Moral Panic.

The phrase was coined by Stanley Cohen Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics in the sixties. Dr. Sevigny’s lecture today was about manipulating a crowd or the public by means of moral panic. If this is what’s happening, if moral panic is actually planned by people in power for their own gain it’s thoroughly disgusting.
What do we really know about what happened on September 11, 2001? The latest internet documentary, Loose Change makes some very scary points about the whole mess. If you can’t sleep after watching it you can go to screw loose change for some rebuttals. Farhenheit 9/11 was pretty wild too when it first came out and dissenting views were available.
Just last week, the Military Commissions Act was passed allowing the US to torture prisoners and hold people without charging them. Although it’s easy to simply be relieved we don’t live in the U.S. and forget about it, I think we need to be aware of what’s happening next door. This act is step backwards for a civilized country.
Defending ourselves against moral panic means reasoning. It’s hard to get facts sometimes, especially if some powerful group has an interest in keeping them hidden. Where does it lead? Hopefully, we can dig out truth from the mountains of garbage out there and think hard enough to have an opinion. Personally, I don’t know what happened on 9/11. But I do know there’s more to the story than the official version. (Robert Cenedella, artist )