US National Park Service of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City (Wikimedia Commons)
Ignorance and 9/11 – An Analysis (15 September 2011) by Lawrence Davidson
Part I
On Monday 12 September 2011 I had sixty five students in a “Twentieth Century World” history class ask me what I thought were the origins of the 9/11 attacks. I said I was quite willing to tell them what I thought, but first they had to give me their opinions. The vast majority believed that Muslim fanaticism led to the tragedy. The only other competitive theory, held by a small minority, was that the attacks were the result of a conspiracy located within the U.S. government itself.
I made it clear that I do not believe in the conspiracy explanation, if for no other reason than it would be impossible to keep that sort of thing secret in a political environment (Washington DC) which leaked information like a sieve. I was more interested in why they thought Muslim fanaticism caused the attack. They could not answer the question in any specific way. It was just the majority opinion that was somehow “in the air.” And, indeed, it is what our leaders and the media suggest and is, by now, part of a shared national consciousness.
Next I inquired why they asked me this question? They answered that as the fellow in the History Department who taught about the Middle East, they saw me as a credible source of information. With that established, I agreed that this was a good and indeed necessary use of class time. So I began.
I told them that Muslim fanaticism did not cause the attack. Clearly the belief that one was acting in a way approved by God made it easier to hijack the planes and crash them into their targets. But that belief was not the motivation for these acts. Rather the attacks on September 11, 2001 were performed as revenge for decades of U.S. foreign policy decisions that had caused enormous suffering in the Middle East.. Student reaction was something like: “foreign policy, what foreign policy?” I told those sixty five students that was exactly the right question. It was time (actually it was long past due) that they understood 9/11 in its historical context. I then led them through a brief description of the following events, all of which identified the United States as an enemy of justice and democracy in the Middle East:
1. In 1953 the U.S. overthrow the democratically established government of Iran and installed the Shah’s dictatorship.
2. In 1958 the U.S. landed troops in Lebanon in support of a Maronite Christian president who was seeking to subvert the Lebanese constitution. We repeated the mistake 25 years later, in 1983, when Ronald Reagan once more sent U.S. forces into Lebanon and quickly lost 241 servicemen to a suicide bomber.
3. We have subsequently backed numerous ME dictators, among them Mubarak in Egypt, Abdullah in Jordan, the Saudi monarchy in Arabia (where we kept troops on the holiest of Muslim soil), the king of Bahrain, etc. even while selectively opposing others such as those in Syria and Lybia. Our criterion for support is not whether a government is a dictatorship or democracy, but rather whether it cooperates or not with American policies in the region.
4. The notorious regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was an excellent example of this criterion. For a number of years this dictator was the beneficiary of American support (we sold him his poison gas and biological agents). However, he eventually invaded Kuwait (which the British had lopped off from Iraq in 1913) and we then turned against him. Following the First Gulf War a U.S. sponsored blockade of Iraq resulted in the death of over half a million Iraqi poor people and children. I quoted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s infamous 1996 confession on the TV program 60 Minutes that she thought all those deaths were “worth it.” I am sure that Osama bin Laden thought exactly the same way about the deaths of the civilians in the Twin Towers and the hijacked airplanes.
5. And, of course, there is the consistent U.S. support of Israel in its policy of relentless absorption of Palestinian land. Which, in the eyes of many in the Middle East, makes Washington an accomplice in an imperialist and colonialist foreign occupation. As a function of this support U.S. sought to overturn the 2006 fair and free democratic election of the Hamas government in Palestine.
Finally, I explained to the students that however U.S. officials might rationalize these policies, it is simply naive to expect that those who do not like our behavior will stand by and do nothing. And they haven’t. As it turns out, most of those who have turned violent against us are non-state actors such as those associated with Al Qaeda because, over the last 60 odd years, those Middle Eastern governments that opposed the U.S., and also Israel, have been proven impotent.
Part II
The vast majority of Americans have no clue about this history of U.S. behavior. And, the truth is that we simply cannot think critically about what we do not know. As a consequence Americans have no historical context through which to understand the “blowback” such behavior engenders. That being the case they are susceptible to whatever fantasies the media and their leaders feed them, as well as innumerable conspiracy theories. Most Americans accept the story that the terrorism of September 11 was motivated by religious fanaticism and carried out by those who “hate our freedoms.” (To this contention I reply that those who fight against the U.S. do not care what we Americans do in our country, they care what we do in their countries). The sceptics gravitate to the conspiracy stories. They too have it wrong though oddly the U.S. government, by acting in the way described above, did engineer the disaster.
In the case of my students I have filled in the knowledge gaps. It is hard to know how deeply they will ponder this new information and what they can do with it if they do think it through. In any case, as the saying goes, they are but a drop in the ocean. I know that is a depressing thought, but it is an accurate one.
I have come to the conclusion that the United States, for all its ability to project force, is in decline. It is in decline for the same reason that most past empires and power states have faltered. They falter because, over time, their elites become self-deluded and the general public kept in ignorance. The elites come to mistake their own perceptions, limited by narrow interest and/or distorted by ideologies, for objective reality. None of them have ever seen fit to integrate a “devil’s advocate” into their deliberations. Those who can see the world objectively are more likely than not to be ignored or outright fired. Without such people in the halls of power and the offices of the media we are blind. And, as the English poet Gerald Massey once observed, “in blindness we gather thorns for flowers.”
Is Pakistan Being Cast as the Next Plausible Evil Doer?
Conspiracy theorists assure us that Osama bin Laden was killed in December 2001 and his body put on ice in—of course—an undisclosed location. If the recent killing of bin Laden was a lie, who were the liars? All 79 members of SEAL Team 6, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. State Department, the White House and 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. All conspired to have us believe that he was killed in Pakistan.
“Who you gonna believe,” the theorists ask, “me or your lyin’ eyes?”
The killing or capture of Osama bin Laden was a strategic imperative of the Obama presidency. His death on Pakistani soil now presents a challenge to the strategic depth required for security and stability in the region. How, under these circumstances, does the U.S. collaborate with a nation given $20 billion since 911?
To date, the clash between the U.S. and Pakistan has been the focus of mainstream news. Little has been said about the loss of 30,000 Pakistani lives to the war on terrorism. That human toll includes a sharp upswing in deadly attacks since the November 2008 assault in India where Islamic extremists, trained in Pakistan, left 174 dead in Mumbai. Pakistan was portrayed as guilty—by association.
Savvy national security analysts are monitoring who uses bin Laden’s death to tout The Clash of Civilizations. The continued plausibility of this narrative requires a series of plausible Evil Doers, a role that bin Laden played to perfection.
With his death in Abbottobad, home to Pakistan’s elite military academy, Islamabad looks guilty—by association. Mainstream media immediately proposed a no-win proposition for Pakistan: it was either complicit or incompetent. No other option was offered.
When deploying agenda-advancing narratives to induce wars, the power of association is critical. Should a nuclear device be used in the U.S., the U.K. or the E.U., here is the plausible storyline: “How could Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal be secure if their military could not locate bin Laden’s lair in a military town in Pakistan?”
Is Pakistan Next for Regime Change?
Is the power of association again being deployed to start a war by inducing an internalized narrative that displaces facts with false beliefs? Is Islamabad a new cast in a new movie featuring the same old plot?
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Americans know they were induced to invade Iraq on false intelligence. That deceit could not have succeeded absent pre-staging that changed our perception of Iraq from ally to Evil Doer. Is a similar shift in perspective being promoted to rebrand Pakistan?
Plausibility is key. Yet Tom Donilon, Obama’s National Security Adviser, was quick to concede there is no evidence of foreknowledge by Pakistan of bin Laden’s whereabouts.
He also concedes that Pakistan suffered greatly at the hands of those who used its remote lawless regions to train fanatics and launch attacks that killed Pakistanis while Islamabad provided intelligence that enabled Washington to kill or capture extremists.
Obama chose not to share operational intelligence with anyone, including Pakistanis and senior White House staff. Silence is the essence of operational security.
Despite sovereignty issues, the U.S. and Pakistan must make this six-decade relationship work. Progress is best sustained when cooperation is based on mutual interests.
Why Not Try a Prescription That Matches the Malady?
Women in the Pashtun region bordering Afghanistan report that their lives would be vastly improved if they had the electricity to run four light bulbs, charge their cell phones and power their TVs. This is 2011 after all.
Equipping an off-the-grid home with just two high efficiency thin film solar panels would do the job. Another four panels would allow them to refrigerate their food. Imagine raising and educating your children without access to affordable electricity.
Approximately 70% of Pakistani tax revenues are used to service external debt. Much of the balance funds their 1.5 million-strong military, leaving few resources for education or other services for Pakistan’s 185 million citizens.
It’s no wonder that Pakistani children educated in 40,000 Islamic seminaries (madrassas) fail to learn useful job skills. Or that the average Pakistani is skeptical of Islamabad.
The missing component is not trust but a shared vision of what both nations require to restore and sustain their national security. As the largest contributor of personnel to U.N. peacekeeping missions, Pakistan is well positioned to become a global force for positive change.
At this key juncture in an essential relationship, should Americans kill more Muslims, further advancing The Clash storyline? Or should Pakistan and the U.S. join forces to create a new narrative founded on peace through human dignity and solar-powered prosperity?
The tools are known, available and affordable. The missing ingredients are leadership, imagination and the confidence that success is possible.
