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SEPTEMBER 11 2001 : THE CRIMES OF WAR COMMITTED IN THE NAME OF 9/11
#11
TWO AXIOMS OF 9/11
Manuel Valenzuela



With government and corporate media propaganda echoing the traumatic memories of five years ago, from sea to shining sea, enveloping the airwaves and print media of the nation with a clenched fist of wall to wall coverage, Americans have again been bombarded with the exploitation of the mass murder of 3,000 human beings, their death once more serving the political interests of the Bush cabal as well as the financial concerns of the corporate Leviathan. The War on the American People – that psychological operation against our minds and emotions that began with the demolition of the World Trade Center and has continued unabatedly for five consecutive years – has been reinvented and redeployed, its army of lackey journalists, talking heads, government institutions and authoritarian politicians eager to spread the language and images needed to resurrect emotions and feelings, spreading the filth designed to manipulate our fears and hatreds, conditioning us into accepting the dictates of the state and the corporation along with the reality of a world of perpetual war and perpetual terror.



Once more we are being reminded, at the expediency of those in power, and just in case we had begun to forget, that fear is bravery, war is peace, authoritarianism is freedom, dissent is treasonous and a police state is security. Only those truly responsible for perpetrating the events of 9/11, we are made to believe, those lurking behind the smoke, mirrors and purple curtains of the state, can save and defend us from dark-skinned bogeymen of Arab/Muslim lineage that hate us for our freedoms and way of life. Only the fascists in power, we are told, care about preserving and protecting our freedoms, rights, liberties and democracy even as it is they, and not the barbarians at the gates, that are eroding and destroying each with every new day that passes, taking away what the evil terrorist cannot accomplish. It is the dreaded terrorist – of course always Arab in ethnicity or Muslim in faith – we are told by the deciders and the fascists, that roams like a giant cloud of death, hovering above the lands of America, wanting nothing more than to kill us and our children. However, it is the state and its propaganda machine that does not relent in its campaign at frightening and terrorizing the American people, as if it, and not the enemy, is the real terrorist, scaring families, creating stresses and causing insecurity among the masses.



The new blitzkrieg of propaganda and of mental manipulation is an exercise in the further destabilization of already fragile minds and the conditioning of increased fear of those individuals who have begun to forget and heal from the wounds 9/11 inflicted upon the populace. Those in power have taken notice that their scare tactics upon the American people are not as effective as in years previous, and are therefore using the new wave of fear and terror mongering to impose the invisible hand of control – of both thought and action – upon an unsuspecting citizenry, in essence enforcing once again the clandestine iron chain that served to make subservient the minds of hundreds of millions of people in the years after 9/11 that enabled both for one-party dominance along with authoritarian rule, now prevalent in the upper echelons of governance. It is the use of fear and terror, after all, that has propelled the new American fascists to complete dominion over the state, with unfettered power over its institutions, its foundations and its citizenry. It is fear, therefore, that has become the fascist party strategy with terror, its mantra. The only thing they have to offer in the 2006 election year is fear itself.



It has therefore been decided, both by gatekeepers and the Establishment, that the events that left hundreds of millions of people deeply scarred and psychologically fragile must once again be refreshed for all to relive, their remembrance made to resurface from our inner minds so that an entire nation can again be shaped into order and obedience, its collective psyche once more manipulated and controlled by the events, images and sounds that even five years later, still resound with deep disturbance inside the psyche of the masses. It is the horrors of the WTC, more than anything else, that exposed the home of the brave as the culture of cowardice, a people once fearless now made to cower and shake in perpetual fear and insecurity at an enemy concocted, manufactured and marketed by the state and its corporate fear mongers.



