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Friday, September 30, 2011

War On Terror A Hoax

Is The War On Terror A Hoax?

by Paul Craig Roberts September 30, 2011

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and
made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in
the name of the "war on terror." Washington's attacks on the
countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian
populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes
under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing
today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in
out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000
billion dollars—one third of the accumulated public debt—resulting in
a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net and the value
of the US dollar and its reserve currency role while enriching beyond
all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington's "war on terror" has been paid
by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that
Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights.
The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity's greatest
achievement—the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of
war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find.
Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government's improbable
conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on
the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative
program at the University of California discovered that the domestic
"terror plots" hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents.

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during
the protests against the Vietnam War, when protesters were suspected
of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots
for this huge workforce to uncover, the FBI justifies its budget,
terror alerts, and invasive searches of American citizens by thinking
up "terror plots" and finding some deranged individuals to ensnare.
For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City
subway plot, and the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were
all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the
FBI, but as none of the three worked, they obviously were not the work
of such a professional terror organization as al-Qaeda is purported to
be. The Times Square car bomb didn't blow up, and apparently could
not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is
accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model
airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured
Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI's undercover
agents were in control of the plot.

Ferdaus' FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol
with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided "material
support to a terrorist organization" and plotted to destroy federal
buildings—the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years
for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not
al-Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services,
all intelligence services of America's NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD,
the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and
US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a
highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such
nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who
has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot's duty, I must
hope that the question has already popped into readers' minds why we
are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of
blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was
incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an
airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd
"terror plots" that the US government manufactures, it causes me to
realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for
advancing an undeclared agenda. If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no
doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US
Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or
coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they
suffer no remorse from "their" government's murder and dislocation of
millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion
"towel-heads" have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be
exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the
terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times
the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and
their prospects in six countries, there are no real terrorist events
in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were
any terrorists. Would an al-Qaeda terrorist from the organization that
allegedly pulled off 9/11—the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by
a Western power, much less "the world's only superpower"—still in the
face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow
one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America
were really infected with a "terrorist threat," a terrorist would
merely get in the massive lines awaiting to clear airport "security"
and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be
achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely
clear that "airport security" meant no one was safe.

It would be child's play for terrorists to blow up electric
sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It
would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be
easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested
streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation
arteries for days.

Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you
really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to
terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up
America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many
Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated
the "war on terror," have no protection whatsoever and that the Secret
Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really
faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have
brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney
could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald
Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton,
William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free
of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water
plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores
hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The
"shoe bomb" and "underwear bomb" were colored fireworks powders
incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up
in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports
confirm that the "underwear bomber" was walked onto the airliner by an
official, despite the fact that the "underwear bomber" had no
passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or
anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an
international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and
to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael
Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped "terrorist plots" is that every American
citizen, even those with high government positions and security
clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking
off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or
being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that "airport
security" cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American
patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of
liquids and creams beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo,
food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from
TSA, which seldom works. One of America's finest moments is the case,
documented on YouTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires
special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite
the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration,
her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the
wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are
justified by the mindless right-wing as "protecting us against
terrorism," a "threat" that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the
House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security
clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons
programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had
information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As
Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning
with the CIA's briefing of the President as well as with endless
security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a
super-secret committee to investigate the CIA's assessment of Soviet
capability. Afterwards, I was a consult to the Pentagon. I had every
kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government
confidence in me, including confirmation by the US Senate in a
presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a
terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations,
little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I
experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of
America's achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In
their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly
concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in
general are incapable of recognizing America's transformation into a
warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any
developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world's
only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim
peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons,
no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these "threat populations," especially
among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in
America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated "Green
Revolution" have forgotten Washington's overthrow of their elected
government in the 1950s. Despite America's decade-long abusive
military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to
America for their salvation.

Their "leaders" are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the "terrorist threat" and al-Qaeda deflated with President
Obama's alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was
left unprotected and unarmed by his "world-wide terrorist
organization," Washington has come up with a new bogeyman—the
Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs
of Staff chairman Mike Mullen "exaggerated" the case against the
Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of
Pakistan, that the Haqqanis were an operating arm of the Pakistan
government's secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from
his "exaggeration," a euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby
said that Mullen's "accusations were designed to influence the
Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network." In other words, the
Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans
the trouble.

If you don't know what the Haqqani Network is, don't be surprised.
You never heard of al-Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates
whatever new bogeymen and incidents are necessary to further the
neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the
armaments industry.

For ten years, the "superpower" American population has sat there,
being terrified by the government's lies. While Americans sit in fear
of non-existent "terrorists" sucking their thumbs, millions of people
in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any
evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the
wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of
locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

THE CRIMES OF THE PRESS and the POWERS

This is WORTH ReADING....

September 28, 2011

Inciting Violence - Irony And The English Riots

Ironies abound in the media reaction to the English riots that erupted between August 6-10.

It was widely reported that two young men acting independently - Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22 – had been sentenced to four years in prison for trying to incite riots via Facebook in the Manchester area. This 'despite both being of previous good character', and despite the fact that their Facebook entries - viewed by a few hundred people – failed to generate a single rioter. Farcically, the only people waiting for Blackshaw at his gathering point were the police.

The four-year jail sentences were harsh indeed, as the Guardian noted:

'If the two Cheshire men had left home and actually taken part in a riot, it is likely they would have been charged with violent disorder. The average sentence passed on the 372 people convicted of violent disorder in 2010 was just over 18 months. The 1,434 people convicted of public order offences last year got, on average, two months inside.

'Normally, to qualify for a four-year sentence, a convict would have to kidnap somebody (average sentence 47 months in 2010), kill someone while drink driving (45 months), or carry out a sexual assault (48 months).'

Clearly, judges felt that even failed attempts to incite disruption via social media were worse than actual participation in the riots.

Writing in the Daily Mail, columnist Melanie Phillips located the cause of the riots in 'fatherless boys who are consumed by an existential rage and desperate emotional need, and who take out the damage done to them by lashing out from infancy at everyone around them'.

This vicious behaviour is fostered by 'a world without any boundaries or rules. A world of emotional and physical chaos. A world where a child responds to the slightest setback or disagreement by resorting to violence.'

And who can doubt that compassion and restraint in the face of disagreement offer the best hopes for a peaceful world? The 11th century Buddhist poet Ksemendra recalled the wise counsel offered to one enraged king:

'Lord, do not talk like this. If you return anger for anger, anger increases. If you give hate in return for hatred, you will never be rid of your enemies. Would you put out a fire by covering it with wood? It will always rekindle... If you meditate on tolerance to overcome anger, all will become your friends.' (Leaves of the Heaven Tree, Dharma Publishing, 1997, p.333)

Earlier this month, Phillips commented on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks:

'The real problem with the US and UK reaction to 9/11 was that they did not follow through… we should have gone on to deal with Iran, Syria, Pakistan and Saudi as well.'

Did she mean 'deal with' their concerns and grievances in a just and even-handed way? Should the US and UK have recognised their own wrongdoing, their own responsibility for generating hatred? In clarification, Phillips quoted herself from September 2002:

'The US hopes that sorting Saddam will deliver to these other states the simple message: unless you desist from terror, you're next.'

A world 'without any boundaries or rules', in other words, where unilaterally 'resorting to violence' and 'lashing out' is the natural response.

Journalists like Phillips, who use national media platforms like the Daily Mail (circulation 2 million) to agitate for war at a time when the decision lies in the balance, are typically garlanded with awards, not sent to the slammer.  After two years spent cold-selling Blair's war on Iraq, David Aaronovitch, then of the Guardian, won the What the Papers Say Columnist of The Year Award for 2003. In the same year, following a similar pro-war performance, the Independent's Johann Hari was made Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards (to his credit, Hari has since recanted his support for the Iraq war). Phillips was awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1996.

Politicians do even better, of course. Last month, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Tony Blair, now the Middle East Quartet's Special Envoy, was to receive an award 'to express Israel's appreciation for his efforts toward Middle East peace'. A decision worthy of a different kind of Orwell Prize. Meanwhile, Channel 4 reports:

'Since resigning in June 2007 Tony Blair has financially enriched himself more than any ex-Prime Minister ever. Reporter Peter Oborne reveals some of the sources of his new-found wealth, much of which comes from the Middle East.' 


Michael White And 'The Big Bloke On The Next Floor'

In the immediate aftermath of the riots, Michael White, assistant editor of the Guardian, savoured the prospect of the hardship awaiting jailed rioters, including the Facebook Two mentioned above. Why?

'People write all sorts of really ugly and stupid things on Facebook, Twitter, email and other anti-social media platforms (including this one), and it's time they realised that they matter.'

True enough, although the same can be said of journalists, as we have seen, including White himself. At a crucial time in January 2003, he co-authored a Guardian piece that hailed Blair as he 'gave MPs a bravura performance in defence of his [Iraq] policy'. (Michael White and Julian Borger, 'Blair wins time over party divisions on Iraq with bravura performance to MPs,' The Guardian, January 16, 2003)

The reporters failed to mention that, 'bravura' or not, Blair's speech was spectacularly dishonest. They added instead: 'it was noticeable that when Mr Blair delivered a powerful peroration in the Commons the cheers of Labour loyalists greatly exceeded the heckling he had earlier got from his own side'.

Certainly, the Facebook Two sought to inspire social disorder, but this kind of stenography to power habitually performed by mainstream journalists has facilitated the destruction of literally hundreds of thousands of human lives. Is this mere hyperbole? Do journalists really have that kind of power? It is clear to us that they are able to shape public opinion and so make war possible. George Monbiot wrote in 2004 that 'the falsehoods reproduced by the media before the invasion of Iraq were massive and consequential: it is hard to see how Britain could have gone to war if the press had done its job'. (Monbiot, 'Our lies led us into war,' The Guardian, July 20, 2004)

White's outrage was directed at small fry reaching a tiny audience: 'every time I see a nasty piece on new pix, CCTV footage or film of brutal incidents on the street… I hear the R-word [retribution] tip-toeing across my brain.

'I want to see riot louts punished and, if punishment also helps them turn around their otherwise futile lives, then good.'

He recognised that the punishment was sometimes harsh:

'... four years in prison for trying to organise a riot in Northwich or Warrington (no one turned up) is a bit excessive... Yet I'm not sorry at the thought that Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan... and Jordan Blackshaw woke up in the slammer on Thursday remembering that, no, it's not all a bad dream. It could be like this for the next 18 months, lads. And what if that big bloke on the next floor takes a shine to you?'

This gleeful hand-rubbing at the threat of male rape as welcome punishment surely also qualifies as 'ugly and stupid'.

A reader, Murau, commented beneath the article:

'Men in prison. Only subject area where jokes about rape are considered acceptable.'

Another reader, Forthestate responded:

'You're quite right. It's also disturbing that in these not infrequent, rather gloating references, there is an almost tacit assumption that rape is an acceptable part of the punishment. If it's so widespread that it regularly produces this unseemly speculation perhaps there should be some proper journalistic attention devoted to it.'