Last week I was in Egypt, a country presently moved by optimism. The optimism reflects a high state of political consciousness. Almost everyone I met, be they workers (urban and rural), students, shopkeepers, and the ubiquitous taxi drivers know why their country is beset by problems. They can itemize the structural flaws that led to massive corruption, economic deprivation and brutal repression. For instance, they all know that the “laughing cow” dictator, Hosni Mubarak, had substituted his personal interests, and that of his friends, for the national interest. Everyone has the same general notion of what needs to be done: destroy the power of this “party of thieves” and rid the country of the failed policies it has so long endured. How all this will play out in the new environment of relative freedom, with its multiple party formation and emotional debate, is uncertain. However, if the United States can refrain from its usual level of gross interference, things should end up better rather than worse. Hence the optimism.
What are the odds that the US will leave the Egyptian reform process alone? In the long run, they are not good. The new Egypt has already moved to repair ties with Iran and ease the blockade of Gaza. The latter, in particular, is immensely popular in Egypt and will be just as unpopular in the US Congress. Egypt’s military still exercises ultimate control and is supposedly guiding the nation on its path of political reform. That same military is the recipient of billions of US aid dollars and Congress controls those purse strings. There is a lot of room for behind the scenes interference here. The pressure to meddle will increase if the Muslim Brotherhood is successful in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. They are getting ready to contest up to half the legislative seats and their prospects look good. However, such particulars are but catalysts that set in motion a more general, essentially structural, US approach to places like Egypt. On-going meddling in the affairs of other “sovereign” nations has become a veritable part of the culture of the “intelligence” and military bureaucracies of the United States.
Part II – The United States
Here is a depressing example of this attitude. While in Cairo I picked up the 29 April edition of the International Herald Tribune. The story that caught my eye was entitled “New Missions, Blurred Roles.” In part, the opening paragraph went like this, “President Barack Obama’s decision to send an intelligence chief [Leon Penetta] to the Pentagon [as Secretary of Defense] and a four star general [David Patraeus] to [be head of] the CIA is the latest evidence of a significant shift…in how the US fights its battles: the blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies.” What level of awareness does this maneuver reflect of the problems that have long beset America’s failed Middle East policies? In relative terms, certainly something short of that possessed by your average Egyptian cab driver. The Egyptians now boldly think about and discuss not only what is wrong but also why it is so. A significant aspect of why their problems persisted so long was the decades of US support for the country’s dictator. They know that and there is popular sentiment for avoiding that sort of “aid” in the future. If they can achieve this the Egyptians have a genuine shot at a better future. On the other hand, America’s leaders are fixated on what they think confronts them and have relegated the why of it all to irrelevancy. In other words, when it comes to foreign policy our leaders, to say nothing of our soldiers and our spies, are dismally short-sighted. Hence the policy failures.
The CIA, along with the rest of America’s so called “intelligence” agencies, are designed to tell the country’s leaders what is going on in the world. Somewhere buried deep in these information gathering bureaucracies are people who can also tell them why things are happening as they are, but these folks carry little or no influence. This is because the explanations they often give for events conflict with or call into serious question the special interest motives and ends that drive US policies. You see, just as in Egypt, special interests have supplanted national interests. With rare exception, American foreign policy in the Middle East is designed to respond to the desires of domestic lobbies such as the Zionists and not to any national interest, or even to the conditions on the ground in foreign lands. If foreign opposition develops to what our domestic special interests desire, we want to know what it is and then destroy it. Why it arises is a question to avoid because it opens space for the questioning the influence of the special interests.
If the CIA is stuck at the ‘what’ stage of things (say, the what of Israeli security or the what of Iranian nuclear energy development), the Defense Department is dedicated to designing tactical responses to the ‘what.’ Now the efforts of these two aggressive government organizations are to be closely coordinated within a political environment that refuses to look objectively at the roots of its own policies. So what can this move really mean?
Part III – Assassination as a Panacea
In the post Cold War era the decision was made that ability to carry on classical warfare, the warfare between fielded armies, is a less immediate priority than “special operations” designed to “penetrate, disrupt, defeat and destroy” small militant groups which stand against US policy positions in the Third World. Beyond the supporting of dictators and their armies, how does this presently translate into practice? Well, under Leon Panetta, the CIA oversaw “a sharp escalation” of the agency’s “bombing campaign in Pakistan using armed drone aircraft and an increase in the number of secret bases and covert operations in remote parts of Afghanistan.” On the Defense Department side, in 2009 General Patreaus, acting as head of the US Central Command signed a classified order “authorizing US special operations troops to collect intelligence in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran and other places outside of traditional war zones.” The intelligence gathered is to be used to “prepare the environment for future military attacks.”
What we have here is an admission that both the CIA and the Defense Department have taken upthe tactic of assassination as a major adjunct to the support the dictator policy. These are not like the horridly romanticized James Bond “license to kill” actions, nor even the cruder, but still selective, operations of the 11th century Assassins. What Washington has elevated to the level of high tactics is the extraordinarily messy fighter bomber and predator drone attacks that are as likely to massacre entire families, wedding parties, mosque gatherings and café crowds as they are any intended victims. And now the fighter bombers of the Defense Department and the predator drones of the CIA will be oh so better coordinated. Of course, none of this touches on the question of why the “bad guys” are out there, in so determined a fashion, in the first place.
The refusal to consider why opposition to American foreign policy in the Middle East has grown steadily since the end of World War II and finally, on September 11, 2001, reached an unparalleled level of destructiveness, suggests that this latest tactical maneuver will be of little long term worth. It will not alter the US policy of allying with dictators and oppressors. It will not alter the US policy of destructive economic exploitation. It will only intensify American violence against the innocent people who happen to be in the vicinity of those we decide are guilty. And, in doing so, drive them into the arms of extremists – that is those who stand against the US by pursuing tactics as extreme as those used by the US itself. Keep in mind that the violence of the oppressed tends to raise to the level of the violence of the oppressor.
Part IV – Conclusion
There is a difference between being smart or clever, and being truly intelligent. The men and women who run the United States are very clever, but they are not equally intelligent. They are clever enough to design deadly responses to specific situations. However, the responses are almost always bounded by a priori domestic political positions. Our leaders never display the intelligence and the political courage to challenge those positions no matter how disastrous they prove to be.
The most recent example of this stuck in a rut scenario is the national hoopla that followed the assassination of Osama bin Laden. In the president’s speech announcing this action, and the subsequent media discussion about what it might mean for the future, no attention was paid to why the 9/11 attacks were originally launched. President Obama solemnly declared that “justice had been served” but he dared not note the fact that bin Laden had launched the attacks of 2001 in order to obtain “justice” for what American policy in the Muslim world had wrought.
Unless the US changes its policies in the Middle East the so-called War On Terror cannot be won. There is a symbiotic relationship between our policies and the resistance we encounter, between our state terrorism and their non-state terrorism. You cannot bludgeon the connection away by simply honing your tactical abilities to “penetrate and disrupt” because doing so does not “destroy” the reasons for continuing opposition. That is the truth that comes from an objective consideration of the ‘why’ of things. Unlike the Cairo taxi drivers, America’s leadership just does not get it.
Winston Churchill rightly explained that “(a) lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” He said it perhaps before television. For sure before 24-hour cable TV and modern technology instantly communicating globally.
It applies to Obama’s latest lie, announced at 11:35PM EDT on bin Laden, saying:
“Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”
Highlighting 9/11, he painstakingly discussed everything but the truth. America’s media repeated it. Celebratory crowds in front of the White House, in Times Square, and at “ground zero” cheered it past midnight, mindlessly believing a lie. More on that below.
On May 1, New York Times writers Peter Baker, Helene Cooper and Mark Mazzetti headlined, “Bin Laden Is Dead, Obama says: continuing:
Calling him “the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world,” Obama announced his death Sunday night, declaring “justice has been done.”
Cheerleading, not reporting, Baker, Cooper and Mazzetti called his “demise….a defining moment in the American-led fight against terrorism, a symbolic stroke affirming the relentlessness of the pursuit of those who attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.”
New Year’s eve arrived early in America, celebrating a lie, the “bewildered herd” again seduced by presidential deception.
A USA Today editorial headlined, “At last, bin Laden is dead,” saying:
“Could there be any more satisfying words to hear?”
The Boston Globe highlighted “a moment of unity” after nearly a decade of war, calling Obama’s announcement a “vindication of a manhunt spanning presidential administrations, and involving numerous agencies and countless intelligence officers.”
AP quoted Bill Clinton saying:
“I congratulate the president, the national security team and the members of our armed forces on bringing Osama bin Laden to justice after more than a decade of murderous al Qaeda attacks.”
House speaker John Boehner (R. OH) said it was “great news…”
House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi called it “historic.”
Senate Democrat leader Harry Reid “reaffirm(ed) our resolve to defeat the terrorist forces that killed (9/11 victims) and thousands of others across the globe.”
Expect lots more cheerleading ahead, led by major media reports doing what they do best, providing sanitized, managed news, not truth.
Separating Fact from Fiction
Post-9/11, bin Laden became “Enemy Number One,” the nation’s top “security threat.” In fact, if he hadn’t existed, he’d have been invented for political advantage.
In March 1985, after Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 166 to arm Afghan Mujahideen fighters, Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) recruited bin Laden to fight Soviet Afghan forces as a CIA asset. He likely remained one until his death, while simultaneously called “Enemy Number One,” using him advantageously both ways.
David Ray Griffin wrote seminal books on 9/11, including “The New Pearl Harbor,” “The 9/11 Commission Report,” “9/11 and American Empire,” “9/11 Contradictions,” “Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,” and “Osama Bin Laden: Dead of Alive?”
It was also the title of his October 9, 2009 Global Research article, covering two types of evidence:
(1) Objective evidence that he’s dead:
After December 13, 2001, his regularly intercepted messages stopped.
