I’ve been a Cornell Staff member for about thirty years, and pretty much every work day, I work with metal. Mostly machining, but also, bending, shearing, welding, annealing, heating, heat treating, etc.. One thing I’ve learned through my experience, is that gradually heated steel loses its strength gradually, not instantly. Since WTC7’s free fall and symmetric drop displayed all the characteristics of a controlled demolition, and none of a fire induced collapse, I’ve always been skeptical of the government’s “explanation” – that gradual heating of parts of the steel frame due to limited office fires caused WTC7’s drop.
Now that free fall acceleration has been well documented and finally acknowledged by government hired researchers at the NIST, this explanation also seems to be at odds with the findings of Sir Isaac Newton. With that in mind, for the past year or so, I’ve been trying to solicit opinions regarding WTC7’s free fall and symmetric drop from professors in Cornell’s engineering department. All of my initial email inquiries were ignored, and followup inquiries produced only one response, which was limited to a few words of condescension and sarcasm. None of the professors would address the actual research and evidence I provided, or respond to my questions. Brief, polite, and detailed phone messages were also ignored.
So, I decided to submit a guest column to Cornell’s student run paper, The Cornell Daily Sun. Again, my first submission was ignored, but my followup submission did receive a reply, which stated only that my piece would not not be published. No reason was given. I explained to the editors that I would be willing to make some changes if there are some key words or phrases that prompted the censorship, but no explanation for the censorship was forthcoming. I find censorship at a University particularly troubling, since this is an institution where the free and open exchange of ideas, information, and knowledge are not only encouraged, but the very reason for the institution’s existence.
My hope now is that members of the 9-11 Truth community will contact the Cornell Daily Sun by email and phone, and politely explain why 9-11 Truth is such and important and relevant topic, and that by censoring the open discussion of the facts related to 9-11-01,and perpetuating the government’s 9-11 myth, the Sun is also perpetuating the government’s 9-11 wars – wars that come with a very heavy price, in lives, taxpayer dollars, and our economic stability. And of course, these wars reduce rather than increase global security.
Here is my censored guest column. If you decide to contact the Sun, please let me know.
Thanks,
Henry Hansteen
9-11-01: Myth vs Physics 10-15-10
Over the past few years, I’ve probably sent a dozen or so emails to Cornell engineering professors, asking them what I believe are clear and reasonable questions. Most of the professors do not reply at all, a few replied just to tell me that they are unable to answer my questions, and one reply was spiced with condescension and sarcasm. I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed in them. My Grandfather was a Cornell Professor, and he left me with a much different impression . The question is basically this – what can and what can’t cause a 47 story, hurricane and earth quake resistant, steel framed high rise to suddenly crush itself with near perfect symmetry, while accelerating at a rate that is indistinguishable from free fall? That’s what video evidence, government hired researchers from the NIST, and independent 9-11 truth researchers all agree took place on 9-11-01 when World Trade Center 7 dropped. The entire perimeter frame transitioned from standing straight to accelerating downward at the same rate it would have fallen through air. This building was supported by over forty massive interconnected steel columns that extended from bedrock to the roof, and the vast majority of them were never even exposed to any fire. According to the government’s final report, issued by NIST in November of 2008, structural damage from debris impacts didn’t contribute to WTC7’s free fall and symmetric drop. It is now blamed on nothing but ordinary office fires that occupied only a few floors in a small area of the building. The steel frame was designed to easily support several times the weight of the building. Like all steel framed high rises, it was designed with incredible reserve strength.
An object can only accelerate at the rate of free fall if all of its gravitational energy is converted to motion, and none is used to move, bend, crush, or break other objects. Believing that WTC7’s massive steel frame could accelerate through itself at free fall while bending, breaking, and shearing tens of thousands of tons of undamaged structural steel is, in effect, little different than claiming that a car will accelerate down Buffalo Street hill at the same rate whether it’s on the open road or rolling directly through a long row of parked cars. I’ve heard a few people speculate about “buckling”, and how quickly a vertical steel column will fail once it has buckled. This theory doesn’t hold up to analysis, though. Video evidence shows that most of the steel columns in WTC7 were never exposed to any fire, so obviously, gradual heating could not have caused them all to fail at the same instant. Also, steel columns in the process of buckling still have far more structural integrity than air, and could not cause the entire structure to suddenly accelerate at free fall. And even if the entire structure had been engulfed in a raging inferno, the steel would lose it strength gradually, rather than instantly. Revisiting my auto analogy, auto bodies and frames are specifically engineered to buckle, because buckling absorbs tremendous amounts of energy, which rapidly reduces the speed of a vehicle during an impact, and would have reduced (or stopped) the rate of WTC7’s free fall and symmetric drop. The structural integrity of the parked cars is not reduced to that of air once they begin to buckle. This is true even if some of the parked cars are on fire. Gradual heating cannot reduce the integrity of steel to that of air in an instant, and neither office fires nor buckling can explain how the structural integrity of all of WTC7’s exterior columns vanished in an instant.
What can explain WTC7’s free fall and symmetric drop, along with the extremely high temperatures and the molten and vaporized steel? What can explain the instant, total, and simultaneous failure of all of WTC7’s steel columns in an instant, the government’s refusal to test for incendiaries of any type, and its rapid destruction of the forensic evidence? Demolition explains all the evidence, and a team of nine scientists have discovered highly refined military grade nano thermitic material in dust and steel samples. I suggest reading http://www.911research.com and http://www.911speakout.org for those interested in verifying the points I’ve made here. If you think the points I’ve made here are valid, please present them to Cornell’s engineering professors and encourage them to take get informed and take a stand. This is too important an issue to be ignored, and the price for perpetuating the government’s impossible 9-11 conspiracy theory and the resulting 9-11 wars is too high. There comes a time when silence is complicity.