Indeed, the toxicity of 9/11 has produced a collective trauma that has made the home of the brave the largest laboratory of Pavlovian dogs in the world, with its manipulated feelings and emotions becoming the bells and whistles we automatically and reflexively gravitate towards, our minds becoming the glands salivating with fear and terror at either the sound or image of anything resembling that terrible day. The blitzkrieg has been relentless and omnipresent, with a barrage of presidential speeches, ceremonies and bully-pulpit distortions and deceptions attacking the airwaves, with executive branch appearances, lies and manipulations allowed to fester in print and camera, with a corporate media once more granting free reign to the dissemination of falsity and blatant propaganda, its journalists acting like the presstitutes they are, once more showing that corporate media is comprised of nothing but political hacks, media shills and corporate lackeys, to the fictitious Hollywood produced movies and docu-dramas serving to propagate the deceptions and propaganda of the Bush cabal. The corporate world, using its vast arsenal of media tools, and in conjunction with the fascist party, will do whatever it can to assure itself of retaining in power the party already at the controls of governance.



Thus, in order to maintain authoritarian rule, along with one-party control, after the important mid-term elections coming up in November, Republicans, now nothing more than full-fledged fascists availing themselves free of the closet of charades and mirages, with the help of the corporate media, have begun to instill in our minds the previously successful fear-mongering campaign of terror, knowing that fear is the one ace in their pocket that has yet to betray them, knowing that it has been their platform based on fear that has kept them in power. Like a magic charm, the mere mention and methodical repetition of 9/11 and its memories has, without fail, served to hypnotize millions of fear stricken citizens to the dictates of authoritarian rule, creating a voting block of ignorant and cowardly creatures that elects to power a fascist party that promises protection and security from terror at the expense of civil rights and liberties.



The fascist party is thus hoping this past success will again work its magic, in an election that is as much a referendum on Iraq as anything else. It will be fear and terror propelled throughout the airwaves and the print media, with bogeymen lurking behind every corner, under every shadow, ready to murder and terrorize. For the next several months the Fear and Terror Show will hit the television, showcasing the latest terror threat that, thanks to the fascist party, was thwarted at the last second, helping to prove, yet again, that it is they alone who can protect and defend you from the evildoers. The Fear and Terror Show will have as hero our very own George W. Bush, decider extraordinaire, Commander in Chief of the Free World, conduit to the Almighty itself, stumping around the nation delivering the same old regurgitated speech, using fancy words and scaremongering tactics, telling us how much danger America is, and how he and his party are the only ones able to protect us. He will stumble and bumble his way through speech after speech, trying to prove to us why Iraq deserved to be invaded, occupied and its society pulverized, trying unsuccessfully, yet again, to correlate Iraq with the so-called war on terror, trying to validate the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the nation.



The desperation of the fascist party can be seen in the level of fear and propaganda it has begun to generate. Its leaders are fully aware that the nation has finally escaped from underneath the clouds of 9/11, most of it thanks to the disaster in Iraq, and that the population is highly dissatisfied with the direction the nation is headed in. The fascist leadership knows that its party is in trouble in November, which is why the barrage of fear mongering and terror tactics will be as relentless as it will be systematic. They have smelled and enjoyed one party rule, along with its many benefits, for six years, and addicted they have become to power, greed and control. The smear campaign against opponents will thus be twice as devastating, for fascists, like wild beasts, will fight tooth and nail when cornered. They, along with Bush and Cheney, know that if they were to lose the House of Representatives, perhaps even the Senate as well, to the anemic, lesser of two evils opposition party, the last two years of the Bush administration will involve a myriad number of investigations, scandals, revelations and calls for impeachment. For all intents and purposes, the Bush presidency will have ended, creating a lame duck executive having little power and much to answer for. If they were to lose the mid-term election, they could be mired in an endless seam of scandals that could implode the party from within. It is for these aforementioned reasons that the fascist party will use everything at its disposal to retain power, no matter the consequences, no matter the immorality. This is an extremely dangerous party in an extremely ominous time in American history.



Naturally, when the entire success of those in power relies on the use of fear as a political tool, or the use and marketing of ambiguous bogeymen as enemies becomes the paramount reason for their continued control, fear itself will be multiplied and expanded, its parameters greatly increased, as we are seeing today, to a degree where the people of the nation are again made to vote and elect the fascist party, against their own interests, based on fragile emotions, damaged psyches and by consequence, unthinking minds. Fear, in the years after 9/11, has, along with the manipulation of terror, become the ultimate manipulative tool, a political emerald for the most immoral and unscrupulous operatives today.