On December 26, 2001, according to “a leading Pakistani newspaper” story, a prominent Taliban official said he attended his funeral.
Bin Laden, in fact, was very ill with kidney disease. In September 2001, CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported that he was admitted to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan hospital on September 10, 2001, and France’s Le Figaro said:
“Dubai….was the backdrop of a secret meeting between Osama bin Laden and the local CIA agent in July (2001). A partner of the administration of the American Hospital….claims that (bin Laden) stayed (there) between the 4th and 14th of July (and) received visits from many members of his family as well as prominent Saudis and Emiratis. (During the same period), the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking (the hospital’s) main elevator (to) bin Laden’s room.”
Why not if he was a valued asset.
In July 2002, “CNN reported that (his) bodyguards had been captured in February of that year, adding: ‘Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most wanted man in the world is dead.”
Finally, despite Washington offering a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture or killing, no one came forward.
(2) Testimonial evidence of his death:
In 2002, influential “people in a position to know” that he died included:
– Pakistan President Musharraf;
– FBI counterterrorism head Dale Watson;
– Oliver North saying, “I’m certain that Osama is dead….and so are all the other guys I stay in touch with;”
– Afghanistan President Karzai;
– Israeli intelligence saying supposed bin Laden messages were fake; and
– Pakistan’s ISI “confirm(ing) the death of….Osama bin Laden (and) attribut(ing) the reasons behind Washington’s hiding (the truth) to the desire of (America’s hawks) to use the issue of al Qaeda and international terrorism to invade Iraq.”
Other evidence includes former CIA case officer Robert Baer telling National Public Radio (NPR): “Of course he’s dead.”
Then in March 2009, “former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla published an essay in the American Spectator entitled ‘Osama bin Elvis,’ ” saying:
“Seven years after (bin Laden’s) last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence of Elvis’s presence among us than for his.”
Griffin also explained fake messages and videos, saying today’s advanced technology can fool experts, but not all of them.
For years, bin Laden tapes surfaced at strategically-timed moments. Consider one on Friday, September 7, 2007 ahead the sixth 9/11 anniversary. Hector Factor’s Neal Krawetz, a digital image forensics expert, said it was full of low quality visual and audio splices, a likely fake.
Striking also was bin Laden’s beard that was gray in recent images. In this one, it was black. In addition, he was dressed in a white hat and shirt, as well as a yellow sweater, the same attire as on an October 29, 2004 video. Moreover, the background, lighting, desk and camera angle were identical.
Krawetz noted that “if you overlay the 2007 and 2004 videos, bin Laden’s face is the same (unaged).” Only his beard was darker, and the picture contrast was adjusted. Most important are the edits showing obvious splices, at least six video ones in all. Even more audio ones were used that appeared to be words and phrases spliced together, making Krawetz suspect a vocal imitator was used.
A Final Comment
Clear evidence showed bin Laden died years ago, likely in December 2001. However, reporting it was concealed to pursue America’s “war on terror.”
As a result, “Enemy Number One” was used to stoke fear as pretext for imperial wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, perhaps others now planned, and numerous proxy ones in Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain, Palestine, Central Africa, Colombia, and elsewhere.
Griffin wrote his bin Laden book, hoping to shorten America’s wars. He also wished to expose “fake bin Laden tapes (used as) one part of an extensive propaganda operation….furthering the militarization of America and its foreign policy” while popular needs go begging.
Obama’s latest lie left America’s imperial agenda unchanged. In fact, his announcement likely bolsters public support for what’s clearly become unpopular, saying:
“(T)hink back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” urging people to show it again despite how militarism harms their security, well-being and futures by draining funds badly needed for domestic needs.
Instead, expect increasing amounts used for corporate handouts and wars, Obama as uncaring about human needs as extremist Republicans. He’s also an inveterate liar.
Stephen Lendman
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Note: If you email me at qumsi001@hotmail.com in the past few weeks, please resend your message here as I have lost access to that account. Also please be careful with any emails that may come from that email account. You can always email me at mazin@qumsiyeh.org
There is a western media frenzy about the reported “taking-out” of Osama Bin
Laden (the previous ally turned enemy). Israeli papers reported a high level
US security official as saying he instruction was not to capture Bin Laden
alive but to liquidate him. But everyone already knew this since there
would be messy business if the US soldiers captured such a person alive (he
may even spill the beans on his US and Pakistani intelligence links). Most
people went about their daily lives of apathy. Even the stock market did
not go up as pundits predicted. Soon the dollar will resume its downward
spiral.
The US military may feel vindicated and Pakistanis will feel their country’s
sovereignty challenged. Some may chose to retaliate with violence giving the
neocons and neoliberals their excuse to pursue their policies. After the
collapse of the Soviet Union, the military-industrial complex needed a new
enemy to sustain its massive structure and conveniently the “Islamic
terrorism” materialized. Of course there are fanatical Muslims (and Jews and
Christians and Hindus) who are willing to kill. Yet, the US did not have to
invade Iraq and Afghanistan and create more such fanatics. But a more sober
analysis shows that things will change.
Bin Laden was killed a while ago not physically but as an idea! The idea
suffered significant blows by the Arab Spring revolutions which showed that
it does not take violence to change our societies and remove US/Israeli
backed dictators. Bin Laden’s assassination and the continued state
terrorism practiced by the US government and its allies especially Israel
attempt to entrench the idea of violence as an answer. The brutal assault on
Syrian, Yemeni, Saudi and Bahraini demonstrators and the US continued
military attacks in countries around the world are part of this human
foolishness. They represent that wing of our global society that believes
violence is the answer: the win-lose scenario. The hopeful ideas of popular
resistance, freedom, democracy and end to exploitation successfully
challenged the notions of “clash of civilization” and “might makes right”.
We thus remain hopeful despite all the false news planted around us and all
the false-flag operations, and despite the 1 million Iraqis and 50,000
Afghans killed by these wars.
Here in Palestine, most people went about their lives focusing on how to
find the next loaf of bread under Israeli colonial occupation. Hardly a
mention was made of Bin Laden. If we take just one village called Izbet
Al-Tabib, a tiny village of 247 residents (60% of them children), we see one
example of what was on people’s minds. The Israeli decision to take their
land was met with building a protest tent on the threatened land and trying
to make their story known. The Israeli military came and attacked the
villagers and the international volunteers severely injuring an elderly
American woman and arresting three other internationals (see http://palsolidarity.org/2011/05/18071/ ). At night more than 200 soldiers
invaded the village terrorizing its population to try and stem the growing
popular resistance. Please join the villagers Thursday for solidarity
starting at 1 PM. And last night, the Israeli army arrested several
Palestinians in major cities including Bethlehem (this happens regularly in
defiance of the Oslo accords and with knowledge of “Palestinian security”
forces).
In a few days, there will be events and commemorations surrounding the Nakba
day. The Nakba is the Palestinian catastrophe etched into every living
Palestinian mind. It is the fact that from January 1948 to the end of 1949,
more than 2/3rd of our people who lived in the land that became the (Jewish)
state of Israel were ethnically cleansed. 63 years later, nearly 7 million
Palestinians are refugees or internally displaced people. This is the
largest and most tragic and persistent post world war II atrocity. For
information, visit http://PalestineRemembered.com
It is important that we all join in activities to challenge colonialism on
this anniversary of the Nakba. Below are some events but do look for events
in your area or organize your own events. In the US, you can also get some
printed material (a Nakba Pak) from here http://ifamericansknew.org/about_us/packs.html
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities in occupied Palestine. He serves as chairman of the board of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People and coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Sahour He is author of “Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human rights and the Israeli/Palestinian Struggle” and the forthcoming book Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment.
Because, for sure, there’s no way to ask any questions about this.
[Though, there are probably videos that will be shown later...]
U.S. President Obama said it was a “targetted operation”… which “took care to avoid civilian casualties”.
After 9/11, our time of grief, Americans came together, Obama said. “We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda, an organization headed by Osama Bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and committed to killing innocents in our country and around the globe. So, we went to war against Al-Qaeda to protect our citizens, our friends and our allies … In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government which had given Bin Ladan and Al-Qaeda safe haven and support, and around the globe, we worked to capture or kill scores of Al-Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot”, he said. “Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the Director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of Osama Bin Laden the top priority in our war against al-Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle or defeat his network”…
Obama never once said the word “terrorist” or “terror” [this was one of the significant style changes in his administration]. No, this is a war against Al-Qaeda, Obama said, several times.
“There is no doubt that Al-Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us”, Obama added, so the U.S. “must be vigilant, at home and abroad”…
The U.S. then issued a worldwide travel alert and advisory to all U.S. citizens.
A warden message received on Monday afternoon from the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem says: “Given the uncertainty and volatility of the current situation, U.S. citizens in areas where recent events could cause anti-American violence are strongly urged to limit their travel outside of their homes and hotels and avoid mass gatherings and demonstrations”…
In his annoucement, Obama also said that Bin Laden’s “demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity … justice has been done”.
Osama Bin Laden has been killed, somehow, in a “showdown with U.S. forces” in a luxurious villa in a heavily-fortified compountd in Pakistan — a country which insisted he was not there, and where U.S. forces have been operating for years, while supposedly searching for Osama Bin Laden and his amorphous Al-Qaeda Organization, which any misfit or rebel who wanted to antagonize could claim to be part of (whether true or not, claims will be accepted if convenient).
The villa was reportedly in, or on the outskirts of, Abbotabad, about two hours north of Islamabad. [And, the villa was reportedly about 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy.]
According to a report in The Guardian, here, the villa was identified last August, the U.S. was certain in February that Bin Laden and family were there, and Obama gave the order to get him on 29 April.
