An actionable choice for a change!

A post by Ken Freeland

 

"Finally we ksfhave an actionable choice: If we don't want to continue living by what most of the world recognizes as our national lies about 9/11, we can show we mean business at the ballot-box by empowering a real investigation of 9/11 that will help bring its real perpetrators to justice and restore our national sense of decency."

 

 

Greetings fellow campaigners!

I am more excited than I can say by the wonderful opportunity to help the Citizens 9/11 Commission Campaign communicate its case to the people, many of whom are, like me, fed up after 10 years of government cover-up and intransigence. This official response from our elected officials persists despite the efforts by so many of us to compel them to conduct a real investigation into the horrendous events of September 11, 2001. And so we the people have no choice as citizens but to do it ourselves. In my introductory statement to the Steering Committee, I wrote the following:

It is my feeling that the 9-11cc has a real chance of success, but its ability to progress rapidly will likely depend on touching something deeper in the American people than the often arcane scientific disputes with the government's mendacious 9/11 narrative. While some of us may respond on the level of scientific argument, the majority of Americans, as polls repeatedly demonstrate, have doubts about what they are being told by our government concerning 9/11 (and hopefully about the jingoistic foreign policy which flows from it), yet are quickly bewildered by the complexity of the 9/11 truth movement's frequently contradictory (and increasingly contentious) explications. What is this deeper chord which needs to be struck in order to resonate with average Americans? I suggest that the answer may lie in focusing, not on 9/11 truth itself, nor even on a laudable effort to empower a citizens' initiative per se (although this is clearly the indispensable tactic to channel it), but rather, on that deepest common denominator of the body politic, the question of JUSTICE itself. 9/11 is, in its essence, an unsolved crime.

There is a shared American understanding that crimes are to be investigated and solved, but our government has chosen at every step of the way ( its latest twist in the official narrative regarding the putative “assassination” of Osama Bin Laden being a case in point) to sidestep that DUE PROCESS without which genuine criminal justice cannot obtain. In their heart of hearts, I believe most people are troubled by this. It may be our task to address these feelings and emphasize this message…to appeal to people's basic sense of justice on the level of the social contract itself — the inherent duty of every citizen to see that justice is served. . The next step in the argument is the documented unresponsiveness of this government to our repeated efforts to force it to administer due process in the matter of 9/11. In other words, our government , in this instance, has demonstrably broken its social contract with the people, by refusing to administer justice. It follows, then, that in the face of this unresponsiveness by their elected representatives to the demands of authentic justice, citizens have been unable to discharge one of their deepest of civic obligations – and our instinctive need to see justice is served has been deeply frustrated. Finally, the need to do an end run AROUND an unresponsive, intransigent, and essentially unfaithful government that is in fact OBSTRUCTING justice cries out for a solution. This, of course, is no more than the spirit of 1776 applied to the realities of 2011. A similarly revolutionary approach is called for…. the 9-11cc.

Some feel that framing this problem in patriotic terms is hazardous. We are all too familiar with the abuse of patriotic appeal by the jingoists who have controlled our government for most of our lifetimes. Patriotism is among the noblest of callings, yet the flag still serves as the last refuge of scoundrels, to be sure. I am all too familiar with the dark side of American history, however, the fact that elites have been manipulating our country's historical course behind the scenes throughout our history does not mean that the principle of “liberty and justice for all” does not still resonate with the average citizen. If we don't share that conviction, what do we share as a nation? If we cannot effectively appeal to it, where do we lodge our hope?

I hope that readers of this blog agree!

By way of introducing myself, I am a life-long peace activist currently residing in Houston, Texas. My primary motivation is to see the United States revert to a peaceful and constructive relationship with the rest of the world, which will restore health to our national conscience, and allow it to be directed to social justice concerns, where it properly belongs. The bogus “War on Terror” represents a permanent short-circuiting of our national conscience, preempted by the need for national self-defense in endless wars that are themselves termed “preemptive” by their perpetrators. We see what they really preempt: not genuine threats to our national security, but rather, the proper functioning of our national conscience, which is endlessly diverted to an eternal war which, as Senator Gravel reminds us, only assures an eternal sinecure to the military-industrial complex. To summarize: peace is the precondition of the successful pursuit of justice (just as vice versa), but this endless War on Terror presents a false counter-narrative — that justice is secured through preemptive military aggression against those we identify as potential threats – meaning, of course, that any foreign nation can be cast in the role of “potential” threat whenever needed to justify more war.

The ideological lynchpin of this diabolical arrangement remains what it was in 2001: that the events of 9/11 constitute an attack on America by a nebulous trans-national entity that must be militarily defeated wherever discovered (notwithstanding that some of the insurgents the United States/NATO recently allied with in their latest ginned up attack on Libya have an Al Qaeda pedigree – how Orwellian is that!? ). So debunking this core myth of the War on Terror (or whatever it's called these days) remains a core task of those of us who want peace. Thus, I have increasingly focused my activist energy of late in the 9/11 Truth movement. I helped organize it in Houston, and currently facilitate the 9/11 Truth Teleconference. From a frustrated peace activist (the relatively demoralized state of the antiwar movement in the United States reflects our failure to prevent our government from responding to the events of 9/11 with military aggression) I have graduated to a frustrated 9/11 truth activist (ten years later and still no credible investigation!). Our government has not responded to the people in our demand that justice be truly served in the case of 9/11, any more than to our earlier mass demonstrations in opposition to its choice of the warpath rather than the path to justice. The 9/11 truth movement has accumulated a large body of knowledge that pokes enough holes in the government's official version of 9/11 to leave it looking like Swiss cheese, but this knowledge by itself does not get us where we need to go.

While the recent Toronto Hearings represent a welcome watershed in the stature and maturity of the 9/11 truth movement, it points all the more emphatically to the need for an “actionable plan” to put all this knowledge to use in an empowered public investigation that will be able to assess culpability for the criminal acts of 9/11, and then request appropriate indictments from a court of law. The Citizens 9/11 Commission Campaign offers us a way forward: As our government has refused to use the power invested in it by we the people to this necessary end, we the people are left with no choice but to use our power directly in order to institute this investigation ourselves and invest it with the grand jury powers that are ours to assign by natural right. That's the Citizens 9/11 Commission Campaign in a nutshell!  Finally we have an actionable choice: if we don't want to continue living by what most of the world recognizes as our national lies about 9/11, we can show we mean business at the ballot-box by empowering a real investigation of 9/11 that will helpf bring its real perpetrators to justice and restore our national sense of decency. Of course, it's going to take a bit of time and more than a bit of money to accomplish this, thanks to the obstacles placed in the way of citizen-initiatives even in the states which allow them, but it can be done, and it will be done!

Peace,

Ken Freeland 

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4 Responses to An actionable choice for a change!

  1. jordan combden says:

    We need this, It takes courage to question. Just present the facts and present the evidence It speaks for its self so we need this!

  2. Ken Freeland says:

     You are so right, Jordan…the facts speak for themselves, all we need is a people-powered investigation to act on them!

  3. Mark Haskins says:

    Welcome Ken and thanks for stepping up to all the work of serving on this steering committee!  I can't think of anything more important than empowering the people through direct democracy to get a real investigation of 9/11 and bring the real perpetrators to justice.  That alone would be a great start to reclaiming our country from the imperialist corporatist oligarchs who have robbed us blind of so much more than money in the dark of this orwellian hell hole.

  4. Ken Freeland says:

    You're so right Mark, and I don't think we even know the half of it! That's why we need this REAL investigation a.s.a.p.!!
    Peace,
    Ken

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