Its use, manipulation and repetition are guaranteed to deliver to the fascist party millions upon millions of votes come election time, regardless of what the other party attempts to do, for today in America there exists a corrosive cocktail of ignorance, cowardice, xenophobia, nationalism and blind loyalty to the state by large segments of the populace that would rather see their civil rights, liberties and freedoms expire than be forced to confront the fictional wickedness of the dreaded Arab bogeyman the state and its Department of Propaganda conjure up.



To millions of individuals, the party in power at the time 9/11 took place will for years be – because of psychological manipulation and human nature – the party of protection, defense, national security the one best suited to win the so-called war on terror, regardless of the fact that it has been the fascist party itself that has made their country, their world, their families and themselves less safe, not more, due to the debacle in Iraq, the biggest strategic disaster in American foreign policy history, and by its catastrophic Middle East policy, especially in relation to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which only continues to endanger America and the world.



Since 9/11 the Democratic Party, now a center-right, corporate first, political organization, has had to fight an uphill battle against the cratered psychology of the masses. The fascist party has done a successful job of portraying the Democrats as weak on national security and defense of the homeland, marketing it as a party anemic and incapable of protecting the American people. Accordingly, the Democrats, for years with no real power in Washington to speak of, have gotten trampled left and right by the party in power, becoming a party unable to shed its tarnished image, an anorexic minority unable to penetrate the thick fortifications set up by the fascist party. It has tried unsuccessfully to reinvent itself, catering to the new right-of-center reality in America, a tectonic shift caused by the events of 9/11 that triggered the nation’s political pulse to beat more conservatively. Since 9/11 the Democrats, at least the powerful, corporate elements, have remarketed themselves as war mongers, in favor of the occupation of Iraq, in agreement with the war on terror. They have pretended to inject themselves with fascist growth hormone in hopes of attracting some of the 59 million Americans who voted for Bush in 2004. In short, they have become what the Republican Party used to be before flirting with authoritarianism: conservative.



Fortunately for Democrats, and thanks to nobody but the Bush administration, come November they have an excellent shot at retaking one or both houses of Congress. For while it was 9/11, along with Diebold electronic voting machines, that stampeded the fascist party into unrivaled power, it would be Iraq, the Bush administration’s arrogant mistake, a disaster unrivaled in history, that would offer oxygen to the drowning minority party.



Because it was not the party in power at the time of 9/11, lacking the visible reign and loudspeaker power of the presidential bully pulpit, along with being relegated being the minority party in both houses of Congress, the Democratic Party has had to scratch and claw out of the memory hole of obscurity, condemned to premature burial by the earthquake called 9/11. For it was 9/11, an enormous gift to the Bush administration, more than any creative genius by strategists of the fascist regime, that has been the primary catalyst that has stifled Democratic opposition for almost six years. Politically, 9/11 changed everything and it basically guaranteed Bush the 2004 mid term elections as well as the 2004 presidential elections. It was only through his incompetence and idiocy that the 2004 election, a virtual lock with any other incumbent at the helm during 9/11, was so close to begin with, and indeed had to be tampered and compromised in Ohio to guarantee victory.



Without the power of the executive, with negligent control of the government, without the favor of the corporate media, the Democrats have been impotent to alter the course of America or to affect governance. Only the passage of time and the healing of fragile psyches, along with the extraordinary and historical incompetence, corruption, and hubris of the fascist party in power have allowed it to survive above water for the last five years. Yet the Democratic Party’s opportunity to regain control of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even of the Senate, this coming November can be summarized with one simple word: Iraq.