The same report added that “It was a surgical operation, he said, carried out by a small team and lasted only 40 minutes … The US force ran into a problem with one of their helicopters which had to be abandoned, but only after being destroyed by explosives set by the American troops”.
Some Pakistani forces reportedly accompanied the U.S. soldiers. Now, they say they’re not sure who fired the shot that actually killed Osama Bin Laden. But, there can never be another autopsy, a forensic examination, because, the U.S. says, his body has been “buried at sea” — according to Muslim tradition (which is NOT to bury a dead person at sea, but in the earth).
This happened within a very few hours — at 0200 in Washington DC time — and that would be according to Muslim (and Jewish) tradition which prefers burial (in earth) within 24 hours. The military operation apparently started just after 8pm…
The U.S. took charge of the body, and then said no country was willing to take the body for burial…
That’ll make it easy, they must have thought.
Others died, too, including one of his sons, and “a woman being used as a hostage shield”…
But, in the best post-Second-World-War American tradition, the U.S. is leader of “the free world”, and no questions can be asked. Just trust the leaders. Or, what’s wrong with you — get the hell out! Go… to Gaza!
There will be no trial. Osama will not be water-boarded in Camp Guantanamo to extract “the facts” in a full investigation. We will never know what really happened, and we will believe what suits us.
There is no body to show = no need to know: just accept our word, we’re the “good guys”?
On Twitter, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, tweeted (@husainhaqqani) just after 1:15 in the afternoon, Jerusalem time:
**”Official Pakistan statement being released in Islamabad on our US bringing Osama bin Laden to justice 14 minutes ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®”
**”Pak statement: In intelligence driven op, Osama Bin Ladin was killed in the surroundings of Abbotabad in the early hours of Mon morning”
**”Operation was conducted by US forces in accordance with declared US policy”
**”Earlier 2day, President Obama telephoned President Zardari on the successful US operation which resulted in killing of OBL”
**”Al-Qaeda had declared war on Pakistan. Scores of Al-Qaeda sponsored terrorist attacks resulted in deaths of 1000s of innocent Pakistanis”
In the photo below, taken at a roundtable discussion in Jerusalem in July 2004, Marian Houk is the woman wearing the sort-of-orange-colored eyeglasses. Photo courtesy of PASSIA:
Marian Houk, a writer, reporter, journalist and analyst with long experience at the United Nations — in New York and in Geneva and more — as well as with the Middle East. She has reported on, and for a time also worked for, the United Nations. She is a former President of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) at UNHQ/NY (1986), and is currently based in Jerusalem.
I celebrate and congratulate the American Special Operation unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. I congratulate both America and the Muslim world for this great success. No man and no organization in recent memory, perhaps in the last 500 years had done more damage to Islam and the Arabs than Osama and his Islamist Jihadists including Alqaeda, Taliban’s and other small fringe group of killers and murderers.To most people in the Arab and Muslim world, they tend to forget that Osama Bin Laden was the creation and invention of the American CIA and the American Zionist NeoCons, and he was their partner not only in Afghanistan when he was fighting the Soviet Union, but I believe he was their partner and ally during the September 11, attack on America. No one can convince me or hundreds of millions like me in the US and around the world that a group of 18 people can do what they did without key assistance from the inside.
Osma Bin Laden was a bonanza, a windfall for the world Zionists and NeoCons, and the September 11th attack was what was needed by these Zionist NeoCons to have their new world order and to take charge of both US domestic and foreign policy and to have their imprint on US “anti-terrorism” agenda. An agenda that has created animosity for America around the world not only in the Muslim world, and is driving America to the verge of bankruptcy while creating a windfall for Israel as the primary beneficiary of US war on terror. The war on terror has served Israel very well, it served it agenda in the American Knesset, and it served Israel well with its industry and intelligence services and the ability to have its Fifth Column in the US by invitation.
One has to see what did Osama and his Alqaeda did for Islam and for Arabs, nothing, absolutely nothing? Only death, destruction, cold blooded murder, ignorance and mental retardation, setting the Arab and Muslim world centuries, diverting precious financial and human resources from building modern nation states to catch up with the rest of the world, bogged down in trivial issues such as which foot to step into the house or the mosque. Buying guns for killing rather than bread for feeding. It gave excuses for dictatorship like Hosni Mubarak, Bin Ali and Ali Saleh to sell themselves as the front line against Islamist radicals and Jihadists. It allowed dictators like Bachar Assad and his father before him to use the fight against Islamist to solidify their family rules and do what they are doing in Syria. Muamar Gaddafi too sold himself to the West as a fighter of Alqaeda and continues to do the same now as he goes about killing and murdering his own people.
We know what Osama Bin Laden did for Israel and its agenda, but I am not aware of any thing he did for Islam or Muslims? I am not aware of him or his criminal gangs and thugs ever building a school, or a hospital or a clinic, to treat all the victims of suicide bombings, or a bakery or a small factory where women can earn a decent living to help their children while their men are waging Jihad. I am not aware of an instance when these Jihadists sponsored a scientific research into many of the ills and diseases that kills millions of people in the Muslim world, or sponsor a research into food production that can help feed the millions of starving Muslims. Osama Bin Laden and Taliban’s turned soccer stadiums to a theater of the absurd, chopping hands, cutting off heads, stoning women, a showcase of a criminal mind sick mind. They have reduced the great religion of Islam from one of scholarship and learning to ignorance and destruction. They simply killed the joy out of life and out of Islam.
This of course raised the core issue of this essay, when a targeted killing becomes legal and legitimate? Serious question that needed serious debate. I have no answer for this; however I do raise the issue.
Would the early killing and murder of Adolf Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, Klaus Barbie, Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goring, and Hans Aumeier changed things and saved the world the cold blooded murder of 6 millions Jews, not to mention the tens of millions of others who died during the war? Would the early killing of Lenin change the course of history of the Bolshevik revolution? Or would the killing of Joseph Stalin change the program of relocation and forced collective farms that killed 35 million people in the process?
Would the targeted killings of Pol Pot of Cambodia in the early days of the Khmer Rouge change a thing, saving 2 million lives? Would the early assassination of Vladimir Jabotinsky, Menachem Begin, and Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon or Theodore Hertzel change any thing, saving the Jews and the world from the scrooge of Zionism?
The same can be said of Pablo Escobar and the Columbian drug cartel, or Saddam Hussein and his murderous Ba’athist regime or the Shah of Iran and his dictatorial kelpto-regime, or the assassination of Ayatollah Khomeini changed the course of history in Iran? And would the targeted assassination of Muamar Gaddafi and his sons bring an end to their crimes and carnage waged in Libya?
As I said before, these are legitimate questions that needs a serious debate and should publicly open the discussions and discourse. When the saving of a nation, or thousand, or ten thousands or a million or six millions justify the targeted assassination and murder of a criminal dictator or a gang leader? And who makes such decision and under what conditions and circumstances?
Israel has always made good use of its targeted assassinations, killing scores of Palestinian leaders, and the question this raise, when the targeted assassination of an Israeli leader becomes as “legitimate” as the targeted assassination of a Palestinian leader?
I guess legal experts, criminologists, international law experts, sociologists, psychologists, moralist, politicians; religious scholars should wade into this topic and give us the people a clear guideline of when a targeted assassination becomes the “right thing to do”? Of course I do not expect only the Israelis or the Americans or the Europeans to make the rules, but the Muslims, the Hindus, the Chinese, the Indians, the Latin Americans, perhaps even the UN should take this hot topic and issue a guideline. I know the UN so far has failed to define or distinguish between “terrorism” and ‘the fight for national liberation” and of course for obvious reasons, the Jewish Occupation of Palestine.
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Sami Jamil Jadallah is an international legal and business consultant and is the founder and director of Palestine Agency and Palestine Documentation Center www.palestineagency.com and founder and owner of several business in technology and services. Sami also runs an online website (Jefferson Corner). His articles are also featured on PalestineNote and Veterans Today.
United Airlines Flight 175 crashes into the south tower. (Wikimedia Commons)
Interview by Kourosh Ziabari, 2 May 2011
Anthony Lawson
Without any redundant exaggeration, Anthony Lawson is an inimitable, conscientious and unique man. What he does can be described as professional and committed video-journalism. Lawson is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He calls himself as a “stickler for accuracy” and his record demonstrates the rightfulness of this description. His articles and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 9/11 attacks and U.S. foreign policy have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Sabbah Report, Veterans Today, Salem News, Intifada Palestine, Media With Conscience, Rense.com and Ramllah Online.
“Suppressing free and open discussion on any subject is as bad as telling lies, and knowingly suppressing the truth is the biggest lie of all, because it is based, not on a mistake or a genuine error, but on a deliberate intention to deceive,” writes Anthony Lawson in one of his articles.
YouTube has recently removed two of Mr. Lawson’s most impressive video files about Holocaust and 9/11 attacks under the pretext that these video files have violated the copyright law; however, even a seven-year-old child can effortlessly recognize that the sensitive truths which Anthony Lawson has touched upon in his videos caused their removal from the pro-Zionist website.
What follows is the complete text of my in-depth interview with Anthony Lawson in which we discussed a variety of issues including the concealed realities of 9/11, the Zionist influence over the U.S. administration and the freedom of mass media in the West.
Kourosh Ziabari: in one of your articles, you have written that “the NTSB has confirmed that-apparently for the first time from its inception, in 1967, since when it has investigated more than 124,000 other aviation accidents-it took no part in investigating any of the air crashes which occurred on September 11, 2001.” Do you mean that the National Transportation Safety Board refused to investigate the 9/11 air crashes? Was it ordered by a superior authority to do so? What does the fact that NTSB didn’t investigate the 9/11 air crashes imply? You have mentioned that FBI similarly refused to release any information about any debris recovered from the crash sites under the Freedom of Information Act. Do you want to imply that the U.S. administrative organizations such as FBI and NTSB have been complicit in the 9/11 attacks?