On September 14, Channel 4 News reported:

'Those jailed following the riots are being victimised by existing inmates because of the decline in comfort, according to the relative of a teenager detained in Portland prison for an offence unrelated to the riots.'

Channel 4's source added:

'"People are having their association time cut down to an hour a day - or possibly less. I've heard that some of the rioters have been attacked out of sight of the wardens - in the showers."'

We asked White to comment on these reports. He responded:

'Sorry to hear that, but they did think they'd get away with looting unpunished. There's a lesson in that.'

The US human rights organisation Justdetention.org works to challenge the idea that rape, including male rape, in prisons is somehow normal and even acceptable. Their website comments:

'Cases of sexual abuse in detention are not rare, isolated incidents, but the result of a systemic failure to protect the safety of inmates. Victims of prisoner rape are left beaten and bloodied, contract HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, and suffer severe psychological harm. Once released – and the vast majority of prisoners do eventually get out – they return to their communities with all of their physical and emotional scars.'

The Italian activist and film-maker Gabriele Zamparini invited Justdetention.org to respond to White's comments. They replied:

'As you point out it is a very disturbing example of the tendency to joke publicly about and diminish the problem of prisoner rape.' (Forwarded to Media Lens, August 22, 2011)

The corporate media evaluate the actions of the powerful and the powerless by different and conflicting moral standards. The powerful are judged on the basis of who they are rather than of what they do. No matter how plainly individual leaders and parties have lied, no matter how cynical their motives, no matter how many deaths they have caused, they continue to be treated as fundamentally respectable and trustworthy.

This 'respectability' is a function of media power as it interacts with state power. It is a form of propaganda support that is structural, all but unconditional, in essence guaranteed.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Obama at the United Nations: The Arrogant Voice of Imperialism

President Obama delivered an empty and arrogant sermon to the United Nations Wednesday, laced with platitudes about "peace" that were designed to mask Washington's predatory policies.

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The American president received a tepid response from the assembled heads of state, foreign ministers and UN delegates. Not a single line in his speech evoked applause. The novelty of two years ago, when Obama made his first appearance before the body posing as the champion of multilateral-ism in contrast to Bush, has long since worn off. As the world quickly learned, changing the occupant of the White House did little to shift the direction of American foreign policy or curb the spread of American militarism.



The immediate purpose of Obama's 47-minute address was to supplement a behind-the-scenes campaign of bullying and intimidation aimed at forcing the Palestinian Authority to drop its plan to seek a UN Security Council vote on recognition of Palestine as a sovereign member state.



Washington has vowed to veto any bid for Palestinian statehood if it comes to the Security Council, a move that would only underscore the real character of US imperialist policy in the Middle East and the hypocrisy of its claims to identify with the revolutionary upheavals of the Arab masses.



The speech and Obama's defense of the veto threat served to accomplish the same purpose, further diminishing the US president's popularity in the Arab world. According to a recent poll, his favorable rating in the region has fallen from roughly 50 percent when he took office to barely 10 percent, even lower than George W. Bush in his second term.


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Obama rushed from the podium at the General Assembly hall to a meeting and joint appearance with Benyamin Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister praised Obama's remarks and made it clear that the two are working on a joint strategy to muscle Palestine Authority head Mahmoud Abbas into dropping the statehood bid. It was reported Thursday that there were efforts to get the Palestinian delegation to make an entirely symbolic plea for recognition, while agreeing to postpone any vote until after the resumption of US-brokered negotiations with Israel.



There have been two decades of such talks, which have achieved nothing, while Israel has relentlessly expanded Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Since the onset of negotiations in 1991, the number of settlers has more than doubled, while the West Bank has been internally divided by settlements, security roads and checkpoints as well as the apartheid security wall separating it from Israel.



Obama's remarks in the UN speech represented an even further accommodation to Israel compared to his proposal in May for a resumption of talks, which he then said should be based upon pre-1967 borders with "mutually agreed swaps." That statement, which implicitly supported Israel's demand to retain existing settlements, merely reiterated the official policy of the US government since the Clinton administration. Nonetheless, the mere reference to borders provoked a storm of criticism from Netanyahu, the Israeli right, and the Republican Party.



In his speech to the UN, Obama mentioned neither the 1967 borders nor any proposal to halt the expansion of settlements on the West Bank. Instead, he presented the basis for proposed negotiations as: "Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state." As the rest of the US president's remarks made clear, both those conditions are to be dictated by Israel.

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While behind the scenes US officials are reportedly threatening the Palestinian Authority with cutting off all US aid if it goes ahead with the request for recognition, in his speech Obama described a turn to the UN as a "short cut" that would accomplish nothing.



Dismissing the role of the institution that he had rhetorically praised at the outset of his remarks, Obama said, "Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN—if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now." Indeed, scores of UN resolutions on the plight of the Palestinians have been repudiated and ignored by both Israel and Washington. The US has used its veto in the Security Council to kill scores more.



Evidently responding to the right-wing criticism of Republican presidential hopefuls, who have denounced him for "throwing Israel under the bus" with his 1967 borders remark last May, Obama went out of his way to dismiss the historical grievances of the Palestinian people, while identifying unconditionally with Israel.



Of the Palestinians, he said only that they deserved a "sovereign state of their own" and they "have seen that vision delayed for too long."



This was followed by a declaration that "America's commitment to Israel's security is unshakable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring." He continued by describing Israel as a country "surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it," whose "citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses." He referred to Israel as a "small country" in a world "where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map." And he wound up by invoking the Holocaust.



"These facts cannot be denied," he said. One would never guess from this selection of "facts" that some 4 million Palestinians live under the oppression and constant violence of Israeli occupation, and that another 5 million are refugees, driven from their homeland.



Nor for that matter, would one have any inkling of the constant wars that "little Israel," with its elastic borders, has waged against its neighbors. Among the more recent are the 2006 war against Lebanon, which left 1,200 civilians dead and much of the country's infrastructure in ruins, and the 2008 "Operation Cast Lead," against Gaza, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,500 Palestinians, compared to 13 Israelis.



With a tone of exasperation, Obama acknowledged that "for many in this hall," the Palestinian question was the issue that "stands as a test" for Washington's claims to champion human rights and democracy.



In reality, however, the rest of the speech proved just as revealing in terms of the hypocrisy and imperialist interests that pervade Washington's policies all over the world.



The pretense laid out at the beginning of Obama's speech was that the US government is engaged in "the pursuit of peace in an imperfect world." The address included a trite refrain, repeated three times: "peace is hard."



Fleshing out this theme, Obama pointed to the partial troop withdrawals from the eight-and-a-half-year-old war and occupation in Iraq and the decade-old war in Afghanistan. He bragged that by the end of the year, only 90,000 US troops will be deployed in these wars.



Washington's aim, he said, was to forge an "equal partnership" with Iraq "strengthened by our support for Iraq—for its government and its security forces," and an "enduring partnership" with "the people of Afghanistan." He claimed that these changes proved that "the tide of war is receding."



The rhetoric about "partnership", however, refers to the plans being pursued by the White House and the Pentagon to keep US troops, CIA operatives and American bases in both countries, long past the dates set for US withdrawal. US imperialism is determined to continue pursuing the goals that underlay the wars from the outset: hegemonic control over the strategic energy reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Persian Gulf.



Obama then preceded to extol the "Arab Spring," declaring: "One year ago, the hopes of the people of Tunisia were suppressed…One year ago, Egypt had known one president for nearly thirty years."



Needless to say, the American president made no reference as to whose support had kept the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak in power for so long, nor to the current attempts by Washington to salvage the regimes they headed and suppress the mass popular movements that forced their ouster.



From there, he proceeded to praise the NATO war in Libya, declaring that, by authorizing this imperialist intervention, "the United Nations lived up to its charter."



In reality, the war represented a fundamental violation of the tenets of this charter, which proclaimed the "sovereign equality" of all member states, demanded that all disputes be settled peacefully and insisted that member states "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state."



In the case of Libya, the US and its NATO allies, proclaiming the threat of an imminent massacre in Benghazi, procured a resolution authorizing "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. It utilized this resolution as a cover for a war of regime change. The NATO powers carried out thousands of air strikes and sent in special forces troops to organize, train and arm a "rebel" force for a war that has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Libyans. The aim of this war, like those in Afghanistan and Iraq before it, is domination of strategic energy reserves—as well as inserting Western military power in the midst of a region facing revolutionary turmoil.



"This is how the international community is supposed to work," Obama declared in relation to the Libyan operation, calling to mind Lenin's description of the League of Nations, the UN's predecessor, as a "thieves' kitchen."



Turning to uncompleted business and potential imperialist interventions yet to come, Obama condemned Iran for failing "to recognize the rights of its own people" and calling for the UN impose new sanctions against Syria. "Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?" he demanded.



Given the bloody events in Yemen, where over 100 civilians have been massacred over the past three days, Obama could not completely ignore the upheavals against US-backed regimes in the region. In Yemen, however, there was no invocation to stand against oppressors, merely a call to "seek a path that allows for a peaceful transition."



Even more tepid was his reference to Bahrain, the headquarters of the US 5th Fleet. "America is a close friend of Bahrain," he declared. Here, where thousands have been killed, tortured, imprisoned, beaten and fired from their jobs for demanding democratic rights, he proposed merely a "meaningful dialogue," while justifying the repression by suggesting that Bahrainis were confronting "sectarian forces that would tear them apart."



The rest of the speech consisted of a hollow and unconvincing recitation of the usual platitudes. These included the elimination of nuclear weapons—with Washington, sitting on the greatest nuclear arsenal in the world and the only state ever to use such weapons lecturing North Korea and Iran. He inveighed against poverty and disease and insisted on the need "not to put off action that a changing climate demands." Thrown in were calls for the rights of women as well as gays and lesbians.



On the decisive issue facing millions of working people in the US and across the globe, Obama acknowledged that economic "recovery is fragile", that "too many people are out of work" and that "too many are struggling to get by." Referring to the multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the banks, he boasted, "We acted together to avert a depression in 2009" and insisted that "We must take urgent and coordinated action once more."



But as with all the other issues raised in the speech, the American president had no "coordinated action," no program, and no policy to propose. In the final analysis, Obama's empty rhetoric is a direct expression of the profound crisis gripping American capitalism and its ruling financial elite as it confronts economic collapse and the threat of revolutionary upheaval.

full text speech transcript Iran President Ahmadinejad September 22, 2011 UN General Assembly

JTA Jewish news agency (Jewish Telegraphic Agency):

The U.S. delegation walked out during the U.N. address of Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling its anti-Semitism "abhorrent."
Ahmadinejad accused a shadowy Western conspiracy of being behind the
slave trade, both world wars, economic disparity and godlessness.

Washington Post:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered a mass exodus from the
U.N. General Assembly's chamber Thursday with a combative speech that
blasted the United States and other Western powers and questioned
whether Islamist terrorists were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Iranian leader, known for his bomb-throwing rhetoric, used his
allotted 15 minutes before the world body to blame the West for a list
of ills throughout history, from slavery to the two world wars and the
global economic crisis.

He also criticized the Obama administration for killing Osama bin
Laden, suggesting that the al-Qaeda leader could have been the star
witness at a trial that would reveal the true culprits behind the
attacks on New York and Washington.

