9/11 – a surprise meeting

Some will remember that kepa had, on Friday 22.05., organized an occasion titled ”PAINAVAA ASIAA”. The idea was that members of the eduskunta should come and discuss with members of kepa (and other politically interested volunteers) about problems such as the TTIP, the climate, etc. . Also I had volunteered, had arrived in good time before klo 9:00, but our elected politicians did not make any appearance before something like 10:30. Well, I used the time to introduce some of my co-volunteers to Ha-Joon Chang’s ”23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism”. And while doing so, I was also approaching one obvious foreigner:

He was from Ivory Coast, well-dressed in an official way, also turned out to be lively, well-informed and intelligent (I guess he had come for the ”Maailma kylässä” event in some as if offical function). We began by discussing the prices which the producers of cocoa beans get for their product, then continued to other topics. I do not remember how we got to talk about the events of 11 September 2001 in Manhattan and Washington, but I was simply struck how self-evident it was for him that the official report about the matter is rubbish. He did not try to give any excuses for his opinion (thus, was seemingly unaware that here, in the ”Free West”, anybody who doubts the official version is suspected of being something like ”mentally rubbed”), was familiar with all of the often-published evidence against the official version, did altogether not hesitate a bit nor leave any doubt about his straightforward opinion. I remember the discussion as a very pleasant exchange – after all, we fully agreed with each other’s opinion … .

And what to think about this afterwards? The impression is that there is, outside our ”Free World”, a whole (and not so small) other world where people who have not been exposed to our Western media take it as obvious that 9/11 was some type of evil trick of the Western world, especially of the USA and Israel. This has been reported to be the general opinion in the Arab countries, and now I found it in an obviously well-educated person from West Africa. He was certainly not stupid, nor do I believe that one can dismiss Arab opinions so easily as just stupid. Thus, IF one wants to be taken serious (instead of being considered as just another representative of Western inperialism) by people from non-European countries, what about finally having an open debate about 9/11?