The mystery surrounding Raymond A. Davis, the American former Special Forces operative jailed in Lahore, Pakistan for the murder of two young motorcyclists, and his funky “security” company, Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC, in the US continues to grow.
When Davis was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the double slaying in a busy business section of Lahore, after he had fatally shot two men in the back, claiming that he feared they might be threatening to rob him, police found business cards on him for a security company called Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC, which listed as its address 5100 North Lane, Orlando, Florida.
A website for the company gave the same address, and listed the manager as a Gerald Richardson.
An investigation into the company done for CounterPunch that was published on Tuesday, disclosed that the address was actually for a vacant storefront in a run-down and almost completely empty strip mall in Orlando called North Lane Plaza. The 5100 shop was completely empty and barren, save for an empty Coke glass on a vacant counter.
Now Tom Johnson, executive of a property company called IB Green, owner of the strip mall property, says that the 5100 address was rented by a man named Gerald Richardson, who used it to sell clothing. “We made him move out in December 2009 for nonpayment of rent,” he says. Johnson recalls that at one point when Richardson was leasing the space for his clothing store, he told him, “Oh, I have another company called Hyperion which might get mail there.”
Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC, as reported in the Counterpunch article, is not registered with the Florida Secretary of State’s office, although it still lists the vacant 5100 North Lane, Orlando address as its headquarters on the company website, which also provides an email address for Richardson, who is described as the company’s “manager and chief researcher.” (Efforts to reach Richardson via his email and by leaving a message on the one functioning number listed on the website have gone unanswered.)
But there are other mysteries here, too, regarding Davis (whose name does not appear on the Hyperion-Protective website), and regarding Hyperion.
As reported today in the New York Times Wednesday in an article by Jane Perlez, there is also a company in Las Vegas Nevada called Hyperion Protective Services. That firm’s 2006 registration information lists as its owners Raymond A Davis and his wife Rebecca J. Davis of 9811 W. Charleston St., Las Vegas, Nevada, 89117. It lists the company’s address as 9345 Boulder Opal Ave., Las Vegas. A registration in Nevada of that name says that Gerald Richardson “founded the firm” in 1999.
This company, which Perlez says claims it at least hoped to win government contracts, advertises its services (basically providing due diligence for companies making property purchases, and running background checks on employees), on a website called LasVegasComplete.com. On that site, it lists its website, which is the same original site for Hyperion-Protective Consultants, LLC, the apparently virtual company that was run out of Gerald Richardson’s clothing shop at 5100 North Lane, Orlando until he couldn’t pay the rent and got evicted, and that doesn’t have a listed number, or a person to answer the phone.
Meanwhile, the phone number listed for the Nevada incarnation of Hyperion-Protective is a cell phone with a Tucson, Arizona area code, which is registered to Raymond A. Davis. A call to that phone reached a recording of a male voice, with no mention of Hyperion-Protective, and no name offered, asking for call-back information. The call was not returned.
Perlez in her article, datelined Lahore, Pakistan, at least for the first time mentions the forensic evidence that both of Davis’s victims were shot in the back, and quotes police as saying that Davis had told them he shot the men not because they had menaced him with guns, as has earlier been asserted in the US media, based on statements from the State Department, but because “he believed that the men were armed.”
If that was the accepted standard for shooting someone in Texas or Arizona, half the residents of the state would be shooting the other half. It’s also a pretty lame justification for shooting two people in the back!
Perlez also confirms another point–the suspicious array of items that police found in Davis’s rented Honda Civic when they arrested him–though she diminishes their significance by offering the snide comment that the local Pakistani press has been “dwelling” on the items, as well as on his various, and mutually exclusive array of business cards, which included one listing him as working out of the Peshawar Consulate, on the edge of the Pashtun Tribal area, one listing him as a Defense Department contractor, and one listing him as an employee of the seemingly non-existent Hyperion-Protective Consultants LLC in Orlando.
The items that the Pakistani press are “dwelling” on though, as listed by Perlez, include a Glock handgun, a flashlight that attaches to a headband, and a pocket telescope. Unmentioned by Perlez, but also found by police in Davis’s car, were a large number of cellphones, including at least one satellite phone, a collection of batteries, bucketloads of bullets, both for the Glock and a Beretta allegedly used by Davis to kill the two motorcyclists in his pinpoint shots through his front windshield, and a load of M-16 shells. Police report that the bullets were high-powered killer projectiles not allowed in many countries. There were military-grade knives, wires, and a surprising array of high-capacity magazines for the handguns, too (like the one used to such devastating effect in the recent Tucson massacre. There was also something else police found that is profoundly puzzling and disturbing: a camera loaded with pictures of dozens of madrassas (religious schools) and other buildings around Lahore.
This was not the run-of-the-mill armament for an embassy security guard (one of the various titles — covers? — that the State Department has claimed for Davis at the Lahore Consulate).
The US, which seems to really want this guy out of Pakistani hands, is reportedly threatening to cut off financial assistance to Pakistan and to cancel a planned visit by President Obama if Davis is not released–pretty heavy pressure for a low-ranking consular contractor–especially one who has admitted he shot two locals to death while apparently not working in any official capacity.
Perlez also uncritically parrots the US government’s line that Davis is “protected by diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Conventions and that he must be released from custody.”
The problem, as I reported in my earlier CounterPunch article, is that the Vienna Convention that Perlez and the US government are relying on to demand his release states very clearly that any immunity for diplomats or consular staff does not apply to “serious crimes,” and it would be hard to imagine a more serious crime than a double murder, which is what Davis is currently being charged with.
What seems clear at this point is that Davis, 36, is not what the US government is now claiming he is: a “technical advisor” to the consulate. His record –10 years in US Special Forces, supposedly ending in 2003–and his shell “security” company in the US, with its faked addresses, suggest strongly that he is working for the US, either in some intelligence branch, or more likely as an employee of some mercenary-for-hire company like Xe (Blackwater).