Without the debacle in Iraq, a war lost the moment it began, and without the unprecedented ignorance and incompetence of the Bush administration, the nation would still be under the hypnotizing grip of 9/11 and Bush’s fear and terror orgy that has only served to divide America, squash dissent, scapegoat Arab Muslims and give rise to authoritarian beliefs among millions of Bush supporters. The disaster in Iraq has woken millions of otherwise obedient and acquiescent sheeple to the voluminous damage Bush and his minions have done to America. Yet it is not the fate of Iraq or of its people Americans lament and mourn, but rather the death of almost 3,000 soldiers and the maiming, both mentally and physically, of over 20,000 more. Had Iraq been a success, there would not be today the level of dissatisfaction against Bush and the fascist party we witness at present. It is spilled American blood, and the embarrassment of quagmire and disaster, and not the concern for innocent Iraqis, of which up to 250,000 might have already died, that is propelling such discord in the body politic. Nobody likes a loser, everyone likes a winner, and at present, the American people see nothing but failure and disaster in Iraq, thereby causing millions of voters to seek change at the ballot box.



If Iraq was not the complete failure that we see today, if its military occupation were not the colossal collapse many of us said it would inevitably become, and if its unflinching resistance had not trapped the world’s “most powerful” military in an non-winnable and violent quagmire, the American war culture, full of millions of xenophobic, ignorant and fearful war mongers, many unable to decipher Iraq on a map, unable to coherently argue its reality away from Fox News fictions and fascist party talking points, a culture with a military industrial energy complex full of war profiteers and greed addicted elites, would today be thirsty for Iranian, Lebanese and Syrian blood, as rabid for more warfare as many are for pro football, with the fictional war on terror expanding into a cycle of violence threatening the world entire.



In essence, what Bush has created, full of hubris and messianic confidence, full of apathy for human life and suffering, has invariably led to his downfall, with an immoral, debased, criminal and illegal war based on lies, deceits and manipulations coming back to haunt him in a boomerang display of karmic justice. The war in Iraq has become, without a doubt, George W. Bush’s overbearing nightmare, a weight on his shoulders eroding the fabric of his presidency, haunting him day and night, a personal disaster of his own making. With 9/11, where once he had the love and support of the world at his fingertips, where he once had the power to export positive energy to all corners of the globe, with an opportunity to change the course of humanity for the better, he instead altered the direction of human compassion and unity, creating worldwide hatred and animosity for his person and his country, importing fear and exporting brutal violence, choosing the path of greed and imperial hubris over that of togetherness and of humankind, in the end making his subjects less safe, not more and assuring America of perpetual threats arising from the myriad number of hate-filled, revenge-seeking groups seeking to make right the many wrongs inflicted by the decisions of the fascist party.



The presidency of George W. Bush, along with the power of the fascist party, have so become intertwined with the myths, fables, fictions and fears of 9/11 that without its perpetual dissemination, without the manipulation of its engendered fears and hatreds, without the ever-constant reminder to the people of the “official” narrative, the party risks, thanks to the passage of time and the healing of psyches, thanks to citizens waking from their propaganda-laced brainwashing and their hypnotized stupor, losing the high levels of electoral and political support it has enjoyed since 9/11. It is, therefore, of vital importance to the fascists in power that the sense be instilled into the population as if 9/11 just happened all over again, that its emotions and hatreds and fears and panic and hunger for vengeance be replicated, day in and day out, so that the citizenry be forced to confront their own feelings and memories, remembering exactly who was in power, who led a country in mourning, who declared a call for justice, who declared war, who has been in command of this “war on terror” from the very beginning.



With this in mind, it is easy to see the usefulness of never allowing the American populace the opportunity to relax or breathe in security and a sense of well-being. If tens of millions can be kept fearful and terrorized, perpetually afraid of their health and way of life, thinking that only by placing complete blind trust in the fascist party can they be protected from the dreaded Arab and Muslim “terrorists,” then surely the party in power can retain firm one-party control of the state, finally having the opportunity to shred social programs, expand the military budget and unleash war upon the American middle class. If this formula of fear, terror, protection and security can be perfected and maintained, it becomes a possibility that the party in power can retain its power as well as its one-party control for years to come, with each new year amplifying its authoritarian rule and its evisceration of democracy.



