by Drew Noftle

In 2005, I was living a luxurious life in Beijing, China, as the private English teacher for Yang Kaisheng, then President of the Industrial Commercial Bank of China, the largest bank in the world. I was also a corporate trainer for various multinational corporations. Like many people, I believed 9/11 was about America getting blowback from decades of exploitive foreign policy.

At that time, my roommate frequently listened to the Alex Jones Show, a nationally syndicated news/talk radio show based out of Austin, Texas. I remember often coming home to hear Jones, with his thick Texan accent, telling his listeners how he thought the world was run. To me, his ideology seemed radical and baseless until my roommate pleaded with me to sit down and watch one of his films. I said I had neither the time nor the desire to watch a full film, but that I would give him five minutes of my sincere attention. During those five minutes, he played a clip from Martial Law where I saw the collapse of 7 WTC. At first, I thought it wasn’t real. Then I thought if it was real how could I have not seen it on TV even once in the last four years? How could a building blow itself up? After six months of personal research, I still didn’t have many answers, but I had some. The answers I did find led me to join the 9/11 Truth Movement in Canada and inspired me to step onto a path of self-discovery and social awareness.

9/11 brought Canadian troops into Afghanistan and delivered Canadian material support to the war in Iraq. In fact, it is, as Stephen Harper reminded us on September 11, 2007, our sole reason for participation in the War on Terror. “And that is why the countries of the United Nations … launched their mission in Afghanistan – to deal with the source of the 9/11 terror.”

However, what Harper did not mention is that we only did so because then Secretary of State Colin Powel promised us a white paper linking Osama Bin Laden (OBL) to the attacks. That white paper never materialized.

More recently, on August 19 of this year, Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day sent me a letter in which he stated, “The Canadian Government has no cause to believe the destruction of the World Trade Center was due to reasons other than those cited in the … 9/11 Commission Report.”

No cause to believe? How about the following?

• Some of the alleged “suicide hijackers” are still alive and well.
• Fire has never – either before or after 9/11 – caused a steel-framed structure to collapse, let alone at free-fall speed.
• Squibs (explosives that cause puffs of pulverized concrete and steel), such as those you would see in a controlled demolition, were caught on tape during the collapse of all three towers.
• In January of 2008, 9/11 Commissioners Kean and Hamilton stated, “We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information…” adding they were “stonewalled by the C.I.A.”
• To this day, the FBI does not accuse OBL of the attacks. The collapse of 7 WTC – which was not hit by an aircraft – was not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.
• Furthermore, why was not one official or civil servant fired for their actions that day? Was no one negligent? Why were 70 percent of the victims’ family members’ questions not answered by the 9/11 Commissioners?

I, for one, no longer delve into where to place blame for the events of September 11. My reasons for participating in Canadian 9/11 Truth are no longer about putting Bush, Cheney or Osama Bin Laden in jail. Nor is it about justice for the victims. It is about seeing the world once and for all for what it really is. It is about realizing how we are lied to by our government and by corporate journalism, and how we accept those lies. It is about seeking truth in all we do, and learning the importance of educating ourselves, for ourselves.

9/11 Truth is about steering away from our more than 2,000-year-old cycle of non-stop war, and moving instead into a world based on truth, peace and tolerance. These are the truths for which I gave up my life in China and these are the truths the 9/11 Truth movement is founded upon and guides us toward.

Drew Noftle will be in Ottawa this September 11 to build support for a Canadian investigation into 9/11. He is currently working as a teacher in Yaletown. onehistory@gmail.com More info: vancouver911truth.org