How 9/11 taught me to seek the truth

VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SAME PLANET. DIFFERENT WORLDS. SEPT. 25 - OCT. 10, 08

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How 9/11 taught me to seek truth

(USA, 85 min.) Ex-CIA spooks, investigative journalists and military lawyers pose lucid, cogently argued statements about the need for government secrecy versus the importance of freedom and knowledge in Peter Galison and Robb Moss’ documentary. The complexity of the issues at stake is given a fair and balanced approach that is as intelligent as it is worrying. <SECRY> SECRECY

The Fallen: A Silent Collapse Los Caidos (Mexico, 85 min.) When 63 miners were killed at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine in Mexico, their deaths were only the beginning of an appalling story of corporate corruption and government collusion. Director Rudy Joffroy recreates the disaster and its aftermath, including a deadly strike, through interviews with the people who lived through it. <FALLE>

Fierce Light: When Spirit Meets Action (Canada, 95 min.) Referred to as “soul force” by Gandhi and “love in action” by Martin Luther King, Velcrow Ripper (Scared Sacred) examines the roots of spiritual activism, with insight from spiritual luminaries Thich Nhat Hahn and Desmond Tutu, and activists, including Alice Walker, Julia Butterfl y Hill and Daryl Hannah. <FIERC>

Blue Gold: World Water Wars (USA/Canada, 94 min.) Maude Barlow’s call to arms Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water, forms the basis for Sam Bozzo’s incendiary fi lm that travels the world and makes explicit the connection between water and power. The most essential and densely informational of the several recent impassioned fi lms about the imperilled future of man due to our mishandling of the world’s most precious element. <BLUEG>

Throw Down Your Heart (USA, 97 min.) This Buena Vista Social Club of African music features virtuoso banjo player Béla Fleck’s journey to Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia and Mali to jam with superb musicians in their village settings. In Sascha Paladino’s delightful fi lm, the phrase “dueling banjos” doesn’t even begin to sum up the pure joy of watching these musicians in action. <THRHE>

Addicted to Plastic! The Rise and Demise of a Modern Miracle (Canada, 76 min.) Ian Connacher’s doc is a thorough—and thoroughly worrying—look at the presence of plastic in our world. Alarming and enlightening in equal measure, the fi lm hops from factories and landfi lls to India and the Pacifi c Ocean and back in search of facts, fi gures and, most importantly, solutions. <ADDIC>

In 2005, I was living a luxurious life in Beijing, China, as the private English teacher for Yang Kaisheng, then President of the Industrial Commercial Bank of China, the largest bank in the world. I was also a corporate trainer for various multinational corporations. Like many people, I believed 9/11 was about America getting its just desserts for decades of failed foreign policy.

At that time, my roommate frequently listened to the Alex Jones Show, a nationally syndicated news/talk radio show based out of Austin, Texas. I remember often coming home to hear Jones, with his thick Texan accent, telling his listeners how he thought the world was run. To me, his ideology seemed radical and baseless until my roommate pleaded with me to sit down and watch one of his films. I said I had neither the time nor the desire to watch a full film, but that I would give him five minutes of my sincere attention. During those five minutes, he played a clip from Mar tial Law where I saw the collapse of 7 WTC. At first, I thought it wasn’t real. Then I thought if it was real how could I have not seen it on TV even once in the last four years? How could a building blow itself up? After six months of personal research, I still didn’t have many answers, but I had some. The answers I did find led me to join the 9/11 Truth Movement in Canada and inspired me to step onto a path of self-discovery and social awareness. 9/11 brought Canadian troops into Afghanistan and delivered Canadian material support to the war in Iraq. In fact, it is, as Stephen Harper reminded us on September 11, 2007, our sole reason for participation in the War on Terror. “And that is why the countries of the United Nations … launched their mission in Afghanistan – to deal with the source of the 9/11 terror.”

However, what Harper did not men tion is that we only did so because then Secretary of State Colin Powel promised us a white paper linking Osama Bin Laden (OBL) to the attacks. That white paper never materialized.

More recently, on August 19 of this year, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day sent me a letter in which he stated, “The Canadian Government has no cause to believe the destruction by Drew Noftle

of the World Trade Center was due to reasons other than those cited in the … 9/11 Commission Report.”

No cause to believe? How about the following?

Some of the alleged “suicide hijack ers” are still alive and well. Fire has never – either before or after 9/11 – caused a steel-framed structure to collapse, let alone at free-fall speed.

Squibs, such as those you would see in a controlled demolition, were caught on tape during the collapse of all three towers.

In January of 2008, 9/11 Commissioners Kean and Hamilton stated, “We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information…” adding they were “stonewalled by the C.I.A.”

To this day, the FBI does not accuse OBL of the attacks. The collapse of 7 WTC was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Furthermore, why was not one offi cial or civil servant fired for their actions that day? Was no one negligent? Why were 70 percent of the victims’ family members’ questions not answered by the 9/11 Commissioners?

I, for one, no longer delve into where to place blame for the events of September 11. My reasons for participating in Canadian 9/11 Truth are no longer about putting Bush, Cheney or Osama Bin Laden in jail. Nor is it about justice for the victims. It is about seeing the world once and for all for what it really is. It is about realizing how we are lied to by our government and by corporate journalism, and how we accept those lies. It is about seeking truth in all we do, and learning the importance of educating ourselves, for ourselves. 9/11 Truth is about steering away from our more than 2,000-year-old cycle of non-stop war, and moving instead into a world based on truth, peace and tolerance. These are the truths for which I gave up my life in China and these are the truths the 9/11 Truth movement is founded upon and guides us toward.

Drew Noftle will be in Ottawa this September 11 to build support for a Canadian investigation into 9/11. He is currently working as a teacher in Yaletown. onehistory@gmail.com More info: vancouver911truth.org