His words sent diplomats streaming for the exits, starting with the
U.S. delegation and followed by dozens of Europeans and others. More
than a third of the General Assembly seats were empty by the time
Ahmadinejad finished speaking, to polite applause.

Voice of America:

Iran's President Hammers West at UN Meeting

... slammed the United States, Israel, and the West, accusing them of
provoking wars, promoting global discord and spreading
"totalitarianism."

Intl. Business Times:

'U.S. Too Incompetent to Run World'

... speech on Thursday angered a number of world leaders, especially
the delegates from the United States, who walked out of the General
Assembly while Ahmadinejad soliloquized.

... alleged that the United States was and still is an imperialist,
Zionist oppressor responsible for many of the world's wars.

He also attacked NATO as a whole, alleging that the organization is a
war-mongering hegemony that is responsible for causing more misery
than it has abated. This, in a way, was actually his most salient
point. He cited the fact that NATO and the United States are spending
significantly more money on each of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and
Libya than they are on humanitarian disasters such as the famine in
Somalia.

What Ahmadinejad didn't address, however, was Iran's record on the
same humanitarian issues that he used to attack the United States.
Iran actually is a significant contributor to Somalia, and has so far
provided more than $25 million in aid and set up a camp in Mogadishu.

The United States has also pledge a significant amount to Somalia, but
under the provision that the aid not be sent to any region controlled
by rebel group al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab is an al-Qaeda backed rebel
group that controls most of the six areas in Somalia where famine has
been officially declared.

AFP:

Prime Minister David Cameron launched a personal attack on Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad on Thursday minutes after the Iranian leader's anti-West
speech caused a mass walkout.

Jerusalem Post:

In typically-florid prose, Ahmadinejad's 20-minute speech bemoaned the
world's inequities of wealth and power.

.. he posed a series of rhetorical questions which implicitly posited
that the United States is at the root of the world's ills due to its
foreign policy decisions.

The (Israeli) Foreign Ministry issued a statement following the speech
saying Ahmadinejad once again "brought a message of hostility towards
the family of nations as well as threats to global peace and
security."

The statement said Iran's disdain for the international community is clear ...

BBC:

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force
One that he "found it rich" that Mr Ahmadinejad would criticise US
policy,


===== FULL TEXT ======

Mr. President,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am grateful to the Almighty Allah who granted me, once more, the
opportunity to appear before this world assembly. I have the pleasure
to express my sincere thanks to H.E. Joseph Deiss, president of the
sixty-fifth session for his tremendous efforts during his tenure. I
also would like to congratulate H.E Nassir Abdulaziz AI-Nasser on his
election as the president of sixty-sixth session of the General
Assembly and wish him all success.

Let me seize the moment to pay tribute to all those who lost their
lives in the past year, particularly to the victims of the tragic
famine in Somalia and the devastating flood in Pakistan and especially
the earthquake and the ensuing explosions in the nuclear power plant
in Japan. I urge everyone to intensify their assistance and aid to the
affected populations in these countries.

Over the past years, I spoke about different global issues, and the
need to introduce fundamental changes in the current international
order.

Today, considering the international developments, I will try to
analyze the present situation from a different angle. As you all know
the dominance and superiority of human beings over other creatures,
lie in the very nature and the truth of humankind which is a divine
gift and a manifestation of the divine spirit including: faith in God,
who is the ever-lasting creator and planner of the entire universe.

Showing compassion to others, generosity, justice-seeking, and having
integrity both in words and in deeds.

The quest for dignity to reach the pinnacles of perfection, the
aspiration to elevate one's material and spiritual status, and the
longing to realize liberty; Defying oppression, corruption, and
discrimination in trying to support the oppressed; Seeking happiness,
and lasting prosperity and security for all.

These are some of the manifestations of common divine and human
attributes which can clearly be seen in the historical aspirations of
human beings as reflected in the heritage of our search for art and
literary works both in prose and poetry, and in the socio-cultural and
political movements of human beings in the course of history.

All divine prophets and social reformers invited human beings to tread
on this righteous path. God has given dignity to humankind to elevate
his status to assume his successor role on Earth.

It is vividly clear that despite all historical achievements,
including creation of the United-Nations, which was a product of
untiring struggles and efforts of free-minded and justice-seeking
individuals as well as the international cooperation, human societies
are yet far from fulfilling their noble desires and aspirations.

Most nations of the world are unhappy with the current international
circumstances. And despite the general longing and aspiration to
promote peace, progress, and fraternity, wars, mass-murder, widespread
poverty, and socioeconomic and political crises continue to infringe
upon the rights and sovereignty of nations, leaving behind irreparable
damage worldwide.

Approximately, three billion people of the world live on less than 2.5
dollars a day, and over a billion people live without having even one
sufficient meal on a daily basis. Forty-percent of the poorest world
populations only share five percent of the global income, while twenty
percent of the richest people share seventy-five percent of the total
global income.

More than twenty thousand innocent and destitute children die every
day in the world because of poverty. In the United States, eighty
percent of financial resources are controlled by ten percent of its
population, while only twenty percent of these resources belong to the
ninety percent of the population.

What are the causes and reasons behind these inequalities? How can
bone remedy such injustice?

The rulers of the global management circles divide the social life
from ethics and spirituality while claiming the situation is the
outcome of the pursuit of the path of divine prophets or the
vulnerability of nations or the ill performance of a few groups or
individuals. They claim that only their views and approaches can save
the human society.

Wouldn't you think that the root cause of the problems must be sought
in the prevailing international order, or the way the world is
governed? I would like to draw your kind attention to the following
questions:

Who abducted forcefully tens of millions of people from their homes in
Africa and other regions of the world during the dark period of
slavery, making them a victim of their materialistic greed?

Who imposed colonialism for over four centuries upon this world?

Who occupied lands and massively plundered resources of other nations,
destroyed talents, and alienated languages, cultures and identities of
nations?

Who triggered the first and second world wars, that left seventy
millions killed and hundreds of millions injured or homeless. Who
created the wars in Korean peninsula and in Vietnam?

Who imposed, through deceits and hypocrisy, the Zionism and over sixty
years of war, homelessness, terror and mass murder on the Palestinian
people and on countries of the region?

Who imposed and supported for decades military dictatorship and
totalitarian regimes on Asian, African, and Latin American nations?

Who used nuclear bomb against defenseless people, and stockpiled
thousands of warheads in their arsenals?

Whose economies rely on waging wars and selling arms?

Who provoked and encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade and impose an
eight-year war on Iran, and who assisted and equipped him to deploy
chemical weapons against our cities and our people?

Who used the mysterious September 11 incident as a pretext to attack
Afghanistan and Iraq , killing, injuring, and displacing millions in
two countries with the ultimate goal of bringing into its domination
the Middle East and its oil resources?

Who nullified the Breton Woods system by printing trillions of dollars
without the backing of gold reserves or equivalent currency? A move
that triggered inflation worldwide and was intended to prey on the
economic gains of other nations?

Which country's military spending exceeds annually a thousand billion
dollars, more than the military budgets of all countries of the world
combined?

Which governments are the most indebted ones in the world?

Who dominates the policy-making establishments of the world economy?

Who are responsible for the world economic recession, and are imposing
the consequences on America, Europe and the world in general?

Which governments are always ready to drop thousands of bombs on other
countries, but ponder and hesitate to provide aid to famine-stricken
people in Somalia or in other places?

Who are the ones dominating the Security Council which is ostensibly
responsible for safeguarding the international security?

There exist tens of other similar questions. Of course, the answers are clear.

The majority of nations and governments of the world have had no role
in the creation of the current global crises, and as a matter of fact,
they were themselves the victims of such policies.

It is as lucid as daylight that the same slave masters and colonial
powers that once instigated the two world wars have caused widespread
misery and disorder with far-reaching effects across the globe since
then.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run
or govern the world. Is it acceptable that they call themselves the
sole defender of freedom, democracy, and human rights, while they
militarily attack and occupy other countries?

Can the flower of democracy blossom from NATO's missiles, bombs and guns?

Ladies and Gentlemen;

If some European countries still use the Holocaust, after six decades,
as the excuse to pay fine or ransom to the Zionists, should it not be
an obligation upon the slave masters or colonial powers to pay
reparations to the affected nations?

If the damage and losses of the period of slavery and colonialism were
indeed compensated, what would happen to the manipulators and
behind-the-scene political powers in the United States and in Europe?
Would there remain any gaps between the North and the South?

If only half of military expenditures of the United States and its
allies in NATO was shifted to help solve the economic problems in
their own countries, would they be witnessing any symptom of the
economic crisis?

What would happen, if the same amount was allocated to poor nations?

What is the justification for the presence of hundreds of US military
and intelligence bases in different parts of the world, including 268
bases in Germany, 124 in Japan, 87 in South Korea, 83 in Italy, 45 in
the United Kingdom, and 21 in Portugal? Does this mean anything other
than military occupation?

Don't the bombs deployed in the said bases undermine the security of
other nations?

The main question is the quest for the root cause of such attitudes.
The prime reason should be sought in the beliefs and tendencies of the
establishment. An assembly of people in contradiction with the inner
human instincts and disposition who also have no faith in God and in
the path of the divine prophets, replace their lust for power and
materialistic ends with heavenly values.

To them, only power and wealth prevail, and every attempt must bring
into focus these sinister goals.

Oppressed nations have no hope to restore or protect their legitimate
rights against these powers. These powers seek their progress,
prosperity and dignity through imposing poverty, humiliation and
annihilation to others.

They consider themselves superior to others, enjoying special
privileges and concessions. They have no respect for others and easily
violate the rights of all nations and governments.

They proclaim themselves as the indisputable custodians of all
governments and nations through intimidation, recourse to threat and
force, and abuse the international mechanisms. They simply break all
the internationally recognized regulations.

They insist on imposing their lifestyle and beliefs on others. They
officially support racism. They weaken countries through military
intervention, and destroy their infrastructures, in order to plunder
their resources by making them all the more dependent.

They sow the seeds of hate and hostility among nations and people of
different pursuits, in order to prevent them from fulfilling their
goals of development and progress.

All cultures, identities, lives, values and wealth of nations, women,
youth, families as well as the wealth of nations are sacrificed to
their imperialistic tendencies and their inclination to enslave and
captivate others.

Hypocrisy and deceit are allowed in order to secure their interests
and imperialistic goals. Drug- trafficking and killing of innocent
human beings are also allowed in pursuit of such diabolic goals.
Despite NATO's presence in the occupied Afghanistan, there has been a
dramatic increase in the production of illicit drugs there.

They tolerate no question or criticism, and instead of presenting a
reason for their violations, they always put themselves in the
position of a claimant. By using their imperialistic media network
which is under the influence of colonialism they threaten anyone who
questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and
military action.

Last year, when the need to form a fact-finding team to undertake a
thorough investigation concerning the hidden elements involved in
September 11 incident was brought up; an idea also endorsed by all
independent governments and nations as well as by the majority in the
United States, my country and myself came under pressure and threat by
the government of the United States.

Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main
perpetrator and threw his body into the sea.

