[August 9, 2004

The 911truth.org 'About Us' website page proudly
declares, that they have "Prepar[ed] 50,000 "Stop the 9-11
Cover-Up"-style signs to equip protestors at the NYC
GOP Convention" to be held at then end of August, early
September 2004. The wording of those signs was roundly
criticized BEFORE they were printed, but to deaf ears.]

April 7, 2004

I agree that we did great that day [displaying signs at large anti-war protest] but only IF the goal was to reach
people superficially - with a sign that speaks about a "coverup". The "coverup" is actually old news by now. Anybody paying any attention at all to the Commission's hearings would logically assume that the coverup concerns warnings within the administration that fighting terrorism should be a top priority, that the administration unfortunately didn't take such warnings seriously enough at the time so as to have prevented 9-11 and then engaged in a coverup about it. But, no need to worry now folks, because the gov't is certainly taking it seriously now. As Bill Moyers wrote: "It is clear now that the Bush White House bungled the warnings about Al Qaeda. But it's also clear that the Democrats under Bill Clinton made plenty of mistakes, as well. Why can't both parties come clean, apologize and start over?" So, I ask anyone interested in donating money for signs that say "stop the coverup", do you not see that people will assume it only refers to a coverup over "bungling"? Is that what you want to spend your money and time on? Is that what you think
will really reach anyone, give anyone some 911 truth?

To paraphrase Pondo, before he was banned from this 911 Truth Alliance list, when are we going to stop using kindergarten terms like "coverup" and start using adult words, like "treason", and "inside-job", etc.?

If, however, the goal at the March 20th anti-war rally was to reach people with actual information about the 9-11 attacks, regarding who is actually responsible and what is being covered up, etc., I'd say we did a lousy job
in the face of an unusual opportunity.

Anyway, 50,000 of these "coverup" signs, at what Bill Douglas say, they're 50 cents a pop, right? is $25,000. Damn. At the flyer copy price quoted, we could get 833,333 one-page flyers or almost half a million 2 page flyers copied which would provide people with information they
do not get about 911 from the mass media or a four-word sign. Again, there is always the hope that if people get real information, they will become as alarmed and angry as we all are and might actually join our movement. And
again, only 42 percent of Americans have a home internet connection, so even a four-word sign with website addresses doesn't get one much.

The BOTTOM LINE, of course, is that the "power of signs" all depends on the "power" of the message on the signs. Clearly, there's zero power in a "stop the coverup" message now, if there ever was any. Let's be a little flexible. Before the first batch of the 'stop the coverup' signs were
made back in Feb. or early March, there were robust and creative threads on this truth alliance list with suggested alternative sign wordings, most with power in them. I suggest that creativity be reinvigorated before such
resources are laid out. And even after a powerful message is selected for the signs, I still say a majority of our efforts should be going towards providing people with the information needed to backup, and provide support for the
message on the signs.

April 8, 2004

Now, this is interesting.

"It works".

How exactly do you judge its success?

You really think that someone seeing a front page
newsphoto of a protest in which are sprinkled prominent
'9-11 Was An Inside Job' signs among the crowd will actually:

"cause a large scale shift in the minds of those who read these articles in the ap and reuters and whatnot."

Certainly "9-11 Was An Inside Job" is a real improvement in wording. But people looking at that and getting no more information, will what - "have a large scale shift in their minds"?

And, by the way, Bill Douglas [of 911visibility.org and 911truth.org] is not offering us both, if I'm not mistaken, right? Bill's offer is good only for signs. He and his group will not be raising any funds to help us disseminate information. Headlines only, no stories. "It's easier to raise funds for something very visible and dramatic also."
Flash, but no substance.

And if there is any actual mention of the signs in "ap or reuters and whatnot" you can be sure that the text will mock the "kooks" holding them, as well as their theories. (Remember, AP and Reuters and whatnot are just other organs of the same gov't.) So, it could actually have a negative impact - isn't that possible?? Putting people on advance notice - before they receive any information - that they shouldn't bother inquiring further, getting them to prejudge the evidence without having seen any. And because
the message and its messengers have already been belittled as not credible - because THAT seed has been planted in their minds - it makes it that much harder for people to be
willing to look at any actual information should it somehow cross their path.

Angie

April 9, 2004

>>Angie, you could do some fundraising in NY to purchase flyers. Other cities across the US are buying their own flyers.

Our city has been doing that, Bill. Now, however, our city is the only city in the u.s. to be expecting half a million to a million flyer-receptive protestors, & with those numbers, our city's best flyer effort won't be
sufficient by itself. At a cost of 2 cents a page (slightly more than the price recently quoted), to get a million one page flyers, or half a million two-page flyers, would cost us TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS.

And again in my personal opinion, out of the $25,000 you plan on raising for the signs, spending $20,000 of it on flyers gets better bang for the buck because it provides people with information that may turn them into 911
truth believers and advocates. Remember, these will all be people who are already familiar with the Bush administration's ability to tell colossal
lies to get us to go to war, so this is the most receptive group of people in one place that we are all likley to encounter for some time. It's an unusual opportunity that
we should try and make the most of. Because the 911 information is so damning, simply providing people with it is our best bet to get them to join our movement, our chief goal since there's power in numbers.

