A House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing on "Terrorism and the Internet" held last week, and broadcast on C-Span, featured a panel of "experts", including representatives formerly of the RAND Corporation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center who presented 9/11 truth websites sites alongside sites that celebrate the attacks and offer training in terrorist tactics.

The hearing was chaired by Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, and ranking Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert. It was supposed to focus on the use of the internet by "home grown terrorist recruiters" yet in a shocking move it blatantly related the 9/11 truth movement with so called radical "jihadists".

In a very poorly prepared and delivered PowerPoint splurge, Mark Weitzman (pictured far right) stated:

"Some of these are conspiracy theories that present a closed view of the world, such as blaming 9/11 as an "outside job"(?) or blaming outside groups such as the U.S. government, or er the Jews etc, some of these are pro-Iraqi insurgency videos, some of them are media portals that people can enter into, ones that you saw earlier with the flags, the U.S. flags show that thy were based on U.S. servers..."

Under the heading "Internet: Incubator of 9/11 Conspiracies and Disinformation" Weiztman threw in video of WTC building 7 collapsing on 9/11 as posted on various 9/11 truth affiliated websites, along with screen shots of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth site and other sites, such as Killtown's, who raised awareness of this.

"We need to be aware of the empowering effect of the internet upon extremists, we must have researchers and responders for both the technical and and linguistic skills to keep us informed and to be able to respond to what is online. We must make users aware of the misinformation and of the techniques used by extremists." Weitzman continued.

The entire hearing can be viewed online at http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/index.php?main_page=product_video_...

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Weiztman's presentation represents the latest disgusting effort to lump in the movement to uncover the truth behind the 9/11 attacks, a movement which includes hundreds of first responders, firefighters, police, former intelligence officials and the largest 9/11 families representative group, with jihad groups and real Islamic extremists in order to demonize it.

Later on in the hearing, former RAND corporation director Bruce Hoffman re-iterated Weitzman's presentation, stating "These falsehoods and conspiracy theories have now become so ubiquitous and so pervasive that they are believed, so you have almost a parallel truth, and it has become a very effective tool for recruiting people."

Whichever way Hoffman dresses this up, it is plain fact that we have not been given the truth about what happened on 9/11. We have been subject to a "received truth", an official story that when compared with physical evidence does not hold water. In the absence of any real independent investigation, the evidence unearthed during six years of research by individuals and groups who want the truth has made the issue a phenomenon.

In recent polls up to 80% of Americans do not believe they have been told the truth about 9/11. Respected intelligence veterans agree with them. NIST, the body tasked with investigating the collapse of the buildings "cannot explain" why they fell. Yet corporate academics such as Bruce Hoffman continue to insinuate that the truth about 9/11 is and always has been set in stone and any deviation from the official story is a "falsehood".

To then implicitly suggest that the millions of Americans who have questioned the government version of events on 9/11 are synonymous with a vast minority of violent extremist radicals is either extremely ill informed or purposefully misleading.

Over recent months we have witnessed a growth in this disturbing trend to attempt to equate peaceful 9/11 researchers and truth activists with violence and extremism. The prime culprits have been establishment "news" hacks who are raising the same talking point ad infinitum, dubbing the global truth movement "anarchists" and violent individuals who may be aiding terrorists.

Talking heads such as Fox News bigot Bill O'Reilly and his frothing caricature Glenn Beck over on CNN, have specifically targeted 9/11 truthers in segments designed to portray the movement as dangerous and sow the seed in the minds of what viewers they have left that peaceful truth seekers are actually in league with violent terrorists.

People like O'Reilly and Glenn Beck would relish the opportunity to have their baseless allegations "proved right", and should some act of violence or terrorism be carried out, whether real or staged, they would love to blame it on the 9/11 truth movement, in a similar way to how the patriot movement was blamed for the OKC bombing in 1995.

The bill to which these hearings are tied, H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, defines "violent radicalization" as "The process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

It further defines "homegrown terrorism" as "The use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."

The bill's reference to how "The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens," is shocking.

Remember, the bill is not aimed at "Al-Qaeda" websites or arabic forums that post alleged Bin Laden video tapes, it is aimed at American citizens using American based websites, like the very one you're reading now.

The opportunity for the state to seize upon violent posts left by trolls and use them to entrap peaceful 9/11 truthers under the guise that they "promoted violence" should be a major concern for us all.

Our message is simply this - don't even try it.

We have preached a doctrine of absolute non-violence from the very beginning and we will continue to do so. Anyone who calls for violence in a message board post is either a Fed, a Mom's basement dwelling troll who spends their entire day attempting to debunk the 9/11 truth movement, or a completely deluded moron who is unrepresentative of the vast majority of the 9/11 truth movement.

Those individuals who advocate violence should be sought out and investigated individually. Any plans to try and entrap prominent 9/11 truth movement figures using guilt by association should be abandoned immediately and we will ceaselessly emphasize this point until this current wave of propaganda subsides.

Aside from the attack upon 9/11 truth groups, the depiction of the internet as a whole drawn up by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee hearing is farcical. The panel does it's best to present the entire internet as some sort of vicious hate filled breeding ground for radical murderous terrorists. They give the impression that the youth of America are being recruited in their thousands to take down the country in some sort of monolithic war of civilizations. They depict myspace and youtube in such a way as to leave the average American viewer with the impression that those websites are akin to terror training camps.

One cannot help being reminded of the film reels of the McCarthy hearings of the early 1950s as the House is presented poorly thrown together slideshows that suggest that there are dangerous terrorists everywhere, on all manner of internet chat rooms, forums and message boards recruiting American teenagers to wage Jihad.

The informed masses can see through this garbage, they understand that freedom and the peaceful push for truth are the only way to counter any form of extremism. Thus the continued effort by the authorities to diminish civil liberties at home, to wage unprovoked aggression abroad and to demonize those who question such moves is contradictory to their own logic of fighting a "war on terror". Unless, that is, the war on terror is a fraud, perpetuated on a basis of fearmongering power politics.

Action alert:

If you live in California and Jane Harman is your representative, please alert her to our concerns. If you're in Washington state and Reichert is your rep, make your feelings known to him.

CSPAN has been more than fair to 9/11 truth in the past. Last year they broadcast Alex Jones' American Scholars Symposium, in 2005, they broadcast David Ray Griffin, and they will probably listen to feedback regarding this broadcast.

Finally, ask the Simon Wiesthenthal Center (Mark Weitzman in particular) to stop conflating terrorist violence with 9/11 truth, and even though he has not extended the courtesy to us, be polite;

mweitzman@swcny.com

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