Anthony Lawson: That is correct. The NTSB did not take part in the painstaking procedure of examining what was left of the four aircraft to determine that they were indeed the same aircraft which were allegedly hijacked that morning. Two of the allegedly hijacked aircraft: American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were claimed, by the Bush administration, to have been the planes which impacted the North Tower and South Tower, respectively, each flown by Arabs who, it later transpired, had never flown a wide-bodied commercial jet before. Aircraft debris, including parts of an undercarriage and fuselage of the North Tower plane were certainly photographed, and the still-smoking core of what must have been the right engine of the South Tower plane can be seen, in several videos, arcing its way down towards Murray and Church streets, were it was videoed and photographed. Later, an identifiable photograph of this same engine core was released, by a former FEMA official photographer, as it was about to be buried in a landfill on Staten Island. This was an important section of a murder weapon, as were the aircraft parts found in or near the North Tower; the debris from the alleged crash site of United Flight 93 and that of American Airlines 77 which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon.
As to the second part of the question, I very much doubt that the NTSB would have been in a position to refuse to investigate the crashes. I should say that were dissuaded from doing so. The FBI, backed up by the Justice Department has refused to release any details about the aircraft parts or the serial numbers of the Black Boxes that may or may not have been found at the crash sites, although the contents of one of them—the Cockpit Voice Recorder from alleged United 93—formed the basis of several documentaries and an Academy-Award-winning movie, yet the transcript of the recording did not carry the serial number of the device on which it was, allegedly, recorded.
I try not to imply things that I have no proof about, because I think that it is up to the reader or viewer to make up their own mind about such things, but I will state, categorically, that the FBI must have been involved in the subsequent cover-up of important information about 9/11, and it is disappointing, but somewhat understandable, considering the power that the perpetrators must possess, that someone from the NTSB has not come forward with the reasons why these plane crashes, out of so many thousands, were not investigated by a government agency with such an outstanding success record.
(See my video: 9/11: The Unidentified Murder Weapons)
KZ: In your articles, you have alluded to the fact that the U.S. mainstream media evaded and downplayed the truth about 9/11 and tried to cover up the reality behind it. Meanwhile, they laid the groundwork for the military expedition of the United States and its cronies to two independent, sovereign states. Why do the mainstream media in the United States, which you may admit that are mostly run by well-off Zionists, refused to investigate and analyse the 9/11 attacks objectively and impartially? Does it indicate that the U.S. media, contrary to the accepted wisdom of the public opinion, are not absolutely free to publish whatever they want?
AL: It is no secret that today’s mainstream media and the major Hollywood production companies are owned or controlled by Jews, many of them Zionists, and that many if not most are almost certainly biased towards the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel. Of course there will be loud cries of “foul”, if one relates these factors to the obvious areas which should have been reported or looked into by the mainstream media, but were not. There are so many areas of obvious discrepancy, relating to the ongoing coverage of 9/11, two prime examples being the non-identification of the murder weapons, as explained above, and the fact that the strange collapse of WTC 7 was glossed over by the media and not even mentioned in the Commission’s report. This brought to light the virtual disappearance of what used to be called investigative journalism, while calls from independent researchers and public-opinion polls for a more thorough investigation of the obvious anomalies in the 9/11 Commission’s report have fallen on stony ground, because the mainstream media, quite clearly, will the not address these issues with any seriousness.
Once again, I can’t really give you a clear answer to the last part of question two, because I have no evidence that there is outside pressure on the media, but I’m inclined to think that, given AIPAC’s power and who owns the media, very little pressure would be required to prevent reports which may be detrimental to Israel from surfacing in the press or on T.V.
KZ: on several occasions, you criticized the U.S. Congress for its overabundant loyalty and commitment to the Apartheid Regime of Israel. You have stated that “a majority of the curren membership of the United States congress are, in fact, traitors to their own nation, because they have indicated, time and time again, a desire to put the protection of the Apartheid State of Israel ahead of considerations for the safety and security of the realm to which they have been pledged their allegiance: The United States of America.” Is there any certain mechanism within the political structure of the United States which promotes pro-Israel politicians to Congress, Senate and other sensitive governmental positions? In an exclusive interview with me, the American political scientist Prof. Naseer Aruri expressed an interesting statement. He said that no politician with an anti-Zionist mindset could ever dream of living in the White House. Do you agree? Why is it so?
AL: I totally agree with Professor Aruri. I cannot see anyone being voted in as Dog Catcher, if that is an elective position in any of the United States, were they are not prepared to show that they support Israel, 100%. The way that so many members of the House and Senate have signed letters which actually pledge their allegiance to Israel—even in the face of conflicting policies being stated by their own president—is evidence of their treason. Sure, some people will argue about the exact conditions which must apply for such pledges to amount to treason, but the U.S. is still engaged in two wars, if you count the war on terror, and the Libyan conflict could easily escalate into another war, whether declared or not, and Israel will be looking to further its own best interests in the region, which will almost certainly not coincide with America’s best interests—by which I mean the best interests of American citizens, not their administrators—and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, in 1967, that killed 34 American servicemen, should be warning enough that Israel is not to be trusted, when it feels threatened by anyone. So what would these pledges of allegiance or solidarity towards Israel mean, if a similar incident took place?
KZ: Putting aside its militaristic and imperialistic face, United States is deemed by many nations of the world as a superpower which can benefit them in terms of economy and diplomacy. The United States maintains strong relations with so many countries in the world. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan and Germany are the top 5 trade partners of the United States. However, among the countries with which the U.S. maintains strong diplomatic, economic and cultural relations, Israel occupies a special berth. The United States has regularly vetoed any UNSC resolution critical of Israel, justified Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, helped Israel extend its umbrella of occupation over the Palestinian nation and prevented the international community from investigating Israel’s illegal nuclear program. What has created such a strong and unbreakable linkage between Tel Aviv and Washington? What causes the United States to present itself as the unconditional supporter and patron of the Israeli regime?
AL: As I have indicated in my video, Friends of Israel — Enemies Inside the Gates, there seem to be two basic reasons for the strong and unbreakable linkage between Tel Aviv and Washington: arcane beliefs and money. If a person is a Zionist, and believes that Israel really was promised to the Jews, in perpetuity, by their God, several thousand years ago, whether they are Jews or Zionists Christians, that would be reason enough to support Israel, come Hell or high water. But, I suspect the stronger reason is more likely to be money and power, which are pretty much the same thing or, at least, interchangeable. Referring back to Professor Aruri’s statement, I would broaden it to: “No politician with an anti-Zionist mindset could ever dream of living in the White House or of sitting in the House of Representatives or the Senate for any significant length of time.” The reason being that they could never buck the big bucks that AIPAC would put up to defeat them at the next election. And the magic of it all is that it doesn’t cost Israel a shekel, because the U.S. pays Israel $3.1 billion plus in aid, every year, so it can afford to back candidates from both parties. As long as they pledge to keep that “aid” money rolling towards Tel Aviv, it can be rolled right back into their own campaign funds at election time. This is a mind-boggling feed-back system that would have had the Founding Fathers foaming at their mouths, had they considered that such a thing might be a possibility. Democracy didn’t even exist in Ancient Greece, which was a slave state, and it certainly doesn’t exist in the United States, although so many U.S. presidents claim that it is an exportable commodity, if only at the point of an M16 carbine I guess the short answer is: Tel Aviv controls the U.S., not Washington.
KZ: The critics of Israeli regime are always conveniently vilified as anti-Semitist and those who question the veracity of Holocaust accounts are offhandedly called neo-Nazis. Whoever dares criticize Israel for its crimes against humanity and brutal repression of the Palestinian nation is disrespectfully dismissed by the mainstream media. What has given the Israeli regime and the Zionist lobby around the world such an immense and enormous power to suffocate all of the critics and opponents by introducing them as the enemies of Judaism?
AL: Money and dedication to a cause is what enables the perpetuation of these absurd and unwarranted insults. If something is repeated often enough, in the media, it is believed by those who lack the power to think for themselves. And it is the Zionist-owned media that can afford to repeat them, over and over. With regard to people who are unable to think for themselves, unfortunately, I think early religious teachings must take some of the blame for the underdevelopment of young minds, in the area of free thinking, because being encouraged to blindly believe in something that cannot be seen, heard or touched must affect the ability or willingness of a young person to question other things about their lives and relationships with others. Which means that their minds are wide open to other suggestions which may appear quite reasonable, but which are not, if they only gave them some thought. Whatever the cause of this lack of awareness in so many people, most people who are able to think for themselves must realise that the accusation of anti-Semitism has long passed its sell-by date, if it ever had a legitimate one. In fact it is a total misnomer, it doesn’t mean anti-Jewish, because the word Semitic refers to a group of languages, not a belief system. I counter this with my own word combination: Anti-NastyPeopleism. This is quite an okay emotion to have, and if one of those nasty people happens to be a Jew or a Zionist, that is not my problem it is theirs.
KZ: Two of your impressive video files namely “Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid?” and No-Fly Zone over Gaza were flagrantly removed by the YouTube in clear violation of the freedom of speech and democracy. By disabling the truth-seeking internet users to watch your insightful videos, YouTube demonstrated that it can be hardly trusted as a reliable and truthful source of information. Please explain for me and my readers about the contents of your video files and let us know about your idea regarding their removal from YouTube. Do you agree with the belief that the Western world is not that beacon of freedom and cradle of liberty which its statesmen claim?