The war on terror, more than anything else, is a war on the American people’s minds, an experiment at controlling, through fear and terror, the thoughts and decisions of 300 million citizens. The events of 9/11 became a bottomless gold mine to the fascist party, an opportunity to establish permanent rule and dominion over the American political landscape. It is for this reason that the fascist party refuses to stop terrorizing and instilling fear into the minds of the American people. If they can fill millions with fear, concern and attention directed at an alien, unknown, dark-skinned bogeyman, an easy scapegoat from which to place blame at, rather than at its own decimation of the middle class and the erosion of civil rights and liberties, then their job will be made that much easier. If we place our concern and our minds at the Arab terrorist trying to kill us for our freedom and our way of life then we will be less aware as the fascist party fuses with the corporate Leviathan to further devastate our way of life.



For this reason the five year anniversary of 9/11 was made, yet again, a spectacle full of patriotism, nationalism and love of tribe, from flags handed out at pro football games to those hanging on school grounds, from hours of television devoted to never forgetting and always remembering to homework assignments devoted to 9/11, all activities designed both to stir the same feelings, emotions and psychology in the adult population they experienced five years ago to inculcating a new generation of children to the official narrative of events, thereby capturing innocent minds into the devastating fictions and fears of the so-called war on terror. Like a new Thanksgiving or Fourth of July, 9/11 has become, in the short span of five years, yet one more tool of systemic control, a day designed to politicize the death of 3,000 people, a day to validate the fascist-driven war on terror, a day to remind people exactly who was in power and who defended them from the evildoers. In the American narrative, 9/11 has become part of the national lore, a myth like many others before, propagated from coast to coast, from generation to generation, giving life to a vicious circle of violence that is now a self-fulfilling prophesy, becoming the perpetual reminder, as well as the impetus, for the decisive “ideological struggle of the 21st century.”



It is rather interesting, in this day of fascist undertaking and authoritarian rule, that it is the fascist in power concocting fear mongering and emotion-laden terms such as “Islamofascist” and “Totalitarian Islamists” that, while successful in polls and focus groups, does not purport to explain the beliefs of the so-called enemy. Instead, in describing America’s new enemy – one that is perfect to the fascist party because it is so alien to our culture, religion and way of life, so far removed from our shores and our knowledge of foreign peoples, so perfect because of our ignorance of the outside world and that of anything that does not conform to our materialist, consumerist and capitalist way of life – he is describing himself, his party, his followers along with their actions, imputing his beliefs and ideologies onto an enemy marketed so as to correspond to America’s most dreaded fears and concerns.



This perfect enemy, remade one more time to see if Americans take the bait yet again, with its newly minted perfect focus group name, molded from the same soils and clay from which the fascist party takes a drink of water, is but a hollow invention of everything Americans fear, an amalgam of decades of fear-induced terms and ideologies conditioned into our being, combining all the greatest fears of all the enemies we have ever fought into one, absolute mammoth of a bogeyman, capable of destroying the world’s most powerful nation, something even the much more powerful enemies of our past could not achieve.



Imputed onto this terrorist enemy, then, is encapsulated our deepest fears of the various enemies of the Second World War, of the Cold War, of Vietnam, of everything we have been conditioned to detest and hate, using words such as “totalitarian” and “fascist” and “tyranny” and “Hitler” and “Stalin” and “Lenin” that, while historically facetious, nonetheless connote feelings of deep fear, terror and revulsion. Yet in the aura of this illusory enemy we see not a dark-skinned Arab or Muslim, but the reflection of ourselves and our history, for inside our greatest fears also lie our most sinister realities, truths we cannot bear to see except implanted in the face of alien enemies not known or understood.



