Where are we now? And where are we going? Remarks prepared for delivery at the first day of the International Inquiry Into 9/11, Phase 2, Toronto, 25 May 2004 By Barrie Zwicker, Director Let me start with the "we" our species, but not forgetting other life on Earth. Later the "we" will be 9/11 skeptics. Let me start with the largest canvas I can grasp. We are in the universe. The universe is the ultimate reality, as ecologian Thomas Berry puts it, the only text without context. Now speaking of the universe, how many here saw or heard of the latest data gathered by the Hubble Telescope? [few hands went up] The majority here has been robbed of awesome information. So let me share a few quotes from the March 14th Toronto Sunday Star. "On Tuesday, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. "Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the ... exposure reveals the most remote galaxies yet seen, roughly 13 billion light-years away. "The HUDF field covers a patch of sky about the size of a pinhead held at arm's length. "(The field) contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies. "Each galaxy contains approximately 100-billion stars. "The whole sky contains 12.7-million times more area than the Ultra Deep Field." In my opinion, this should have been front page news. But staying with amazing numbers, this news was given perhaps 1/100,000th the coverage of Janet Jackson's breast flash. In that coverage the main thing exposed was the value system of the mainstream media, to which I will return. Awesome as it may be what, you ask, does this new Hubble knowledge have to do with 9/11 and this Inquiry? Well, a great deal. NASA, much of its value system borrowed from or imposed by the current rulers of the USA, plans to pull the plug on the Hubble Space program, which costs a fraction of almost any U.S. military program you care to mention. In other words, a human endeavour which expands our knowledge of our ultimate reality is considered an expendable frill by those who control the most power and resources of our planet. Where is the human species now? We are, as Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa, usually says at the start of his talks, we are at the most dangerous point in human history. We are in a multiple crisis. It is above all ecological. You cannot have a healthy human economy - however structured - based upon a sick Earth economy. The economic crisis is additionally one of extreme inequitability. We are in a related social crisis. There is a communications crisis. The public nervous system is sending false signals. It is not a spiritual crisis, perhaps the opposite. Crisis forces deep reassessment, for individuals, organizations, and for planets. The human species could find its soul in restoring its home. Or we may all die sooner than we should or both. Another way of describing where we, the people, are is to say we are collectively brainwashed semi-automatons being force-marched toward extinction by rulers who are tunnel vision bullies and moral zeroes. Their latest greatest hit was 9/11. So the rulers ordered their apparatchiks to mount some encores, the latest being the Madrid train bombings, quickly dubbed Europe's 9/11. A telltale fingerprint was the alleged finding of a Koran in a van soon after. C'mon. And an alleged tape linked to Al Qaeda. C'mon. The purpose of 9/11 and encore 9/11-type events is to keep the public malleable through fear. A fearful public will countenance a reduction of its liberties in return for promises of greater security. More encores are expected. I hope this will be the subject of much discussion at this Inquiry. Question: how often can they play this Koran-in-a-van card before pattern recognition becomes so widespread among citizens on the planet as to become a serious political force? 9/11 actually was, in my opinion, a sloppily complicated drama that well reflects the diseased minds that concocted it. They can get that complicated because their resources are virtually unlimited and their moral constraints nil. They are diabolical technicians getting off on their power and perversity and propensity to please their masters. But if the 9/11 planners have been high-fiving over their success, they're engaging in hubris, taking credit where it is not due. Those who conspired to concoct this toxic trick and inflict it did not succeed because they created a seamless magic trick. They succeeded only because of the virtual total complicity of the mainstream media, our mental jailers. It is from the mainstream media that most people get most of their information most of the time on most subjects. Those who control the output of the mainstream media control the brainstem of the collective consciousness. When those charged with being skeptical inquirers are neither skeptical nor inquire, the only phrase for it is deep complicity. When investigative journalists fail to investigate the obvious, it is deep complicity. When investigative journalists only investigate that which distracts the public from the obvious, it is even deeper complicity. The mainstream media -- I speak as one who has earned his living for the past 33 years as a media critic -- the mainstream media perform as spear carriers for the emperor through a combination of de facto censorship, mass distraction and platforming of ideologically-loaded deceptions. All blend into the illusory landscape of the total synthetic environment which is their penultimate product. Their ultimate product is atomized lobotomized masses existing in their consumer-decorated assigned pigeonholes - in fact all of us to one extent or another. But there's a seldom-examined, extra uncomfortable reverse side of the coin of systematized corporate media malfeasance. That is a terribly widespread tendency among the populace to want to be lied to. Denial would exist even if the mainstream media did not. We must confront that in ourselves and in others, even as we rightly place the greatest onus upon those who claim to inform us. There's another answer to the question: Where are we now and where are we going? I think we're now on the threshold of hope, because such an edifice of illusion, embedded in and promotive of an Earth-destroying economy, is one which cannot be sustained. Something has to give, and give soon. The depletion of resources is proceeding exponentially. The buildup of wastes is proceeding exponentially. The brazenness of the deceptions manufactured to mobilize public opinion behind the agenda of the neocons is reaching a zenith. Another outrage is widely predicted to occur between now and November. Something is stirring among the masses designated to sleepwalk toward oblivion. Something is stirring even among some of the prison guards, even among a few of the illusioneers. So where are we in the 9/11 skeptics movement? Our job is to know the landscape as well as we can, to grasp the largest picture to the best of our ability, to plan - as Michael Ruppert says - a roadmap from where we are to a better place. Our job is to nourish realistic hope that we can and will, as 9/11 skeptics, play a pivotal role in helping the old death system to itself die the death it unconsciously seeks. Our job is to prepare for the chaos to come and to help lay the groundwork for the more honest and sane world that will be built upon the rubble and the courage of the present. As 9/11 skeptics we are called by history to be our best and most effective selves, whatever role we play. We are charged with doing our utmost to save our planetary home. To paraphrase a poet who performed at a benefit in San Francisco to raise money for Phase 1 of this Inquiry: "Our great grandchildren should not let us sleep at night." That's where we, 9/11 skeptics, are now. We are more awake than we ever have been. We have much more waking up to do. And especially we owe it to our fellow citizens to rub the sleep out of their eyes.