Would it not have been reasonable to bring to justice and openly bring
to trial the main perpetrator of the incident in order to identify the
elements behind the safe space provided for the invading aircraft to
attack the twin world trade towers?

Why should it not have been allowed to bring him to trial to help
recognize those who launched terrorist groups and brought wars and
other miseries into the region?

Is there any classified information that must be kept secret?

They view Zionism as a sacred notion and ideology. Any question
concerning its very foundation and history is condemned by them as an
unforgivable sin.

However they endorse and allow sacrileges and insult against beliefs
of other divine religions.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Real freedom, justice" dignity, well being, and lasting security are
the rights of all nations. These values can neither be achieved by
reliance on the current inefficient system of world governance, nor
through the invasion of the world by arrogant powers and the gun
barrels of NATO forces.

These values could only be realized through independence and
recognition of others' rights and through harmony and cooperation.
Is there any way to address the problems and challenges besetting the
world by using the prevailing international mechanisms and tools to
help humanity achieve the long-standing aspiration of peace, security
and equality?

All those who tried to introduce reforms whilst preserving the
existing norms and tendencies have failed. The valuable efforts made
by the Non-Aligned movement and Group 77 and GrouplS as well as by
some prominent individuals have failed to bring fundamental changes.
Governance and management of the world require fundamental reforms.

What should be done now?

Dear Colleagnes and Friends;

Efforts must be made with a firm resolve and through collective
cooperation to map out a new plan, on the basis of principles and the
very foundation of universal human values such as Monotheism, justice,
freedom, love and the quest for happiness.

The idea of creation of the United Nations remains a great and
historical achievement of mankind. Its importance must be appreciated
and its capacities must be used to the extent possible for our noble
goals.

We should not allow this organization which is the reflection of the
collective will and shared aspiration of the community of nations, to
deviate from its main course and play into the hands of the world
powers.

Conducive ground must be prepared to ensure collective participation
and involvement of nations in an effort to promote lasting peace and
security.

Shared and collective management of the world must be achieved in its
true sense, and based on the underlying principles enshrined in the
international law. Justice must serve as the criterion and the basis
for all international decisions and actions.

All of us should acknowledge the fact that there is no other way than
the shared and collective management of the world in order to put an
end to the present disorders, tyranny, and discriminations worldwide.
This is indeed the sole way to prosperity and welfare of human society
which is an established and vivid truth.

While acknowledging the above truth, one should note that
acknowledgement alone is not enough. We must believe in it and spare
no effort toward its realization.

Dear Colleagues and Friends;

Shared and collective management of the world is the legitimate right
of all nations, and we as their representatives, have an obligation to
defend their rights. Although some powers continuously try to
frustrate all international efforts aimed at promoting collective
cooperation, we must, however, strengthen our belief in achieving the
perceived goal of establishing a shared and collective cooperation to
run the world.

The United Nations was created to make effective participation of all
nations in international decision-making processes, possible. We all
know that this goal has not yet been fulfilled because of the absence
of justice in the current management structures and mechanisms of the
UN.

The composition of the Security Council is unjust and inequitable.
Therefore, changes including the restructuring of the United Nations
are considered the basic demands of the nations that must be addressed
by the General Assembly.

During last year session, I emphasized the importance of this issue
and called for the designation of the current decade as the decade of
shared and collective Global Management.

I would like to reiterate again my proposal. I am sure that through
international cooperation, diligence and efforts by committed world
leaders and governments and through insisting on the realization of
justice and the support of all other nations, we can expedite the
building of a common bright future.

This movement is certainly on its rightful path of creation, ensuring
a promising future for humanity. A future that will be built when
humanity initiates to trend the path of the divine prophets and the
righteous under the leadership of Imam al-Mahdi, the Ultimate Savior
of mankind and the inheritor to all divine messengers and leaders and
to the pure generation of our great Prophet.

The creation of a supreme and ideal society with the arrival of a
perfect human being who is a true and sincere lover of all human
beings, is the guaranteed promise of Allah.

He will come alongside with Jesus Christ to lead the freedom and
justice lovers to eradicate tyranny and discrimination, and promote
knowledge, peace, justice freedom and love across the world. He will
present to every single individual all the beauties of the world and
all good things which bring happiness for humankind.

Today nations have been awakened. With the increase in public
awareness,they no longer succumb to oppressions and discriminations.

The world is now witnessing more than ever, the widespread awakening
in Islamic lands, in Asia, Europe, and America. These movements are
ever expanding their spirit everyday and influence the pursuit of the
realization of justice, freedom and the creation of a better tomorrow.

Our great nation stands ready to join hands with other nations to
march on this beautiful path in harmony and in line with the shared
aspirations of mankind.

Let us salute love, freedom, justice, wisdom, and the bright future
that awaits humankind.

Thank you.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

9/11: “The Big Magic Trick” Ten Years Later


SUPERB SUMMARY

MUST READ!!!

President Barack Obama's bizarre claim on May 2nd that U.S. commandos had "killed" the long-dead Osama bin Laden in Pakistan is just the latest – and one of the most preposterous – in a long series of official lies about the so-called "terrorist attacks" of September 11th, 2001.
 
As veteran U.S. intelligence analyst Dr. Steve Pieczenik wryly observed: "This was the first commando raid in history in which the commandos killed a guy who had already been dead for almost ten years."
 
Sadly, however, the mindless cheering triggered by Obama's announcement and all the related lies and fabrications that have poured out of Cass Sunstein's disinformation factory in the White House demonstrates once again that if you tell big enough lies and repeat them often enough, they will usually be believed.

As we approach the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the U.S. authorities will undoubtedly tell us more new lies and repeat a lot of old ones as they desperately try to keep the lid on Pandora's Box and counter the growing worldwide awareness that the so-called "terrorist attacks" of September 11th, 2001, were a fraud.
 
This article is dedicated to the memory of Hal Sisson, the distinguished lawyer, author and activist who was among the first to question "the official 9/11 fairy tale" and who inspired me and others to investigate the events of September 11th, 2001, to try to discover the truth about what really happened that day.
 
 
[First published in the Victoria Street Newz, September 2011 edition.]
 
In Germany, for example, a recent opinion poll by the prestigious Emnid Institute showed 89.5 per cent of Germans no longer believe the official story that the "attacks" were carried out by Osama bin Laden and 19 Arab "hijackers."  And more than 1,400 professional architects and engineers from all over the world have now signed a petition saying they believe it was physically impossible for the twin towers to have come down in the way the authorities claim.

Indeed, after ten years there is now overwhelming evidence that the "terrorist attacks" on the twin towers in New York City were actually orchestrated by a small cabal at the pinnacle of U.S. power to provide a pretext for waging two phony wars, pillaging the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, drastically curtailing civil liberties and diverting hundreds of billions of dollars of public money into the coffers of oil, arms and security companies.

Let me first confess that at the time of 9/11 I was taken in by the official lies and deceptions along with most people around the world.  The events that day were so shocking and spectacular that it seemed to me the story the authorities were telling us must surely be at least basically true. Indeed, for five years thereafter I continued to accept the official version of 9/11 without seriously questioning it since I didn't have the time, or initially even the inclination, to undertake the huge task of personally examining all of the massive amount of evidence available on 9/11.

But in 2006, after prodding from some friends, I began to carry out an intensive study into the 9/11 issue, and, on the basis of my five years of investigations, I now believe it is as clear and certain as anything can ever be in historical research that the events of September 11th, 2001, were masterminded, not from some cave in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden, but from the inner sanctum of power in Washington, D.C., by a small cabal headed by then Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Like many other incidents that have occurred in history over the centuries, the 9/11 "attacks" have turned out to be what is known as a "false-flag" operation – that is, a clandestine operation which the leaders of one country carry out in such a way that they deny responsibility for their actions and instead falsely accuse some of their foreign enemies of having perpetrated the incident, thereby providing a pretext to wage war against those enemies.

This has now become clear even to a number of retired U.S. military officers who have taken the time to study this issue and are brave enough to face the truth. For example, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Razer, who served for many years as a fighter-pilot and commanding officer in the U.S. Air Force, says: "After four years of research, I am 100 per cent convinced the 9/11 attacks were planned, organized and committed by treasonous perpetrators at the highest levels of our government."

Veteran U.S. Air Force fighter-pilot Jeff Dahlstrom says: "This was definitely a false-flag operation. It was an attack on America by Americans – and was used to justify the Patriot Act, which took away half of the Bill of Rights." Another retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Robert Bowman, who served as Director of the "Star Wars" Defense Program under Presidents Ford and Carter, calls the official report of the 9/11 commission "a sham and a whitewash" and thinks the "prime suspect" for mastermind of 9/11 is Dick Cheney.

Retired U.S. Air Force Captain Russ Wittenberg, who was a fighter-pilot in Vietnam and flew military and commercial planes for more than 40 years, is even more blunt in dismissing the official version of 9/11: "The story our government has told us about 9/11 is total bullshit, plain and simple."

Those views are shared by American theologian Dr. David Ray Griffin, who has long been considered one of America's foremost theological scholars but who has become better known in recent years as perhaps the world's leading independent expert on 9/11. Griffin, who has written nine meticulously documented books about 9/11, says "The truth about 9/11 is so shocking and has such horrifying implications that I can understand why so many people can't bring themselves to face the reality – just as I couldn't at first.  But the evidence is indisputable. The truth is that 9/11 was an inside job, orchestrated by forces within our own government.
 
It was a false-flag "attack," with evidence planted to make it appear to have been planned and carried out by Arab Muslims… The Bush-Cheney administration had already decided, months before 9/11, to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. In planning and carrying out the 9/11 "attacks," the perpetrators planted evidence to implicate Middle Eastern Muslims – evidence which, when examined, can easily be seen to have been fabricated… it is especially shocking that these "attacks" were orchestrated to pave the way for launching unprovoked wars on two countries that provided no threat – imminent or long-term – to the people of the United States."
 
Although it took quite a long time for me and some others to understand what really happened on 9/11, one man realized right away that the story the authorities were telling us that day wasn't true. He was William Rodriguez, who was on duty on 9/11 as chief custodian in the WTC North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the building at 8:46 a.m.

A few seconds before the plane hit the tower, Rodriguez says he and 14 others who were with him heard and felt a large explosion below them in the sub-basement of the building, and they later heard a series of smaller explosions along the walls far below the level where the plane struck. Many others also heard such explosions in all three of the buildings that collapsed. For example, one of Rodriguez's co-workers in the North Tower, Teresa Veliz, says: "There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons."

It should also be noted that 118 of the firefighters who fought the blazes that broke out in the three WTC buildings testified they heard what sounded to them like the kind of explosions that occur during controlled demolitions. For example, firefighter John Schroder, who arrived in the lobby of the North Tower shortly after the first plane struck, said: "Everything in the lobby was exploded, blown out. It wasn't from the jet fuel – no way! It looked like a bomb went off in the lobby. There was no fire – it just looked like a bomb went off."

