57 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 29 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 9/11/16

Why I Don't Speak of 9/11 Anymore

By       (Page 2 of 2 pages) Become a premium member to see this article and all articles as one long page.   15 comments
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Edward Curtin
Become a Fan
  (26 fans)

5. 9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous numerical designation applied to an historical event, and obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical appellation for an important event in American history. The future editor of The New York Times and Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced this connection the following morning in a NY Times op-ed piece, "America's Emergency Line: 911." The linkage of the attacks to a permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: "An Israeli response to America's aptly dated wake-up call might well be, 'Now you know.'" By referring to September 11th as 9/11, an endless national emergency became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. It is a term that pushes all the right buttons evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery; it is propaganda at its best. Even The Journal of 9/11 Studies uses the term that has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless repetition. As George W. Bush would later put it as he connected Saddam Hussein to "9/11" and pushed for the Iraq war, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had been blended.

I have concluded -- and this is impossible to prove definitively at this time because of the nature of such propagandistic techniques -- that the use of all these words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge. It is why I don't speak of "9/11" any more. I refer to those events as the attacks of September 11, 2001. But I am not sure how to undo the damage.

Lance deHaven-Smith puts it well in Conspiracy Theory in America. "The rapidity with which the new language of the war on terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms and their mutual connections to WW II nomenclatures; and above all the connections between many terms and the emergency motif of "9/11" and "9-1-1" -- any one of these factors alone, but certainly all of them together -- raise the possibility that work on this linguistic construct began long before 9/11". It turns out that elite political crime, even treason, may actually be official policy."

Needless to say, his use of the words "possibility" and "may" are in order when one sticks to strict empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is apparent to me that he considers these "coincidences" part of a conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put in his underappreciated humorous way, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."

The evidence for linguistic mind control, while the subject of this essay, does not stand alone, of course. It underpins the actual attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that are linked. The official explanations for these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic and are patently false, as proven by thousands of well-respected professional researchers from all walks of life -- i.e. engineers, pilots, architects, and scholars from many disciplines. To paraphrase the prescient Vince Salandria, who said it long ago concerning the assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of 2001 are "a false mystery concealing state crimes." If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks together with the language adopted to explain and preserve them in social memory, the "mystery" emerges from the realm of the unthinkable and becomes utterable. "There is no mystery." How to communicate this when the corporate mainstream media serve the function of the government's mockingbird (as in Operation Mockingbird) repeating and repeating the same narrative in the same language; that is the difficult task we are faced with.

Words have a power to enchant and mesmerize. Linguistic mind-control, especially when linked to traumatic events such as the September 11th and anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb and blind. It often makes some subjects "unthinkable" and "unspeakable" (to quote Jim Douglass quoting Thomas Merton in JFK and the Unspeakable: the unspeakable "is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said.").

We need a new vocabulary to speak of these terrible things.

Next Page  1  |  2

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).

Must Read 8   Well Said 8   Valuable 8  
Rate It | View Ratings

Edward Curtin Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter Page       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Edward Curtin is a widely published author. His new book is Seeking Truth in A Country of Lies - https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/ His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Remembering Albert Camus' "The Plague": It is US

Prof. Noam Chomsky, Anarchist, Lectures Leftists on Why They Should Vote for Neo-Liberal, War Hawk Hillary Clinton

The Coming Wars to End All Wars

The "Deep State" Then and Now

Happy Fifth Anniversary, Hillary, You've Destroyed Libya

The Fakest Fake News: The U.S. Government's 9/11 Conspiracy Theory - A Review of 9/11Unmasked: An International Review

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend