September 19, 2011
9/11: Experts Challenge US Government Investigations
(Toronto - September 8-11, 2011) Over four days, top international experts from the physical and social sciences-physicists, chemists, economists, and psychologists-together with architects, engineers, investigative journalists, academics and lawyers, met at Ryerson University in Toronto to challenge the US government's controversial explanation of what happened on 9/11 ten years ago.
The participants in these International Hearings on the Events of September 11, 2001 also explored in detail the many omissions and distortions of the 9/11 Commission Report, and what expert testimony revealed as scientific fraud in the reports of the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the destruction of the Twin Towers and of World Trade Center Building 7.
Throughout the four days of the Hearings, the experts’ evidence-based presentations were vigorously questioned by four panelists, one of them the Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, and the other three American and Canadian academics of high distinction. These panelists will shortly publish a final report consisting of the expert witness testimonies and the panelists’ conclusions as to what the evidence adds up to.
Testimonies from 9/11 American widow Lorie Van Auken, from Bob McIlvaine, the father of a 9/11 victim, and from former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Senator Mike Gravel were also included in the Hearings.
The four day conference was sponsored by the Texas-based International Center for 9/11 Studies (http://ic911studies.org/).
An insistent theme running through the four-day conference was that official investigations into 9/11 have failed to describe and account for the 9/11 events. Senator Gravel is leading a national campaign to have an independent citizens’ 9/11 commission (www.9-11cc.org).
“The evidence in hand points to the urgent need for a citizens’ investigation with grand jury powers,” said Gravel.
“The best path to accomplish this objective is through the exercise of direct democracy. This entails placing a ballot initiative before voters in states that have an initiative law,” explains Gravel, “Our initial goal is to qualify in at least one state during the presidential election year of 2012, when the stakes are the highest. After that, our immediate task will to wage an historic campaign to pass each initiative into law.”
On the last day, the tenth anniversary of 9/11 (Sunday September 11, 2011) the audience along with the eyewitness experts, panelists and the two conference moderators joined in a moment of silence introduced by a moving statement:
“Today is a solemn anniversary—for ten years ago this-morning, at just about this time of day, a new reality of spectacularly brutal destructiveness and of wanton mass-murder was forced upon the American people—and before long, thanks to a powerful elite’s cynical manipulation of American responses to this horror, upon people in many other countries as well. During yesterday’s sessions we were led to reflect upon the dreadful sufferings inflicted on first responders who were exposed, without protective clothing or respirators, to the highly toxic World Trade Center dust.
I would ask you now to take a few moments to remember, in silence, those who were the direct victims ten years ago today of acts that appear, with increasing clarity, to amount to a state crime against democracy, and to state terrorism.
Let us remember also the indirect victims: the family members of the victims, the first responders and their families, the soldiers who have been killed or maimed by the 9/11 wars, and the people in many countries struck down by the military aggressions that have followed 9/11. Let us stand together, in silence, and remember the victims of September 11, 2001.”
