Iran’s nuclear chief has questioned the impartiality of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its silence towards the deployment of hundreds of nuclear warheads in Europe.
“The agency claims to be impartial, but is it really impartial? If it is then why does it keep silent on the deployment of hundreds of nuclear warheads on European soil and some occupied countries and not [even] submit a report to international organizations like the UN? Head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO) Fereydoun Abbasi queried on Monday.
Abbasi made the remarks at the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna.
The Iranian official demanded answers to questions such as why the agency is silent on the missing nuclear material in the US and who is in possession of the said nuclear material.
He went on to caution that the health of US and international community is in danger.
Earlier this month the US Government Audit Office (GAO) reported that the government is unable to account for the whereabouts of 16,000 kg of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The material in question was distributed to 27 countries over several decades.
“The selective approaches of the IAEA, particularly towards developing countries, and by showing diversion in their activities, have so far paved the way for the imposition of economic sanctions and military attacks against these countries,” Abbasi added.
The United States, Israel and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program.
As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran maintains that it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
Zionist and neoconservative rhetoric often refer to the Palestinian claim that they were expelled from Palestine in 1948 as the “Big Palestinian Lie”. Instead, the Zionists argue that, rather than being expelled from Palestine, they fled.
It is, of course, classic Zionist Chutzpah. The obvious question is; why then did they flee? It wasn’t just to escape the fighting; it was through fear of what would happen to them if they stayed. The Palestinians that fled had heard of the atrocities that the Israeli fighters had committed on Palestinians elsewhere such as at Deir Yassin, Lydda, Ein al Zeitun, among many others.
The Palestinians that left weren’t refugees from the fighting; they were expelled through fear of being killed by the Palmach, the Irgun or the Haganah forces of Zionist Israel.
The latest lie about the Palestinian expulsion came from Sol Stein writing in the neocon online rag National Review Online. This time, however, Sol Stein has exposed himself as a liar. His lie is so obvious. I have emailed him to let him know that his claims are false and why they are. This is what I said to him:
Hi Sol
In your article “The Palestinian Big Lie: The Palestinians distort the origins of the conflict with Israel” which recently appeared in National Review Online, you wrote:
“Almost immediately, Safed’s Arabs began streaming out toward the Syrian border. There were no expulsions of Arab civilians by Israeli forces.”
Yet Ben Gurion wrote in his diary on 7 June 1948:
“Abraham Hanuki, from Ayelet Hashahar, told me that since there were only 100 old people left in Safed they were expelled to Lebanon.”
How can you say there were no Arab civilians expelled by Israel? You are contradicting, not just a Palestinian claim that, indeed, there were expulsions, but a claim by Ben Gurion himself.
I look forward to your explanation.
Kind regards
Damian Lataan
Needless to say, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response or any form of explanation because any response, other than an apology to the Palestinian people, would simply compound the Big Zionist Lie.
(LETHRIDGE, Alberta) – Pacifica and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation have joined forces in featuring Jonathan Kay in 9/11/11 coverage aimed at renewing the psychological warfare essential to the invasions, torture, Genocide, illegal occupations and Islamophobia characterizing the 9/11 wars.
Jonathan Kay was a featured guest highlighted in the network coverage of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 as broadcast by both Pacifica Radio in the United States and the English-language radio division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Kay wrote for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation a hate-inspired, tenth-anniversary text claiming that those engaged in seeking answers for the copious unanswered questions concerning 9/11 are engaged in “absolving” all Muslims collectively of a “terrible crime.” (p. 167)
Kay’s diatribe was funded by a prominent Israeli-based think tank whose leadership comes largely from the Project for the New American Century. PNAC is the think tank which observed in 2000 that its ambitious program of military expansion and invasions could not be met without a “catalyzing event” like a new Pearl Harbor. Entitled “Among the Truthers”, Kay diverts attention away from the evidence of what did and did not happen on 9/11. Instead Kay appoints himself as a psycho-anthropologist in pursuit of what this war promoter and Isamophobe describes as “the growing conspiracist underground.”
In his 9/11/11 coverage Michael Enright, host of CBC Radio’s flag ship show, Sunday Morning, demeaned on air his old colleague, Barrie Zwicker. Zwicker and Enright worked together for many years as reporters at The Globe and Mail, the main competitor in Canada of Kay’s National Post. Zwicker is the author of “Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11”. As his wonkey subtitle proclaims, Kay equates even the most accomplished of those engaged in the quest for 9/11 truth, investigators like Zwicker as well as Professor David Ray Griffin, with “Birthers, Armageddonites, Vaccine Hysterics, Hollywood Know-Nothings and Internet Addicts.”
Aged 77, the fit, mentally-agile Zwicker was a guest earlier today on Michael Enright’s program. The struggling host could not come anywhere close to keeping up with Zwicker. Instead Enright displayed an ignorance of his subject matter unbefitting of a broadcaster holding a high level of public trust in Canada’s Crown-owned agency. Like the CBC, the Pacifica stations in the United States have frequently featured Kay as an expert commentator on 9/11. While the CBC did not broach the subject of 9/11 skepticism in its 9/11/11 coverage, at least Pacifica did include in its tenth-anniversary broadcast the perspectives of, for instance, architect Richard Gage and University of Copenhagen Chemistry Professor, Niels Harrit. Both educators are highly critical of the official conspiracy theory of 9/11.
Russian and Chinese refusal to support UN sanctions against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of August has caused a dramatic outburst of criticism in Western media and from the local human rights activists. On Tuesday the Facebook group ‘Syrian Revolution 2011’ posted a banner in Russian condemning Moscow for allegedly ‘killing the Syrians’. Let’s have a brief look at who is actually killing in Syria and other Arab countries.
Despite a common prejudice the rioters opposing the Syrian authorities are by no means ‘peaceful protestors’. The Syrian army and police fight against well-trained and properly armed professional raiders supported by the West and the fifth column inside Syria.
Since April the total record of Syrian soldiers, policemen and security officers assassinated by the ‘demonstrators’ has reached 600, while the number of injured is even higher. Many of them are killed by knifes with utmost cruelty. Every second shot by the long range sniper fire from upper locations (tops of the multistory buildings) precisely above or under the vest. That’s a notably professional pattern of action. Although typical for Syria, Soviet and Russian-made arms are being widely used in the clashes, many victims were hit by the weapons of Western origin having higher killing power, including pump rifles. There are many mutilated by improvised explosive devices.
