How News Creates “Reality”: The All-at-Once Phenomenon and the Imagery of September 11

Book Review of The New Pearl Harbor Revisited by David Ray Griffin

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If ever a single book could change history for the better, we have one now. Published this month, “The New Pearl Harbor Revisited” thoroughly and irreversibly explodes the myths surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The events that unfolded before our incredulous eyes that morning were forever linked to devout Muslim fanatics seeking to terrorize wicked, infidel America.

These enduring images of planes plummeting into the Twin Tower icons have fractured world hopes for global order, security, and friendship.

And this imagery is perhaps the most classic example of “the all-at-once phenomenon” that has ever been broadcast by the media.

We all saw this at once on a single day, and its jaw-dropping imprint produced a historic turning point in the collective public reality.

This turning point has fettered international travel, poisoned Muslim relations, obliterated constitutional rights, justified rampant torture, and killed over two million human beings in occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.

And all this fallout has been stoically endured because these dominant images were unquestioningly accepted at face value.

But not by everybody.

Increasingly, a small army of independent professional researchers has turned up the spotlight on a burgeoning Internet archive of eyewitness accounts, early TV footage, and newly released government documents.

This body of concerned scholars, engineers, architects, physicists, pilots, firefighters, and former military, FBI/CIA and government officials has dusted off enough solid evidence to halt the 9/11 myth in its tracks.

But the real news is that this great sprawling archive has been tamed into an orderly, indexed encyclopedic reference work packed with hard evidence that systematically refutes the 9/11 myth, and shatters the meaning behind its images.

“The New Pearl Harbor Revisited” is a wonder of historical revelation. To read it is like watching a jigsaw puzzle forming up. As new pieces are added, the picture takes shape, and a new reality is born—a freeing reality which dissolves the specter of terrorism, and the burden of mistrust which this specter invited in.

It’s like walking into a cave of antiquity to find history carved into the walls—an illuminating history which was not available seven years ago, or even four years ago, when the 9/11 Commission Report was published. In 2004, much of this historical archive was not yet available.

Professor Griffin’s new documentary sources include the oral histories of the Fire Department of New York; the prosecution files from the Moussaoui trial; early video footage mounted from home collections on Youtube and Google Video; the release of government files and reports through FOIA requests; the archiving of out-of-print newspaper interviews on independent websites; the various and conflicting flight manifests which have surfaced from the four flights; the seismic reports which reflect the time and intensity of the crashes; revelations in the press that torture was used by the CIA to extract evidence from al Qaeda operatives; and new historical accounts such as New York Times reporter Philip Shenon’s 2008 “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.”

He covers new independent expert testimony such as the World Trade Center concrete pulverized to the width of a human hair, the E-4B mystery plane which hovered over the White House as the Pentagon was struck, Project Able Danger and its disappearing files, the performance of cell phones at high altitude, and a host of other technical problems within the official account.

But the most significant impact of this work is that it thoroughly demolishes the official version of events. Dr. Griffin has navigated the whole spectrum of evidence with such clarity and intelligence that we can see the unassailable truth about 9/11: it was a false flag attack on America, either originating from within the country, or aided by complicity from within the country.

Griffin’s formulation of this cooperative, cumulative work in progress is now about as complete as it can ever be, short of the formal investigation the world so desperately needs.

And, because of what 9/11 has done to the world, it’s urgent that we view the now available truth through this clear lens together, and then act to turn things around.

We must act together to restore the US Constitution, and to rebuild trust among nations and cultures—trust which will unify the world in addressing the truly crucial problems of mass starvation and the global climate crisis.

But first we must understand the difference between celluloid-based fiction and hard reality. We must escape this schizoid cinematic nightmare of illusion that was spun by images and lies—a nightmare that becomes more perilously self-fulfilling which each moment that our waking is delayed.

And waking means true, “all-at-once” headlines, generated by a mature population striving to replace a false and evil illusion.

This illusion has cost Iraq and Afghanistan nearly 2 million deaths. Causing these deaths has cost the US the $700 billion it now needs to save its economy.

This is the book that can rouse us from the nightmare of terrorism and its most tragic offspring, the mayhem in the Middle East.

Professor Griffin and his colleagues have done their part. It’s up to the rest of us to read it, face it, and propel it into the headlines.


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Articles by: Elizabeth Woodworth

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