Now, what's the continuum of information we've got generally so far:
attending a conference/videotapes & books/ booklets/ flyers/signs, with progressively less information being provided as one moves to the right. The cost of disseminating this information far and wide decreases as one moves to the right, except reverse the order of flyers and signs this time because flyers are cheaper. Of those items, signs provide the least information and
any success is therefore more speculative (not to mention there's always the possibility that signs will actually do harm, because if they are described at all in the mass media, the mass media will mock the theories and those
holding the theories so that people will reflexively
dismiss the 911 truth before they've heard anything that backs it up).

Of course, I'd love it if we could give out a million books at the convention, but we can't afford that. I'd love it if we could give out a million informative flyers, and it looks like we won't be able to afford that either. By the way, there are other items on that continuum that we haven't fully explored. Like CD's for example. Anyone
know how cheap they are to burn en masse nowadays (calling all you musicians out there who might know)? (I assume it would be much cheaper than copying and distributing videotapes). One step up from a flyer could be distributing an audio CD with interviews, with a recorded preface & closing asking people to burn and distribute copies themselves too, or at the least, to pass it on to someone else after they've listened to it. I don't know, but let's say that they're $1.00 a pop. Bill, would you have any interest in raising funds for the burning of 25,000 cd's of an interview instead of for 50,000 signs? People donating would see clearly the product. It would get the interview into the hands of 1 out of 20, or 1 out of 40 receptive protestors, depending on how many show up.

In deciding how to best spend limited resources, (and this is something that every activist and every group has to decide, so discussions concerning same are certainly not "time-wasters", Lori) my criteria would be what gets the
most information to the maximum number of people because it's more likely that our ranks will then grow. The GOP Convention, like the anti-war march, should be seen as an unusual opportunity to reach not the general public,
but to reach people who will naturally be more receptive to our message - those who came out to protest Bush and in spite of fear campaigns. The more we grow, the easier it will then be to reach the general public. I think
too many people devote their energies and resources and actions to getting bits and pieces of 911 into the mainstream media, but because the mainstream
media is so controlled it is 1) a herculean task and 2) has an incredibly speculative chance of success, since the mass media is a mouthpiece of the very gov't who perpetrated the attacks and will always put their negative spin on it, or only permit release of limited hangouts or that information
which actually strengthens the 911 legend. Obviously, any mention of 911 in media is not necessarily a good mention.

It's very ironic that you find discussions on how we can be most productive "deleterious to our productivity", Lori. Instead, we MUST bring our collective wisdom to bear on how we can be most productive and that does require some thought. What might be achieved by a particular action is a question that we should raise. There are many bandwagons to jump on, and bandwagons we haven't thought up yet. Yes, time is of the essence, all the more reason to look before we leap to make sure we're not jumping in the wrong or misguided direction, only to have to back track.

Just to expand a little bit on my take on current approaches - and I, for one, am very interested in people's opinions on the value of our current and future actions - is that focusing all energies on getting the tiniest
mention of what is often a limited hangout in the mass media takes too much for granted. It assumes, I guess, that those lucky enough to stumble across such tiny mainstream press mention decide to be, and have the time &
resources to be, independent investigators themselves, seeking out additional information. Why this admittedly SLOW method is that preferred by most & financially supported by most is something I haven't been able to
understand. Which is the better choice - reaching more people superficially; or reaching less people but reaching them substantively? With the latter, you get people to join you to help you reach other people deeply. That's why I think we shouldn't make trying to worm our way into
the mass media, or group photo shots that appear therein, the major focus of our time and resources, and use other methods instead, methods like what my friend calls the good ole "oral tradition", or really basic grass roots
politics, providing real information to one person at a time, in the hopes that that person will also tell another person . . .

Angie

May 5, 2004

The 9-11 truth movement isn't about a coverup, yet you wouldn't know that from seeing most 911 Truth Movement protest signs. It's about mass murder, mass murder to have a pretext for more mass murder & other fun things. The 9-11 truth movement isn't, or shouldn't be, about "coverups". It should be about manufactured state terror. Talk about coverups actually support the gov't's coverup story, makes people think that foreign, non-U.S. sponsored terrorists, really were coming to get us, only we acted incompetently in protecting ourselves from them and have covered that fact up. The manufactured state terror keeps getting worse, all around the world, with new (& nuclear/biological, etc.) attacks predicted here soon any day. That's the crime we've got to start talking about, manufactured state terror. We should have already been talking about that. Not lies. Not duplicity, they're all beside the point. And those who focus on talk of a 911 coverup 2 1/2 YEARS LATER when this is what we are facing, when they are smart enough to know better, doesn't deserve our respect. The times are simply too dire, and people can get that bullshit coverup story (that the gov't is lying & covering up when they say they didn't know these terrorists were plotting how to get us and were going to use planes as weapons) from the mainstream media, they don't need a 911 truth movement for it.

Angie

July 19, 2004

Of course, every activist in the truth movement should always consider why it is they decided to become an activist in this movement and try and match up their activist efforts to that reason. Mine is similar to Ken Jenkins as I heard him describe it in San Francisco (but no time to find quotes of him now). Americans don't
get sufficiently enraged by the crimes our governmental system commits on a horrendus scale against people overseas, but if they only knew that it was the gov't that killed 3,000 of our own citizens, all to make us believe in this elaborate theory jutifying the war on terrorism,
the war that won't end in our lifetimes, we'll, they'd rise up. So, if that's your activist goal, then the 911 truth you'd want to expose would be showing them exactly that. Mere lies, gov't coverups, scandals, don't do the trick. They are "routine". We live with 'em all the time.

Angie