AL: An operation like YouTube is wide open to abuse from people who have no regard for freedom of speech and expression. Ever since the first video you mention was taken down, because of a false copyright-infringement claim, which was not looked into by the YouTube “Team”—even when I pointed out that the claimant had given an incorrect telephone number and the material it was claimed I was infringing is not even available on the Internet—I’ve given up trying to fight them, because that is what such people want me to do: waste my energy fighting a corporation which doesn’t care a damn about anyone or anything, except making money. It is a world sickness: never mind the quality of our operation, feel the money it makes. These days, I never use the word “believe” in relation to my thoughts, because it has the wrong connotation. People believe things that, quite obviously, may not have any basis in fact, so I prefer the word “think”. So the answer is that I don’t think that the Western world is a beacon of freedom or cradle of liberty. Most of its elements are as corrupt and as rotten to the core as any of the regimes which have already fallen or which are teetering, in the Arab world, right now.
Here’s a question for you, rhetorical I guess: Have you ever seen anything as gross as the royal wedding and the coverage given to it by the media? How much did all that cost to prop up the idea that monarchy still has something to offer in this day and age? The world didn’t stop when Israel invaded Gaza, but it stopped, as far as the BBC and CNN were concerned, when a couple of young people of no particular noteworthiness got married I cannot look at any of those pictures or listen to the inane commentaries without thinking of the massive degradation of decency that went into the planning of that appalling display of wealth, or the mental illness that makes certain people think that the frock worn by so-and-so has any meaning at all, in the wider picture of human decency and compassion for the suffering of others. It was a disgrace.
KZ: According to the Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which was highlighted in your video, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression and there should be no exception to this rule. However, those who benefit from aggrandizing the story of Holocaust and exaggerating its extent are at odds with this inalienable freedom. Why has the Holocaust become a forbidden zone which nobody can enter? What’s your personal viewpoint regarding the accounts which have been given about Holocaust? Did the Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler exterminate 6 million Jews is gassing chambers?
AL: It would be hard to answer in a single paragraph what I took a 30 minute video to examine. During WW II, atrocities of monumental proportions were committed by both sides. The thousand-bomber raids launched on the civilian population of Germany and the droppings of two atomic bombs on civilians in Japan are prime examples. There is no doubt in my mind that English and American politicians and military staff sat and cold-bloodedly planned those atrocities. They would have been classed as war criminals had Germany won the war. On the other hand, it seems that there is no solid evidence that Germany put in train a plan to systematically murder Jews using gas chambers. I have no doubt that some Germans were as cruel as some of those bombing-raid planners, and that a lot of unnecessary deaths resulted from that cruel streak, which seems to show itself in so many humans, but I do not think that the facts support the planned systematic-extermination scenario that the ever-growing number of Holocaust museums claim was perpetrated by the Germans. And I would add that the more I hear and see of the attempts to gag open discussion on this uniquely banned historical subject, the more I am convinced that some things are being covered up and others invented in order to perpetuate some of the Holocaust stories that would not stand up to a thorough and impartial examination.
KZ: Let’s take a glance at the developments taking place in the Middle East region. Almost all of the nations in the Persian Gulf region which are experiencing revolutions or semi-revolutions, from Egypt and Tunisia to Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, have been the staunch allies of Washington. One feature is common between all of these countries and that is their repressiveness and black human rights record. Why does the United States support and uphold brutal regimes such as Bahrain, Libya and Yemen who relentlessly massacre their own people and refuse to be held accountable before the international community?
AL: I don’t claim to have anything more than a distant bystander’s knowledge of these issues, so all I can do is put two and two together from observing the diplomatic Merry-Go-Round between the various countries you mention, over the last few years. Clearly, the United States has no interest in these countries becoming democracies, or in the wellbeing of their citizens; the arming of Saudi Arabia demonstrating its blatant show of support for one of the most elitist regimes in the world. Bearing in mind the control exercised by Zionists in the U.S., I think it is almost a certainty that each potential flash-point is looked at, not from America’s point-of-view, but from Israel’s. The change of regime in Egypt, which has a common border and a long-standing peace pact with Israel, is going to be one of the most telling areas to watch, in view of the Egyptian people’s stated concerns about Gaza and the Palestinians. These recent uprisings and demonstrations of discontent must have sent tsunami-sized shock waves through whatever diplomatic damage-control systems the Washington-Tel Aviv axis had in place, so it would be a brave or foolhardy observer who would try to guess what is likely to happen, except to say that whatever does happen it is unlikely to be very pretty to watch on our TV screens or read about on the Internet.
KZ: United States and its European allies have long accused Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program. They have lethally pressured Iran to give up its nuclear program and imposed hard-hitting sanctions against the country which have paralyzed the daily life of people here. At the same time and while almost everybody knows that Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, nobody dares question Israel on its nuclear program. How should one come to terms with this exercise of double standards?
AL: I have tried to address this issue in several of my videos, the most pertinent being:
Iran and the International Bureau of Double Standards
Double Vendetta — The Insanity of the Iran Confrontation
The huge barrier to any common-sense approach to this problem is Zionist-controlled America’s and Britain’s unforgiving attitude, and, perhaps, even suppressed guilt for their imposition of the Shah on a nation struggling to achieve a working form of democracy, in 1953, while their most valuable natural resource was being plundered by foreign oil companies, and I can do no better in answering your question, than to copy some excerpts from the script of this video:
“Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 assisted [the CIA] in the coup to protect the interests of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company—now the newly-infamous British Petroleum. Under a disgracefully unbalanced agreement, the shareholders received 58% of the profits; the British collected 30%, in taxes, while Iran received a measly 12%. So the motive for overthrowing Dr. Mossadegh and Iran’s constitutionally-elected government was pure greed….” ” Perhaps to the surprise only of the tunnel-visioned British and American administrations, the Iranians decided, in 1979, that they’d had enough of the Shah and his vicious National Intelligence and Security Organization — SAVAK….” “There followed the United States Embassy hostage crisis, destined to forever colour U.S./ Iranian relations. The Iranian regime was demanding the return of the recently-deposed Shah, to face trial, but he was allowed into the United States for medical treatment, and it was feared that this could mean that a CIA plot was being hatched to reinstate him. Approximately 90 people were taken hostage and 52 remained in captivity until the end of the crisis, four hundred and forty-four days later….” “This incident still reverberates, within the collective American administrative psyche, as an insult. An insult yet to be expunged. Leaving what can be accurately described as: A vendetta against any Iranian regime which fails to do what it is told to do, by America.”
Thank you for asking me to take part in your interesting series of interviews; it has been a challenge, but also a great pleasure to share my thoughts with you.
Kourosh Ziabari
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist, and regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. More articles by Kourosh Ziabari can be found here.
Kevin Barrett is a renowned American journalist, writer and former university lecturer. He has taught English, French, Arabic, American Civilization, Humanities, African Literature, Folklore, and Islam at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay area, Paris, and Madison, Wisconsin. Being a Muslim convert, Dr. Barrett is a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance (MUJCA) and member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11 (SPINE).
According to Salem News, In July 2004 he rashly rejected a plum post-doc at the University of California because it was funded by the 9/11-disinformation-sponsoring CIA-linked Ford Foundation. “In the summer of 2006, Republican state legislators and Fox newscasters demanded that Barrett be fired from his job teaching an introductory Islam class at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but the University refused to buckle, and Barrett got high marks from his students.”
In fall 2006 Barrett began hosting an Internet talk show weekly on Republic Broadcasting Network titled “Truth Jihad Radio.” Twice a week he had another Internet talk show on the Genesis Communications Network called “The Dynamic Duo.”
Dr. Barrett is internationally renowned for his well-substantiated researches on the 9/11 which he describes as a false-flag operation and inside job that took place with the foreknowledge of the high-ranking personalities inside the U.S. executive structure.
He wrote three articles for the Madison’s Capital Times newspaper in which he tried to reveal the truth behind the 9/11 attacks; however, the newspaper was shortly closed after running his articles.
Kevin Barrett kindly accepted my interview request and joined me in an in-depth conversation, answering my questions regarding the 9/11 attacks and the influence of Israeli lobby over the U.S. policymakers. What follows is the complete text of my interview with Dr. Kevin Barrett, journalist, writer and university lecturer.
Kourosh Ziabari: You have selected the title “Truth Jihad” for your personal website. Although being functionally and semantically a sublime and precious concept in Islamic thought, Jihad has been constantly vilified and denigrated by the extremist neo-cons and Zionists who want to portray a distorted and black image of Islam. They claim that Jihad is tantamount to terrorism and Muslims who follow the principle of Jihad are terrorists as well; however, the reality is that Jihad is a mobilized, logically sustained and concerted confrontation with those who want to plunder your values and treasures and violate your rights. Although you’re a Muslim convert, you are a Western citizen; however, you have selected an Islamic name for your website. Would you please explain about this selection for me and my readers?
Kevin Barrett: Being a Western citizen and a convert does not make me any less of a Muslim. Islam, after all is a deen, a religion and a way of life, not a race or ethnicity.
In any case, jihad is a noble religious concept. As you know, the word means “effort” or “striving.” In one sense, jihad is the complement of “Islam” whose root meaning is “surrender” to God. So jihad means to exert effort in the cause of God.
One very intense form of effort, exertion or striving in the cause of God is armed struggle in defense of the community. Those who wage this form of jihad risk everything in an all-out struggle in service to the community and to God.