The tactics of provocations is another distinctive feature of the opposition’s modus operandi set to keep the situation destabilized and create havoc and bloodshed. Having the most significant gangs already dispersed by the governmental forces, the opposition renews these tactics. Here is the message from Elena, who has relatives in Syria:
‘The gangsters were planning a series of debacles on 27th day of Ramadan (August 26). This is a special day for Muslims, Laylat al-Qadr (the Night of Destiny), when the sky is believed to be open and Allah is fulfilling all dreams. They wanted to organize a series of explosions and assassinations to cause people’s outrage. Syrian security agencies were timely informed about these plans and managed to detain around 200 plotters. There were several foreign specialists in subversive actions among the detained as well as Arab mercenaries from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other countries. According to the evidence obtained, they were about to capture al Abbasein and al-Amaween squares in Damascus by pretending to organize pro-Assad march. When on the site, they schemed to change the slogans generating chaos, scuffles and eventually victims among the civilians.’ (Source in Russian)
NATO’s ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Libya has already led to unprecedented suffering of the Libyan people. The so-called ‘new government of Libya’ has shown to their former patrons in the UK, France and Italy that they do not care much about the sentiments of the international community. The mass lynching of black-skinned foreigners is now typical on the Libyan territories controlled by anti-Qaddafi forces. Mustafa Abdul Jalil, one of the leaders of the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC), has even admitted that ‘there are no bloodless revolutions… We should not be surprised if some casual victims of skirmishes are the case. Our soldiers cannot afford wasting time for identifying detained personalities. Their loyalty to the new authorities will be determined subjectively.’
As a result the number of victims of the new regime among Libyan residents from Chad, Niger and Sudan is counted in thousands. Khamis al-Bass, a Saudi journalist reports from Libya: ‘On my eyes several uniformed men dragged an entire black family off their asylum, accused them in espionage for Qaddafi and hanged them all.’
The chairman of the African Union commission, Jean Ping, said many members of the Union had not yet recognized the TNC as the legitimate government of Libya because of reports of anti-black violence. He warned that the rebellion had left Libya unstable and its huge arms caches prey to looting by extremists and smugglers.
The perspective of turning Libya into a new lawless territory resembling Somalia or Liberia is tangible. The civil war is gaining momentum as the NATO Special Forces get seemingly restrained from further involvement into conflict. Their loss toll is already too high. According to several insider reports, e.g. British SAS has lost 21 to 35 soldiers, most of them during the storm of Tripoli and helicopter crash on the Algerian border in August. So NATO apparently decided to pump the ‘new Libyan government’ with more weapons in the endeavor to turn the scale of the on-going faceoff in Libya in favor of the TNC and wash their hands. For example, this week the Russian news agencies reported a massive arms shipment to the TNC from Moldova. An air-craft IL-76 arrived in Kishinev from Benghazi on Tuesday to be loaded by a ‘cargo of Moldavian army’s stores with expired date of usage’. Defense Ministry of the Republic of Moldova officially commented that ‘the shipment is being carried out according to the contract between the Ministry and a Latvian company’. Most likely the delivery of the second-hand Soviet weapons (there are no other sources actually available at Moldavian stores) to Benghazi was arranged by K.S.A via Ltd, a Latvian Riga-based transportation firm and used Soviet arms supplier…
Factually we can see that a small mediator from Latvia, a NATO country, starts playing a key role in channeling old Soviet-made weapons to the Afro-Asian conflict zones. The outcome of such arming would be extremely dangerous. That will lead to the escalation of civil war in Libya and other hotspots meaning more victims and more sufferings for the civilians. We have already written about this strategy in previous posts here and here.
Last but not least, it would be surprising if NATO pumping up the Islamic Orient with old Soviet arms had not played the propagandistic card of ‘Russian weapons killing Arabs’. Indeed, since late August they have launched a ridiculous press campaign in Yemen, accusing Russia (!) of ‘supplying equipment to Saleh regime to be used against peaceful pro-democracy protesters’. In a propaganda stupor they are even claiming that the presidential palace in Sana’a is being defended by the Russian tanks T-92, a model that does not exist in nature! Here we will not get into details of US$ 4 billion deal for military modernization program of Yemeni army and police that United States provided to President Saleh in the framework of counter-terrorism cooperation in 2010. We just take a note that the ‘military convoys’ coming to Yemeni port of Hodeida are contracted by the same dubious Latvian company K.S. Avia transporting arms to the Libyan Transitional National Council.
The Israeli government has adopted a new plan to “resettle” the Bedouin residents of unrecognised villages in the Negev Desert into larger recognised settlements. This plan will affect tens of thousands of Bedouins in the Negev. Dressed up as a solution to the problem of unrecognised Bedouin villages, this plan in fact is a blueprint for ethnic cleansing and the destruction of the Bedouin way of life.
As soon as Israel was established in 1948, it began a ruthless campaign of displacement and expulsion against the Bedouins, the indigenous community of the Negev (Al-Naqab in Arabic) Desert, which had been living there for a thousand years before the establishment of Israel. Most of the community were expelled or forced to flee during the 1948 war. The remainder were forcibly relocated to a small area in the northeast of the Negev known as the siyag. However, Israel continued with its expulsion campaign well into the 1950s. At that time, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper described how the army would drive the Bedouin off their land:
“The army’s desert patrols would turn up in the midst of a Bedouin encampment day after day, dispersing it with a sudden burst of machine-gun fire until the sons of the desert were broken and, gathering what little was left of their belongings, led their camels in long silent strings into the heart of the Sinai desert”
The Israeli government was determined to destroy the indigenous people of the Negev and turn it into an area for Jews only. On official Israeli maps all the Arabic locality names were replaced by invented Hebrew ones. About 85% of the Negev was designated as “state land”. All Bedouin villages there were declared illegal and unrecognized. Being confined to a small, marginal area, the Bedouin were forced to give up their nomadic way of life, ceasing to move around with their herds. The Israeli government passed a law which made it effectively illegal for the Bedouin to graze their black goats, their most preferred and useful animal, and today the black goat is nearly extinct.
In the 1970s, the Israeli government created seven towns for the Bedouins, promising them access to basic services such as water, electricity, education, and healthcare. The largest of these was Rahat. Israel’s true goal was to put an end to the unrecognised villages and gain more land in the Negev for Jewish settlement. About half of the Bedouin moved to these towns while the other half refused to abandon their unrecognised villages, clinging to what was left of their traditional way of life. The towns are widely regarded as a failure, lacking essential services and infrastructure. The Bedouin today are the poorest and most disadvantaged community in Israel. Many lead a squalid existence, calling tin shacks home. 66% of them live below the poverty line and in the unrecognised villages that figure reaches 80%.
Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government has stepped up the campaign against the Bedouin, as part of the wider campaign against the Arab community within Israel’s 1948 borders which has seen the targeting of leading Arab politicians such as Knesset member Hanin al-Zoabi and the passage of laws specifically aimed against the Arab minority. The new plan that has been adopted, known as the Prawer Report, is being sold by the government as a way of “absorbing” the Bedouins into wider society and improving their lives. Those resettled are to receive financial compensation and the plan will cost the Israeli government 6.8 billion shekels (£1.15 billion) However, on closer examination, the report’s true intentions become clear. The Bedouin claim 600,000 dunums of land in the Negev – only 5% of the total area of their ancestral lands. They have continuously had this claim rejected by the Israeli courts. The original report of the Prawer Commission estimated that the Bedouin were entitled to 187,000 dunums. That figure was reduced by the National Security Commission to whom the report was presented to 100,000 dunums, under pressure from right-wing ministers in the government. Today, on average a Bedouin farmer in the Negev possesses 3 dunums of land while his Jewish counterpart possesses 30. The Prawer Commission, which includes no representatives from the Bedouin community, was itself a replacement for the earlier Goldberg Commission which included Bedouins and was seen by Netanyahu as too lenient.
All this points to the ideological motivation behind the Netanyahu government’s new policy towards the Bedouin. Informed by extreme right wing Zionism, the government sees the Bedouin, the original inhabitants of the Negev, and the most powerless and disadvantaged community in Israel today, as an enemy and an existential threat. The “development” of the Negev – code for changing the demographic identity of the area – has become a preoccupation for the government, the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund. At the “Negev 2010” conference in Beersheba, held in March of that year, senior ministers put forward a plan to attract 300,000 settlers to the area. One of them was the housing minister, Ariel Atias, who previously said that it was “a national duty to prevent the spread” of Israel’s Arab citizens. For his part, the chief executive of the Jewish National Fund in the United States said, “if we don’t get 500,000 people to move to the Negev in the next five years, we’re going to lose it”, clearly referring to the Bedouin.
In order to see the extent of the Israeli government’s hostility to the Bedouin, one need look no further than the unrecognised village of Al-Araqib. This community, which has existed since the nineteenth century, has been demolished 29 times by the Netanyahu government, each time being rebuilt by its inhabitants immediately afterwards. These bloody-minded demolitions, aimed at forcing the inhabitants to flee in order to give their land to neighbouring Jewish farmers, illustrate the true agenda of the Israeli government.
If the Prawer Plan were to be implemented, all their villages will be destroyed. The Bedouin will not only lose their land but also their livestock and what is left of their way of life. The towns they will be forced into, which lack essential services and infrastructure, and are ridden with poverty and crime resemble ghettos more than actual cities. The identity of the Bedouin would be destroyed and they would become outcasts in their own land. This plan brings to mind the forced relocations of the Native Americans in the United States and the resulting destruction of their communities. The Israeli government is trying to disguise its racism and rapacity behind a plan presented as being in the interests of a community while its real intent is to destroy it and take over its land.
The American people are told, again and again, that 9/11 “changed everything.” Is this really true?
The answer is both yes, and no.
Yes, because 9/11 prompted policies of regime change, preemptive strike, and humanitarian intervention, which, in turn, triggered the wars and military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya. At home, it provided justification for the institution of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, outsourcing of torture, restriction of personal/civil liberties and the ballooning of the Pentagon budget.
And no, because the militaristic policies and security measures that were thus put into effect in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks had been in the making for nearly a dozen years before the attacks took place.
There is overwhelming evidence that the US policies of preemptive strike and regime change started not with the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001 but with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Beneficiaries of war dividends, that is, the military-industrial-security complex, were alarmed by the demise of the Soviet Union, by the end of the “communist threat” as the ready-made justifier of continued escalation of the Pentagon budget, and by the demands for “peace dividends.” “What we were afraid of was people who would say . . . ‘Let’s bring all of the troops home, and let’s abandon our position in Europe,’” acknowledged Paul D. Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense under President Bush Sr. “It’s hard to imagine just how uncertain the world looked after the end of the Cold War.”
Not surprisingly, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, and in the face of widespread demands for “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the military-security capital moved swiftly to fend off such demands by successfully inventing all kinds of “new threats to the national interests of the United States.” Instead of the Soviet Union, the “menace of rogue states, global terrorism, and militant Islam” would have to do as new enemies. Having thus effectively substituted “new sources of threat” for the “communist threat” of the Cold War era, powerful beneficiaries of military spending (working through the Pentagon and a number of militaristic think tanks like the Project for the New American Century, Center for Security Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and National Institute for Public Policy) managed not only to maintain but, in fact, expand the Pentagon budget beyond the Cold War years.
The 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, global terrorism, and US military aggressions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere in the Muslim-Arab world can be better understood against this background: the systemic or internal dynamics of the military-industrial-security complex as an existentially-driven juggernaut to war and militarism that, in the aftermath of the Cold War era, needed all kinds of enemies and boogiemen in order to justify its continued usurpation of the lion’s share of the public finance, or the US treasury.
Major post-Cold War US military strategies such as regime change were formulated not after the 9/11 attacks, or under President Bush Jr., but under President Bush Sr., that is, soon after the demise of the Soviet Union. The early 1990s Pentagon architects of those strategies included the then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz, then Undersecretary of Defense, Zalmay Khalilzad, then a Wolfowitz aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Strategy and Colin L. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Most of what the Pentagon team crafted in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War was published as a government document under Cheney’s name as America’s “Defense Strategy for the 1990s”—the document also came to be known as Defense Planning Guidance.
Almost all of the Pentagon’s post-Cold War aggressive military strategies such as preemptive strike, expansion of NATO, regime change, nation building, or humanitarian intervention can be traced back to the notorious Defense Planning Guidance of the early 1990s. As James Mann (of the Center for Strategic & International Studies) put it, “What the Pentagon officials had succeeded in doing, within months of the Soviet collapse, was to lay out the intellectual blueprint for a new world dominated—then, now and in the future—by U.S. military power.”
