Lets get on with it

[xmasdale]

To: the steering committee and interested others

From: Noel


We mustn’t lose momentum after the holiday.

USE OF FUNDS
Ian Henshall has raised the issue of whether we are spending funds wisely in promoting speaking engagements for David and Annie around the country and asks whether funds would be better spent running adverts in the Independent. Ian, I’m glad you raised the question because we should all the time be asking questions about what is the best use of our time and effort, but I don’t think I agree with you on this one.

My view is that the public meetings are more worthwhile than newspaper ads. Jimmy Walter ran newspaper ads and got very little feedback from them. They engage the attention of some of the readers often only for a couple of minutes, whereas public meetings engage people’s attention for a couple of hours, provide us with contact details for further activity, engage a team of people in organising them and create a newsworthy event which often leads to free publicity in the local press. (Sometimes we don’t brief the press well enough). People thus contacted often themselves become multipliers in spreading the truth about 9/11 and 7/7.

Annie, and particularly David, have been the most prolific in giving public talks, but others have been active too: Ian Crane has done a lot, Ian Henshall, Nafeez Ahmed, Jay Ginn, Ian Neal, Simon Ralli Robinson, Kenyon Gibson, Simon Aronowitz, Carol Alubaids, Colin Buchanan, David Boyle, Keith Mothersson and others. I would like to see this work continue and increase because I don’t believe many people really come on board without face to face contact and dialogue and without others in their area to team up with and offer support. IMHO we need to turn our attention to fundraising to keep it going.

I haven’t heard from David and Annie since the solstice and I don’t know if they are interested in doing further speaking engagements, but if they are, I suggest we raise money to help them do so. We should also consider supporting the initiatives of some of our other public speakers.

FUNDRAISING
We have just had a generous offer from Garrett Cook to sell material on Ebay for us. We need someone to take on the challenge of fundraising co-ordination.

I propose the following steps as a matter of urgency to solve multiple challenges, in particular financial ones which are really restricting what we do.

DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS
We send out an e-mail to activists in the regions asking for volunteer material distributors. Volunteers contact Belinda and sort out with her the terms of their distribution of material.

CAMPAIGN FOR AN INDEPENDENT ENQUIRY
Without further ado we establish a properly constituted Campaign for an Independent Enquiry which has a simple constitution, a bank account, a treasurer, essential other office holders, membership by standing order and a committee.

EDUCATIONAL TRUST
We investigate the setting up of an educational trust whose function will be to research and educate the public about the facts of 9/11 and other terror attacks and whose terms of reference will enable it to receive tax deductible monies. This income, however, would be useable for educational purposes only.

THE CAMPAIGN’S FUNDS
Not being tax deductible, we can spend these funds how ever we want. Some of the activities of the existing Network may be seen as of advantage to the Campaign. The Campaign’s committee can decide how the money raised for the Campaign will be spent. The existing Network continues as it is; some of its members will join the Campaign and others will not.

The Campaign committee draws up a brief statement which it asks people to endorse, something roughly along the lines of:

*We believe that there are so many unanswered questions about the terrorist attacks in the US of 11th September 2001, attacks which have predicated an ongoing War on Terror and a consequent erosion of our civil liberties ever since, that a thorough public investigation of the facts of what happened and what lay behind it is required to allay fears of deception and cover up.*

A fairly neutral formulation like that will allow us to support/affiliate to international initiatives, such as Webster Tarpley’s to instigate an investigation along the lines of the Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, and to others, showing a willingness eventually to support which ever is most likely to get off the ground.



GETTING THE FUNCTIONAL GROUPS TO WORK
Misunderstandings or something have stopped the website functioning as we had hoped and have therefore. Discussing things by e-mail is relatively cumbersome compared with discussing them in the private area of the forum on our website: www.nineeleven.co.uk .

Jim R promises me that if a group of people approach him asking him to set up a specialist private area on the forum to discuss a particular function of our work, he will do so, but each such group must decide who their moderator is, so that that designated person can admit others to that private section of the forum.

We agreed on certain functional areas at our national conference but for various reasons have not managed to get most of these off the ground. Such areas agreed were:

Ÿ political lobbying
Ÿ counselling
Ÿ dairy and meetings co-ordination
Ÿ fundraising
Ÿ interfaith and support for the Muslim community
Ÿ media technical support
Ÿ liaison with the rest of the peace movement
Ÿ resources and learning
Ÿ women’s organisation
Ÿ national committee

Others suggested have been 911 cabals within the Green Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Stop the War Coalition.

Simon A tells me that he has found a suitable diary software for the diary and meetings co-ordination.

The other groups should now function if those interested in them will send their names to Jim R jim@ernie.demon.co.uk (with a copy to me, Noel xmasdale@aol.com)

It will be up to the provisional national committee to come up with a constitution. We have made a start on this, but we have stalled and need to resume quickly, because lack of clarity about all these issues means we cannot even set up a bank account for people to pay funds raised into.

I have lists of who originally put their names down for which functional groups, but people can change their minds or join another group. Just let us know what you want to do.

The most important priority now IMHO is to get the constitution of the Campaign for an Independent Enquiry established without further ado.

Noel
8 January 2006