Listen 7:00- 9:00 pm (PST) to the WeThePeopleRadioNetwork.com and to our guests-
John Leonard, publisher of Progressive Press, publisher of many 9/11 Truth books- including the first one in English- Nafeez Ahmed's The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001, Webster Tarpley's 9/11 Synthetic Terror- Made in USA, and Kevin Barrett's Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle against the 9/11 Big Lie.
John-Paul Leonard has an BA in Political Science from UCLA, and an MBA in Finance from UC Berkeley. He spent the 1980's in Europe working as an auditor for multinational corporations, and the 1990's in his own business in Eastern Europe, working on stock market privatization. In Oct. 2000 his interest in politics was re-awakened by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and he became on online pro-Palestinian writer and activist. In 2001 he returned to the US, where he published the first 9/11 Truth book in English, The War on Freedom, in 2002. He devotes most of his energies since then to 9/11 Truth publishing. John has also spoken at 9/11 Truth events, has worked closely with Carol and Blaine to publish and distribute the Deception Dollars, and can talk about the challenges that publishers face overcoming the deafening silence of the mainstream media.
Manuel Valenzuela, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/ is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of the novel- Echoes in the Wind. His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. He is looking for a publisher for his next book, Beyond the Smoking Mirror: Reflections on America and Humanity, a collection of his essays, which include some excellent ones on 9/11 Truth.
Hal Sisson www.halsisson.ca was born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He was an armourer with the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. He later attended the University of Saskatchewan, where he obtained a degree in law in 1951. His varied career includes a stint as a reporter for the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and a thirty-year law practice in Peace River, Alberta. He retired from the law in 1984 to devote time to croquet, marble collecting and writing fiction. He conceived, produced and starred in Sorry 'Bout That, the longest running annual burlesque revue in Western Canada. He is the author of The Big Bamboozle; Coots, Codgers and Curmudgeons (with Dwayne W. Rowe); Caverns of the Cross; The Big Bamboozle; A Fowler View of Life; A Fat Lot of Good and its sequel, Maquiladora Mayhem. He has just finished the third in that humourous murder mystery series, entitled You Should Live so Long, scheduled for midsummer release. He is author of the new Modus Operandi 9/11, the first humorous, fictional novel tackling 9/11.
At one time a ranking Canadian player of international and USCA croquet, in 2001 Hal placed in the top 25 shooters in the World Marble Championships in London, England.
We will be discuss the challenges and hopes of publishing 9/11 Truth books- both humorous, and serious, fiction and non-fiction, from the publisher, author, aspiring writer, and activist points of view.
Please send questions to be addressed or telephone during the second hour of the show and join in the conversation at 888 202-1984.
8 comments:
I've got a couple of ideas for 9/11
books that might reach new market
segments, and I'd like to offer
these to anyone willing to write
them.
This culture is more interested in
personalities than in ideas. A way
to lure new people into the 9/11
lore would be a nonfiction account
of the story of the 9/11 Truth
movement and the people, the facts,
the theories, the triumphs, the
disappointments, and the schisms as
the movement has grown and mutated.
It's a story full of William Faulkner's
universal truths: "love and honor
and pity and pride and compassion
and sacrifice," a story of intriguing
and diverse personalities.
Anyone interviewing participants in
the movement will naturally hear a
lot of dirt, most of which will surely
be untrue. It's essential to the
success of the interviews that the
writer commit to respectful
treatment of all people involved,
adopt an objective attitude, refuse
to take sides, and let the
verifiable facts (and only the
verifiable facts) speak for themselves.
The second idea recasts the Jersey
widows' experience into a
microcosmic story about grief,
conflicting world views, and
resistance to truth. The family
member of a person who died in the
9/11 attacks turns to the engineer
who lives across the street
for help in understanding questions
about the twin towers' collapses.
The neighbor's initial response is
to label such concerns as unhealthy
and refuse to discuss them. The
family member's persistent and
specific questions then earn glib
and erroneous responses which,
further questioned, lead to serious
research. Gradually the engineer
comes to rethink the entire issue
with a more open mind, which leads
to a career-threatening concern
with truth.
The characters' relationship might
be structured in any of several
ways along the axes of social
class, education, charisma, back
story, and culture. The family
member might be the parent or the
spouse of the victim, might be male
or female. The engineer might be
male or female. Sexual tension
would crank up the conflict--were
they old flames? Does one of them
have a bad marriage? All possibilities
should be considered in the quest
for the strongest story.
Well don't all pile on at once.
I've got an opening scene in mind:
Dawn on a suburban street,
newspaper deliverer drives by
tossing the WSJ, bath-robed
residents wheel garbage bins to
the curb. The engineer looks out
from his/her home office upstairs.