Although President Clinton did not officially embrace Cheney’s Defense Planning Guidance, he did not disclaim it either. And while he slightly slowed down the growth in the pentagon budget, he too had his own share of military operations abroad—in Somalia, Iraq, Haiti, and various provinces of the former Yugoslavia. The Federation of American Scientists has recorded a list of US foreign military engagements in the 1990s which shows that in the first decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, that is, under Presidents Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, the United States engaged in 134 such operations. Here is a sample: Operation Eagle Eye (Kosovo), Operation Determined Effort (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Operation Quick Lift (Croatia), Operation Nomad Vigil (Albania), Operation Desert Thunder (Iraq), Operation Seva Verde (Columbia), Operation Constant Vigil (Bolivia), Operation Fundamental Response (Venezuela), Operation Infinite Reach (Sudan/Afghanistan), Operation Safe Border (Peru/Ecuador), Operation United Shield (Somalia), Operation Safe Haven/Safe Passage (Cuba), Operation Sea Signal (Haiti), Operation Safe Harbor (Haiti), Operation Desert Storm (Southwest Asia), and many more.
With the accession of George W. Bush to the presidency, all the Pentagon contributors to the notorious 1992 Defense Planning Guidance also returned to positions of power in the government. Cheney of course became Vice President, Powell became Secretary of State, Wolfowitz moved into the number two position at the Pentagon, as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, became the Vice President’s chief of staff and national security adviser.
Although George W. Bush’s administration thus arrived in the White House with plans of “regime change” in the Arab-Muslim world, it could not carry out those plans without a pretext. The 9/11 attacks (regardless of who planned and carried them out) provided the needed pretext. The evidence thus clearly shows that, contrary to the claims of many critics, including some distinguished figures like Noam Chomsky, 9/11 served more as an excuse, or boogieman, than a “trap” laid by Osama bin Laden in order to bleed and disgrace the United States by prompting it to wage war and military aggression against the Arab-Muslim world.
The administration wasted no time manipulating the public’s fear of further terrorist attacks to rally support for the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. As the administration was preparing for the invasion of Iraq in early 2003, it also dusted off the Pentagon’s 1992 Defense Planning Guidance and promoted it as the “Bush Doctrine” for the new, post-9/11 world. The post-9/11 version of Defense Planning Guidance retains—indeed, strengthens—all the major elements of the 1992 version, although at times it uses slightly modified terminology.
That the U.S. military response to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and its response to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001 were basically the same should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the dynamics and profit imperatives of the business of war: continued increase of the Pentagon budget and continued expansion of the sales markets for the war industry. The pretexts or tactics for pursuing higher war dividends may change (from the “threat of communism” to the “threat of rogue states, or global terrorism, or militant Islam”) but the objective or strategy remains the same—permanent war and, consequently, continuous escalation of the Pentagon budget and higher profits for the interests vested in military/security capital.
The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments.
Let’s examine the case against “the truthers” presented by Ted Rall, Ann Barnhardt, and Alexander Cockburn.
But first let’s define who “the truthers” are.
The Internet has made it possible for anyone to have a web site and to rant and speculate to their heart’s content. There are a large number of “9/11 conspiracy theorists”.
Many on both sides of the issue are equally ignorant. Neither side has any shame about demonstrating ignorance.
Both sides of the issue have conspiracy theories.
9/11 was a conspiracy whether a person believes that it was an inside job or that a handful of Arabs outwitted the entire intelligence apparatus of the Western world and the operational response of NORAD and the US Air Force.
For one side to call the other conspiracy theorists is the pot calling the kettle black.
The question turns not on name-calling but on evidence.
The 9/11 Truth movement was not created by bloggers ranting on their web sites. It was created by professional architects and engineers some of whom are known for having designed steel high rise buildings.
It was created by distinguished scientists, such as University of Copenhagen nano-Chemist Niels Harrit who has 60 scientific papers to his credit and physicist Steven Jones.
It was created by US Air Force pilots and commercial airline pilots who are expert at flying airplanes.
It was created by firefighters who were in the twin towers and who personally heard and experienced numerous explosions including explosions in the sub-basements. It was created by members of 9/11 families who desire to know how such an improbable event as 9/11 could possibly occur.
The professionals and the scientists are speaking from the basis of years of experience and expert knowledge. Moreover, the scientists are speaking from the basis of careful research into the evidence that exists.
When an international research team of scientists spends 18 months studying the components in the dust from the towers and the fused pieces of concrete and steel, they know what they are doing. When they announce that they have definite evidence of incendiaries and explosives, you can bet your life that that have the evidence.
When a physicist proves that Building 7 (the stories not obscured by other buildings) fell at free fall speed and NIST has to acknowledge that he is correct, you can bet your life that the physicist is correct.
When fire department captains and clean-up teams report molten steel–and their testimony is backed up with photographs–in the debris of the ruins weeks and months after the buildings’ destruction, you can bet your life the molten steel was there.
When the same authorities report pumping fire suppressants and huge quantities of water with no effect on the molten steel, you can bet your life that the temperature long after the buildings’ destruction remained extremely high, far higher than any building fire can reach.
When the architects, engineers, and scientists speak, they offer no theory of who is responsible for 9/11. They state that the known evidence supports neither the NIST reports nor the 9/11 Commission Report. They say that the explanation that the government has provided is demonstrably wrong and that an investigation is required if we are to discover the truth about the event.
It is not a conspiracy theory to examine the evidence and to state that the evidence does not support the explanation that has been given.
That is the position of the 9/11 Truth movement.
What is the position of the movement’s critics? Ted Rall says: “Everything I’ve read and watched on Truther sites is easily dismissed by anyone with a basic knowledge of physics and architecture. (I spent three years in engineering school.)”
Wow! What powerful credentials. Has Rall ever designed a high rise steel building? Could Rall engage in a debate with a professor of nano-chemistry? Could he refute Newton’s laws in a debate with university physicists? Does Rall know anything about maneuvering airplanes? Does he have an explanation why 100 firefighters, janitors, and police report hearing and experiencing explosions that they did not hear or experience?
Clearly, Ted Rall has no qualifications whatsoever to make any judgment about the judgments of experts whose knowledge exceeds his meager understanding by a large amount.
Ann Barnhardt writes: “I gotta tell you, I’ve just about had it with these 9/11 truthers. If there is one phenomenon in our sick, sick culture that sums up how far gone and utterly damaged we are as a people, it is 9/11 trutherism. It pretty much covers everything: self-loathing, antisemitism, zero knowledge of rudimentary physics and a general inability to think logically.” She goes down hill from here.
Amazing, isn’t she? Physics professors have “zero knowledge of rudimentary physics.”
Internationally recognized logicians have “a general inability to think logically.” People trained in the scientific method who use it to seek truth are “self-loathing.” If you doubt the government’s account you are antisemitic. Barnhardt then provides her readers with a lesson in physics, structural architecture and engineering, and the behavior of steel under heat and stress that is the most absolute nonsense imaginable.