Firefighter Louie Cacchioli said: "In the lobby we saw elevator doors completely blown out and people being hit with debris – we all thought there were bombs set in the building." Firefighter Dennis Tardio said he heard a series of explosions: "It was as if they had detonators and they planned to take out a building – boom, boom, boom." Firefighter Kenneth Rogers said: "There were explosions floor after floor after floor… I figured it was a bomb because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing." Firefighter Richard Banaciski, who was one of the first responders in the South Tower, said: "There were explosions like on television when they blow up buildings. These explosions seemed to be going all the way around the building like a belt."

Outspoken firefighter Paul Isaac Jr. says most of the firemen and policemen who were on duty that day know the official story about 9/11 is a lie but they are afraid to say so publicly for fear of reprisals against themselves and their families. "There is no question," Isaac says, "that explosives were used in the buildings. I know 9/11 was an inside job. The police know it and the firefighters know it too."

Custodian William Rodriguez says he was shocked when he heard the authorities claim that fire and the impact of the planes had caused the buildings to collapse since it had been obvious to practically everyone in the buildings that they had actually been brought down by controlled demolition. On the morning of 9/11 Rodriguez bravely fought through billows of smoke and dust to lead hundreds of people out of the doomed North Tower – and for the past decade, perhaps even more bravely, he has fought through billows of official lies and deceptions, as well as constant threats and harassment, to insist that the authorities tell the truth about what happened on 9/11.

Ironically, Rodriguez had once worked as a magician's assistant, so he was no stranger to the world of trickery and deception – and he drew on that experience to summarize what happened on 9/11. "It's easy," Rodriguez says, "to do misdirection – to make people look in one direction while you do the magic with the other hand. That's the real story of 9/11. It was just a big magic trick. It was an illusion."

After studying the 9/11 issue for five years, I fully agree with Rodriguez. In fact, we could easily fill every page of every edition of Victoria Street Newz for the next year describing all of the "magic tricks" (i.e. the lies and deceptions) that the U.S. authorities used in planning, carrying out and covering up the "attacks" of 9/11. While that obviously won't be possible, we will take a look at a dozen of the most significant of these lies and deceptions: four in this issue and four more in each of the October and November editions.

•  The alleged ring-leader of the 9/11 "terrorists," Mohamed Atta, wasn't really an ascetic, fanatically devoted follower of Osama bin Laden as the authorities claimed – he was actually a very worldly, wild-living young fellow who had close ties, not to al Qaeda, but to the CIA-backed Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

This supposedly devout, Koran-obsessed warrior of Allah actually spent much of his time drinking alcohol, dabbling in cocaine and other drugs, eating pork and other foods shunned by fundamentalist Muslims and watching pornographic videos. He sometimes lived with prostitutes and frequently visited Las Vegas where he gambled, cavorted with lap dancers and often brought call girls to his room. So much for the official claim that Atta "hated America's freedoms and was determined to strike a blow against U.S. decadence"!

For several months prior to 9/11, Atta was being closely monitored – and apparently also manipulated – by U.S. intelligence agents. He was also receiving money, not from al Qaeda, but from the U.S.-backed Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI.

Indeed, even the FBI now acknowledges that a payment of $100,000 was sent from the ISI to Atta's Florida bank account on the personal orders of the head of the ISI, General Mahoud Ahmed, shortly before 9/11.

And, by the strangest of "coincidences," General Ahmed just happened to be in Washington, D.C., on September 11th, 2001, conferring with then CIA Director George Tenet and other senior U.S. intelligence officials.

It is now also clear that the "incriminating evidence" against Atta "found" at Logan Airport in Boston was planted, rather clumsily, by the authorities. Their story about how and where this "evidence" turned up changed many times in the days following 9/11, as David Ray Griffin explains in detail in his book Cognitive Infiltration.

    For more details also see:

    •  Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamed Atta and the CIA Cover-up in Florida by Daniel Hopsicker
    •  9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in the U.S.A. by Webster G. Tarpley 
    •  The widely-publicized photo collage of the 19 alleged hijackers which the authorities produced so remarkably quickly after the "attacks" is a complete fabrication – several of these "suicide hijackers" turned up very much alive after 9/11, and none of the names of the "hijackers" appeared on the original flight manifests released by American Airlines and United Airlines immediately after the "attacks."


The authorities moved with dazzling speed to produce the names and photos of the 19 alleged hijackers. We were immediately told, in effect, that these were the men who had committed the crime, and we should all blindly believe that claim and not ask any embarrassing questions.

In fact, however, no remains or other physical evidence of the "hijackers" was ever found at the crash sites – except for five identification documents and one red bandana which, we are told, somehow miraculously survived three of the plane crashes and were found in remarkably good condition.

According to the official story, the passport of alleged hijacker Satam al Suqami magically survived the fiery crash of Flight 11 into the North Tower and was found in the rubble in near-perfect condition. And in Pennsylvania at the site where Flight 93 was said to have spiraled into the ground, there was, astonishingly, no wreckage of the plane or bodies of any of the people on board – just the "magic passport" of alleged hijacker Ziad Jarrah and a red bandana supposedly belonging to one of the "hijackers."

An even greater "miracle" – or actually three "miracles" – occurred in Washington, D.C., where Flight 77 allegedly struck the Pentagon. Again there was no plane wreckage or bodies of any of those on board – the only items that somehow magically survived were three identification cards belonging to alleged hijackers Majed Moqed, Nawaf al Hamzi and Salem al Hamzi.
 
[pentagon strike]

Moreover, in the days following 9/11, several of the "suicide hijackers" turned up very much alive. For example, it turned out that "hijacker" Abdul Aziz al Omari had been working at his office at Saudi Telecom in Riyadh on 9/11. Another "hijacker," a young pilot for Saudi Airlines named Saeed al Ghamdi, was in Tunisia attending a flight training course when some friends came rushing up to him a couple of days after 9/11 with a newspaper showing his picture on the front page and describing him as "one of the 9/11 suicide pilots."

Alleged hijacker Salem al Hamzi was found working at a petrochemical plant in Yanbou, Saudi Arabia. And another "hijacker," Waleed al Shehri, who was working as a pilot in Morocco at the time of 9/11, saw his picture in a Casablanca newspaper and notified the authorities that he was still alive.

Indeed, nine days after 9/11, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal met at the White House with President George Bush and after that meeting Al-Faisal told reporters: "It has been proved that at least five of the men on the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened on 9/11."

All of the still-alive "hijackers" offered to appear before the official 9/11 commission and to submit to any tests or investigations required to prove their identity. But the commission and other U.S. officials simply ignored them, and to this day the American authorities continue to stonewall and use the clearly phony 19-photo collage of the "hijackers."

It should also be noted that none of the names of the 19 alleged "hijackers" appeared on the original passenger lists for the four "hijacked" flights, which were released by American Airlines and United Airlines immediately after 9/11, even though all of them had supposedly purchased tickets in advance. It was only after this rather embarrassing discrepancy was reported on CNN and some other news outlets that the authorities issued revised versions of the passenger lists on which the names of all the "hijackers" now magically appeared.

Moreover, if hijackers had really broken into the cockpits of the planes on 9/11, surely the pilots would have followed standard procedure and "squawked" the universal hijack code (7500) on their transponders, an act that takes only a couple of seconds. But, amazingly, that was not done by even one of the eight pilots on the four "hijacked" planes.

    For more details see:

    •  "The Patsies: The 19 Alleged 9/11 Hijackers" in Global Outlook (Issue 11), 2006
    •  The New Pearl Harbor Revisited by David Ray Griffin
    •  The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 by Paul Zarembka
    •  The real reason why the "hijacked" planes were not intercepted by air force fighter-jets – like all 67 of the planes that had veered off course in U.S. airspace in the eight months prior to 9/11 were intercepted – was not because the air force was caught off guard on 9/11 but because it had been given a stand-down order by Vice-President Dick Cheney.


In their "explanation" for why the planes weren't intercepted, the authorities tried to muddify the fuzzification, as Allan Fotheringham used to say, by producing three mutually contradictory versions of the timelines for the flights of the "hijacked" planes. This is eerily reminiscent of what happened after President John Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963, when the authorities produced three contradictory versions of the Dallas Police radio log for that day. It's d»já fraud all over again, so to speak!

In any case, if we cut through all the flim-flam and disinformation, there is clear evidence that the U.S. authorities learned of the "hijackings" of: Flight 11 at least 31 minutes before it struck the North Tower, Flight 175 at least 20 minutes before it hit the South Tower, Flight 77 at least 38 minutes before it allegedly hit the Pentagon, and Flight 93 at least 31 minutes before it crashed in Pennsylvania.

Under standard U.S. air defense procedure, any planes veering off course without explanation are routinely intercepted within about 10 minutes. On 9/11 there was clearly ample time for the 14 jet-fighters available at four bases in the Northeast Air Defense Sector to have intercepted all of the "hijacked" planes.

It is especially mind-boggling that no fighter-jets were deployed from Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, the main military base protecting the U.S. capital, until 10:42 a.m. – more than an hour after the Pentagon was struck. As former British cabinet minister Michael Meacher says: "There is simply no rational way to explain why planes weren't deployed immediately from Andrews, which is just 11 miles from the Pentagon and which had always said it maintained scramble-ready fighter-jets around the clock."

So why didn't the air force follow normal procedure on 9/11 and intercept the "hijacked" planes? Quite simply because it had been ordered not to do so. According to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, who was in the basement bunker of the White House where Dick Cheney was directing operations that morning, an alarmed-looking young officer came into the room three times reporting on the movements of the "hijacked" Flight 77. The third time the young man asked Cheney, "Do the orders still stand?" and Cheney reportedly snapped, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Not surprisingly, there is no mention of Mineta's stunning testimony in the official 9/11 report.

But veteran CIA operative Ray McGovern says he and other intelligence experts who have studied this issue believe that the Mineta testimony, along with other factors, clearly indicates Cheney had issued a stand-down order.

There were also a number of reports across the U.S. on 9/11 that a stand-down order had been given. For example, at Los Angeles International Airport, security expert Charles Lewis said he and others monitoring FAA and NORAD communications were shocked when they learned that "a stand-down order had come from the highest level of the White House." Lewis says that in a private conversation he had in 2006 with La Ponda Fitchpatrick, head of security operations at the Los Angeles airport on 9/11, "she told me LAX security was well aware that 9/11 was an inside job."

    For more details see:

    •  The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute by Paul Thompson
    •  Cognitive Infiltration by David Ray Griffin
    •  Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert
    •  Towers of Deception by Barrie Zwicker
    •  American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell
    •  It should now be obvious to "anyone with two eyes and a brain" that all three of the buildings that collapsed in New York City on 9/11 (WTC 1, WTC 2 and WTC 7) were brought down by controlled demolition using high-temperature cutter-charge explosives – not by hydrocarbon fires and the impact of the "attacking" planes.


There is simply no way the 656 huge solid-steel beams supporting the three buildings (287 in each of the twin towers and 82 in Building 7) could have been melted and cut by fires fed by jet fuel, which burns at a maximum temperature of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. Steel requires a temperature of at least 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit to even begin melting, and the pools of molten steel that flowed like lava in the debris of the fallen buildings for weeks after 9/11 couldn't have been produced without a temperature of at least 3,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

In addition, some melted molybdenum was found in the rubble at Ground Zero – and that substance requires a temperature of at least 4,753 degrees Fahrenheit to melt. And there were also pieces of steel that appeared to have been partly evaporated – a process that would have required a temperature of at least 5,182 degrees Fahrenheit. Temperatures of this kind couldn't possibly have been generated by jet fuel.