What he was actually doing on his ill-fated drive into the commercial heart of Lahore is up for grabs.
There have been several reports in the Pakistani press, unmentioned by Perlez, that the two men he killed were not, as initially reported by the US, petty thieves, but were actually agents working for Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI. Today, ABC’s Nick Schifrin, who has been the best reporter on this story in the US corporate media, reports that while the State Department “adamantly denies” the claim (big surprise, that!), four Pakistani officials, off the record, have told ABC that the two men Davis killed were ISI agents assigned to tail Davis because he was a spy who had “crossed a red line.”
What “red line?” Again there is speculation in Pakistan’s media that Davis may have been involved in some kind of covert US program to actually finance or orchestrate some of the bombings that have been rocking, and destabilizing Pakistan. (Certainly that could be an explanation for the stop at the ATM for a bundle of cash, and for all of those cell phones recovered from Davis’s car, which could serve nicely as bomb detonators–a popular method adopted by terrorists everywhere, though of course they could also have been dedicated lines or throwaways for “cutouts,” as one veteran of such black-ops notes.)
The suicide by rat poison of the 18-year-old bride of one of the two slain men would seem to point to the victim’s being more than just a petty street thief, too. The young woman, from her hospital bed, before dying, said that she was killing herself because she despaired of seeing justice done for the murder of her husband.
~
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-backed (we hope!), online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of colleagues John Grant, Linn Washington, Jr., and Charles M. Young, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
Those politically savvy people who thought strongman, Hosni Mubarak would be out before the end of the first week of the Egyptian uprising better rethink the odds. For thirty years Mubarak has developed what can be called a deeply rooted dictatorial regime with regular White House access and annual largesse of some $1.3 billion in military equipment and payroll.
A former military man, he has been very alert to what is needed to maintain the loyalties of the police, the intelligence security forces and the army. If he goes, tens of thousands of those on his payroll could lose their patronage and be on the outs if his government is really replaced.
Moreover, he enjoys the support of both the United States and Israel for whom he has been a “stable” force against the pressures coming from Iran and its allies in the Middle East.
Arrayed against him are a variety of protestors, best known for their occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo and whose grievances are being reported hour-by-hour by the harassed international media, including the much attacked Al-Jazeera. Widely noted are the solidarity, self-help, stamina and democratic nature of the rebellion.
The state-controlled media, however, remains in Mubarak’s hands. He has shown he can cut off the entire Internet and mobile phone systems with what one commentator called “the active complicity of the major corporate servers.”
Going into the third week of the uprising, the regime has reopened the banks, and is urging businesses to open their doors. The government is striving to wait out the protestors, whose daily supplies and energies are being sapped by the overwhelming force arrayed against them to intimidate, weaken and keep their numbers down not just in the Square but also in other cities like Alexandria and Suez.
So far the army is remaining largely neutral. The regimes’ paramilitary gangs, in plain clothes, attacked the protestors inflicting fatalities and injuries to see if they will cut and run. So far, the demonstrators are well-organized in the Square and in other Cairo neighborhoods and are holding their ground. But roundups of some of the leading dissidents for brief imprisonments or worse and detaining or beating journalists continue.
What these developments reflect is that the Mubarak regime is still in charge, with just enough rhetoric of reform, while replacing some top leaders and dismissing the board of Mubarak’s political party, to show some slack. Mubarak’s tactic is to bend a little so as not to break.
But unless the largely urban, tech-savvy protestors can keep replenishing their ranks and bringing more of the frightened rural poor to their rallies, they risk being perceived as running out of steam. After all, they cannot be seen as receiving aid from abroad as the Mubarak government receives regularly from U.S. taxpayers. They cannot be seen as espousing “radical ideologies” as the Mubarak government espouses radical use of dictatorial violence and torture in the past and present.
In a way, the weaknesses of the protestors—no centralized leadership, no resources—are also their moral strengths. That is why their great fear is being infiltrated by organized provocateurs to create “incidents” and smears. So they have their own checkpoints leading to the Square and are trying to keep good relations with the soldiers surrounding their encampment.
The Army is central to the perpetuation of the Mubarak forces and their oligarchies. Under orders to appear neutral and maintain order, the Army, like most Egyptians, is waiting for the next move of the two sides, though alert to its own interests which include business investments.
Rumors are rife. But it seems that some people designated by the protestors and representatives of the long politically suppressed Muslim Brotherhood have met with Mubarak’s people.
Mubarak’s newly appointed vice-president, longtime intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, with close operational contacts in Washington, appears to be making the decisions, if only to give the impression that Mubarak is relenting and may be willing to remain as a figurehead president until his term is up later this year.
All this disingenuous image of moderation may be the regime’s way of biding time so as to more fully prepare to depress or destroy this popular uprising in various ways short of massive violence watched by the whole world in real time. Choosing the latter course could unleash forces in this impoverished and brutalized country of 80 million people that both the army could not contain and the already fragile economy could not endure.
If, as rumored, the trade unions exert their independence and form worker committees that could organize a general strike, then an alternative support structure could join the protestors to call for some economic relief, such as increasing wages and consumer subsidies. However, the Mubarak government has an inside watch on anything like such an initiative materializing as well. The regime is propagandizing that there is no alternative to itself being the transition, whatever that may be, other than chaos and radical revolution against the West.
What is the Obama Administration doing behind the scenes, beyond its statement in favor of a transition government planning “open and fair elections”? Will it stand with the people of Egypt and human rights if it has to stand against what analyst Samah Selim described as the “terrifying naked silence of multinational corporations and the national security state against civil society?”
Egypt’s general prosecutor on Monday opened probe on former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly’s reported role in the New Year’s Eve bombing of al-Qiddissin Church in Alexandria in which 24 people were killed, an Egyptian lawyer told Al Arabiya.