Obviously he/she has been working
all night. Across the street
someone is trying to get into a
minivan and his/her spouse is
trying to pull him/her out of the
driver's seat.
"You are not going to send that letter!"
"Let go of me!" It's a bellow or
a shriek.
"Why are you doing this to us?"
The engineer turns away from the
window and sits at his/her CAD-CAM
workstation, staring out the window
at the sky.
This scene assumes that we have a
worldview conflict in the victim
family. So which is it, the
questioner or the complacent one,
who turns to the engineer? In the
former case the engineer might be
motivated by love toward truth, in
the latter the engineer might be
torn between truth and love.
The second sounds stronger.
The following commentary was
offered by Dr. Paul Rea.
I. The first is most intriguing if the writer was/were able to keep his/her own ideological leanings out of the narrative; if not, such a book might inflame internecine conflicts. We don't need more theorizing or ideology; the emphasis should probably fall on self-reflection, something the movement needs more of. In particular, it should focus on character and commitment, which include conflicting emotions that most of have felt or still feel.
Much as Orwell noted (though he wrote it himself) political fiction is almost always bad art, so historical narratives that seem overly personal or overly ideological tend to be bad non-fiction. No one is going to argue that Isaiah Berlin's Russian Thinkers doesn't have a lot of Berlin in it, but it also offers sharp insights into great Russian thinkers. The reader need to have the sense that the writer is intellectually honest--meaning that he or she follows the subtleties of a subject wherever they may lead, regardless of the author's preconceptions.
Since history, like fiction, is about character, the prospectus might be tweaked to include activists, researcher, writers, and visual artists who provide of sampling of the characteristic personalities that are attracted to the 9/11 movement. Yes, they're diverse, but are there common threads, even a characteristic mentality? Does this movement, for instance, attract more than its share of personalities who imagine themselves to thrive on taking unpopular, oppositional, or skeptical positions? Is there an anarchistic or libertarian streak among some, even many of us? Are there those who have seen our movement as a way to garner attention that might not be so immediately available in other more established arenas, such as the peace, anti-poverty, or labor movements? Has the amount of internet hostility made it more difficult for some members to realize that there is such as things as constructive criticism?
In short, what kind of people are we? How might our characteristic perspectives lead to our characteristic blind spots? Well, I offer many questions but fewer answers. If psychological considerations are a major focus, Ken or I might be resources for such a writer to consult.
II. Your second idea also holds promise since it addresses the issue of psychological resistance and communication between neighbors, associates, family members, etc. How much of the resistance we encounter is lazy or cowardly, fearful of what they might have to do if they let the truth in, and how much of the resistance is validly a matter of psychic survival--that of persons who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they just can't process any more stress or ambiguity?
These are questions that I've struggled with at various points, and strike me as ones that you, too, might also have things to say about.
Hope this is helpful, and that these comments might provoke other respondents to join the conversation.
I certainly agree with your views on the necessity for purging ideological filtering and authorial theorizing; that my vision is of a scrupulously objective work that lets the verifiable and relevant facts speak for themselves, and I'd hope that my only preconception is the belief that a lot of people had a lot of different ideas about 9/11 and the movement and soon developed a lot of personal rivalries about the relative merits of those ideas.
I would not feel comfortable injecting any theories I might develop on "the character of the 9/11 activist" into the book, though I suppose collecting the opinions of others into a section might be worthwhile, and I suppose such theories might at times inform my interviews.
Your perceptions on the fear in resistance are wise. Why does adversity strengthen some people and destroy others? In an earlier post I compared the opposition between truth and love with the motivation toward truth by love, concluding that the former was more dramatic. Your comment has led me to recast the latter as opposition between truth and fear. That is probably strongest of all.
OK, third time's a charm. A screenwriting friend calls for collaborative efforts:
I think we should get writers, artists, singers, all sort of creative,
intuitive types who are passionate about truth together to share
their talents. Would-be writers could link up with front-liners
who have the facts. Singers can record truth songs and video
savvy types can put the performances on You Tube or Google.
How about on line truth galleries of original art with original
songs or poetry on You Tube in song length bursts? I think time
is of the essence and any vehicle that enables people to openly,
peacefully express their views might help people find the
courage to come forward to speak. I'm sure there are a lot of
people who are afraid to speak. For them, and I include myself,
writing under an assumed name is better than not writing at all.
Working with someone on the front lines while staying in the
background may be a welcome opportunity. I think the call
should go out. I think having someone who is recognizable
make that call might be helpful. What's more important is to
have a way for the process to flow from idea to finished
product with credibility.
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