Moreover, all three of the buildings collapsed in just a few seconds at near free-fall speed – and this couldn't have happened without the use of pre-positioned cutter charge explosives, according to physicist Dr. Steven E. Jones, who has carried out by far the most detailed independent study of the WTC collapses, using elaborate scale-models of the buildings. After several years of tests and analysis, Jones said: "There is only one honest conclusion that can be made: the buildings couldn't have collapsed the way the authorities claimed without violating several of the basic laws of physics." Jones had been a long-time physics professor at Brigham Young University in Utah but was fired when he refused to either suppress his 9/11 research or lie about it.

Internationally renowned architect and New York City planner David A. Johnson, who has also carefully studied the WTC collapses, says: "I am very familiar with these buildings and their design, and I know they couldn't possibly have come down the way they did without using explosives and severing the core columns at the base."

Another prominent expert on the WTC collapses, San Francisco architect Richard Gage, studied all of the fires that have broken out in steel-framed high-rise buildings around the world and concluded: "In more than 100 steel framed high-rise fires which have occurred before and after 9/11 (most of them very hot, very large and very long-lasting), not one of these buildings has collapsed, ever."

Gage believes it was physically impossible for the WTC buildings to have come down the way they did without the use of high-powered explosives and he has circulated a petition calling for a new, honest investigation into why the structures collapsed. As we noted earlier, that petition has now been signed by more than 1,400 professional engineers and architects from all over the world.

It should also be noted that several huge pieces of steel from the towers – some weighing as much as 50 tons – were propelled laterally more than 500 feet, which couldn't possibly have happened in a gravity-driven collapse. Indeed, Dwain Deets, a former director of research engineering at NASA, says: "The fact that these massive chunks of steel were hurled horizontally for such distances leaves no doubt in my mind that explosives were involved."

When the buildings collapsed, there were also huge pyroclastic clouds of pulverized concrete, which drifted across much of Lower Manhattan – the type of clouds often produced by controlled demolitions, but not by fires or gravity-driven building collapses.

Moreover, the 9/11 commission blatantly lied when it said there was a hollow shaft at the core of each of the twin towers. Actually there were 47 gigantic solid-steel girders at the core of each tower, and after the towers fell on 9/11 most of these girders were found in quite neatly cut 30-foot-long pieces – just the right size to be loaded on to flatbed trucks and quickly whisked away from the site (more than 40 truckloads were removed in the first 24 hours). Such precision "slicing" of steel is quite common in carefully planned demolitions but never occurs in random hydrocarbon fires.

One man who became fascinated by all the controversy about the WTC building collapses was the respected Danish scientist Dr. Niels Harrit, who taught chemistry at the University of Copenhagen for 34 years and has published more than 60 articles in major scientific journals.

Harrit and eight colleagues decided to get to the bottom of the matter by carrying out an intensive independent study. As part of their investigations, these scientists examined samples of dust from the WTC rubble and were astonished to find millions of microscopic chips of nanothermite – an ultra-high-tech incendiary explosive which is capable of slicing through steel beams.

At the end of their two-year study, Harrit concluded: "The evidence couldn't be more clear. Anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that all three of the WTC buildings were brought down by controlled demolition involving extraordinarily high temperatures and enormous explosive force – not by random hydrocarbon fires and the relatively minor impact of the planes."

As Harrit notes, even though the images of the jetliners crashing into the towers were so dramatic, the impact of the planes would actually have caused only relatively minor structural damage. Indeed, the towers had been specifically designed to withstand multiple impacts from a four-engine jetliner travelling at up to 600 miles per hour. On 9/11 the north tower was hit by a two-engine jet travelling at 440 miles per hour and the south tower by a two-engine jet travelling at 540 miles per hour.

Hyman Brown, the construction manager at the time the twin towers were built, said: "The buildings were over-designed to withstand almost anything, including hurricanes, bombings and an airplane hitting them."
 
Sadly, the WTC's construction manager at the time of 9/11, Frank DeMartini, perished in the "attack" on the north tower. But, in what turned out to be a remarkably prescient interview in January, 2001, he said: "I believe the towers could probably sustain multiple impacts from jetliners because their structure is like the mosquito netting on a screen door – the jet plane would be just like a pencil puncturing that screen netting."

And one last point about the buildings: some might wonder how agents of the Cheney-led cabal could have gained access to the WTC buildings to plant the cutter-charge explosives. Actually, however, that wasn't much of a problem since the company in charge of security at the WTC complex, Securacom, was headed by none other than George W. Bush's brother Marvin and cousin Wirt Walker III.

    For more details see:

    •  www.AE911Truth.org
    •  9/11: Blueprint for Truth – The Architecture of Destruction (DVD) by Richard Gage
    •  9/11 Revisited: Scientific and Ethical Questions (DVD) by Steven E. Jones
    •  "Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Centre Catastrophe" in  The Open Chemical Physics Journal (vol. 2), 2009
    •  "The Impossible Free-Fall Collapses of the Three WTC Towers" by Tony Bird in Global Outlook (Issue 13), 2009
    •  Waking Up From Our Nightmare: The 9/11/01 Crimes in New York City by Don Paul and Jim Hoffman
    Next month, when we continue our look at the sordid but fascinating story of 9/11, we will see that:
    •  The story we were told about "heroic passengers" overpowering four "hijackers" aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and sending the plane plummeting to the ground was pure fiction – actually the plane was shot down by two F-16 fighter jets dispatched from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia on the orders of Vice-President Dick Cheney, and the plane's debris was scattered over 13 square kilometres of the Pennsylvania countryside.
    •  WTC 7, the building that mysteriously collapsed even though it wasn't hit by any plane, was brought down by controlled demolition on the afternoon of 9/11 because the "emergency command centre" on its 23rd floor had been used to guide the "attacking planes" into the twin towers, and the authorities wanted to make sure any incriminating evidence would be destroyed.
    •  The Pentagon wasn't really hit by a jetliner on 9/11 but by a small missile, and great care was taken to minimize damage and casualties – and also to make sure that records related to one of the biggest military spending scandals in American history would be destroyed in the "attack."
    •  The so-called "smoking-gun videotape" purporting to show Osama bin Laden chortling about the 9/11 "attacks" has been exposed as a fake – and, contrary to all the ridiculous hype and hoopla about U.S. commandos supposedly killing bin Laden in Pakistan, he actually died quietly and undramatically in the mountains of southern Afghanistan in mid-December, 2001, when he lost the long fight he had been waging with chronic kidney disease.

 
 

9/11: "The Big Magic Trick" Ten Years Later (second of three parts)

written by Gordon Pollard
 
by Gordon Pollard

In September's Street Newz we began looking at how the so-called "terrorist attacks" of September 11th, 2001, were actually a "false-flag" operation orchestrated by the small ruling cabal in Washington, D.C., to provide a pretext for waging two bogus wars, looting the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, cracking down on political dissidents and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars of public money into the coffers of oil, arms and security companies.

Let's look now at four more of the most significant of the official 9/11 lies and deceptions.
 
This series is dedicated to the memory of Hal Sisson, the distinguished lawyer, author and activist who was among the first to question "the official 9/11 fairy tale" and who inspired me and others to investigate the events of September 11th, 2001, to try to discover the truth about what really happened that day.
 
 
 
 

•  Of all the lies we were told on 9/11, none was more dramatic or more heart-rending than the story about how a group of "heroic passengers" aboard United Airlines Flight 93 had supposedly overpowered four "hijackers" and sent the plane plummeting to the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Sadly, however, this story has turned out to be pure fiction: a fairy tale concocted by the authorities to cover up the fact that the plane was actually shot down by two F-16 fighter jets dispatched from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia on the orders of Vice-President Dick Cheney, and its debris was scattered over 13 square kilometres of the Pennsylvania countryside.

In its official report, the 9/11 commission acknowledged that Dick Cheney issued an order to shoot down Flight 93 but said the order wasn't given until 10:10 a.m. – seven minutes after the plane had crashed, supposedly because of a revolt against the "hijackers" by a group of "heroic passengers."

But the 10:10 a.m. time claimed by the commission was flatly contradicted by a number of key figures, including White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke who said he received word of Cheney's shoot-down authorization no later than 9:45 a.m. Moreover, the records show a "scramble" order was issued at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. and two F-16 jet-fighters took off from the base at 9:30 a.m.

Even Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly stated two F-16 fighter-jets were tailing Flight 93 before 10:00 a.m. – and there is compelling evidence they executed Cheney's order and blasted the plane out of the sky at 10:03 a.m.

Multiple witnesses who lived in the part of rural Pennsylvania over which Flight 93 was flying reported hearing noises and seeing flashes in the sky consistent with missiles hitting a plane. Several people also observed what looked like a shower of debris from an aircraft falling from the sky.

On the ground, a number of investigators, including a special unit from Asahi Television of Japan, combed the area and discovered small fragments of debris from the plane strewn across a 13-kilometre swath of territory. Also part of one of the engines from the aircraft was found far from the site where the plane had allegedly spiralled into the ground. Astonishingly, at that site near Shanksville there was no indication at all that a plane had crashed there – no wreckage, no luggage, no bodies – just an eerily smouldering crater.

On 9/11 reports that Flight 93 had been shot down were circulating widely in military and intelligence circles. For example, Major Daniel Nash, an F-15 pilot who had been dispatched from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts, said that after returning to his base, he was told that a military F-16 had shot down an airliner in Pennsylvania.

At Los Angeles International Airport, Charles Lewis, who, as we mentioned in last month's instalment, was carefully monitoring FAA, NORAD and FBI communications, said: "We were told fighter-jets had been scrambled and had shot the plane down over Pennsylvania – and that was way before they started telling us the 'hero' story."

The main "evidence" produced by the authorities to support the official story of a passenger revolt consisted of a number of cell-phone calls which passengers allegedly made from the plane, including the most famous one in which the "revolt leader" supposedly shouted, "Let's roll!" It now seems quite clear, however, that this "evidence" is bogus. Extensive tests by independent experts have demonstrated that the kind of high-altitude cell-phone calls allegedly made from Flight 93 were simply impossible with the technology available at that time. But the technology to produce realistic-sounding voice-morphing fakes certainly did exist in 2001.

Moreover, the other "evidence" which the authorities produced, the melodramatic dialogue on a tape supposedly from the cockpit voice-recorder on Flight 93, is also quite clearly fraudulent. That strange tape (released 1,670 days after 9/11) is full of anomalies and absurdities. At one point, for example, we hear passengers talking about using a drink cart to break down the cockpit door. But in reality, of course, the "black box" in the cockpit couldn't possibly have recorded voices in the passenger compartment with the cockpit door closed.

I found the story of the "passenger revolt" aboard Flight 93 to be one of the saddest aspects of the 9/11 fraud. What seemed at first to be a wonderful story of heroism and self-sacrifice turned out to be a cruel and cynical hoax that the authorities used to "sell" the 9/11 lies to the public.