Axiom Two: Inevitable Triumph of Truth



Yet, as can be seen today, the attempt at controlling the populace through the use of fear, in the age of the Internet, is much easier said than done. With Cold War mentalities prevalent in the upper echelons of governance, their faded ideology filling the halls of power, it was easy to become convinced that the population could be controlled in much the same way as when the dreaded Soviet was enemy number one. During this time, however, information was sequestered and controlled by a minute number of gatekeepers, thereby keeping the masses in perpetual ignorance of reality, unaware of truth and condemned to have no choice but to believe whatever information the government decided to provide. The Cold War was an authoritarian’s wet dream, for in their absolute control over information and knowledge the people were more willing to accept the dictates of power, their minds unable to entertain the thought of possessing non-governmental truth.



Today, however, the siphon of information has been blasted open by the power of the Internet. Entire legions of cyber patriots can in an instant hold accountable members of governance, their computer screens instantly popping up the latest news and information from all corners of the planet. What was once hidden from view, what once the gatekeepers kept from our curious eyes, today get spread like a virus from coast to coast, its dissemination opening minds and creating knowledge among entire tiers of the population. The Internet’s infantry, an army of couch activists, detectives, writers, journalists and watchdogs, living in a communal undertaking of global significance, can today hold to account governments, corporations, individuals, the media and the institutions that were once protected by the invisible cloak of secrecy.



It is not farfetched to describe the Internet as the greatest invention of communication and knowledge ever created by man, after that of language and writing, surpassing the printing press, the telephone and the television. In its enormous success at informing the People, however, lies its ultimate threat to the Establishment, and the reason why the next decade will see an aggressive attempt at curtailing its power, at infecting its capacity to inform and teach, at controlling its content, at making it much more difficult for the People to access its wonderful communicative capabilities. If we are not ready to fight for its survival, those in power will make sure it is never allowed to interfere in their plans and goals again. They have seen the monumental effect the Internet has had in informing the People regarding Iraq and the lies and fictions of the government. They have seen its ability to join ideas and thoughts, its capacity to regurgitate knowledge and truth, its mechanisms for shedding light where once darkness reigned. They have seen, in its purest and most absolute form, democracy rise and thrive in the plethora of websites scattered throughout the Internet.



It was the Cold War mentality of the architects of the attacks of 9/11, with their inability to adapt to societal change or to the informational potential of the Internet, along with their inability to escape their Soviet era strategies, that has enabled millions of people from all regions of the world to see for themselves the events of that fateful day, over and over again, from dozens of angles. The Internet has been the catalyst for millions of people to become informed by the studies, research, findings and information of many others, for the first time in history bringing together millions of individuals in the pursuit of seeking the truth to one of the most heinous crimes of the modern era. This development the architects of 9/11 did not plan for or expect, as their Cold War era mentality, where control of information by the state and the Establishment was absolute, did not contemplate or envision such a reality. As a result, an entire community of truth seekers is free to assiduously pursue a challenge to the official conspiracy theory, searching for answers the state and the corporate media, through their institutions and channels, have not and will never provide.



Today millions of individuals do not need to depend on the blind trust placed on the honor of the state or the last word of the corporate media; these entities need not be taken for their word any longer; their lies are no longer sacrosanct, their propaganda can now be dissected and destroyed, their charades can now be questioned and explored. Government and corporate media can be discovered for what they are, their manipulations and deceptions outlined and exposed, their whitewashes and cover-ups shown for the falsity they are. The population of a nation can now, at the touch of the keyboard, finally question authority, seeking answers to questions not by asking the state or corporate media lackeys, but by using critical thinking, reason and logic. The emancipation and expansion of the human mind, away from the dictates of the state, the interests of the corporate Leviathan or the conditioned brainwashing of our youth are but three benefits of this wonder called the Internet.



