9/11 And The Orwellian Redefinition Of ‘Conspiracy Theory’
By Paul Craig Roberts | Rense | 6-20-11
While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.
A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.
For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.
In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.
When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”
In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.
The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.”
This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.
Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.
In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.
The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.
The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.
Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.
In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.
Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.
Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.
As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators. To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.
The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.
If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.
A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.
US Raid Gets Much Credence in Gullible-minded America
By Kim Petersen / Dissident Voice / June 6th, 2011
The gullibility of many Americans is rooted in deep distrust of the Islamic countries, a desire to protect their nuclear hegemony, impressions of world events, and devotion to preachings of hard-line priests.
It was all a done deal, Bob Smith sniffed. The US got their bogeyman in Abbottabad.
To Bob, the secret night raid by U.S. commandos, the staccato bursts of gunfire, the crash of the stealth helicopter and the reported killing of the al Qaeda leader in a whitewashed compound were pure gospel. The Americans had proven to the world that terrorism exists everywhere in Pakistan.
“Next we’ll go in and take control of their nuclear weapons,” the 20-year-old college student said as he walked along a cement path near the campus.
In Washington and across the country, almost all Americans are thoroughly convinced that Bin Laden was killed in a raid May 2. A poll conducted by USA Today/Gallup found that 54% of Americans believe bin Laden’s death will make the US safer from terrorism while 28% fear it will be less safe. There was no need to ask whether they believed Bin Laden was assassinated last month by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs (just like there is no need to ask who masterminded 9-11). Results indicate that at least 82% believe bin Laben to have been killed. Some people say that Bin Laden should have been killed earlier.
Such acceptance of official accounts is usual in a country with a collective propensity to get swept up by corporate media and government declarations, analysts say. The profound gullibility shared by many Americans is rooted in their deep trust of the United States government, their desire to protect their country’s nuclear hegemony, their impressions of world events outside the US, and their devotion to the preachings of hard-line priests.
The gullibility, analysts say, gives life to acceptance of the government line nurtured by free but reckless media that provide exposure for Christian-minded observers and others willing to mute skepticism. Many television talk shows try to gobble up ratings with sensationalism and demonization of the Islamic world. The result, analysts say, is often too much scapegoating and not enough self-examination of America’s own problems, a form of denial.
One of the country’s top terrorism conspiracy theory purveyors is US defense secretary Robert M. Gates who wears a trademark dark suit and tie and routinely appears at US government press conferences. In February on YouTube, Gates breathlessly talked of a real problem of anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Thus, the Democrat-Republican axis seeks to wrest control of the Islamic world by secretly supporting terrorist groups within these countries to foment civil war.
The above was a tweaking of page one of a online piece in the Los Angeles Times that palpably exposes the bias and animus toward US-government declared enemies.1 Far worse, it points to a propensity for some readers to uncritically accept printed word as fact.
The Times reporter uses the pejorative “conspiracy theorists” to describe the wide swath of Pakistanis who doubt the official US account about the purported assassination of Osama bin Laden. He thereby ignores the lies of the US government regarding Saddam Hussein having weapons-of-mass-destruction, yellow cake from Niger, dodgy British dossiers, and a history of war pretexts.2 So the skeptics are derided as conspiracy theorists.
Mainly, I substituted the word “Pakistan” with “America” and “conspiracy” with “gullibility.” Critically minded readers will easily recognize the corporate media stenography for the US government line on the conspiratorial war-on-terrorism. When many people continue to believe the official government lie after years and years of mendacity, what conclusions should one draw?
- Alex Rodriguez, “Bin Laden raid gets little credence in conspiracy-minded Pakistan,” Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2011
- Kim Petersen, “Grasping at Straws: Searching for a War Pretext,” Dissident Voice, 4 March 2003.
Creating the bin Laden Reality
By Paul Craig Roberts | LewRockwell.com | May 17, 2011
I have heard one dozen times today (May 13) from media that the US killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. I heard it three times from National Public Radio, twice from the BBC, and from every TV and radio station I encountered, even those stations that play the rock and roll music of the 1950s and 1960s. The killing of bin Laden has now entered the legends of our time and, no doubt, the history books.