Obviously, Barnhardt knows nothing whatsoever about what she is talking about, but overflowing with hubris she dismisses real scientists and professionals with ad hominem arguments. She adds to her luster with a video of herself tearing out pages of the Koran, which she has marked with slices of bacon, and burning the pages.
Now we come to Alexander Cockburn. He is certainly not stupid. I know him. He is pleasant company. He provides interesting intellectual conversation. I like him. Yet, he also arrogantly dismisses highly qualified experts who provide evidence contrary to the official government story of 9/11.
Cockburn avoids evidence presented by credentialed experts and relies on parody. He writes that the conspiracists claim that the twin towers “pancaked because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges.”
Little doubt but there are bloggers somewhere in the vast Internet world who say this. But this is not what the professionals are saying who have provided evidence that the official account is not correct. The experts are simply saying that the evidence does not support the official explanation. More recently, an international team of scientists has reported finding unequivocal evidence of incendiaries and explosives. They have not said anything about who planted them. Indeed, they have said that other scientists should test their conclusions by repeating the research. After calling experts “conspiracy kooks,” Alex then damns them for not putting forward “a scenario of the alleged conspiracy.”
Moreover, not a single one of the experts believes the towers “pancaked.” This was an early explanation that, I believe, was tentatively put forward by NIST, but it had to be abandoned because of the speed with which the buildings came down and due to other problems.
Unlike Rall and Barnhardt, Cockburn does refer to evidence, but it is second or third-hand hearsay evidence that is nonsensical on its face. For example, Cockburn writes that Chuck Spinney “tells me that ‘there ARE pictures taken of the 757 plane hitting Pentagon–they were taken by the surveillance cameras at Pentagon’s heliport, which was right next to impact point. I have seen them both–stills and moving pictures. I just missed seeing it personally, but the driver of the van I just got out of in South Parking saw it so closely that he could see the terrified faces of passengers in windows.’”
If there were pictures or videos of an airliner hitting the Pentagon, they would have been released years ago. They would have been supplied to the 9/11 Commission. Why would the government refuse for 10 years to release pictures that prove its case? The FBI confiscated all film from all surveillance cameras. No one has seen them, much less a Pentagon critic such as Spinney.
I have to say that the van driver must have better eyes than an eagle if he could see expressions on passenger faces through those small airliner portholes in a plane traveling around 500 mph. Try it sometime. Sit on your front steps and try to discern the expressions of automobile passengers through much larger and clearer windows traveling down your street in a vehicle moving 30 mph. Then kick the speed up 16.7 times to 500 mph and report if you see anything but a blur.
Cockburn’s other evidence that 9/11 truthers are kooks is a letter that Herman Soifer, who claims to be a retired structural engineer, wrote to him summarizing “the collapse of Buildings 1 and 2 succinctly.” This is what Soifer, who “had followed the plans and engineering of the Towers during construction” wrote to Alex: “The towers were basically tubes, essentially hollow.” This canard was disposed of years ago. If Alex had merely googled the plans of the buildings, he would have discovered that there were no thin-walled hollow tubes, but a very large number of massively thick steel beams.
Cockburn’s willingness to dismiss as kooks numerous acknowledged experts on the basis of a claim that a van driver saw terrified faces of passengers moving at 500 mph and a totally erroneous description in a letter from a person who knew nothing whatsoever about the structural integrity of the buildings means that he is a much braver person than I.
Before I call architects kooks whose careers were spent building steel high rises, I would want to know a lot more about the subject than I do. Before I poke fun at nano-chemists and physicists, I would want to at least be able to read their papers and find the scientific flaws in their arguments.
Yet, none of the people who ridicule 9/11 skeptics are capable of this. How, for example, can Rall, Barnhardt, or Cockburn pass judgment on a nano-chemist with 40 years of experience and 60 scientific publications to his credit?
They cannot, but nevertheless do. They don’t hesitate to pass judgment on issues about which they have no knowledge or understanding. This is an interesting psychological phenomenon worthy of study and analysis.
Another interesting phenomenon is the strong emotional reactions that many have to 9/11, an event about which they have little information. Even the lead members of the 9/11 Commission itself have said that information was withheld from them and the commission was set up to fail. People who rush to the defense of NIST do not even know what they are defending as NIST refuses to release the details of the simulation upon which NIST bases its conclusion.
There is no 9/11 debate.
On the one hand there are credentialed experts who demonstrate problems in the official account, and on the other hand there are non-experts who denounce the experts as conspiracy kooks.
The experts are cautious and careful about what they say, and their detractors have thrown caution and care to the wind. That is the state of the debate.
The instructions were simple. “Get up you fucking bastard”, “Get up you fucking ape” screamed the soldiers, followed by kicks and punches. Sometimes the blows came from multiple fists and boots.
Getting up meant squatting, half leaning against a wall, arms pointing straight out. This is known as a stress position.
The British army made ten Iraqi hotel workers spend days like this. Even if they stayed in position they were beaten, had urine poured over them or were forced to drink it. They had their heads covered with hoods.
It is torture and it was systematic. It is what being “questioned” by the occupying forces in Iraq really meant.
By the end of this ordeal, hotel worker Baha Mousa was dead. One soldier later remarked, “We kicked him to death”.
British soldiers inflicted “violent and cowardly” assaults on Iraqi civilians, according to a public inquiry into the killing published last week. The Gage inquiry concluded that an “appalling episode of serious, gratuitous violence” by the British army killed Baha.
Baha died within 36 hours of being taken into British military custody. He received 93 external injuries, including a broken nose and also internal injuries including fractured ribs.
He died from asphyxia.
The case is an indictment of military culture. It shows the vicious treatment that the army doled out to civilians it interrogated.
Robbed
The torture of Baha Mousa began when the army raided a hotel in Basra, Iraq, on 14 September 2003. Baha had only been working at the hotel for about two weeks. It was one of three jobs that he had in order to support his family.
The army arrested ten workers in the raid—and soldiers robbed the safe. A number of those arrested were kicked and their heads were held in flushing toilets. Much worse was to come.
Soldiers took the ten away with instructions not to use hoods—because a TV crew had turned up outside. But they beat the prisoners again before reaching the detention centre. Once there, the ordeal began in earnest. Prisoners recalled being beaten to force them to dance “like Michael Jackson”.
The inquiry heard evidence that they were scalded with boiling water, urinated on, kicked, punched and sleep deprived.
One recalled how he was given a bottle in which to urinate. When he asked for a drink on the third day, the contents of this bottle were poured into his mouth.
A soldier also grabbed his face through the sandbags and tried to force his fingers into the detainee’s eyes.
