 Someone else who loves to speak his piece is Mickey Huff. He's up next. He is the director of Project Censored, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, co-editor of the annual Censored book series, and professor of social science, then goodness in history at Diablo Valley College. You're lucky students. Thanks so much, Rachel, Emily, Frank. I wanna thank everyone here today. It's an honor to be invited for this 20-year anniversary slash commemoration of the 9-11 events. Go, Kevin. Hard act to follow, brother, but I'm gonna do my best. And thanks for speaking your piece and your truth. Man, you've been doing it for a long time, and I've learned a lot from you, learned a lot from so many of the people here. So again, honored to be here, thanks to, again, Emily, Rachel, Frank, Medea Code Pink, Peace Action, Massachusetts. Also wanna thank my good friend, the great scholar, author of Giants, the global power elites, previous director of Project Censored, Peter Phillips, who had the courage to question dominant media narratives around the events of September 11, despite the lack of support from many on the left. His collections of unanswered questions around 9-11 are still ever relevant today, and his book, Giants, is actually speaking of who benefits, is a who's who of who benefited from the global war of terror, kicked into high gear by the events of 9-11. As William Faulkner once wrote, the past is never dead, it's not even past. And history matters, the teaching of history matters. And now, 20 years later, 9-11 literally is history to millions of people who were too young to remember or not even born yet. And this generation now comprised many of my undergraduate students taking courses for me in US history, political economy, and a course called Critical Reasoning in History that I've taught with a focus on contemporary historiography and the events of 9-11 for about 17 years now. It's called History in the Making, Contemporary Historiography and the Rough Draft of History. The subtopic is today's fake news, is tomorrow's fake history, riffing on the CIA whistleower Ralph McGhee, case studies and media myth-making and the propaganda of historical construction. Well, this is all basically around the recent history of 9-11. I certainly go back and set the stage for these things, but nevertheless, my brief talk here today in my WTC seven minutes is to focus on young people and another generation of people learning our history. So I wear a lot of hats, as you heard, Rachel say, I'm co-chair of the history department, chair of the journalism department, director of Project Censored, the anti-censorship pro-free press group Project Censored. And for the last 45 years, Project Censored, I've been involved since 2008. I've been surveying the rough drafts of history, journalism around major events and topics that impact all of us, including but not limited to the events of September 11, 20 years ago. It's not exactly fun or easy thing to do. It doesn't win one many popularity contests. And in fact, it sometimes turns erstwhile allies into something else. So challenging is the path that follows transparently sourced factual reporting that dare challenge the status quo in official historical narratives, right? I hereby would like to ask everybody here please not participate in the circular firing squad so prevalent on the left and remember who we are really fighting against and fighting for. 10 years ago this week, the Occupy Movement was born and gave us the language of the 99% and the 1%. And you heard Rachel riffing on that just moments ago. Let's not lose sight of that cabal of billionaires, war profiteers, big pharma drug pushers, fossil fuel polluters and purveyors of Big Brother Incorporated, the surveillance capitalists of our technocracy. This is where our ire must be directed, right? This is where, not toward each other. We must look up, not at each other to fight amongst ourselves. George W. Bush said, let's never accept outlandish conspiracy theories around the events of 9-11. Well, don't let that label shut down inquiry as the biggest conspiracy theory around 9-11 has come from the US government and our corporate media. And of course the conspiracy theory label was weaponized and used by the CIA in the 1960s to discourage people from challenging the Warren Commission and JFK, CIA memo 1035960. I urge you to look into it and read the great book by Lance de Haven Smith about this called Conspiracy Theory in America. Well, let's move in here back to the teaching of history. Gore Vidal once noted that we are the United States of Amnesia, right? The great political scientist Michael Parenti cautioned us, those engaged in the manufacturing of history often introduced distortions at the point of origin well before the history is written or even played out. This initial process of control is not usually left a chance but is regularly pursued by interested parties who were situated to manipulate the record. It is important to teach these unhistories, the untold history leading to 9-11 and thereafter in this past 20 years with thanks to Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick and other historians. The media and the political classes weaponized 9-11 to cast a cloud of fear not just across the United States but the world. And when we look at this media we see that elites do not want us to forget, right? They want us to remember to be fearful, to be distrustful of each other, to be racist and lust for violence against innocents around the world because we relied to about 9-11 and that such people allegedly hate our freedoms. This is not true. What is hated is our ignorance, our apathy, our privilege and our jingoistic behavior. What I hope we do not forget however is the road to 9-11. And from remember the main World War I's cry fight them over there. So we don't have to fight them over here which was echoed after 9-11, right? The day that will live in infamy, Pearl Harbor, right? The lies around the Gulf of Tonkin into Vietnam were exposed by Daniel Ellsberg pending on papers including coverups of Kent State. The anti-war activists in media Pennsylvania who uncovered the FBI's COINTEL program still alive and well to this day operating under other names, right? Given new life after the 9-11 attacks COINTEL Pro was. It seems that there's a very clear pattern of lies and deception around U.S. wars followed by crackdowns on civil liberties at home. And that pattern continues with 9-11. The history of bin Laden, the CIA, Iraq and WMDs. The list goes on and on. But looking at 9-11 in particular, quickly, the rise of the neoconservatives, the project for the new American Century, let's not forget them and who they are. The document rebuilding America's defenses that calls for a new Pearl Harbor in order to unleash an American century, a new American century. Those wars were already planned well in advance of 9-11 in the Middle East. Once Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld were in place, they immediately looked to put into effect what the project for the new American Century called that new American Century and dominated with U.S. hegemony. 