For more details see:

•  "The Impossible Phone Calls of 9/11" by Rowland Morgan in Global Outlook (Issue 13), 2009

•  The New Pearl Harbor Revisited by David Ray Griffin

•  Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror by Richard A. Clarke

•  "Debunking 9/11 Lies" by Jim Hoffman in Global Outlook (Issue 10), 2005

•  WTC Building 7, the 47-story structure that mysteriously collapsed even though it wasn't hit by any plane, appears to have served as a key co-ordination centre for the "attacks" on the twin towers, and the building was literally blown to smithereens with high-powered explosives on the afternoon of 9/11 to make sure any incriminating evidence would be destroyed.

Among the many weird things that happened on 9/11, perhaps the most bizarre of all was the live BBC television report at 5:14 p.m. in which reporter Jane Standley told us World Trade Centre Building 7 had collapsed – even though we could clearly see that the building was still standing in the background behind her.

Indeed, the BBC had begun reporting the collapse of WTC 7 at 4:53 p.m. on radio and 4:54 p.m. on television. And CNN television anchor Aaron Brown had started reporting the building's collapse even earlier, at around 4:00 p.m. As with Mark Twain's death, reports of WTC 7's demise had been greatly exaggerated.

But not for long! At 5:21 p.m. all the remarkably prophetic reports came true and WTC 7 did, in fact, collapse into its own footprint in just 6.5 seconds. It marked the highly unusual end of a highly unusual building.

Contrary to what the authorities claimed, WTC 7 wasn't "just an ordinary office building." It was actually one of the most important buildings in New York City, housing major offices of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense. Also the Securities and Exchange Commission kept vast records of bank transactions on floors 11 through 13, including many involving financial officials who were under investigation at that time for fraud. All these records were destroyed, as bad luck would have it, when the building collapsed!

But by far the most important offices in WTC 7 were those of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's Emergency Management Command Centre, which had been set up on the 23rd floor in June, 1999, to serve as a headquarters "bunker" where officials would deal with any possible terrorist attacks or other major crisis.

Given the obvious importance of WTC 7, one would have thought the authorities would have given high priority to explaining why this building collapsed on 9/11. Astoundingly, however, the 571-page official 9/11 report not only gives no such explanation but doesn't even mention the fact the building collapsed.

On 9/11, immediately after learning that the North Tower had been "attacked," New York City's Emergency Co-ordinator Barry Jennings and Corporation Counsel Michael Hess rushed to WTC 7's emergency command "bunker" where they had expected to find Mayor Giuliani taking charge of operations. But, to their amazement, the "bunker" had been largely abandoned and one of the few people still there told them to leave immediately and to go to 75 Barkley Street, where they would find Giuliani.

The mayor said later he hadn't gone to the WTC 7 23rd floor "bunker" because it was "obvious" to him that Building 7 was going to collapse. One of the greatest mysteries of 9/11 to this day is why Giuliani was so certain WTC 7 was going to collapse even though the city's emergency officials and firefighters weren't certain – and even though only fairly small fires were burning in that building.
In any case, after 9/11 the authorities hoped at first they could get away with ignoring the WTC 7 collapse. But they soon discovered that a 47-story building couldn't be swept under the rug without a huge bulge showing. Complaints from some of the families of 9/11 victims eventually forced the authorities to call an "investigation," and that unenviable task was given to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

As we've already seen, Building 7, like the twin towers, was clearly brought down by pre-positioned cutter-charge explosives. But for NIST, of course, the truth wasn't an option, so they came up with an astonishingly convoluted story about one of the building's pillars, the magical "Column 79," supposedly having fallen in such a highly unusual way that it caused "a chain reaction" among the other pillars.

In his painstakingly detailed 328-page book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False, David Ray Griffin calls NIST's explanation "a thoroughly unscientific theory, resting on a combination of observation, free speculation, implausible claims, fudged data and outright fabrications."

Those views are shared by David L. Griscom, who was a research physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory for 33 years. He says: "Griffin's book provides unequivocal evidence of massive scientific fraud committed by a politicized NIST." Griscom was one of more than 15,000 U.S. scientists (including 52 Nobel laureates) who signed a statement in 2008 accusing the Bush administration of "distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."

The release of the NIST Report on August 21st, 2008, was also shrouded in additional controversy and mystery by the sudden, still unexplained death just two days earlier of New York City's 53-year-old Emergency Co-ordinator Barry Jennings, who had been an outspoken critic of the official version of the WTC 7 collapse. Indeed, David Ray Griffin dedicates his book on Building 7 "to the memory of Barry Jennings, whose truth-telling may have cost him his life."

But the biggest question of all, of course, is why Building 7 was brought down on the afternoon of 9/11 – and the most compelling explanation came from former German cabinet minister and internationally-respected security expert Andreas Von Buelow, who believes Rudy Giuliani's 23rd floor "bunker" was used to co-ordinate the "attacks" on the twin towers. "It would have been the optimal place," he says, "to run the 'attacks' using remote-control technology." And the building's collapse would destroy any incriminating evidence.

Our look at the strange saga of Building 7 would not be complete without noting that one person above all emerged as the "big winner" from the collapse of WTC 7: the building's lease-holder, "Lucky Larry" Silverstein, who pocketed a cool $475-million after buying the building for $386-million just six weeks before 9/11 and winning an insurance claim for $861-million after it collapsed.
The ease with which he obtained that super-generous payout was especially remarkable in view of Silverstein's startling statement in an interview with PBS in September, 2002, that he had told firefighters on the afternoon of 9/11 that Building 7 should be "pulled" (the industry term for controlled demolition).

For more details see:

•  The CIA and September 11th by Andreas Von Buelow

•  "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" by Steven E. Jones in Global Outlook (Issue 11), 2006

•  63 Documents the Government Doesn't Want You to Read by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell

•  Towers of Deception by Barrie Zwicker

•  The Pentagon was struck on 9/11, not by a Boeing 757 jetliner as officially claimed, but by a much smaller projectile in an "attack" carefully planned and controlled to make sure there would be only minimal damage and casualties – and also to make sure key documents related to a $2.3-trillion military spending scandal would be destroyed in the "attack."

If we were to believe the official story about how the Pentagon was "attacked" on 9/11, it would surely have had to be the strangest attack that had ever been carried out on any building in history.

If the "hijacked" Boeing 757 jetliner had really approached the Pentagon from the west, as we were told, the "suicide hijackers" would surely have plunged the plane directly into the roof, causing massive damage and almost certainly killing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and many top military officials. But instead, we are told, these remarkably considerate "hijackers" circled around the building for no apparent reason and struck a section known as Wedge One, which, as good luck would have it, was being renovated at that time and was therefore largely unoccupied.

Moreover, the plane's circling manoeuvre was nothing short of astounding since the pilot had to descend 7,000 feet in two minutes while travelling at 530 miles per hour and performing a steep 270-degree banked turn and then crash into the Pentagon's first-floor wall without touching the lawn. And this nearly impossible feat was supposedly accomplished by a young "hijacker," Hani Hanjour, who hadn't even been able to fly a single-engine Cessna at a flight-training school a month earlier.

Even more amazing, however, was the fact that the "hijacked" jetliner had a wingspan of 124 feet but whatever hit the Pentagon left a hole in the wall just 18 feet in diameter – and there was absolutely no physical evidence at the "crash site" indicating a large jetliner had hit the building. Indeed, a number of Pentagon employees, such as April Gallop and Karen Kwiatkowski, who rushed to the site of the "crash" found no signs of an aircraft – no fuselage wreckage, seats, luggage or human remains. Even the plane's two six-ton engines, made of tempered steel and virtually indestructible titanium, just magically vanished and neither has been found to this day. Gallop, a veteran military data analyst, says the official claims that a jetliner struck the building are "utterly ridiculous."

That view is shared by a number of military and civilian aviation experts who have studied this issue, such as retired Air Force Colonel George Nelson, who worked for 30 years as an aircraft accident investigator. Colonel Nelson says: "Any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged."

Indeed, none other than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld inadvertently let the cat out of the bag in a recorded interview with Parade magazine on October 12th, 2001, when he referred to "the missile" that struck the Pentagon before correcting himself and saying he had meant to use the word "plane."

So, since American Airlines Flight 77 obviously didn't really hit the Pentagon, what actually happened to the plane? According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane dropped off the radar screen at 8:56 a.m. (41 minutes before the Pentagon was hit) and it apparently went down in a remote part of northern Kentucky near the Indiana border. It remains unclear to this day exactly how and why the plane went down and what became of the aircraft and its passengers. What is absolutely clear, however, is that the journey of Flight 77 on 9/11 ended in the Midwest, hundreds of miles away from the Pentagon.

That being the case, what really struck the Pentagon? All of the evidence indicates the "attack" was a self-inflicted wound. The building was hit by a small missile in a very carefully controlled operation to keep damage to a minimum and, above all, to make sure Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the top Pentagon officials who were in the building at the time wouldn't be harmed. I understand it is very difficult, or perhaps even impossible, for many people to face the shocking reality that the "attack" on the Pentagon was a hoax – but the truth doesn't cease to be the truth simply because its implications are so horrifying.

In any case, the truth about what happened at the Pentagon could have been made clear to everyone by releasing the video tapes from the 87 surveillance cameras known to be in operation in the area around the Pentagon – especially the tapes from the cameras at the Sheraton Hotel and Citgo Gas Station across the street from the Pentagon, which both had clear sight-lines to Wedge One.

But all of these tapes have been suppressed (FBI agents seized the Sheraton and Citgo tapes only minutes after the Pentagon was hit). All that the authorities have released are a few still-frames which show a small fire and a fuzzy white streak but which provide no proof at all that a jetliner hit the building.

It is also important to note that while the phony "attack" on the Pentagon was carried out mainly to whip up public fear and hysteria, so Dick Cheney and his friends could proceed with their imperial adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, it also served another purpose: helping to cover up a major military spending scandal.

On September 10th, 2001, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld made the astonishing public announcement that an estimated $2.3-trillion of Defense Department money had apparently gone missing and the matter was under investigation. Less than 24 hours later, the 9/11 "attacks" occurred and, as bad luck would have it, the part of the Pentagon "attacked," Wedge One, just happened to be the place where financial records were kept, and hundreds of important documents were destroyed.

Officially, of course, this was all pure coincidence and the "attack" on the Pentagon wasn't intended to destroy any evidence or divert attention away from the spending scandal – but if you believe that, please contact me immediately and I will be happy to offer you a bargain-basement price for a certain bridge I own in New York City or one of several tourist resorts I operate on the moon!
For more details see:

•  "The Pentagon: Big Plane, Small Holes" by Jim Hoffman in Global Outlook (Issue 11), 2006

•  Cognitive Infiltration by David Ray Griffin

•  American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura and Dick Russell

•  Although the U.S. authorities have waged one of the most high-powered propaganda campaigns in history to try to brainwash and intimidate people into believing Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, there is actually not a shred of credible evidence that he orchestrated the "attacks" – the so-called "smoking-gun videotape" purportedly showing bin Laden chortling about the "attacks" is as phony as President Barack Obama's claim that bin Laden was killed by U.S. commandos in Pakistan.