Others were given scalding water to drink and cold water was poured over their heads. One heard Baha Mousa shouting and screaming, saying, “I’ll die”, “my nose”, “I’m bleeding”.
The soldiers had a competition to see who could kick a prisoner the hardest.
The report notes that one prisoner “had petrol rubbed under his nose, water poured over his head and a lighter held close to his head, with the obvious intention of causing him to think petrol was about to be ignited.”
And so it continued. “For almost the whole of the period up to Baha Mousa’s death… the detainees were kept handcuffed, hooded and in stress positions in extreme heat and conditions of some squalor,” the report said.
The inquiry was also played a video of one soldier, Corporal Donald Payne, screaming at the prisoners and calling them “fucking apes”.
Payne became the first member of the armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty to inhumanely treating civilians at a court martial in 2006.
The soldiers put on a show where they made the prisoners into a “choir”—by beating them till they screamed. “Towards the end of the second day they were all in so much pain that he only had to poke them to get them to make a noise,” said former soldier Gareth Aspinall in the report evidence. “When visitors came across they also found it funny.”
On one occasion, soldiers held a “free for all” where a number of them attacked all the Iraqis at once. In between the beatings, prisoners were questioned. They had done nothing wrong.
Failed
The report names 19 soldiers as having assaulted prisoners—although the inquiry has not been able to identify several others. It says that Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the unit’s commander, “bears a heavy responsibility for these events”. Retired appeal court judge Sir William Gage accepted that Mendonca did not know that the abuse was going on.
But he said Mendonca failed by not knowing “precisely what conditioning involved”.
The report does not say that there was systematic torture of Iraqi prisoners. But it does point out that Baha’s death wasn’t a one-off incident.
Gage puts the blame at the door of individual soldiers and officers, as well as on poor internal communications. He condemns the “loss of discipline and a lack of moral courage” that meant soldiers did not report the abuse.
Soldiers repeatedly lied about what went on. Time and time again, soldiers claimed not to remember what they had seen or done.
That amnesia went right to the top.
Killing
Senior commanders were apparently ignorant of a ban imposed in 1972 on the use of five torture techniques, including hooding, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
While highly critical of the evidence of a number of soldiers, and of the lies told about the Iraqis’ detention, Gage ruled that there was no cover-up of Baha’s death.
After Baha’s killing, the government claimed that hooding of prisoners had stopped, which it hadn’t, and that it wasn’t used for interrogations, which it was.
The report says that while the Ministry of Defence (MoD) had provided inaccurate information, neither it, the civil service, nor ministers had intended to mislead. Instead the inquiry condemns the “corporate failure” of the MoD.
This included then armed forces minister Adam Ingram’s claim that he was “not aware of any incidents in which UK interrogators are alleged to have used hooding as an interrogation technique”.
But Ingram had been sent a memo explaining what had happened to Baha Mousa. Ingram claimed, “It certainly would not have been within my power to remember everything that I had been informed.”
The report also notes the memory loss of then Labour defence secretary Geoff Hoon. It says, “His answers suggested that he had not perhaps fully grasped the respect in which his response turned out to have been inaccurate.”
The report provides evidence that soldiers were trained in what are essentially torture techniques. This, combined with a culture of racism and violence, explains why torture was so commonplace.
Private Stuart MacKenzie of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment was one of those guarding Baha. Just days before the hotel raid, MacKenzie wrote in his diary, “Found 3 Ali Babas at WTP7, beat them up with sticks, filmed it. Good day so far.”
The inquiry concludes only that there should be better training for what the army calls “the harsh approach”. And it proposes the army drops teaching methods to “maintain the shock of capture” and “prolong the shock of capture”.
The government immediately rejected this, claiming that lives could be put at risk unless the army could deploy all “necessary” techniques.
The inquiry has shone a light on the brutality of the war in Iraq. But it has left the establishment untouched, the command structure and the politicians blameless. That is not justice.
During the first days of September, the Israeli military administration announced its decision to temporarily suspend demolitions in the occupied Palestinian territory, in recognition of the double standard applied for years to Palestinians and Jewish settlers. Nevertheless two days after the international media picked up this news, the same Israeli authorities ordered several demolitions in the regions of Hebron, Nablus and Jerusalem.
In the south hills of Hebron, soldiers demolished a zinc house with two rooms and a residential tent donated by an international NGO in Um al-Khay, a small town populated by Bedouins displaced from the Negev. The demolition meant that 20 people, 16 of them children, are now without a home. Israeli forces also destroyed in the same town a sanitary unit that had been built by an Israeli organization. More than 15 people used this facility.
The military also showed up last Thursday (September 8) to As-Samu. This Palestinian village is in the south of the West Bank and in the middle of the Separation Wall’s projected route. According to Israeli authorities’ plans, As-Samu inhabitants will lose 10,000 dunams of land when the Wall is built. For the time being, the military continues to executive the endless demolition orders in the area. This time they destroyed one kilometer of electricity infrastructure.
Meanwhile, just 14 kilometers east of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli soldiers demolished three agricultural cisterns in An-Nassariya. Around 1,300 people live in this village that also hosts the healthcare facilities for all the surrounding towns. Most of the people in this region depend on agriculture to live and this is exactly what the occupying forces seem to be focusing on destroying. Last July Israel demolished three wells and essential supporting infrastructure, including pumps and pipes. Even though An-Nassariya is near the city of Nablus, it is considered Area B, according to the Oslo Accords design.
Finally four kilometers north of East Jerusalem, in the route going to Nablus, Israeli soldiers burst in the small town of Nabi Samuel on the same day. Home to 20 Muslim families and the tomb of the Prophet Samuel, Israel has declared this zone Area C and has fenced it off completely. Over the years Israeli authorities have confiscated land in the area and demolished all new construction. On Thursday the newest victim was the owner of a fruit and vegetable stand. Not only was his stand destroyed, but all his goods were confiscated. The owner later noted that this had been the fourth demolition this year. Desperate and without hope, he and his family promised to go on a hunger strike.
I will begin my talk with an unusual confession. Though I was born in Israel, in the first thirty years of my life I did not know much about the Nakba, the brutal and racially driven ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in 1948 by the newly born Israeli State. My peers and myself knew about a single massacre, namely, Deir Yassin but we were not at all familiar with the vast scale of atrocities committed by our grandparents. We believed that the Palestinians had voluntarily fled. We were told that they had run away and we did not find any reason to doubt that this had indeed been the case.