Laywer Ramzi Mamdouh said he had presented a proclamation to Egyptian prosecutor Abd al-Majid Mahmud to investigate news media reports suggesting that the former interior ministry had masterminded the deadly church attack with the intent to blame it on Islamists, escalate government crackdown on them, and gain increased western support for the regime.
Mahmud said the information contained in some reports were “serious.”
The proclamation, numbered 1450, pointed to the news reports sourcing a UK diplomat who explained the reasons why Britain has insisted on the immediate departure of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his regime, especially his interior ministry’s security apparatus previously directed by el-Adly.
According the UK diplomatic sources quoted in the reports, the former interior minister had built up in over six years a special security system that was managed by 22 officers and that employed a number of former radical Islamists, drug dealers and some security firms to carry out acts of sabotage around the country in case the regime was under threat to collapse.
The proclamation also pointed, sourcing reports on UK intelligence services, that interior ministry officer Maj. Fathi Abdelwahid began in Dec. 11, 2011 preparing Ahmed Mohamed Khaled, who had spent 11 years in Egyptian prisons, to contact an extremist group named Jundullah and coordinate with it the attack on the Alexandria church.
“Discipline the Copts”
Khaled reportedly told the group he could assist with providing weapons he had allegedly obtained from Gaza and that the act was meant to “discipline the Copts.”
After contact was made, a Jundullah leader named Mohammed Abdelhadi agreed to cooperate in the plot and recruited a man named Abdelrahman Ahmed Ali to drive a car wired with explosives, park it in front of the church and then leave it to be detonated by remote control, according to the report.
But Maj. Abdelwahid, who worked for the interior ministry, reportedly detonated the car before the Jundullah recruit got out, therefore killing him and 24 worshipers in the church.
After the attack, the interior ministry officer asked Khaled to go meet the Jundullah leader in an Alexandria apartment and evaluate the success of the attack.
A few days later the two men met in an apartment in Alexandria’s Abdel-Moneim Riad street. During their meeting Maj. Abdelwahid and his security forces raided the apartment and arrested them. They were then driven immediately by ambulance to an interior ministry building in Cairo.
They stayed in detention until Jan. 28 when the ministry of interior and its security system broke down allowing them to escape as did thousands of prisoners around the country.
When they fled, both the men went straight to the UK embassy in Cairo and told the story of how they were set up by the government to carry out terrorist attacks, according to the reports.
Soon after Pakistan appeared on the world map as a sovereign country, it was placed in the US sphere of influence. From the signing of the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with the United States in 1954 to Musharraf’s blind subservience to the US, the incompetent Pakistani rulers have effectively turned Pakistan and US relations into the relationship between the vassal and suzerain state; with Pakistani rulers’ abject submissiveness, Pakistan’s sovereignty has been very much reduced to flag waving and singing the national anthem.
General Musharraf during ten years of his rule pushed Pakistan to a new low in subservience to the US In his constant bid to prove his unwavering loyalty, Musharraf, in his docile act of obedience, sold Pakistani and foreign citizens to the US for a bounty of $5,000 to 5 million per head. These people were kidnapped and hunted in flagrant contravention of Pakistani and international laws, handed over to the US without any charge, concrete evidence or due judicial process, and then they were thrown in the torture pit of Guantanamo Bay. Musharraf, without feeling a single iota of guilt, says in his memoir, “We have captured 689 and handed over 369 to the United States. We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars. Those who habitually accuse us of ‘not doing enough’ in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan. Here, I will tell the stories of just a few of the most significant man-hunts…” This is perhaps the first instance in civilized history that a head of state abducted and sold his own people for prize money and was proud of it and unabashedly mentioned it in his memoirs.
Among the many ills that Musharraf inflicted on Pakistan, he allowed the personnel of the US intelligence agencies and mercenaries from American private military companies (Blackwater, Halliburton, DynCorp, etc) to operate all over Pakistan in search of Al Qaeda leaders. Today, it is well known, that hundreds of US armed operatives freely roam on the streets of Pakistani cities. Whether as a mistake or unintentional utterance, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an interview admitted Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan. Not only did the Musharraf regime allow American mercenary presence in the country but he also waived the visa requirement for them; they come and go as they please, without visa or traveling documents. Often, they are escorted off the plane into a waiting car on the tarmac.
Pakistan’s newspaper Nawa-e Waqt in its editorial writes, “The Blackwater operatives, who committed heinous and inhuman crimes in Iraq, come wherever they please in Pakistan without visa or travel document. They keep on roaming around in vehicles with fake number plates with dangerous weapons. These U.S. officials point guns at the security people if asked to reveal their identity. During a few minutes debate, there is a series of phone calls from the high officials, and they, who consider Pakistan as their playground, are allowed to go with honor (How Much Dignity is Left?”, Nawa-e Waqt, January 18, 2010, translated from Urdu). It is also claimed by many and cannot be dismissed easily that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was abducted independently by Americans mercenaries from Karachi and then transferred to Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s government, Musharraf’s and the present PPP regime, has turned a blind eye and keeps mum to US mercenaries violating the country’s sovereignty and assassinating its citizens. However, the recent murder of two Pakistanis by a U.S. “diplomat” Raymond Davis on a busy street of Lahore in full view of the public forced the Pakistani government to arrest the American suspect. After the shooting and killing Davis called the consulate for help, a Land Cruiser, came to the scene. The driver of the Land Cruiser went the wrong way down a one-way street and ran over a man on a motorcycle, killing a third person. The driver of the get-away vehicle and four passengers who came to rescue Davis fled the scene and are still at large. Despite repeated requests the US Consulate is not revealing any information about the driver who killed a motorcyclist. The murder incident and the aborted attempt to rescue and help the suspect flee has, once again, brought to the forefront the presence and criminal activities of secretly fielded American mercenaries in Pakistan.
The US authorities claim that the name of the man arrested for the double murder is not Raymond Davis. The US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “We have not released the identity of our employee at this point”; however, he denied the man’s name is Raymond Davis. The US Embassy in Pakistan says that the man in Pakistan’s custody is a diplomat with a valid US diplomat passport and visa. But the copies of passport and visa of Davis obtained by Dawn News show that his name is Raymond Alan Davis, his passport is not of a diplomat and he was not on diplomatic visa but he came to Pakistan on a business visa. The US first claimed that Davis is a “Technical Adviser” and “Counselor”. Later his designation is changed to “functionary” of the US Consulate. However, ABC News says, Davis is an employee of Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC, a private security company based in Orlando, Florida.
Davis’ claim that he killed the two men in self-defense is spoiled when one considers that all the bullet wounds were found in the back of the dead bodies. Also, no shot was fired from the guns recovered on the bodies of the dead Pakistanis. His other claim that he is immune from arrest and prosecution by the virtue of his diplomatic status is also proven empty, as neither his passport nor the visa is diplomatic. If indeed Davis is a diplomat and enjoys diplomatic immunity, the US, on ethical grounds, should waive the immunity and let the judicial process take its course. It would only raise US prestige. If Davis truly acted in self-defense, he would be acquitted.
The Washington Post in its report of January 27 puts a new twist to the already complicated storyline, and even adds a dose of suspense. Here is what the Post says, “A senior former U.S. diplomatic security agent suggested Thursday that the American involved in a fatal shootout in Lahore, Pakistan, was the victim of a spy meeting gone awry, not the target of a robbery or car-jacking attempt.” The Post quoted Fred Burton, a former deputy chief of the US Diplomatic Security Service’s counter-terrorism division who worked on several major terrorism cases in the 1980s and 1990s, as saying: “It looks like an informant meet gone bad more than a car-jacking attempt.”
If we consider what a diplomat fluent in Urdu with automatic weapons and a large sum of money in a rented car was doing in the part of town that has been scene of terror bombing, Burton’s theory of “an informant meet gone bad” appears highly credible. Diplomats do not travel in a locally rented car and go cruising with large sums of money and automatic weapons in the not so desirable part of the town. It is very plausible that Davis was on a mission and the mission went awry. Pakistanis strongly suspects U.S. hands in the terror bombings in their country.
At the end of the day, the US will get its way; Pakistan’s servile administration under US pressure will let Davis go free. There will be some clamor in the press and anti US demonstrations on the streets but all will be forgotten and forgiven soon. The other likely scenario: to appease the Pakistani public, the US may release Dr. Aafia Siddique; a Pakistani neuroscientist who the US says has ties to Al Qaeda members, sentenced in the US to 86 years in prison for attempted murder, in exchange for the release of Raymond Davis. It is highly unlikely, rather unimaginable, that the trial will go to its end, and if Davis is found guilty that he will serve the full sentence in a Pakistani jail. The US is not Pakistan, and Raymond Davis is not Pakistani Aafia Siddique, who was sold and forgotten and abandoned by her Pakistani rulers.
If Raymond Davis goes free, after murdering two Pakistanis in broad daylight, without judicial process, it would be yet another abject surrender by the Pakistani government to the will of the US.
Because my blog prompted by the Arizona shootings has attracted many comments pro and con, and more recently has been the object of a more selective public attack on me personally, I thought it appropriate to post a supplementary blog with the purpose of clarifying my actual position and re-focusing attention on the plight and suffering of the Palestinian people being held in captivity. In the background, are crucial issues of free speech, fairness in public discourse, and responsible media treatment of sensitive and controversial affairs of state.
Both the UN Secretary General and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations harshly criticized some remarks in my personal blog that mentioned the 9/11 attacks. They referred to the views expressed there as ‘despicable and deeply offensive,’ ‘noxious, ‘inflammatory,’ and ‘preposterous.’ Their comments were apparently made in response to a letter written to the UN Secretary General by the head of UN Monitor, a Geneva-based highly partisan NGO, that called misleading attention to this passage in the blog. Ambassador Rice called for my dismissal from my unpaid post as an independent Special Rapporteur of the UN Human Rights Council with a mandate to report upon the Israeli observance of “human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.”
For anyone who read the blog post in its entirely it should be plain that the reference to the 9/11 issues is both restrained and tangential. What is stressed in the blog is the importance of carefully examining evidence before drawing conclusions about political and legal responsibility for highly sensitive public acts, and the importance for the serenity of the society of achieving closure in a responsible manner. I never endorsed doubts about the official version of 9/11 beyond indicating what anyone who has objectively examined the controversy knows– that there remain certain gaps in the official explanation that give rise to an array of conspiratorial explanations, and that the 9/11 Commission unfortunately did not put these concerns to rest. My plea was intended to encourage addressing these gaps in a credible manner, nothing more, nothing less. I certainly meant no disrespect toward the collective memory of 9/11 in the country and elsewhere. On the contrary, my intention was to encourage an investigation that might finally achieve closure with respect to doubts that remain prevalent among important sectors of the public, including among some 9/11 families.
What seems apparent from this incident, which is itself disturbing, is that any acknowledgement of doubt about the validity of the official version of the 9/11 events, while enjoying the legal protection of free speech, is denied the political and moral protection that are essential if an atmosphere of free speech worthy of a democracy is to be maintained. When high officials can brand someone who raises some doubts in the most cautious language as ‘an enemy of the people,’ then there are either things to hide or a defensive fury that is out of all proportion to the provocation. To seek further inquiry into the unanswered questions about 9/11 is surely not an unreasonable position
What is dismaying to me is that neither the office of the Secretary General nor the U.S. Mission to the United Nation made any effort to contact me to seek clarification of my remarks on these issues that are not connected with my UN role prior to making their insulting criticisms damaging to my reputation. I would think that as a representative of the UN and a citizen of the United States, I am at least entitled to this minimal courtesy, and more substantially, that whatever criticisms are made are based on what I said rather than on a manifestly inflammatory letter written by the UN Monitor, that has made a habit of publicly attacking me in consistently irresponsible and untruthful ways, presumably with the intention of diverting attention from my criticisms of Israel’s occupation policies in the Palestinian territories. It is always more tempting to shoot the messenger than heed the message. A similar tactic, what I call ‘the politics of deflection’ was deployed over a year ago in a shabby attempt to discredit the distinguished South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, a person of impeccable credentials as an international public servant. The intention was again to avoid a proper focus upon the devastating findings and recommendations of the Goldstone Report submitted to the United Nations after conducing a scrupulous inquiry into the allegations of violation of law associated with the Israeli attacks on Gaza between December 27, 2008 and January 18, 2009.
I remain determined to report as fully and honestly as possible about the massive human rights violations confronting Palestinians who have now lived without rights under occupation for more than 43 years, and to do my best not to let such personal attacks impair my capacity to carry out the assignment that I was invited to perform by the UN.
What the United States Government, the Secretary-General and the media should be focused on is the ongoing, widespread and systematic violation of Palestinians’ human rights by Israel. Only since the beginning of 2011, at least four Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli forces and more than 33 others have been injured. This is in addition to the expansion of settlements, home demolitions, forced evictions and displacement of Palestinian families, revocation of residency permits and forced transfers, particularly devastating in East Jerusalem, detention and mistreatment of over 6000 Palestinians, including children, as well as the illegal blockade of Gaza. My forthcoming report to the Human Rights Council addresses these and other severe ongoing violations of Palestinian rights by Israel.
Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Occupied Palestine, is under fire for writing what is obviously true about the U.S. government and the media. Calls for his firing abound from the usual suspects.
Such commitments to truth as Falk possesses can pose problems for prospective careerists, but the 80-year-old human rights activist and scholar likely doesn’t care all that much about resulting slander.
In fact, Falk wrote: the “media … [is] unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events [of 9/11].” And that author David Ray Griffin is of a caliber of “other devoted scholars of high integrity.”
That’s it. Why is the Lobby and its supporters so enraged by Falk’s rather banal comments?
Falk’s lifetime commitment to the truth puts him beyond the reach of McCarthyite slanderers and cowards who see Falk and other human rights activists and truth-tellers as betraying the cause—that is, America and Israel right or wrong and don’t make waves. Liars cannot erase a lifetime with one lie. It’s been tried with Helen Thomas and it failed.
So what’s the hubbub that has U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, demanding that Falk step down from his UN position and saying, “In my view, Mr. Falk’s latest commentary [a paragraph on the media and 9/11] is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the U.N.”? (Reuters, Charbonneau)
Turns out Falk has the temerity to suggest that the mainstream media refused to accept “well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the [9/11] events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials.” (Reuters, Charbonneau)
We thought this was axiomatic. But the American Jewish Committee and various crusaders for truth in the U.S. Congress want Falk fired.
The 9/11 Commission member and staff is composed of the sort of insiders Washington elites wanted on the blue-ribbon committee to prevent accountability and disclosure to the American people 0f what their government knew and when its many agencies knew it.
Remember when George W. Bush made his over-the-top appointment of Henry Kissinger to the 9/11 commission in late November 2002. (CounterPunch, December 17, 2002; Leon) Even then those—like the 9/11 victims’ families—who doubted the would-be chair Kissinger’s commitment to investigate the truth of the events leading up to 9/11 were smeared as conspiracy theorists and un-American radicals.
Kissinger’s appointment as chair was withdrawn as too obvious a choice for a cover-up. And Kissinger gave away the store on the Lou Dobbs Moneyline show (CNN, December 16, 2002) in a laugh-a-minute interview excerpted below. Said Kissinger:
I hope that everybody has his partisanship out of his system now. And that people remember that this [9/11] was an event that was totally unexpected to the American public; that it came from a direction that nobody had ever thought of. And that it was the first attack on the continental United States … . (Dobbs quickly interrupts)
As for Falk, here is his commentary crime:
The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues [of secrecy in government]. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin (and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or co-option, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.
Did we miss something? What’s the problem here?
Of course, the official 9/11 version of events is a lie.
As the great journalist I.F. Stone once wrote: “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”
Falk knows this truism about governments; most everyone does. He dare speaks this truth? Thank you, Richard Falk.
I spent a year in Sweden a few years after the assassination of Olaf Palmein 1986, the controversial former prime minister of the country who at the time of his death was serving as a member of the Swedish cabinet. He was assassinated while walking with his wife back to their apartment in the historic part of the city after attending a nearby movie. It was a shocking event in a Sweden that had prided itself on moderateness in politics and the avoidance of involvement in the wars of the twentieth century. A local drifter, with a history of alcoholism, was charged and convicted of the crime, but many doubts persisted, including on the part of Ms. Palme who analogized her situation to that of Coretta King who never believed the official version of her martyred husband’s death.
I had a particular interest in this national traumatic event as my reason for being in Sweden was a result of an invitation to be the Olaf Palme Professor, a rotating academic post given each year to a foreign scholar, established by the Swedish Parliamentas a memorial to their former leader. (after the Social Democratic Party lost political control in Sweden this professorship was promptly defunded, partly because Palme was unloved by conservatives and partly because of a neoliberal dislike for public support of such activities)
In the course of my year traveling around Sweden I often asked those whom I met what was their view of the assassination, and what I discovered was that the responses told me more about them than it did about the public event. Some thought it was a dissident faction in the Swedish security forces long angered by Palme’s neutralist policies, some believed it was resentment caused by Palme’s alleged engineering of Swedish arms sales to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, some believed it was the CIAin revenge for Palme’s neutralism during the Cold War, some believed it could have criminals in the pay of business tycoons tired of paying high taxes needed to maintain the Swedish maximalist version of a welfare state, and there were other theories as well. What was common to all of these explanations was the lack of evidence that might connect the dots. What people believed happened flowed from their worldview rather than the facts of the event—a distrust of the state, especially its secret operations, or a strong conviction that special interests hidden from view were behind prominent public events of this character.
In a way, this process of reflection is natural, even inevitable, but it leads to faulty conclusions. We tend to process information against the background of our general worldview and understanding, and we do this all the time as an efficient way of coping with the complexity of the world combined with our lack of time or inclination to reach conclusions by independent investigation. The problem arises when we confuse this means of interpreting our experience with an effort to provide an explanation of a contested public event. There are, to be sure, conspiracies that promote unacknowledged goals, and enjoy the benefit of government protection. We don’t require WikiLeaks to remind us not to trust governments, even our own, and others that seem in most respects to be democratic and law-abiding. And we also by now should know that governments (ab)use their authority to treat awkward knowledge as a matter of state secrets, and criminalize those who are brave enough to believe that the citizenry needs to know the crimes that their government is committing with their trust and their tax dollars.
The arguments swirling around the 9/11 attacks are emblematic of these issues. What fuels suspicions of conspiracy is the reluctance to address the sort of awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations that David Ray Griffin(and other devoted scholars of high integrity) have been documenting in book after book ever since his authoritative The New Pearl Harbor in 2004 (updated in 2008). What may be more distressing than the apparent cover up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials. Is this silence a manifestation of fear or cooption, or part of an equally disturbing filter of self-censorship? Whatever it is, the result is the withering away of a participatory citizenry and the erosion of legitimate constitutional government. The forms persist, but the content is missing.
This brings me to the Arizona shootings, victimizing both persons apparently targeted for their political views and random people who happened to be there for one reason or another, innocently paying their respects to a congresswoman meeting constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. As with the Palme assassination, the most insistent immediate responses come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, both proceeding on presuppositions rather than awaiting evidence.
On one side are those who say that right-wing hate speech and affection for guns were clearly responsible, while Tea Party ultra-conservatives and their friends reaffirm their rights of free speech, denying that there is any connection between denouncing their adversaries in the political process and the violent acts of a deranged individual seemingly acting on his own. If we want to be responsible in our assessments, we must restrain our political predispositions, and get the evidence. Let us remember that what seems most disturbing about the 9/11 controversy is the widespread aversion by government and media to the evidence that suggests, at the very least, the need for an independent investigation that proceeds with no holds barred.
Such an investigation would contrast with the official ‘9/11 Commission’ that proceeded with most holds barred. What has been already disturbing about the Arizona incident are these rival rushes to judgment without bothering with evidence. Such public irresponsibility polarizes political discourse, making conversation and serious debate irrelevant.
There is one more issue raised, with typical candor and innocence, by the filmmaker, Michael Moore. If a Muslim group has published a list of twenty political leaders in this country, and put crosshairs of a gun behind their pictures, is there any doubt that the Arizona events would be treated as the work of a terrorist,, and the group that had pre-identified such targets would be immediately outlawed as a terrorist organization. Many of us, myself included, fervently hoped, upon hearing the news of the shootings, that the perpetrator of this violence was neither a Muslim nor a Hispanic, especially an illegal immigrant. Why? Because we justly feared the kind of horrifying backlash that would have been probably generated by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, and their legion of allies. Now that the apparent perpetrator is a young white American, the talk from the hate mongers, again without bothering with evidence, is of mental disorder and sociopathology. This is faith-based pre-Enlightenment ‘knowledge.’
What must we learn from all of this? Don’t connect dots without evidence. Don’t turn away as soon as the words ‘conspiracy theory’ are uttered, especially if the evidence does point away from what the power-wielders want us to believe. Don’t link individual wrongdoing, however horrific, to wider religious and ethnic identities. We will perish as a species if we don’t learn soon to live together better on our beautiful, globalizing, and imperiled planet.
Update: The level of McCarthyite hysteria directed at Richard Falk is astonishing. ”UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s office condemned Richard Falk, a retired Princeton professor and a member of the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, for questioning in a recent blog posting” the official version about the 9/11 terror attacks. … The secretary-general’s spokesman, Vijay Nambiar, wrote that Falk’s remarks were “an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in the attack.” (Horn, Jerusalem Post)
In August 2010, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah presented “intercepted Israeli reconnaissance footage” and “the recorded confessions of Israeli spies” at news conference in Beirut to support his claim that Israel was responsible for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. The aerial footage, taken by Israeli unmanned drones, showed the same route taken by Hariri’s motorcade on the day of the assassination, suggesting that the ex-PM was being pursued.
Nasrallah’s revelations were compelling but, unfortunately, they were ignored by the western media except for the Christian Scientist Monitor which compiled the information in an article titled “Is Hezbollah right that Israel assassinated Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri?”
Here’s an excerpt from the CSM:
“Israel has the capability to carry out this type of operation, such as Hariri’s assassination and the other assassinations that targeted Lebanon during the past few years,” said Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, adding that Israel’s motive was to cast the blame on its enemies, Syria and Hezbollah. (“Is Hezbollah right that Israel assassinated Lebanon’s Rafik Hariri?”, Christian Scientist Monitor)
Nasrallah’s damning evidence is especially important now that the prosecutor for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has issued his draft indictments. (On Monday) For now, the contents are being kept secret, but it’s widely expected that members of Hezbollah will be charged in Hariri’s murder. Nasrallah has warned that he won’t allow members of his militia to be arrested, so if warrants are issued, fighting will surely break out. Already, many schools in Beirut have been closed and Lebanese security forces have been put on high alert.
At the same time, the Obama administration has been working behind the scenes to influence key members in Lebanon’s government to support the US-Israeli position. In fact, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador Maura Connelly to explain why she had met with Lebanese lawmaker Nicolas Fattouch over the weekend. It appears as though the US is meddling in the country’s internal affairs in an effort to discredit Hezbollah. Connelly has not yet explained what she was up to.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon is supposed to be an “independent” investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Nasrallah has dismissed the STL as an “American and Israeli project” designed to label Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. The STL has culled all information that does not comply with its primary objectives. Thus, the fact that more than 100 people in Lebanon have been arrested in the last year “on charges of collaborating with the Mossad… including one who said his Israeli handlers instructed him to delude the late prime minister into thinking Hezbollah was out to kill him (Hariri) and so allow the agent to alter the route Hariri’s motorcade would take that fateful February day”, or that Lebanon’s “telecommunications network had been infiltrated by Israel, compromising all its communications” (“The Hariri Assassination: All Eyes on Lebanon”, Ranni Amiri, CounterPunch) will undoubtedly be omitted from the investigation’s final report.
Here’s more from Ranni Amiri’s article:
“According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years. (Note–Charbel Qazzi was head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon ‘s two state-owned mobile service providers.” (“The Hariri Assassination: The Role Of Israel?” Rannie Amiri, CounterPunch)
So, the question arises: Who had the communications systems, aerial drones and explosives capable of killing Hariri? Who knew the route of his motorcade? Who had the motive?
And why is Israel’s chief of staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi, making predictions that the political situation in Lebanon will progressively deteriorate following the STL’s indictments? Here’s a clip from the political theatrics website:
“The Israeli Chief of Staff told the Knesset’s Foreign Committee that “with lots of wishes and a little bit of information” the situation in Lebanon will probably deteriorate following the issuance of an indictment by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)…
Although the date of issuing the indictment has not been set yet, Ashkenazi predicted it will be in September and insinuated that it will implicate Hezbollah. The Israeli general’s comments were seen as momentous particularly that he made them in front of a committee involved in Israel’s strategic policies.” (“Merlin” Ashkenazi Wishfully Predicts Deterioration In Lebanon In September”, politicaltheatrics.net)
So, why is Ashkenazi speculating on the STL indictments way back in July 2010, and why would he bring it up at a meeting devoted to “Israel’s strategic policies”? Does this explain why there are reports of increased military activity on Israel’s northern border? Is there a broader strategy to use the indictments to resume hostilities between Israel and Lebanon?
And why is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton so deeply involved in the activities of a so called “independent” tribunal? Clinton put the kibosh on a Syria-Saudi team that was trying to find a resolution between the rival factions in Lebanon’s ruling body. Why? And why did she preemptively torpedo the S-S negotiations and tell “Saudi King Abdullah and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri that the U.S. would reject any settlement at the expense of the UN tribunal.” Saad Hariri has reluctantly acquiesced to Clinton’s demands, but what does that mean? Should we assume that Clinton cares more about finding out who killed Rafik Hariri than his own son?
The loose ends and unanswered questions abound. The case that’s being made by the STL may seem convincing, but there is an equally cogent narrative that supports Hezbollah’s position. Here’s how British politician George Galloway summed it up in a speech in Edmonton in November 2010:
“I believe, and I don’t know anybody who is objective in this matter who does not believe, that Hezbollah are absolutely innocent of this crime, and it is time that the tribunal looked to the people who benefited from this crime…..in Israel.
“Any law student here knows, the first thing you do when confronted with a crime is ask the question, cui bono, who benefited?
“Did Syria benefit from the killing of the Sunni leader in Lebanon? Syria lost everything.
“Did Hezbollah benefit? Would Hezbollah benefit from destroying forever the respect and admiration that the Sunni Muslim population, not just in Lebanon but throughout the Arab and Muslim world, had towards them? No! They would lose everything.
“But Israel gained everything from this crime. It deepened the schism between Sunni and Shia in Lebanon. It deepened the schism between Sunni and Shia throughout the Muslim world. They plunged Lebanon into absolute chaos, and may do so again in the next few days and months.
“If this tribunal issues this indictment and anyone seeks to implement it, there will be war in Lebanon and there will be war almost certainly between Israel and Lebanon, and all of us will be dragged into it one way or another.” (“Galloway unedited: ‘Special Tribunal for Lebanon’ should have asked ‘who benefited?'”, rabble.ca)
Is that the goal, another war in Lebanon to create the “New Middle East” that Bush and Condi used to opine about? It’s too soon to say, but it’s not looking good.
The total collapse of WTC 7 at 5:20 PM on 9/11/01 shows all of the features of an implosion engineered through controlled demolition.
Controlled demolition is the use of pre-positioned explosive charges to destroy structures. Depending on the nature of the structure and constraints imposed by its surroundings, a controlled demolition may require a great deal of precision in its planning and execution. That is especially true of tall steel buildings in urban settings, given the natural tendency of such structures to topple. Controlled demolitions of buildings in cities are designed to implode the structures, making them sink into their footprints and fold in on themselves into a small consolidated rubble piles
Observing the collapse of 47-story WTC 7 shows it to have all of the features of an implosion engineered by controlled demolition.
The collapse of the main structure commences suddenly (several seconds after the penthouse falls).
The building sinks in a precisely vertical manner into its footprint.
Puffs of dust emerge from the building’s facade early in the event.
The collapse is total, producing a rubble pile only about three stories high.
The main structure collapses totally in under 7 seconds, only about a second slower than it would take a brick dropped from the building’s roof to reach the ground in a vacuum.
Although Zionism typically represents itself as the solution to anti-Semitism, the truth is less flattering. In fact, hostility toward Jews is indispensable to the cause of Jewish nationalism. If anti-Semitism didn’t exist, Zionists would have to invent it. … continue
The Miami 7, the Fort Dix 6,the Newburgh 4, the Underwear Bomber, the Portland Car Bomber… The FBI has set up then knocked down dozens of terrorist straw men in an effort to convince you that the ‘war on terror’ is real. This is a very real war for your mind and we may all pay a high price for ignoring it.
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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