NDAA press conference

9/11 Truth, Inner Consciousness and the "Public Mind"

Global Research
James Tracy

With few exceptions the news that will shape public discourse is subject to a de facto censorial process of powerful government and corporate elites beyond accountability to the public. It is here that Sigmund Freud’s notion of repression is especially helpful for assessing the decrepit state of media and public discourse in the United States. In Freud’s view, one’s collective life experiences are registered in the subconscious, with those particularly disturbing or socially impermissible experiences being involuntarily suppressed, only later to emerge as neuroses. Whereas suppression is conscious and voluntary, repression takes place apart from individual volition.

With opinion polls indicating at least half of the public distrusting the official account of September 11th, the foremost basis for the “war on terror”, no public event has been more repressed in public consciousness via the mass media than 9/11. The enduring usefulness of Freud’s theory is suggested in repeated manifestations of the repressed episode to haunt the public mind for which a surrogate reality has been crafted.

Peter Dale Scott describes occasions such as the assassination of President John Kennedy and September 11th as “deep events” because of their historical complexity and linkages with the many facets of “deep government”—the country’s military and intelligence communities and their undertakings. The failure to adequately explain and acknowledge deep events and pursue their appropriate preventative remedies leads to continued deceptions where unpleasant experiences are contained and a new “reality” is imposed on the public mind.  Together with the notion of repression, the term is also applicable for considering how instances of such historical import are dealt with in mass psychological terms, or, more specifically, by ostensibly independent alternative news media capable of recollecting the real.

For example, on May 1, 2011 President Obama announced the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the mythic mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, to an apparently ecstatic nation. Most conventional news outlets reported Obama’s announcement unquestioningly because it fit the scheme of their overall erroneous reportage on September 11th. When alternative news media and bloggers almost immediately pointed to various contradictions in the story—the observations of eye witnesses to the raid, doctored photos of bin Laden’s alleged corpse, and international press reports that Bin Laden died many years prior—corporate news outlets acted swiftly to repress the well-reasoned critiques as “conspiracy theories” with a barrage of swiftly-produced editorials and op-eds. Indeed, the announcement of Bin Laden’s supposed demise came just four days after the Obama administration released the president’s purportedly authentic long-form birth certificate, an event at once uncannily amplified and repressed by the proclamation of bin Laden’s fate; where the vocabulary of repression produced another term, “deather”.

The Criminalization of Protest: Say Goodbye To Free Speech in America

Global Research
Devon DB

Barack Obama speaks at a demonstration
similar to the type he is set to ban

A new bill, HR 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011, also known as the “Trespassing Bill,” is soon to be signed into law by President Obama. This bill effectively criminalizes protest and will hurt protest groups and movements such as Occupy quite hard.

The bill as states that anyone who knowingly “enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so” with the “intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in or [in] proximity to, any restricted building or grounds” or “impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions” will be punished with a fine or “or imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both.” (emphasis added)

There are already many problems with the bill as it does not attempt to define what “imped[ing] or disrupt[ing] the orderly conduct of government business or official functions” is, nor does it specify what “government business” is or what an “official function” is. This vagueness will allow for the US government to effectively stifle protest and free speech, thus criminalizing such actions like the upcoming Occupy Chicago anti-NATO/G-8 protests. In addition to this, such a law will make it impossible for Americans to exercise their First Amendment rights when “government business” is being attended to or “official functions” are occurring.

Unsurprisingly, only three people voted against the measure: Paul Broun (R-GA-10), Justin Amash (R-MI-3) and Ron Paul (R-TX-14). This law would allow federal law enforcement “to bring these charges against Americans engaged in political protests anywhere in the country, and violators will face criminal penalties that include imprisonment for up to 10 years.” HR 347 will is ripe for abuse, as the NYPD has, as of recent, assumed the notion that taking photos and videotaping is a form of disorderly conduct.