The US government that told us that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and “al Qaeda connections” and that Iran has nuclear missiles that require the US to ring Russia with anti-ballistic missile systems, finally told us the truth for once. Obama found Osama and had him murdered, apparently unarmed in his underwear, defended not by al Qaeda, “the best trained, most dangerous vicious killers on the planet,” but by two unarmed women.
As I offered previously, if you believe this, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can let you have for a cheap price.
The government has created another reality for us proles. We won again. Us white hats got the black hat, just like in the western movie. Fantasy is better than fact, and us good guys are on a roll. It makes everybody happy, even those who have lost their jobs, their houses, their pensions.
So, who’s the next black hat? The military/security complex cannot do without a bad guy, or the budget could be cut and billions of dollars in profits would go missing. Without someone for Americans to hate, the show can’t go on.
Homeland Security says the next black hat will be “domestic extremists.” The CIA says it will be the next al Qaeda leader, bin Laden’s replacement, who will terrorize us white hats for killing bin Laden. The neocon brownshirts say it is Pakistan, who hid bin Laden from us, thus protecting him from justice being done. Hillary says it is China, and as the US economy continues its collapse, more and more fingers will point at China.
Airport Security will pat down more babies, feel more genitals, and radiate more air travelers.
But without bin Laden, we will feel safer and more secure, which is counterproductive for the military/security complex. Obama has made a fundamental mistake. He has killed Emanuel Goldstein (bin Laden), the hate figure who justified the trillions of dollars we have blown trying to get him.
Once Homeland Security, the CIA, and the White House decide who the new hate figure is to be, we will be off and running again.
It took 10 years to get bin Laden. This proves that all those security experts who say that the war will last for 30 years might be underestimating the necessary commitment. If it takes 10 years each to find and murder the next two leaders, we are faced with conflict that lasts across generations.
As I wrote previously, bin Laden’s killing serves so many different agendas that even those who don’t believe the story have hooked their wagon to it. Al Qaeda itself can no longer take credit for acts of terrorism without declaring that it was to avenge bin Laden.
The bin Laden story is now set in stone, immune from fact. Global Research has provided us with bin Laden’s last known interview, which appeared in a Pakistan newspaper on September 28, 2001 and was translated and made available to the West by the BBC World Monitoring Service on September 29, 2001.
In the interview, bin Laden says: “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. . . . Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks the common American people have been killed. . . .The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which makes us surprised, but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. . . . Terror is the most dreaded weapon in the modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people.”
But who would believe a demonized bin Laden when to do so requires them to disbelieve George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Western media?
We all know, don’t we, that in America the government always has the best interest of ordinary people at heart and always tells them the truth. If you don’t believe this, you are anti-American.
~
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
Copyright © 2011 Paul Craig Roberts
Americans Are Living In 1984
By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts | LewRockwell.com | May 10, 2011
The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?
So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on March 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.
Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.
For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.
Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We–the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats– were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.
No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.
No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.
If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how is it possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?
The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many. Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.
Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.
Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”
Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.
Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.
If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong. The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?
The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”
I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire–as did a number of historians.
The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.
This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living in George Orwell’s 1984.
For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”
A people as gullible as Americans have no future.
Osama bin Laden’s Second Death
By Paul Craig Roberts | Lew Rockwell | May 2, 2011
If today were April 1 and not May 2, we could dismiss as an April fool’s joke this morning’s headline that Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight in Pakistan and quickly buried at sea. As it is, we must take it as more evidence that the US government has unlimited belief in the gullibility of Americans.
Think about it. What are the chances that a person allegedly suffering from kidney disease and requiring dialysis and, in addition, afflicted with diabetes and low blood pressure, survived in mountain hideaways for a decade? If bin Laden was able to acquire dialysis equipment and medical care that his condition required, would not the shipment of dialysis equipment point to his location? Why did it take ten years to find him?