So transparent are the lies cover-ups and whitewashes of the government regarding the events of 9/11, so pervasive is the corporate media’s unwillingness to question the official conspiracy theory or investigate its many polemic events, and so obvious is the state’s blatant involvement on 9/11 itself, that the 9/11 Truth Movement has, thanks to the Internet, grown by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, regardless of those gatekeepers, be it from the right or left, whose job it is to maintain as reality the fictional account as told by the Bush administration and the Democratic party. The Internet has opened the 9/11 events to the full investigative powers of the other superpower, humankind itself, from all walks of life, from all corners of the globe, all united in pursuit of the truth in the wake of such an apparent criminal undertaking. The Truth Movement, whether LIHOP or MIHOP, has been brought together by community and technology, by the collection of news and information once hidden and suppressed now deciphered and seen, free to roam the vast expanse of the information superhighway. The Truth Movement, more than anything else, has connected the dots to an enormous mountain of evidence supporting the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, an act of state sponsored terror.



This movement for truth, smeared as “conspiracy nuts, theorists,” and “wackos” by those whose beautiful minds are too perfect to contemplate thinking outside the box, by those who think their precious minds are too important to be bothered by such “ridiculous” opinion, by those whose ego will always be much greater than their intellect, is doing the job the media once did, searching for truth wherever it may lie, however uncomfortable it may seem, investigating, researching and studying the overwhelming evidence contradicting the official conspiracy theory. Whatever one chooses to believe regarding 9/11, the Internet has broken the seal off of the state and corporate monopoly on the dissemination of information, allowing the river of available information to flow freely through the consciousness of humankind. Today, millions of minds can see the evidence presented in front of their eyes, analyze the information, and draw a conclusion. More and more people, when confronted with all available 9/11 related research, are seeing 9/11 for what it really was, not what the state and its propaganda machines want the world to see. Millions are connecting the dots, finally seeing a picture that is altogether uncomfortable and frightening.



It is such levels of uncomfortable and frightening realities that will invariably lead millions of Americans to self-censor themselves, blinding themselves from seeing the light, refusing to believe in the possibility that their own government perpetrated the events of 9/11, in spite of mountains of evidence proving the contrary. It is the idea that those chosen to protect and defend the nation and its people could actually do both extreme harm that the majority of people cannot fathom. For our entire lives we have been nurtured to place complete trust in the mechanisms of the state; we have been brainwashed from birth to think the government is a benign and honorable entity, incapable of harming us or our fellow citizens. For years under the nation’s educational systems we are ingrained with the fictions of noble Presidents performing noble deeds, of a Congress comprised of honorable representatives, of a government of, by and for the People. These fictions are rammed down our minds, for years embedded into our belief system by the invisible hands of the state, inevitably making us completely subservient to its activities and functions.



It is this pervasive yet methodical brainwashing, this nurtured conditioning upon the bosom of governance, that acts as the subconscious barricade halting our quest for answers, for questioning authority, for seeing the reality of what the state is capable of doing to its people in the interests of power and greed. Years of brainwashing serve to make us obedient and subservient to the dictates of the state and our leaders, it serves to make us place blind trust and loyalty in governance, in a belief that those chosen by the people have only altruistic motives behind their political masks. This mirage, a belief that like religion we are naturally and genetically inclined towards following, is the greatest obstacle for seeing truth, yet it also separates those with internal bravery from those fearful of reality, for, just as it is much easier to believe a heavenly afterlife exists after death than to perceive death as the end of life and the beginning of nothingness, it is easier to live the charade of the state’s and our leaders’ altruism than in the prevalent wickedness of its actions.



Unable to escape the belief that the state and its leaders can do not wrong, not willing to accept the malevolent intentions of state sponsored terror upon the populace, millions would rather seek the comfortable satisfaction of drinking the kool-aid than the uncomfortable suffocation experienced going down the rabbit hole. Millions, through no fault of their own, are unable to escape the haze of perpetual brainwashing, preferring the warmth of ignorance over the unsettling fright of reality. Confronted with the mountain of truth placed in front of their eyes, millions will nonetheless choose to conjure up outrageous theories and explanations trying to validate the events of 9/11 through the official government narrative, refusing, because of the uncomfortable and traumatic ramifications of alternate theories, to believe anything outside what has conveniently been concocted by both the state and its corporate media propaganda.