Today, Islam as a deen, and the world Muslim community, is under attack. 9/11 was a mass human sacrifice designed to ritually inaugurate a New World Order of global government by satanists and atheists. With Christianity and the other big religions co-opted or neutered, only Islam stands between the perpetrators of 9/11 and their goal of a New World Order. Under these circumstances, is incumbent upon Muslims to wage effective jihad in self-defense and in defense of our religion, and in defense of all of our fellow human beings and our planet, fi sabili llah [in the way of God].
After thinking things through, I have concluded that the most effective way that I can wage jihad is by wielding the weapon of truth — especially the truth about 9/11. The 9/11 perpetrators seem to have made several big mistakes and left unmistakable evidence incriminating themselves. Their single biggest mistake, apparently, was failing to demolish World Trade Center Building 7 on the morning of 9/11; presumably due to some logistical problem, they had to wait to demolish it until late that afternoon. Anyone who spends a few minutes informing themselves about WTC-7 must either choose intellectual dishonesty, or admit that 9/11 was an inside job. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxmdYOorqs0
When Americans and Westerners face the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, their attitude toward Islam, and the New World Order’s war on Islam, changes radically. They realize that they, and Muslims, share a common enemy. They become deserters from the war on Islam, and join the oppressed peoples of the world, and the bearers of the scriptures, in a common struggle for justice.
While I am very serious about waging this “truth jihad,” I realize that Western culture fears and loathes the word “jihad.” So I use a technique common in certain forms of comic literature — for example, the novel Don Quixote — of being simultaneously serious and humorous. I make fun of myself by using hyperbole (exaggeration) in order to play the role of the “crazy radical jihadi for truth.” What is most hilarious, and most deeply serious, is that this “crazy radical jihadi” character I’m playing, like King Lear’s fool, is the only sane character in the play, the only one who understands and tells the whole, painful truth. The humor makes my uncompromisingly honest message palatable for Western audiences. As the saying goes, “If you tell the truth, make it funny or they’ll kill you.”
By accepting this role, which Allah’s qadr seems to have prepared for me, I am straddling the boundary between Islamic and Western culture, between seriousness and humor, between reality and imagination, in a unique way. As an American Muslim literary scholar with an odd Irish sense of humor, and a whole lot of outrage about 9/11 and the 9/11 wars, this is my way of waging jihad fi sabili llah.
KZ: What’s your precise stance on the 9/11 attacks? Do you believe that the U.S. officials had foreknowledge of the incident? Do you think that it was an inside job or a false flag operation? Have you traced any sign of the Israel’s involvement in the attacks?
KB: To know means to believe based on sufficient evidence. So I know, not just believe, that 9/11 was a false-flag attack, that many individuals at or near the top of the US Executive Branch, military, and intelligence apparatus were complicit in the attack, and that the state of Israel and its American agents were heavily involved. This is the inescapable conclusion of anyone who reads David Ray Griffin’s books on the subject, alongside Bollyn’s Solving 9/11, with an open mind.
KZ: Your publication “Bin Laden’s Dead, the Tape is Phony” is considered to be the first pro-9/110-truth op-ed ever written and published in a mainstream media outlet. You have written three such op-eds in “Capital Times” of Madison. Why don’t the mainstream media publish op-eds and articles revealing the truth of 9/11 attack? Why do they shun the publication of materials which are critical of the mainstream interpretation of the attacks?
KB: The American mainstream media are owned by just a few huge corporations, and thoroughly penetrated by the CIA. Google “Operation Mockingbird”. The owners and key decision-makers of these outlets are disproportionately Jewish and pro-Zionist (see Philip Weiss’s “Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What if We Do?”). Deep down inside, a great many of these Zionists suspect the truth about 9/11, and are terrified that if revealed it could trigger an anti-Jewish pogram and/or the destruction of Israel. Additionally, many Americans, Jewish and otherwise, who are not Zionists, feel threatened by the possibility that the truth about 9/11 would reveal them as fools, and perhaps even annihilate their whole world-view. It is difficult for journalists who are trained to believe that America is an exceptional nation, and that America’s leaders always have good intentions, to believe that their own leaders would conspire in the ritual slaughter of thousands of their own people. The few who are cynical enough to realize how evil their leaders are, are also cynical enough to know on which side their bread is buttered. Everyone in the media knows that breathing a word of truth about 9/11 will kill your career. It may not be coincidental that shortly after publishing my three 9/11 truth op-eds, the Capital Times was closed down by the company that owned it, leaving Madison with only one newspaper: The lying, corrupt Wisconsin State Journal.
KZ: In October 2004, the 9/11 hero William Rodriguez filed a lawsuit against the then President George W. Bush and 155 other parties and accused them of complicity in the 9/11 attacks. He claimed that the Twin Towers were devastated by means of “controlled demolitions” which the members of New York fire department were ordered on instructions of the CIA. Is it true that FDNY conspired with Larry Silverstein under the patronage of CIA to deliberately destroy the Twin Towers?
KB: The short answer is “yes.” But it should be noted that the NY Fire Department was not complicit as a whole department. Rather, its leadership is penetrated by the CIA and perhaps Mossad, in the same way that state governments, state and local police departments, the FBI and other agencies are penetrated by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. According to Jesse Ventura, upon his inauguration as Governor of Minnesota, a group of state government officials who were also undercover CIA officers summoned him to a briefing in which it was made clear who was really running the State of Minnesota. The FDNY is undoubtedly infiltrated as well. Larry Silverstein’s hesitation in mentioning the “er…Fire Department Commander” who decided to “pull” WTC-7 suggests that this “FDNY Commander” was actually a high level intelligence operative whose job may have included a cover position in FDNY.
KZ: Physicist Dr. Crockett Grabbe has pointed out in a 2007 article that the NIST account of the 9/11 attacks has been thoroughly erroneous, unrealistic and fallacious. He has pointed out that “the rapidly expanding huge concrete dust clouds from the towers, the very-quick appearance of multiple squibs on all 3 collapsing buildings, and the destruction of hundreds of autos for several blocks around the World Trade Center from these squibs” indicate that the Twin Towers did not simply collapse as a result of the planes crashing into the towers, but due to explosive materials. Jim Hoffman’s article also attests to the same fact and admits the presence of unignited aluminothermic explosives in dust samples from the Twin Towers, whose chemical signature matches previously documented aluminothermic residues found in the same dust samples. What does this fact signify? Who should be held accountable if we admit that the explosive materials brought down the Twin Towers?
KB: Everyone who is lying about it and who should know better — meaning the entire GW Bush Administration, the top levels of the military and intelligence command, all of the NIST people responsible for the scientific fraud represented by NIST’s reports on the WTC, and a great many others (see www.whodidit.org/) should be immediately arrested and aggressively interrogated, with relatively leniency offered in exchange for the whole truth delivered in a timely manner. If our judicial system cannot do this, citizens, including honest police and military, should arm themselves in preparation to make citizens arrests in what will amount to a second American revolution. Likewise, foreign nations ought to demand the truth about 9/11, and to cut off all relations with the USA until war crimes prosecutions reveal the full truth about 9/11 and the 9/11 wars.
KZ: You are a founding member of the Muslim-Jewish-Christina Alliance which is aimed at improving interfaith dialogue, coexistence and understanding in light of the 9/11 events. It’s a very fantastic goal to bring together the followers of divine religion and improve mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence between them; however, there are people who don’t tolerate this religious convergence and want to sow the seeds of incompatibility, dissention and strife between the Muslims, Jews and Christians. They are extremist and radical conservatives who follow the Marx’s viewpoint that religion is the “opium of masses”, hence downgrading interfaith dialogue and undermining it. How is it possible to realize an all-out, all-encompassing interfaith dialogue while the media moguls, hawkish statesmen and warmongering politicians want to bring about conflict and disagreement between the followers of divine religions?
KB: That is a very good question! I am disappointed at the slow progress of 9/11 truth in the Jewish and Christian communities, and by the failure of the global Muslim community to offer its full support to the 9/11 truth movement. The New World Order atheists and satanists have cleverly pitted the revealed religions against each other, while fostering an atmosphere of hopelessness and despondency that prevents many from taking action. Since Muslims by and large are better acquainted with the facts, both about 9/11, and about the brother- and sisterhood between good followers of the revealed religions, I think Muslims need to take the initiative in reaching out to those Christians and Jews who will listen. An excellent resource is the work of Mark Siljander, a conservative Christian who has come to understand the considerable similarities between Islam and Christianity. http://www.marksiljander.com/
KZ: The United States and its European allies invaded two Muslim countries following the 9/11 attacks under the pretext of eradicating terrorism and combating religious fundamentalism in these countries. They branded Iran as a part of the so-called Axis of Evil and threatened Tehran of a military strike several times during the years since 9/11 attacks. Who is, in your view, the real terrorist? Who has spread violence and unrest in the Middle East? Does the United States have enough credibility and reputation among the nations of the region to assert that it looks for their well-being and safety? Who has murdered 1 million Iraqis in 8 years and displaced thousands of others? Who turned Afghanistan into the world’s number one smuggler of narcotics and drugs? Overall, what’s your estimation of the military expedition of the United States to the region and its consequences?
KB: The question answers itself! Seriously, the US completely lacks credibility and moral authority, and has no business threatening anybody, or even offering anybody advice, until it solves its internal problems, starting with the crime of 9/11. The US and its psychopathic settler colony, Israel, should leave the Middle East and prepare to pay trillions in reparations to the people of that ravaged region. So who will fill the vacuum? Iran and Turkey are the two countries in the region that have developed a degree of moral authority and leadership, and their respective forms of Islamic democracy will be the obvious models as the US-puppet Arab dictators fall. I hope these two great Islamic democracies will engage in close cooperation rather than competition, perhaps leading to the restoration of the caliphate in the form of a loose federation that would eventually expand to include all of the Muslim-majority countries.