Consider also the claims, repeated by a triumphalist US media celebrating bin Laden’s death, that “bin Laden used his millions to bankroll terrorist training camps in Sudan, the Philippines, and Afghanistan, sending ‘holy warriors’ to foment revolution and fight with fundamentalist Muslim forces across North Africa, in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Bosnia.” That’s a lot of activity for mere millions to bankroll (perhaps the US should have put him in charge of the Pentagon), but the main question is: how was bin Laden able to move his money about? What banking system was helping him? The US government succeeds in seizing the assets of people and of entire countries, Libya being the most recent. Why not bin Laden’s? Was he carrying around with him $100 million dollars in gold coins and sending emissaries to distribute payments to his far-flung operations?
This morning’s headline has the odor of a staged event. The smell reeks from the triumphalist news reports loaded with exaggerations, from celebrants waving flags and chanting “USA USA.” Could something else be going on?
No doubt President Obama is in desperate need of a victory. He committed the fool’s error of restarting the war in Afghanistan, and now after a decade of fighting the US faces stalemate, if not defeat. The wars of the Bush/Obama regimes have bankrupted the US, leaving huge deficits and a declining dollar in their wake. And re-election time is approaching.
The various lies and deceptions, such as “weapons of mass destruction,” of the last several administrations had terrible consequences for the US and the world. But not all deceptions are the same. Remember, the entire reason for invading Afghanistan in the first place was to get bin Laden. Now that President Obama has declared bin Laden to have been shot in the head by US special forces operating in an independent country and buried at sea, there is no reason for continuing the war.
Perhaps the precipitous decline in the US dollar in foreign exchange markets has forced some real budget reductions, which can only come from stopping the open-ended wars. Until the decline of the dollar reached the breaking point, Osama bin Laden, who many experts believe to have been dead for years, was a useful bogeyman to use to feed the profits of the US military/security complex.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House.
Copyright © 2011 Paul Craig Roberts
OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD – YET AGAIN!
By Damian Lataan | May 02, 2011
With the US in the doldrums everywhere including at home, Obama and his advisors clearly thought now would be a really good time to bring great and humungous tidings to a hurting American people. A royal marriage seems to have worked for the recession hit British, why not the death of a make believe arch enemy for millions of ordinary American suffering the financial hardships derived – ironically – from the expense of the wars meant, so we were told, to have put an end to the actions of people like bin Laden.The Western media circus will now play the news of bin Laden’s ‘death’ up to the hilt around the world. Ignored will be the evidence that bin Laden died years ago. Supporters of the bin Laden myth will argue that there was never any concrete evidence that bin Laden was dead ages ago but then nor will they be able to show any concrete independently verifiable evidence that he was killed in Islamabad yesterday despite the Americans saying they have his body.
It was convenient for the Western propaganda machine to keep bin Laden alive all these years since his death probably at the end of 2001, just as it is convenient for the Western propaganda machine to now announce his death.
His death, regardless of when it was, also happens to be convenient in terms of the world now never being able to hear his side of the story had he been captured and tried. Osama bin Laden denied having had anything to do with 9/11 and, since the US was already after his blood anyway, there was no reason at all for him to lie. A later video of a not very good look-alike claiming responsibility appeared and was presented as final proof that he had, indeed, confessed to being responsible for 9/11.
For years the US administration and the West have presented Osama bin Laden as the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Twenty First century in order to perpetuate their ‘War Against Terrorism’ which ended up being nothing more than a war against Islam and the Muslim world, so the big question now is; who will replace him as the object of hate for the West?
UPDATE
According to the LA Times, US officials have said that “DNA tests had confirmed bin Laden’s identity”. One wonders how a DNA test was completed so quickly since even when in a rush (despite what you see on ‘CSI Miami’) they take about 48 hours to do. And the other question is; with what are they comparing his DNA with?