Osama bin Laden was the perfect "terrorist bogeyman" to serve as a credible scapegoat for Dick Cheney and his cohorts when they pulled off their false-flag operation on September 11th, 2001. By bin Laden's own admission, al Qaeda operatives had carried out a number of anti-U.S. attacks around the world such as the 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, so it was fairly easy to con the U.S. public into believing bin Laden was also responsible for the events of 9/11 – especially amid all the blind fear and hysteria that followed the "attacks."

Shortly after 9/11, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell promised he would provide clear proof that bin Laden was responsible for 9/11 "within a few days." And the Taliban leaders in power in Afghanistan at the time publicly stated they would turn bin Laden over to the U.S. authorities if the Americans provided proof bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 "attacks." But no such evidence has been produced to this day. Indeed, even FBI spokesman Rex Tomb publicly admitted: "The FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11."

Following every previous al Qaeda operation, bin Laden had quickly claimed responsibility and boasted that it demonstrated al Qaeda's power – not surprisingly, since one of the main goals of these operations was to win new recruits for al Qaeda. If bin Laden had really masterminded the 9/11 "attacks," he would undoubtedly have trumpeted his involvement to the heavens and proclaimed it the greatest "achievement" of his life.

But instead bin Laden emphatically denied any responsibility for 9/11. Indeed, speaking on Al-Jazeera on September 16th and to the Islamic Press on September 17th, bin Laden swore "in the name of Islam" that he had nothing to do with the "attacks." This was a very powerful denial since, whatever one might have thought of Osama, he was undeniably a very devout Wahabi Muslim.

As the weeks went by, the U.S. authorities came under increasing pressure to come up with at least some proof of bin Laden's involvement, so on December 13th they released what they called "a smoking-gun videotape," which they claimed American soldiers had found in an abandoned house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and which purports to show bin Laden chortling with some friends about the 9/11 "attacks." Actually, however, it is a sad commentary on the gullibility of the public and the news media that this transparently fraudulent tape was taken seriously let alone accepted as authentic. Indeed, even America's leading academic expert on bin Laden, Dr. Bruce Lawrence of Duke University, dismissed the tape as "bogus" – but that comment was never reported, of course, in the mainstream media.

On close examination, the "bin Laden" in the video is clearly an impostor. He has darker skin, fuller cheeks, a broader nose and much shorter fingers than the real bin Laden. The "bin Laden" in the video also had a serious weight problem and looked more like Santa than Osama. At the time this tape was allegedly made, the real bin Laden's body was severely emaciated: he was in the final stage of dying from kidney disease and was thin as a rake. Also by that point, the real bin Laden's left arm was paralyzed, but the "bin Laden" in the video casually raises his left arm above his head. Moreover, part of Osama bin Laden's shtick was that he always made a point of moving slowly and gracefully like a ballet dancer – but the "bin Laden" in the video jerks about like a drunken fan at a UFC fight.

As it turned out, the "Jalalabad tape" was the first of a long series of phony bin Laden video and audio tapes that the U.S. authorities would produce. At the time of 9/11, bin Laden was very seriously ill with severe kidney disease and was being kept alive only with intensive dialysis treatments. In his last authentic videotape message, recorded sometime after November 16th and aired by Al-Jazeera on December 27th, 2001, bin Laden looked shockingly gaunt and almost cadaverous, with his left arm hanging limp. After carefully examining this tape, CNN's medical specialist Dr. Sanjay Gupta said bin Laden appeared to be "in the final stage of renal failure" and noted anyone in such condition "would be unlikely to survive beyond several days or a week at the most."

Indeed, there is compelling evidence that bin Laden finally lost his long struggle with kidney disease and died in mid-December, 2001 – less than 100 days after 9/11 – and he was buried near Tora Bora in southeastern Afghanistan. This evidence is explained in great detail by David Ray Griffin in his book Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?

The first reports of bin Laden's death appeared in The Observer newspaper in Pakistan on December 25th, 2001, and these reports quickly spread around the world. By the end of 2001 these reports were being widely accepted as true even by many political leaders and news organizations in the West.

Suddenly, however, in early 2002, the Osama saga took another weird twist when officials of both the U.S. and al Qaeda told us – without offering any credible evidence – that we should stop believing bin Laden was dead and start believing he was still alive. Old Osama had apparently experienced a miraculous resurrection!

Actually, as former CIA operative Robert Baer and others have noted, both the U.S. and al Qaeda had a huge mutual interest in "breathing life" into bin Laden's corpse.

"In fact," Baer says, "there was a vast industry of contractors, corporations and pundits who needed bin Laden alive – all of them eating at the trough."

The U.S. needed a "live" super-bogeyman – with bin Laden dead, the highly lucrative "anti-terrorist" gravy train might come screeching to a halt. And al Qaeda also needed a "live" Osama to serve as its superstar leader since it had no potential successor with the same kind of charisma and ability to attract new recruits.

Consequently, over the past decade, as David Ray Griffin has documented so brilliantly, we witnessed a truly bizarre spectacle, with a steady stream of dire warnings coming from the long-dead Osama bin Laden in phony voice-morphing tapes. Although these voice-from-the-grave tapes were blindly accepted as genuine by almost all of the North American media, they were widely ridiculed in more sophisticated political and diplomatic circles. For example, former U.S. Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla joked in American Spectator magazine that bin Laden had become "Osama bin Elvis".

By early 2011 we began to see indications bin Laden had finally out-lived his usefulness to both the U.S. and al Qaeda – and it seemed the "Ghost of Osama" might soon be exorcised, so to speak! On February 9th U.S. counter-terrorism director Michael Leiter announced the U.S. no longer considered bin Laden the biggest terror threat to the U.S. – he had lost his number-one bogeyman spot to the relatively obscure Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen. Leiter said bin Laden was "no longer able to organize terrorist plots the way he once could" – which was no doubt true since most people who have been dead for ten years are no longer quite as productive as they once were!

The stage was now set for Barack Obama to go before the cameras on May 2nd and tell the world, with as much dramatic flair as he could muster, that U.S. commandos had "just killed" bin Laden in a raid on a mansion located near a large military base in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Just a short time after Obama's address, however, the official story began to unravel when U.S. officials made the astonishing claim that bin Laden's body had been "buried at sea in accordance with Muslim tradition." One person who immediately expressed skepticism was George Noory, host of the widely-syndicated radio show "Coast to Coast AM," who happened to be broadcasting live on more then 500 stations at the time of Obama's announcement.

When told bin Laden's body had been dumped in the ocean, Noory exclaimed: "This surely must be a joke!" He later added: "This is one of the most ridiculous things I've heard in all my years of broadcasting. Anyone who knows anything about Islamic practices would be aware that a Muslim should never be buried at sea unless the person dies on a boat. A Muslim should be buried in the ground with the head facing toward Mecca." Noory's comments were echoed by Islamic clerics around the world who said most Muslims would consider the action allegedly taken by the U.S. to be insulting, not respectful.

The official account of the Rambo-style shootout on bin Laden's "hideout" was also immediately ridiculed by a number of independent military and intelligence experts such as Craig Hulet and Dr. Steve Pieczenik, who pointed out that such a raid would have been the worst possible tactics to use in the circumstances described. In a real scenario of this kind, Hulet noted, "every effort would have been made to take bin Laden alive and this would almost certainly have been achieved using the right kind of tactics." And even if bin Laden had been killed in the operation, his body certainly wouldn't have been chucked into the ocean – it would have been made available to independent forensic experts for examination and verification.

In any case, the debate about "what happened to bin Laden on May 1st" is totally irrelevant since, as we've already seen, old Osama had already kicked the bucket almost a decade earlier. Dr. Pieczenik, who has worked as a high-level military and intelligence advisor in the U.S. capital for many years and has a lot of insider friends, says: "Practically everyone of consequence in Washington is well aware bin Laden died of renal failure in December, 2001. Privately, some people even talk and joke about it. But no one ever dares to say anything about this in public, for obvious reasons."

In the days following Obama's announcement, the official version of the raid changed so often and there were so many contradictions and discrepancies that at one briefing session White House Press Secretary Jay Carney almost broke down, pleading with reporters that all the problems with the official story had resulted from "the fog of war."

Nonetheless, even though the "we-just-killed-Osama" routine was carried out with about as much aplomb and finesse as might have been expected from the Three Stooges, Obama was immediately hailed by most of the ever-gullible public and the brain-dead mass media as "the great terrorist slayer," so he now gets to cash in politically on the 9/11 lies just as George Bush and Dick Cheney did earlier. Perhaps Obama should change his campaign slogan for the next election from "Yes, we can!" to "Yes, we con!"

In any case, the "anti-terrorist" gravy train keeps rolling along, with further fuel provided by all the "scary" information contained in the so-called "treasure trove" of documents supposedly found in bin Laden's "hideout. Not surprisingly, these "frightening" documents warn of more possible al Qaeda "attacks" to come, perhaps this time in Los Angeles, Chicago or Washington, D.C. With trillions of dollars at stake, the big "terrorism" show must go on – Osama or no Osama!

Meanwhile, right on cue, al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahri weighed in with a suitably sleazy, hypocritical video claiming he was "shocked" to learn of the U.S. "commando raid" and telling us bin Laden's role in the ongoing drama had now changed from romantic elusive warrior to glorious martyr. Ten years earlier, of course, it had been al-Zawahri who made the decision that it was to al Qaeda's advantage at that point to keep the dead bin Laden "alive". In his video, al-Zawahri even managed to "one-up" Barack Obama in terms of show-biz presentation by delivering his spiel wearing flowing white robes and brandishing a Kalashnikov rifle!
For more details see:

•  The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

•  Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia by Ahmad Rashid

•  Unholy Wars by John K. Cooley

•  Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11 by Mathias Broeckers

Next month, when we conclude our look at what really happened on 9/11, we will see that:

•  The conflict in Afghanistan is a totally bogus war – the Bush-Cheney administration had already decided months before 9/11 to invade the country and use it as a pipeline corridor so the huge Cent Gas energy consortium could transport hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas from the Caspian Basin to the Indian Ocean.

•  9/11 was not just one of history's greatest frauds but also one of history's greatest "robberies" – "lucky" WTC lease-holders and stock-market investors pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars while even "luckier" oil, arms and security companies gained hundreds of billions of dollars.

•  The official report of the 9/11 commission is one of the most blatantly dishonest documents in all of human history – its 571 pages are a concoction of literally hundreds of distortions, omissions and even outright lies such as, for example, the astonishing claim that none of the four "black boxes" aboard the planes that hit the towers were recovered when, in fact, all four were found.

•  9/11 was one of the great watershed moments in history and it produced some of the very best of genuine patriotic heroes such as WTC custodian William Rodriguez but also some of the very worst of pseudo-patriotic zeroes such as Vice-President Dick Cheney.
 
 
 
Gordon Pollard, who is a native of Victoria, has a MA in History from Columbia University in New York City and a BA in History and English from the University of Victoria.  After working for 10 years as a journalist in B.C., Alberta, and Ontario, Gordon spent 20 years teaching English and History in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka