDAA–and various Executive Orders–perhaps it is time right now for us to bury these pieces of casual oppression aimed at us.

I collected a small set of links to the recent articles and videos and radio shows I have been invited to read and watch and listen to lately, they are here on this Re-Think 9/11 page, which I think important enough to keep permanently linked and easily available from the Restoring Democracy page. Please read, please share, please spread the word.

The first link on that list leads to Geoengineeringwatch.org, where I read today’s article and once more watched the short film linked there. It made me think more of us need to be reading this, watching this, thinking more deeply about what exactly has happened to us in the US–and elsewhere–post 9/11. And asking ourselves: what can we possibly do to change this current reality? Is there anything that can be done?

Still vital for the rest of us with conscience to speak out against a new war in Syria, and a return to war in Iraq–at the cost of billions of dollars, and unimaginable cost to human life and peace everywhere. Also vital to keep speaking out against surveillance and censorship of journalists, activists, writers, and everyday working citizens. And PETA tells us new horrors are being unveiled in recent NIH-funded use of baby macaques ($30 million spent in the last 7 years to traumatize newborns) building on 30 years of needless psychological and physical torture. NRDC tells us the Navy is knowingly going ahead with 5-year mid-frequency sonar testing expected to strand, maim, and kill thousands of whales and other sea creatures.

Just Foreign Policy is running a campaign to get Congress to debate bombing Syria. The Committee to Protect Journalists is running a campaign to speak out for journalists. PETA is running a campaign to stop the torture of baby monkeys. NRDC is running a petition to the Secretary of Defense to stop the sonar testing. There is another petition as well on The Petition Site to stop the sonar.

Please drop in to the Peace/Not War page, the Privacy/Censorship page, the Living Beings page for these petition-links.

News and opinion on Iraq and Syria:

Terrific video from Ken O’Keefe, Military veteran, on the insanity of returning to war.

“The staggering costs of all this—$25 billion to train the Iraqi Army, $60 billion for the reconstruction-that-wasn’t, $2 trillion for the overall war, almost 4,500 Americans dead and more than 32,000 wounded, and an Iraqi death toll of more than 190,000 (though some estimates go as high as a million)—can now be measured against the results. The nine-year attempt to create an American client state in Iraq failed, tragically and completely. The proof of that is on today’s front pages.” Read Peter van Buren’s op-ed at Nation of Change on the madness of returning to war in Iraq and bombing Syria.

“Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warned that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and absorb individuals into a public that can be shaped and manipulated by those in power.” Read Chris Hedges’ op-ed on continuous war, the madness of a new war, and what the US is trending toward, via Simone Weil’s ruminations on war, 1984, and the distant memory of the Roman Empire.