By John Bursill

Well what a week we’ve had here in oz fighting the 9/11 info war! As you may all be aware Truth Action Australia organized a recent Conference in Sydney, Australia in March of this year. The aim of this conference was to gather intellectuals and activists together over a weekend to learn more about the 9/11 events and discuss the way forward to truth and justice. It was also hoped that we may be able to break the media blackout in Australia by the attendance of some high profile speakers like Dr Bob Bowman and Yukihsa Fujita MP, unfortunately this did not happen.

Since the conference Truth Action Australia www.truthaction.org.au and 911oz www.911oz.com have made a concerted effort to have the news of Fujita’s attendance to the Sydney Conference and the 9/11 questions he is asking, heard and seen by the Australian public. We decided to target our campaign at our publicly funded broadcaster the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The ABC has Australia wide coverage in all forms of media and has the confidence of the Australian public being the most available and trusted news source. Our efforts involved complaints, letters, e-mails and demonstrations that included distributing DVD’s and information to the ABC staff. This news is especially important in Fujita’s case as Australia is a major trading partner with Japan and Councilor Fujita Directs the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs and Defense making his questions highly significant in our region. The ABC’s charter, is to “inform” the Australian people of news that is of “National Interest”, so this definitely fits the bill!

After two months of consistent pressure on the ABC, Hereward Fenton of 911oz was given a chance to write an opinion piece for the “Unleashed” section of the ABC home page www.abc.net.au/unleashed called “Unanswered 9/11 questions”. Hereward wrote an extremely well crafted piece that was non-speculative and well linked to the best evidence exposing the falsehoods of the “official 9/11 conspiracy theory”! Hereward was well on his way to setting a new record for comments in the “Unleashed” section when a complaint by a regular blogger “IA” stopped all comments. His complaint was regarding us encouraging people to comment at ABC at the 911oz.com forum and this was seen by the editor as evidence of a campaign to get a higher profile for this article. Was this fair? Well considering this “IA” had been the most prolific poster of comments in a consistently derogatory and ad-hominem manner; seemingly trying to intimidate persons from commenting in an obvious attempt to stifle the debate; I would say no! As we the 9/11 Truth advocates had the overwhelming genuine majority support for a new investigation into the 9/11 event, this censorship on balance was unfair and uncalled for!

We all now expected the ABC would allow a rebuttal of Herewards piece questioning the 9/11 event, we were surprised at how poor the attempt would be and how poorly sourced it was. This piece was called “Conspiracy theory lunacy” by Hugh Tobin heavily relying on statements like “The 9/11 Commission set up in 2002 interviewed over 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed over two and a half million pages of documents before releasing a 571-page report explaining how and why the World Trade Centre buildings collapsed” and quotes from the discredited Popular Mechanics book “Debunking 9/11 Myths”. It was also important to note that Mr. Tobin introduced the ideas of prejudice within the 9/11 Movement saying that he had been attacked online at 911oz.com being called a MOSSAD agent, as if this was the norm! Now since that article has gone up we have continued the debate successfully until on Thursday afternoon when the frequency of clearance of posts slowed dramatically and many of our rebuttals were not appearing at all? We are wondering why…..?

While all this was happening another article was dropped into the “Unleashed” section as a way of wrapping up this “conspiracy theory theme” called “The philosophy of conspiracy” by David Coady. It is an interesting piece and one which most 9/11 Truth Advocates would support in part, unfortunately he does not give us the credit with possibly being right! He says “In the case of 9/11 the question is "Who are the conspirators, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, or George Bush and the American security services?" The correct answer to this question is so well established by now that nothing further I can say here could be expected to convince the 9/11 truthers.” while being dismissive of us he does leave the door open, a little. He then goes on to say “Yet it is vital to any open society that there are respected sources of information which are independent of official sources, and which can freely contradict them and not be dismissed without argument. The widespread view that conspiracy theories are always, or even typically, irrational is not only itself irrational, it is dangerous.” this is truly a cutting and well thought out comment on society today! In summing up his contribution this quote does it very well “We need a name for people who irrationally reject evidence of conspiracy, to give our political discourse some much needed balance. The expression "coincidence theorist", which has gained some currency on the Internet, goes some way to meeting this need.” Hooray for David he is drawing attention to the “dangerous” "coincidence theorist", so maybe he is on our side, in secret?

This was a great “week of truth” in Australia and I encourage you all to read these three articles at www.abc.net.au/unleashed and comment as you like. I would also recommend Hereward’s article for use as a resource in any e-mail campaign as it is a great summary of our best arguments!

We now plan to continue our campaign to encourage the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to do an actual news report on 9/11 and the quest for a new investigation!

To contact the ABC and congratulate them in their recent editorial decision to allow these opinion pieces, please go to this link http://www.abc.net.au/contact/contactabc.htm . You may also challenge them on the quality of Hugh Tobin’s piece “Conspiracy theory lunacy” and the stopping of comments on Hereward Fenton’s piece “Unanswered 9/11 questions”.

Kind regards John Bursill – Truth Action Australia