KZ: What’s your estimation of the plight of Palestinian people under the Israeli occupation? We already know that both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claim that the Land of Israel historically belongs to them and that they are the genuine inhabitants of the Land and should be allowed unrestricted freedom to live in a state which they’ve been endowed with by the Almighty God. Who says the truth? Who is righteous in this conflict? Do the Israelis have the right to occupy the Palestinian lands under the pretext that six million Jews were massacred by the Nazi regime in the Second World War? What’s your take on that?
KB: Clearly, whatever the Germans did to the Jews cannot possibly justify the theft of even one square foot of Palestinian land. Those struggling against Zionism, including the real Jews of Naturei Karta, are the righteous ones in this conflict. I believe that Zionism’s days are numbered, and that the Palestinians will reclaim their land within my lifetime or my children’s, God willing.
KZ: Please tell us a little about the situation of press freedom in the West. We are usually told that the American media are unrestrictedly free to publish materials critical of the government and propagate ideas which the regime is not content with. Is it true that the United States, as proclaimed by former President Bush, is a “beacon of freedom” with equal rights for the minorities, political dissidents and non-conformist thinkers?
KB: Here in the USA, those of us in the genuinely alternative media are remarkably free to express ourselves. I can say nearly anything I want to say on my radio shows and in my blog posts. But the “genuinely alternative media” is kept very small and under-funded. When someone from the genuinely alternative media develops a broad audience, like Alex Jones, he will be pressured to tone it down — especially by the Zionists. It’s no accident that the one line Alex Jones will not cross is the borderline of anti-Zionism. Because he has such a large audience, if Alex Jones were to try to steer his audience toward anti-Zionism, something bad would probably happen to end his career, and perhaps his life.
It does seem strange that the biggest limit on press freedom here concerns speaking out against Zionist interests. Helen Thomas and others have found that out the hard way. In today’s USA, it is much easier to criticize American interests and get away with it than to criticize Zionism. Apparently the Zionists have the USA in a stranglehold, a real death-grip, thanks primarily to the 9/11 coup d’état. And they are doing their best to force the US into a war against Iran. Such a war would serve Israeli interests, but badly damage American interests, and the interests of humanity. So far, the American leadership has refused to take this suicidal step. By helping educate the American people about 9/11 and other Zionist false-flag attacks, and by helping them free themselves from Zionist control and Zionist conditioning, we can help save both the Iranian and American people from a lot of unnecessary suffering.
Kourosh Ziabari
Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist, and regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. More articles by Kourosh Ziabari can be found here.
Mention Richard Falk and you think of an honourable man who cares deeply about injustice, particularly the trampled rights of Palestinians under the evil jackboot.
Mention Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the United Nations, and what comes to mind?
The BBC reported in December 2008: “During her stint in the Clinton White House, she was described as ‘brilliant’ but also ‘authoritarian’ and ‘brash’. According to the New York Times, she acknowledges ‘a certain impatience at times’.”
She is also said to be “unwilling to consider opinions that differ from her own”.
Ambassador Rice has just demanded that Falk, the UN Human Rights Council’s special rapporteur in the Palestinian territories, step down from his UN position. “In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary [an entry in his blog about the media and 9/11] is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the UN.”
Falk’s crime was saying that the US administration’s reluctance to address the awkward gaps and contradictions identified by several scholars in the official explanations of 9/11, only fuels suspicions of a conspiracy. And he suggested that “what may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials”.
Fair comment, you might think. And carefully worded to cause no offence.
But Reuters reported that UN Watch, an advocacy group affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, had written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon similarly demanding that he “strongly condemn Mr. Falk’s offensive remarks — and … immediately remove him from his post”.
The report added that UN Watch had targeted Falk in the past and frequently criticised the Human Rights Council for berating Israel while ignoring rights violations by developing countries.
The American Jewish Committee also called on the UN to immediately dismiss Falk for publicly endorsing “the slander of conspiracy theorists”. Executive Director David Harris said: “We agree wholeheartedly with the US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Susan Rice, who stated that Mr Falk’s comments are ‘despicable and offensive’ and, like her, urge the UN to remove him from his position. Falk has long been a conspiracy-ridden and harmful figure who surely does not serve the best interests of the UN.”
UN Watch claims to have won “global condemnation” of Falk. Its website trumpets: “After UN Watch exposes noxious remarks, UN official Richard Falk [is] roundly condemned by UN Chief, US Gov’t, and media worldwide.”
“Noxious”… that’s Rice’s word. Could they be sharing the same scriptwriter?
UN Watch diligently sets down who said what…
Thursday, Jan. 20: UN Watch takes action and files complaint with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, demanding he condemn Richard Falk, the U.N Human Rights Council’s permanent investigator on “Israel’s violations of the principles of international law,” for his latest remarks suggesting that the US government — and not Al Qaeda terrorists — destroyed the World Trade Center. The protest came as part of UN Watch’s 3-year campaign to expose and combat Falk’s denial and justification of Hamas and Al Qaeda terrorism, and his material support for 9/11 conspiracy theorists. At the daily U.N. press briefing, when Matthew Lee of Inner City Press asks for a response, the Secretary-General’s spokesman says they don’t comment on independent experts.
Friday, Jan. 21: The New York Daily News picks up the story and publishes editorial: “When will the lunacy reach such heights that UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon realizes his so-called Human Rights Council is wrecking what little reputation the world body has left? … Ignore those jetliners crashing into the towers, is Falk’s advice. Who are you going to believe, your own eyes or him and his friends? Ban should ring down the curtain on this grotesque buffoonery. He should force out Falk forthwith…”
Monday, Jan. 24: The United Nations sends letter to UN Watch with unprecedented condemnation of a UN Human Rights Council official: “The Secretary-General condemns [Falk's] remarks. He has repeatedly stated his view that any such suggestion is preposterous — and an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack.” UN Watch immediately releases the letter to the public, and calls for the UN to fire Falk.
Tuesday, Jan. 25: US Ambassador Susan Rice condemns Falk and echoes UN Watch’s call for him to be fired: “Mr. Falk’s comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them in the strongest terms… The United States is deeply committed to the cause of human rights and believes that cause will be better advanced without Mr. Falk and the distasteful sideshow he has chosen to create.” Ambassador Eileen C. Donahoe, the US envoy to the Human Rights Council, also speaks out.
On the same day, in a Geneva address to the member and observer states of the Human Rights Council, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon repeats his condemnation of Falk: “Recently, there was a Special Rapporteur who suggested there was an ‘apparent cover-up’ in the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. I want to tell you, clearly and directly. I condemn this sort of inflammatory rhetoric. It is preposterous – an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic terrorist attack.” Click for Video
SUCCESS: UN Watch’s campaign led to the unprecedented international condemation of Richard Falk, who exploits his UN position to justify and deny Hamas and Al Qaeda terrorism. It sparked dozens of news stories worldwide, as shown in the sample below. All of this succeeded in finally puncturing Falk’s undeserved halo as a “human rights expert.” For the first time ever, the UN itself had condemned Falk, and in the strongest terms. As a result, Falk’s credibility in the international arena is now at zero.
What’s remarkable is how twitchy these people get at the slightest possibility that someone will lift the lid on 9/11, their hysterical protests serving only to deepen already serious suspicions.
Incidentally UN Watch’s founder, chairman and executive director are all Jewish, the latter having worked at Israel’s Supreme Court.
Let’s go back to July 14 last year and remarks made by Ambassador Rice during a reception for Israeli Ambassadors Gabriela Shalev and Daniel Carmon held by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2010/144672.htm
“Today, I mostly want to talk about my very dear friend, Ambassador Gabriela Shalev,” said Rice. “She’s truly one of my favorite people…
“Gabi and I had the opportunity to work closely together on a series of important issues, from dealing with the deeply flawed Goldstone Report to seeing through the passage by the Security Council of the toughest sanctions resolution to date against Iran. She has been a lioness in defense of Israel’s security and its legitimacy — working tirelessly to ensure that Israel has the same rights and enjoys the same responsibilities as any other UN member state.
“We will continue to work together to seek a lasting and comprehensive peace that meets Israel’s security needs and creates a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. We will continue to strengthen Israel’s qualitative military advantage so that Israel can always defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats. And, as the President pledged, we will continue US efforts to combat all international attempts to challenge the legitimacy of Israel — including and especially at the United Nations.”
Having revealed herself as another handmaiden to the Zionist cause, Rice’s attack on Falk for breaking the ridiculous taboo and questioning the US administration’s refusal to hold a proper independent inquiry into 9/11 only raises questions about her own suitability for an important position at the UN.
Meanwhile, there are millions of us out here who are right behind Richard Falk because he stands for justice. We are not amused by growing indications that the official story of 9/11 doesn’t add up. Nor are we too pleased by the realisation that it was used to prod our own governments into sacrificing troops and treasure to a couple of unlawful, unwinnable wars that have caused mega-deaths and endless suffering to innocent civilians, trashed our good name abroad and made us vulnerable to reprisals at home… just to advance the crazed ambitions of the US-Israeli axis.
In short, if there’s the slightest doubt we want to know the truth.
Stuart Littlewood
Stuart Littlewood is an industrial marketing specialist turned writer-photographer. In 2005 he was invited to write and shoot pictures for a book about the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. ‘Radio Free Palestine’ was published in 2007. For details please see www.radiofreepalestine.co.uk.
The Author is a regular contributor to RamallahOnline.com. Find more Articles by Stuart Littlewood on RamallahOnline.