What were They Thinking? Suspicions will Inevitably Grow about the Extermination of Osama bin Laden
By Dave Lindorff – This Can’t Be Happening – 05/02/2011
According to the brief announcement made by President Barack Obama last night, the operation in Pakistan by US Navy SEAL special forces was a well-planned hit job.
“They took care to avoid civilian casualties,” the president said of the top-secret night-time raid by helicopter on a highly secure compound near a military base in Abbottadad, a city only about an hour’s drive drive from, Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city. He added, “After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”
Not for long though. After “double-tapping” bin Laden–that is a military term for the illegal process of executing a wounded person–or insuring that a person is truly dead–that involves firing not one but two bullets into the head–his body was taken out of Pakistan by the departing SEAL raiding party, and reportedly buried (dumped) at sea.
According to the Washington Post, the US wanted to “prevent the creation of a shrine” to the late leader of Al Qaeda and alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks. “We don’t want a bunch of people going to the shrine forever,” the Post quoted one unidentified official as saying.
This is supposed to be “closure”?
Think about it a moment. The US had the living Osama bin Laden in their hands last night! After almost 10 years, they had successfully captured the guy who allegedly managed to mastermind the biggest, most disastrous attack on the US in the modern history of the country–perhaps of all time–a coordinated aerial assault on the financial and military hearts of the world’s most powerful country, carried out with nothing but box cutters–an attack which managed to neutralize the mightiest air defense system in the world! And instead of bundling him into an orange jump suit, putting a bag over his head and bringing him in for interrogation, like they’ve done to hundreds of other lesser captives in the so-called decade-long “War on Terror,” they “double-tapped” him on the spot?
What were they thinking?
Given the trove of information he could have offered about US terrorism vulnerabilities, about his far-flung terrorist organization and its future plans, I have to think the only conceivable answer is they had to have been thinking that this guy would have some pretty embarrassing things to say about the US and its dirty “War.”
There has been considerable controversy surrounding bin Laden’s origins, with news organizations such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, among others, all reporting that he had received funding, training and weapons during the 1980s from the CIA, which was reportedly using him as a conduit for supporting Arab volunteers fighting against the Soviet military forces in Afghanistan. The US has denied these claims, but the evidence is rather convincing that for at least some time, bin Laden was considered “our guy.” How embarrassing if he were to confirm that at a trial! How embarrassing if he went further, and said that his relationship with the CIA had extended beyond the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan.
But the potential for US discomfort with a living, talking Osama bin Laden goes well past his early relationship with the CIA. Shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, US forces, having toppled the Taliban government in Kabul, appeared to have surrounded and trapped bin Laden and his supporters in the mountains of Tora Bora. Then, suddenly, the siege was called off, and US forces were largely pulled out of the country, to join forces that were being assembled in Kuwait and the UAE in preparation for a war that the Bush/Cheney administration was secretly gearing up for against Iraq–a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, and that posed no threat to the US or its allies. How embarrassing for Washington if bin Laden were to tell about how close he had been to capture back then, only to suddenly find that he and his men were being given a free pass to escape to Pakistan!
And then there is the matter of 9-11 itself.
One doesn’t have to be a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, conjuring up all kinds of ideas about the attacks being an “inside job” planned by some nefarious cabal of plotters within the US, to believe that the true story of how those attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were able to go off so flawlessly has yet to be told. The 9-11 Commission has been thoroughly discredited as a cover-up, even by its own members. My own reporting has confirmed that the FBI lied to that commission about not having the flight recorders of all four of the planes involved. There is also the mystery of the Israeli Mossad agents who, according to reports in the Jewish Forward newspaper, were observed filming the attacks from across the Hudson River and who were also seen apparently celebrating as the buildings came down, and who were later captured in their van by New Jersey police, only to be released under State Department pressure, and flown safely to Israel. There are the curious put options that were placed on a few companies that were certain to have their shares tank after the attack–American and United Airlines, and several of the financial companies that had offices in the Twin Towers–puts that were arranged through the investment bank Alex Brown, whose chairman, until 1998, was a guy, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, who at the time was a high-ranking member of the CIA. The commission never even tried to find out who placed those incredibly prescient puts and who collected on them.