9-11 was the event that gave them the opportunity. It was the catalyzing event like the new Pearl Harbor that gave them the, quote, opportunity to unleash U.S. empire across the world with impunity. So let's not forget the failures around 9-11 the FAA, NORAD failing to scramble planes, the stock market short sales just prior to the attacks. Let's not forget the dust and deceit of the environmental fallout and destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City when Chrissy Todd Whitman at the EPA lied about the safety of the air so Wall Street could open and thousands of fallen ill and even more have died. The government failed to do anything about these victims of 9-11 until they were shamed into action by a comedian on late night TV and John Stuart, pathetic, absolutely disgraceful. Let's not forget about the anthrax attacks ultimately traced to U.S. military base and subsequently bossed investigation by the FBI that fell into the vast memory hole which turns out as quite a rabbit hole. Speaking of the FBI, let's not forget whistleblowers like Colleen Rowley about the many forewarnings that were all somehow missed by an unelected presidential administration. Let's not forget the CIA and counterterrorism czarists that said attacks were coming the summer of 9-11 of 2001 and that quote, the attacks would be spectacular. Let's not forget CNN and the BBC announcing in advance that WTC7 Tower fell 20 minutes before it did. That's some crackerjack reporting. Let's not forget the Afghans offered to assist our looking into bin Laden asking only for evidence of his complicity and the U.S. said we don't need any evidence and likely didn't have any. Let's not forget. Let's never forget we invaded two countries not technically involved in 9-11 killing over a million innocent people displacing millions of people more based around the lies of 9-11. Let's not forget the media fear porn and propaganda that's still with us to this day. Let's not forget the endless invocations. Let's never forget Condi Rice who wrote books with Phillip Zellichal who was ahead of the editing the 9-11 commission scaring Americans with phantoms of mushroom clouds over New York City lying to the commission about never predicting an attack that would take place even though she delivered a presidential daily briefing saying exactly that. Let's not forget the normalization of total surveillance and torture taking shoes off at airports endless breaking news from terrorist suspect roundups and scary soundtracks constantly waving flag trying to cover the shame of killing innocent people with thanks to Howard Zinn. Let's never forget the coverups of the 9-11 commission with Phillip Zellichal who saw to it that over 75% of the questions of the victims' families around 9-11 that fought for the Bush administration for over 400 days to form a commission were never even addressed only 9% of those questions were satisfactorily answered further underscoring the purpose of such political commissions. To cement propaganda of official narratives in the public consciousness and move on the corporate media, not mainstream corporate dutifully helping this process and history demands that we do not simply move on it demands we continue to ask questions to not accept contradictions and lies from above. I could go on about 9-11 historiography and I do a whole course on it in the semester and I can never address it all and I know my time here is coming to an end which I'm grateful to have this opportunity to talk to everybody and be here today to all the young people here please never stop asking questions never stop, never stop striving for the truth no matter how hard or unpopular stand up for social, political and economic justice for your generation and those that even will come after you. What we do today shapes the kind of world you inherit and while it's hard to imagine as a young person one day you too will be older and another youth will ask what you did with your time here. Emma Goldman said most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. I encourage more sinners and more true seekers about our past about the events of 9-11 in hopes we become a more accurately informed more empathetically driven and truly more just and equitable society in order to never forget we need to pursue those infamous unknown unknowns Rumsfeld mused about. We must strive to teach the truth about our history triumphs and tragedies and learn from our calamitous mistakes so that we won't be so they won't be repeated by yet another generation forging its own future in hopes of eventually being on the right side of history. Please feel free to follow more of our work at projectcensored.org. This past couple of weeks we're featuring specials on 9-11 and you can contact me through projectcensored.org mickey at projectcensored.org everyone that's here is invited to be on the show and I'm hoping to use excerpts from today's amazing testimonies on future shows. Thank all of you very much for the important work that you do. Again, it's an honor to be here. Thank you so much for that, mickey. And especially thank you for saying that you will spread the word yourself by taking these testimonials and rebroadcasting them. I would encourage all of our audience to do the same. I know people may be scrambling for all the great links and information that's being shared in the chat. Don't worry, we're gonna send that out to you. We're gonna send out a bunch of relevant links and actions you can take. And most importantly, the recordings of this program. And once again, I encourage you to share that with your friends, family and colleagues who could not be here live.