9/11 Truth Panel at Concordia UNI in Montreal

posted by ewing2001 on Friday December 19, @05:21PM

Report from another 9/11 Truth Panel in Long Island, New York next week

9/11 conspiracy theory debated

TheConcordian.com -December 12

By Stavroula Papadopoulos

A United States (U.S.) government conspiracy theory behind the September 11 attacks was the topic addressed in the movie entitled Aftermath: Unanswered Questions from 9/11, as well as in the panel discussion that followed the screening at Concordia.

"Unequivocally, 9/11 is a U.S.-intelligence sponsored toy," said Michel Chossudovsky, economics professor at the University of Ottawa and editor of the Center for Research on Globalization.

Monday's event was organized by Cinema Politica. It presented three short films in addition to its main presentation, all made by Guerrilla News Network (GNN), an independent alternative news organization and video design boutique.

Stephen Marshall, director of Aftermath, was the second panelist. Marshall is also the director of GNN and the creator of Channel Zero.

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Aftermath featured nine people answering 11 questions that emanate from 9/11. These questions challenged the official version of the events of that day and its warning signs.

Mary Schiavo, aviation disaster attorney, argued that airlines should have been better prepared because of the hijackings that occurred on Sept. 12, 1970. Nafeez Ahmed, author of The War on Freedom, said that there was an unusual 30 minute delay in the U.S. military interception response; when it normally only takes 10 minutes to react. David McMichael, former CIA analyst, looked at the administrative response to the military failures of that day. The then General Richard B. Myers has since been promoted, and the military budget was increased from $10 billion to $35 billion.

Chossudovsky is also featured in the movie and he dealt with the ties between the U.S. and the terrorists. He said that Mahmoud Ahmad, pin-pointed by the U.S. government as the money-man behind the attacks, was in Washington with top U.S. officials from Sept. 4 to 13, 2001.

Riva Enteen, of the National Lawyer's Guild, dealt with recent legislation like the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security. She said the Patriot Act "dismantles the constitution," and moves more power to the justice department. The words used in the new legislation are often vague and could extent to consider protesters, or the like, to be engaging in illegal activities. "Dissent has never been more critical," said Enteen.

During the panel discussion, Chossudovsky talked about the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which, one year before the election of George W. Bush, outlined a road map to war. Chossudovsky said that the PNAC reads: "we need a Pearl Harbor type of event to harvest public opinion in support of the war agenda."

He believes that "Al-Qaeda and the Bush administration still work hand-in-hand."

He believes it to be naïve to think that the links that existed between U.S. ventures and Al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 have all been cut off.

Chossudovsky argued that the Red Cross was attacked by coalition forces and not by Osama bin Laden. He relates the second Red Cross attack to the first.

"I don't have the proof, but I strongly suspect that this was a U.S.-sponsored intelligence operation," he said. This would reduce the ability of the Red Cross to monitor war crimes in Iraq, thereby, allowing the U.S. administration to call the shots.

During the question period, this view was particularly challenged by Concordia student Samer Elatrash. He said that the panelists' approach to 9/11 was "stretching" reality. "You're relying on very tenuous evidence," he said.

"To blame the Red Cross bombings on American forces, you're really taking away from any agency of [the Iraqi] people. There are a lot of Iraqi resistance cells," he said, "but they're not as neat and as logical as you'd have us believe."

Ron Gous, computer and airline consultant, also challenged the speakers by saying that there was not enough time between the two planes hitting the Two Towers for the U.S. military to react.

Near the end of the lecture, a man in the audience got increasingly impatient and aggravated. He wanted to know, for a fact, whether or not the Bush administration had prior knowledge to the 9/11 attacks.

Chossudovsky said it is not a simple issue with straightforward answers. "I understand that this information is very hard to swallow, but it is all fact," he said.

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