Would bin Laden have had anything to say about who or about which intelligence agencies might have had advance knowledge of his plans before the 9-11 attacks?
We’ll never know.
He is now crab bait at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.
Terminating Osama bin Laden might have offered brief primal satisfaction to a tribal element in the US that likes to mindlessly chant “USA, USA!” at particularly gruesome moments of American military mayhem, but the deliberate in situ execution of this particular villain, and the subsequent rapid and thorough obliteration of his mortal remains, has only ensured that, like the Kennedy assassination, the King murder, and the disappearance of Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, Osama bin Laden will become a permanent mystery and source of endless conspiracy theorizing.
And the mystery of 9-11, and how it was possible for a few guys armed with some box-cutting razors and with limited flying skills to destroy the financial center and a big chunk of the military headquarters of the most powerful nation in the world, will be that much harder to solve.
On the available evidence, the powers that be in Washington wanted it that way.
‘Bahrain protesters face death penalty’
Press TV – April 26, 2011
The Bahraini regime is seeking the death penalty against a group of anti-government protesters at a martial court, says an opposition activist.
Seven protesters are accused of killing two security forces during the regime’s crackdown on the popular uprising, former lawmaker Matar Matar told AFP on Tuesday.
He added that the trial was being held in camera, and that lawyers were not given enough time to study the case.
The verdict is expected on Thursday and the prosecution has demanded death sentences, Matar noted.
The seven are Ali Abdullah Hassan, Qasim Hassan Mattar, Saeed Abdul Jalil Saeed, Issa Abdullah Kazem, Abdul Aziz Abdullah Ibrahim, Sadiq Ali Mahdi, and Hussein Jaafar Abdul Karim, according to ex-MP.
People in Bahrain have poured to the streets since February 14 to protest against the Al Khalifa dynasty.
In March, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait deployed their troops in the country to reinforce the brutal armed clampdown against the mass protests.
Security forces have arrested hundreds of people. Scores of protesters have also been killed and many others gone missing during the harsh Saudi-backed crackdown in the Persian Gulf state.
~
See also Anti-war.com:
Seven Face Death Over ‘Terrorism’ Allegations Related to Protests
By Jason Ditz | April 25, 2011
Seven of Bahrain’s Shi’ite protesters are to be sentenced to death, according to the nation’s state media, for their role in the protests and the deaths of two policemen. The regime claimed the protesters “committed their crime for terrorist reasons.”
Several hundred thousand protesters took to the streets over the past few months to demand democratic reforms and to complain about sectarian discrimination. A strong majority of Bahrain’s population is Shi’ite, but the ruling family is Sunni. The protests ended following the invasion of 1,500 GCC troops, led by Saudi Arabia, to help the government put down the demonstrations.
At least 13 protesters were slain during the rallies, and reports have a number of others dying in custody. The government also reported the deaths of four policemen. They did not indicate how the police were slain, but claimed to have “confessions” from the seven.
Bahrain had seldom used the death penalty over the past several years, and human rights groups had pushed them into a de facto moratorium. With the introduction of martial law to the tiny island nation, it seems this too may be changing.
A response to the killers of Vittorio Arrigoni (and to my family)
By Pam Bailey | Mondoweiss | April 21, 2011
When the news first broke that Vittorio Arrigoni, the Italian who had been volunteering in Gaza with the International Solidarity Movement, had been kidnapped and murdered, the response in the U.S. and international media was similar to this comment by Charles Glass in The National: “After what happened to this brave young man, how many others will volunteer to take his place – when it may mean death to those who love them?”
The New York Times commented: “(The murder) raised embarrassing questions for Hamas about the security it says it has restored…. It also raises the specter of a growing boldness on the part of more extreme, virulently anti-Western Islamic groups in Gaza, which would pose a challenge not only to Hamas but to foreign activists promoting the Palestinian cause.”