Let me tell you that in all my years in Israel, I have never heard the word Nakba spoken. This may sound pathetic, or even absurd to you — but what about you? Shouldn’t you also ask yourself — when was the first time you heard the word Nakba? Perhaps you can also try to recall when this word settled comfortably into your lexicon. Let me help you here — I have carried out a little research amongst my European and American Palestinian solidarity friends, and most of them had only heard the word Nakba for the first time, just a few short years ago, whilst others admitted that they had only started to use the word themselves three or four years ago.
But isn’t that a slightly strange state of affairs? After all, the Nakba took place more than six decades ago. How is it that only recently it found its way into our symbolic order?
The answer is, in some respects, quite a straightforward one: to be in the world means to be subject to changes and transformations. It entails grasping and reassessing the past through different present realisations. History is shaped and re-shaped as we proceed in time. Accordingly, we seem to understand the Palestinian expulsion and plight through our current understanding of Israeli brutality: In the light of the destruction Israel left behind in Lebanon in 2006, followed by our witnessing of the genocidal crimes performed in Gaza in ‘Operation Cast Lead’, and observing the footage of the IDF execution of peace activists on the Mavi Marmara — we have subsequently, managed to amend our picture of the scale of the 1948 Palestinian tragedy. As we grasp more fully what the Israelis are capable of — we are also able to re-construct our vision of Israel’s ‘original sin’ i.e. the Nakba. We are able to empathise more deeply with the expelled Palestinians of 1948 via our current evolving comprehension of Israel, the Israeli, ‘Israeli-ness’, Jewish nationalism, global Zionism, and the relentless Israeli lobby.
The meaning and significance of it becomes clearer — the past is far from being a precisely sealed off set of events with a fixed meaning, pre-decided for us by a fixed viewpoint and then closed off from further debate. Instead, our understanding of the past is shaped and transformed, constantly, as we progress and grow in knowledge and experience. And, as much as our current reality is shaped by our world vision — our past too, is shaped, re-shaped, viewed and re-viewed by the narratives we happen to follow at any given time.
This is the true meaning of ‘being in time’; this is the essence of temporality, and this is what historical thinking is all about. People possess the capacity to ‘think historically’– to be transformed by the past — but also to allow the past to be constantly shaped, and re-shaped, as they proceed towards the unknown.
Deir Yassin Remembered
But here is an interesting set of historical anecdotes that deserve our attention: Indeed, one may be left perplexed on learning that — just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945 — the newly-formed Jewish state ethnically cleansed the vast majority of the indigenous population of Palestine (1948). Just five years after the defeat of Nazism — the Jewish state brought to life racially-discriminatory return laws in order to prevent the 1948 Palestinian refugees from coming back to their cities, villages, fields and orchards. These laws, still in place today, were not categorically different from the notorious Nuremberg race Laws. One may also be totally perplexed to find out that Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, is located on the confiscated land of a Palestinian village Ein Karem, next door to Deir Yassin, which is probably the ultimate symbol of the Palestinian Shoa.
One may wonder what is the root cause of this unique institutional lack of compassion that has been exhibited and maintained by Israel and Israelis for decades. One might expect that Jews, having been victims of oppression and discrimination themselves, would locate themselves at the forefront of the battle against evil and racism. One might expect the victims of discrimination to resist inflicting pain on others.
Yet, some deeper and far more general questions come to mind here — how is it that the Jewish political and ideological discourse fails so badly to draw the obvious and necessary moral lessons from history and Jewish history in particular? How is it that in spite of ‘Jewish history’ appearing to be an endless tale of Jewish suffering, the Jewish State is so blind to the suffering it inflicts on others?
On the face of it, what we see here is a form of alienation from historical thinking. Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has noted that Rabbinical Judaism could be realised as an attempt to replace historical thinking: instead of history, the Torah provided Rabbinical Judaism with a spiritually-driven plot. It conveyed an image of purpose and fate. However, things changed in the 19th century. Due to the rapid emancipation of European Jewry together with the rise of nationalism and the spirit of Enlightenment, assimilated European Jews felt bound to redefine their beginnings in secular, national and rational terms. This is when Jews ‘invented’ themselves as ‘people’ and as a ‘class’: like other European nations, Jews felt the urge to possess a coherent narrative about themselves and their history.
Inventing history is not a crime – people and nations often do it. Yet, in spite of the rapid process of assimilation, Jewish secular ideology and politics failed to encompass the real meaning of historical thought and historical understanding. Indeed, the assimilated secular Jew was very successful in dropping God and other religious identifiers. And yet, at least politically, the assimilated Jew failed to replace divinity with an alternative Jewish anthropocentric secular ethical and metaphysical realisation.
Temporality and Alienation
I only recently understood that the ‘Jewish Identity political discourse’ is not only foreign to history; not only is it actually antagonistic towards historical thinking, but it is also detached from the notion of temporality.
Temporality is inherent to the human condition: ‘To be’ is ‘to be in time’. Whether we like it or not, we are doomed to be hung between the past that is drifting away into the void, and the unknown that proceeds towards us from the future.
Through the present, the so-called ‘here and now’, we meditate on that which has passed away. Occasionally we hope for forgiveness; and sometimes we are cheered by a pleasing memory. At other times we become angry with ourselves for not having reacted appropriately at some moment in our past. And from time to time we may recall a sensation of love.
In the present we can also envisage the future, and in the awareness of that presence we may sense the fear of the unknown. But we can also experience waves of happiness and optimism when the future seems to smile at us.
More often than not, we draw lessons from the past. But far more crucially important and interesting perhaps, is the idea that an imaginary future can easily re-write, or even re shape the past.
I will try to elucidate this subtle idea through a simple and hypothetical yet horrifying war scenario:
For instance, we can easily envisage a horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called ‘pre-emptive’ attack on Iran could escalate into a disastrous nuclear conflict, in which tens of millions of people in the Middle East and Europe would perish.
I would guess that amongst the few survivors of such a nightmarish imaginary scenario, some may be bold enough to say what they ‘really think’ of the Jewish state and its inherent murderous tendencies.
The above is obviously a horrific fictional scenario, and by no means a wishful one, yet such a vision of a ‘possible’ horrendous development should restrain Israeli or Zionist aggression towards Iran.
But as we know, this hardly happens — Israeli officials threaten to flatten and nuke Iran all too often.
Seemingly, Israelis and Zionists around the world fail to see their own actions within a historical perspective or context. They fail to look at their actions in terms of their consequences. From an ethical perspective, the above ‘imaginary’ scenario could or should prevent Israel from even contemplating any attack on Iran. Yet, what we see in practice is the complete opposite: Israel wouldn’t miss an opportunity to threaten Iran.
