AE911Truth backs plan to form 9/11 Truth party in Canada

By Craig McKee (http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/)

The planning process is under way to form a new political party to run on a 9/11 platform in Canada’s 2015 federal election.

Fifty potential candidates responded to an appeal to run in October of next year from AE911Truth’s Richard Gage on his recent cross-Canada Rethink 9/11 tour. Gage asked members of the audience at each tour stop whether they would be willing to put their names forward. At the Montreal presentation, I was one of four who did.

The only Canadian who has run for a major political party while supporting the 9/11 Truth movement is Bev Collins, who is co-ordinating this new effort. Collins ran in 2008 for the New Democratic Party (which is currently Canada’s Official Opposition, holding 99 of the country’s 308 seats in the House of Commons), and she finished a very respectable second in her British Columbia riding.

In an interview, Collins explained that she had been asked earlier this year by AE911Truth to consider running for Parliament again on a 9/11 Truth platform. She says she indicated at the time that she would much prefer that a team of candidates be puttogether rather than having her run alone. It was agreed that Gage would ask for volunteers during his tour.

I believe strongly in the party option at this point, but I’m keeping an open mind. I acknowledge that some of the potential candidates have run in previous elections, so they have experience with the process that I don’t.

For me, it’s not about winning (which is a good thing, because we aren’t going to win). It’s about raising the profile of the fight for 9/11 truth. It’s about making some noise. It’s about the publicity that would come from seeing the words, “9/11 Truth” on a ballot in as many ridings across the country as possible.

My concern about a mixed approach is that we would be diluting our impact and making it much easier for the media to ignore us (Yes, I know they’ll probably do that anyway …) There is a novelty in creating a 9/11 party that just might get some attention from journalists. I’d rather have 75 candidates running for a 9/11 truth party rather than 35 for the party, another 25 as independents, and 15 more for existing, small parties.

Yes, I think we should put our eggs in one basket. It’s the only way we have a chance of being heard.

Another element to consider is that it is being made increasingly difficult for independents to be heard in Parliament as this article on the rethink911.ca web site explains. Unlike registered political parties, independents are not allowed to raise money all year ‘round but only during election periods. And unlike with parties, if an independent does not spend all the money he or she raises, they are not allowed to keep it for a future campaign.

Collins says she gave up party politics after her 2008 experience – which included attacks from other parties for her 9/11 views and calls for her to be dumped from the NDP’s roster of candidates. Then party leader Jack Layton (who died of cancer in 2011) stood by Collins, something that his successor, Thomas Mulcair, would certainly not have done.

Collins, who had previously run four times for the Canadian Action Party (a small party that used to call for a new 9/11 investigation), does make a strong point when she says there are advantages to going the independent route. Not following the party system avoids the problem of your party being infiltrated and taken over by those who have their own agenda, and it means that candidates are free to express their opinions without having to follow a party line. The mixed approach has the clear advantage that it offers each candidate the choice of how they want to proceed.

But as someone who has worked in the media, I believe we need to maximize our impact and our visibility.

One thing that is clear from the discussions so far is that those involved come from across the political spectrum: everything from Libertarians to Greens to Socialists and everything in between. Also clear is that most of the registered parties in Canada – including all the major ones – want nothing to do with 9/11 Truth.

Obviously a great deal of work has to be done to set up a new party. In the UK, Simon Lane founded the Nine Eleven was an Inside Job Party and ran in a by-election in 2012 as its only candidate. He received 66 votes.

Turning to the electoral system to bring attention to 9/11 truth is not a new idea. There are a number of American political candidates who have run for state and federal office, including well-known Truth movement figures like Carol Brouillet and the late Dr. Robert Bowman.

Former six-term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was first elected to Congress in 1992 and was re-elected another four times before losing her party’s nomination in 2002, after she had begun to question 9/11. She returned to Congress in 2004, which was significant given that her views about 9/11 were well known by this point. She left the Democratic Party some time after losing the 2006 nomination for her seat. She later ran as the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2008.

An effort to gain acceptance for a 9/11 truth party in Canada would face some significant obstacles, particularly because a lot of Canadians are bound to wonder why they should consider a party whose existence is based on an event that happened in another country 14 years ago (by the time the election is held).

Besides the fact that 24 of the victims of 9/11 were from Canada, so much of what has transpired in the United States as a result of 9/11 has been felt north of the border (and around the world). We passed our own version of the Patriot Act, called the Anti-Terrorism Act, in December 2001. Some of the provisions of the Bill expired in 2007 and an attempt to renew them was defeated. But after Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party won a majority government, it came back with the Combating Terrorism Act. This was fast-tracked in 2013 as the result of the Boston Marathon bombing.

And some Canadians don’t think false flag operations in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world affect them?

Canada joined the U.S. in invading and occupying Afghanistan as well as bombing Libya. And our leaders, from all political parties, maintain the lie that 9/11 was a terrorist attack by extremist Muslims. Like the American people, Canadians are the victims of 9/11, and we share the guilt for 9/11 when we let the lie stand.

One of the biggest challenges in getting this new party off the ground will be agreeing on a platform. The AE approach of focusing on the evidence for controlled demolition of the three WTC towers has been mentioned during our discussions as has the work done by the Consensus 9/11 Panel, co-founded by David Ray Griffin and Canadian Elizabeth Woodworth.

But I believe that a 9/11-based platform must go beyond these two positions and these two organizations. Neither, for example, has come to terms with the overwhelming evidence that no large airliner hit the Pentagon. Ignoring this to focus only on the towers would be a big mistake, I believe.

Then, of course, there is the issue of whether the party would take positions on non-9/11-related issues – particularly given the diverse ideological positions of the potential candidates. But these are issues to be discussed in the weeks and months ahead as the effort to create the infrastructure for a new party goes forward.

It’s important to make this point: Forming a new party and running 9/11-truth candidates does not imply that the electoral process is the best way to overcome the lies and deceptions of 9/11 and the bogus war on terror that are driving our world towards disaster.

But we have to make enough noise to let people know we’re here and we’re not going away. This is a start.

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