No wonder that both my sister and my daughter, who had come to support my increasingly frequent trips to Gaza, now are discouraging me from continuing my work there. “I have to admit that now, with things becoming more dangerous in Gaza every day (from all sides–for example, Vik being killed by the very people he was trying to help), I completely understand why your daughters would be hoping that you don’t go back,” wrote my sister. Another friend, who had visited Gaza with me on one of my first trips, put it even more bluntly: “I would never have thought that the people he was supporting and helping would turn on him.”
I am sure this reaction is exactly what Vik’s killers – whoever they are–had been hoping for.
Whether the murder was committed by collaborators with Israel or religious extremists who abhor Western influence and/or want to make Hamas look bad, the motive seemed to be – at least in part — to scare off other internationals who might think to come to Gaza, whether via the next flotilla (planned for late May) or other route. Although no one knows — and we may never know – the true motivation of Vik’s killers, Israel has certainly worked overtime in the last few months to stop the next flotilla from reaching the shores of Gaza. The newspaper Ha’aretz reported last month that Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi has threatened that if the boats try to reach Gaza, “forcing” the military to attack, “there may be no alternative to deploying snipers to minimize troop casualties.” Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF will deploy attack dogs from its Oketz canine units. Likewise, Israel has not been shy about assassinating individuals it doesn’t like (the most recent example is the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai).
However, whoever committed this gut-wrenching crime, and whatever their motivation, they are not Gaza (and the murderers of Juliano Mer-Khamis– the popular director of the Jenin Freedom Theater — are not the West Bank – or Palestine). After all, should Americans be judged by Timothy McVeigh, or the Unabomber? When word began spreading like wildfire that Vik had been murdered, my friends from Gaza – and many whom I barely knew, but were just connections on Facebook – messaged me to apologize on behalf of their entire people. One email I received was titled “WE ARE SO SORRY.”
Even those who didn’t know Vik felt the need to express their deep sorrow and shame; in fact, they were the majority of the individuals who reached out to me. Sameeha Elwan, a young blogger in Gaza, wrote: “All of us were agonized by the news of his abduction, spending the whole night anticipating and hoping that morning would bring us the news of his release…(But) morning brought us mourning. The first unconfirmed news of his death came at 2 a.m., leaving us all speechless and confused…’Did you know him personally?’many asked me today in the funeral that was held by Gazans in honor of Vittorio. In fact, I did not meet him in person, as was the case of so many Palestinians who were there…(But) to know how brave Vittorio was, I only had to look around, and see the agony and anger in the faces of hundreds of people…”
Vik’s death was considered a national tragedy in Gaza – indeed, throughout Palestine. I can’t help but compare this to how Americans would react if a foreigner in their midst –albeit one who was there in solidarity with them – was randomly slain. I doubt it would elicit the same outpouring of grief, or that Americans who didn’t even know him would feel a personal responsibility for the perpetrators. Even when my purse was apparently stolen one night by a coffeehouse, everyone I knew felt compelled to apologize – going out of their way to track it down.
This is the reason that in the eight months I lived in Gaza – five months in 2010 and three this year, coming home barely two weeks before Vik’s death – I felt safe and literally “embraced.” Crime can happen anywhere; yes, Gaza is a “hot spot,” and may be more dangerous than most, but not because of the Palestinians. I am not unlike the other international volunteers who are drawn to Gaza, or to Palestine in general. We know the spirit of the people there; we see inside their collective heart. And we agree with Sameeha when she writes, “No matter who was behind this vicious crime against humanity, he is not the least Palestinian.”
So to my friends and family who ask why I want to continue to return to the region, when “the people I help may turn on me,” I say no, they will never turn on me. And if I am ever in danger, they will have my back. They may not always be able to protect me from the criminal elements that are present everywhere, but I know they would lay down their lives for mine.
And to Vik’s killers, I say you will never win. Because we will keep coming back.
Pam Bailey is an American who has been on several of the Codepink delegations to Gaza. She then lived in Gaza for five months last year and three months this year.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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