My explanation is simple. The Jewish political and ideological discourse is foreign to the notion of temporality. Israel is blind to the consequences of its actions; it only thinks of its actions in terms of short-term pragmatism. Within the Jewish political discourse the time arrow is a one-way road. It goes forward, yet it never turns the other way. There is never an attempt to revise the past in the light of a possible future. Instead of temporality, Israel thinks in terms of an extended present.
But Israel is just part of the problem. The Jewish lobby is also blinded to the immanent disaster it brings on Diaspora Jews. Like Israel, the lobby only thinks in terms of short term gain. It seeks more and more power. It never looks back , and neither does it regret.
To sum up, the notion of temporality is the ability to accept that the past is ‘elastic’. The notion of temporality allows the time arrow to move in both directions. From the past, forward, but also, from the (imaginary) future, backward. Temporality allows the past to be shaped and revised in the light of a search for meaning. History, and historical thinking, are the capacity to re-think the past. Ethics is bounded with temporality, for ethics is the ability to judge and reflect on issues that transcend beyond the ‘here and now’. To think ethically is to produce a principled judgment that stands the test of time.
Looking at the Past
To a significant extent then, the ability to revise one’s perspective on, and understanding of the past, is the true essence of historical thinking — it allows us to reshape our comprehension of the past through an awareness of an imaginary future perspective, and vice versa. To think historically becomes a meaningful event once our past experience allows us to foresee a better future.
Revisionism then, is imbued in the deepest possible understanding of temporality, and therefore inherent to humanity and humanism. And it is obvious that those who oppose proper and open historical debate are operating not only against the foundations of humanism, but also against ethics.
And yet, in Israel some lawmakers insist that commemoration and historical debate of the Nakba should become illegal. And, interestingly enough, Jewish anti Zionists also oppose any attempt to deconstruct or revise Jewish past. I, for instance, have been criticised recently for being an ‘anti Semite’ for suggesting that Zionism is not colonialism. In case you do not know, this conference was under severe pressure mounted by some leading Jewish anti Zionists who insisted on preventing any discussion about the history of Jewish suffering.
But I guess that it is pretty clear by now that my philosophical outlook is not very flattering to Jewish political and ideological discourse. Yet, the truth must be spoken: Jewish political discourse openly opposes any form of revisionism. Jewish politics is there to fix and cement a narrative and terminology.
Though the Zionist ideology presents itself as a historical narrative, it took me many years to grasp that Zionism, Jewish identity politics and ideology were actually crude, blunt assaults on history, the notion of history and temporality. Zionism, in fact, only mimics an historical discourse. In practice, Zionism like other forms of Jewish political discourse, defies any form of historical discussion. Thus, those who follow the Zionist and Jewish political ideologies are doomed to drift away from humanism, humanity and ethical conduct. Such an explanation may throw light on Israeli criminal conduct and Jewish institutional support for Israel.
Self-Reflection Is Overdue
Inventing a past, as Shlomo Sand suggests, is not the most worrying issue when it comes to Israel and Zionism. People and nations do tend to invent their past.
However, celebrating one’s phantasmic past at the expense of others is obviously a concerning ethical issue. But in the case of Israel the problem goes deeper. It is the attempt to seal the yesterdays that led to the collective ethical collapse of Israel and its supporting crowd.
However, as much as I enjoy bashing Israel and Zionism, I will also have to ask you to self-reflect. Sadly enough, Israel is not alone. As tragic as it appears to be, America and Britain also managed to willingly give up on temporality. It is the lack of true historical discourse that stopped Britain and America from understanding their future, present and past. As in the case of Jewish ‘history’, American and British politicians insist on a banal, binary and simplistic historic tale regarding WWII, The Cold War, Islam, and the events of 9/11. Tragically, the criminal Anglo-American genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, AKA ‘The War against Terror’, is a continuation of our self-inflicted blindness. Since Britain and America failed to grasp the necessary message from the massacres in Hamburg and Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, there was nothing that could stop English-speaking imperialism from committing similar crimes in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
And what about you, my dearest Germans. What about your past? Are you free to look into your past and to re-shape your understanding of it as you move along? I don’t think so. Your history, or at least some chapters of it, are sealed by some draconian laws. Consequently, you, the younger generation, do not attempt to grasp the true ethical meaning of the holocaust. Clearly, Germans do not understand that the Palestinians are actually the last victims of Hitler, for without Hitler, there wouldn’t be a Jewish State. Your young generations fail to see that the Palestinians are certainly victims of a Nazi-like ideology, which is both racist and expansionist. Let me also advise you, if any of you feel guilty about anything to do with your past, it should be the Palestinians whom you should care for. The fact that Germany is detached from its past clearly explains German political complicity in the Zionist crime. It certainly explains why your government provides Israel with a nuclear submarine every so often. But it also explains why you may remain silent when you find out that Yad Vashem is built on Palestinian land stolen in 1948.
But it isn’t just Israel, Zionism, Britain, America and Germany. Let us look at ourselves, the supporters of Justice in Palestine. Even within our movement, we have some destructive elements who insist that we shouldn’t dare to touch our past: in the last month, Café Palestine Freiburg and the organiser of this conference were subjected to relentless attack by some established elements within the Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist movement. They were demanding that the conference should drop me because I am a ‘holocaust denier’. Needless to say, I have never denied the Holocaust or any other historical chapter. I also find the notion of ‘holocaust denial’ to be meaningless, and on the verge of idiotic.
However, I do indeed insist, as I did here today, that history must remain an open discourse, subject to changes and revision, I oppose any attempt to seal the past, whether it is the Nakba, Holocaust, the Holodomor or the Armenian genocide. I am convinced that an organic and ‘elastic’ understanding of the past is the true essence of a humanist discourse, universalism and ethics.
I clearly don’t know how to save Israel from itself, I do not know how to liberate Jewish anti Zionists from their Judeo centric ideology; but as far as America, Britain, Germany, the West, and us here today are concerned, all we have to do is to revert to our precious values of openness.
We must drift away from a restrictive, monolithic Jerusalem, and reinstate the ethical spirit of pluralist Athens.
GAZA CITY — Palestinian lawmaker Salah Bardawil says the bid to join the UN is a “tactical move” that supports President Barack Obama’s next election campaign.
Bardawil, of Hamas, warned that the move would “set the borders for a Jewish country,” therefore contributing to normalizing recognition of “the state of occupation and its borders.”
The move would amount to the “criminalization and elimination of Palestinian resistance.”
He added that the step was a mistake akin to the signing of the Oslo Accords.
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
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Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
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