why we’re covering 9/11 fifteen years on

A reader called “Paul” recently emailed us this message:

Paul is probably not as plugged in to recent geopolitical history as he should be, but leaving that aside, we do realise some of our readers will be questioning our decision to cover the 9/11 fifteenth anniversary, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to talk about that.

Firstly, we think there’s no point in expending the effort involved in running OffGuardian, if we are going to be selective in our scepticism.

Fifteen years ago the idea of large scale false flags or government deceptions seemed absurd to all of us. But the unraveling of so many official narratives in recent years; the lies over WMDs, the lies over Ghouta, the lies over Libya and Ukraine, the repeat evidence for wholesale manipulation, if not fabrication, of events to promote war, means we don’t feel able to simply take the events of 9/11 on trust any more.

It was the catalyst for the perpetual war currently being waged, the ultimate fail-safe irrefutable argument to silence criticism of the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and the creeping emergence of fascism in the Western world.

How can any of us continue to question everything 9/11 has brought us, but not question 9/11 itself?

We aren’t interested in simply erecting new certitudes to replace the used ones. We aren’t claiming “Bush did it” or “Israel did it” or “the Saudis did it”, or indeed “Bin Laden did it.” We want to take a long and dispassionate look at the evidence for what actually happened that day, and give space, as our remit dictates, to those opinions and facts that tend to be silenced in the mainstream.

On 9/11 three steel-framed high-rise buildings collapsed completely at near free-fall speed allegedly due to fires – which, if true, makes them the only steel-framed high-rises in construction history to have ever done this. Rationally and objectively, this is something worth examining, as unique events always are. Did the government-appointed enquiry by the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) do a thorough job in explaining why this unique event occurred? Or did it do what government-appointed enquiries usually do and fudge? Do we have answers or evasions?

For some reason these questions are routinely avoided, even by those who are willing to ask similar questions about WMDs or Syrian chemical weapons or Chilcot. The fear of the label “conspiracy theorist” deters too many of us – which of course is just what it was intended to do.

But if even the “non-Truther” alt news community allow itself to be controlled and corralled by Orwellian language-manipulation, we have already conceded the ultimate power to those we are supposed to be challenging. The same social forces that invented the phrase “conspiracy theory” only need to invent other no-go labels in future to effectively force us into further self-censorship. Unless at some point we refuse to allow the voodoo word-magic to work on us.

So, we’re using the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11 to pose a couple of very basic questions:

• Has the government sufficiently explained its version of events?
• Does this version fit the observed facts better than any other?

The fact this is considered by so many intelligent people to be an “out there” thing to do speaks volumes about how much even the most savvy of us are currently brainwashed.

The phrase “conspiracy theorist” is an empty meme invented to deter enquiry. We don’t think this is a good thing and we don’t intend to be controlled by it. We believe facts really should be sacred – however unpopular they may be and whatever label someone may have attached to them.

We all hope our readers will find this series interesting, thought-provoking and maybe even enlightening.

CATTE    SYSTEMTATIC    VASKA    KIT

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