The events of 9/11, as horrific and traumatic as they were, remain to tens of millions, either by purposeful blindness or lack of knowledge in the events, the evil yet sole intentions of Arab extremists, without complicity from the American government. Unfortunately for many, they will never be able to jump the hurdle placed in their mind almost from birth, unable or unwilling to escape the matrix of state and corporate control over their lives. The truth is too unbearable to bear, its reality too unfathomable to comprehend, its ramifications becoming too bizarre and corrosive for the average American mind to swallow. Thus, many will simply chose to remain ignorant, suspecting the truth yet belittling the patriots risking ridicule or worse to expose the truth, preferring to live enslaved rather than living free, their minds remaining chained to the vacuum of their masters, surrounding themselves with the comfort of materialism and the escapism of propaganda and television, their decision made so as not to interfere or interrupt lives normal and adequate. Better to live a lie than be bothered or rattled by truth; better to smear truth seekers than to contemplate an earth shattering and disturbing shock to the system.



Yet millions of Americans who remain ignorant should not be smeared themselves, for every person arrives at separate times in their journey called life, finding truth in their own way, confronting reality as best they know how. All the Truth Movement can do is offer them a hand at seeing beyond their cages, pointing them in the direction of all available 9/11 research and investigations and allowing each individual to make up his or her mind. For unlike George W. Bush’s democracy building project in the “new” Middle East, 9/11 truth and reality cannot be implemented at the insistence of a barrel of a gun, nor can it rush its devastating implications into the minds of those still unable or unwilling to confront a very difficult mindfuck. In time truth will find a way and when that day arrives, the cloudy skies will part, offering bright and radiant light where only dark surroundings once reigned, and the fertile valleys of awakening will overtake the barren deserts of despotism.



Such is the power and momentum of the 9/11 Truth Movement that a growing ideology is rising from the minds of fascists that seeks to squash and suppress the truth from ever rising. To the Establishment and those in power, the Truth Movement has become an enormous threat to the system, capable of uncovering the greatest hoax in the history of modern man, capable of unraveling carefully planned visions and goals. Already as much as 40 percent of Americans doubt the official conspiracy theory, with the numbers of enlightened citizens growing daily thanks to the plethora of evidence available online and in print. For truth cannot be hidden long or sequestered from the people; truth always finds a way out of the dungeons of falsities and fictions. For this reason truth seekers are being persecuted and intimidated, their voices silenced, their research questioned and invalidated, their momentum tried to be stopped. Truth seekers are smeared and ridiculed instead of being confronted with alternate research and facts, for it is easier to destroy truth by destroying and contaminating its voices than by confronting its reality. The corporate media, along with its journalist hacks, refuses to confront the questions regarding the events of 9/11, or investigate the myriad number of anomalies in existence, preferring to cover-up the possibility of truth, thinking that by ignoring the issue its truth will be made to disappear.



A war against the 9/11 Truth Movement is under way, both by the state and the corporate world, in an attempt at squelching the movement before it grows, before its momentum becomes an unstoppable tsunami capable of waking the American people from their decades-long doldrums. It is for this reason that the corporate media ignores a growing movement, pretending questions and answers do not exist, why gatekeepers try and alter opinion, why the state invests millions of dollars to contradict the research of scientists and tenured professors, why to even speak of alternate theories evokes the wrath of the Establishment. More and more, to question the narrative of the official conspiracy theory is seen as treasonous, as un-American, as anathema to the principles of the nation. To seek answers to the ambiguous events of 9/11, to deviate away from what the state says is truth is to become a pariah in the community, the university, work or in one’s profession. A disturbing pattern is emerging, one all too familiar in totalitarian societies, that seeks to quiet any questioning and investigation of the real events of 9/11 and who was responsible, using the veil of intimidation and the questioning of patriotism to silence dissent.



If there is nothing to hide, why the smear campaign? If the truth is what the state says happened, why the stifling of dissent? If so confident in the official narrative, why the suppression of truth seekers and their work? Why are the valid questions asked by the Truth Movement answered only by smears, libel and slander? Why does there exist such friction and inertia by the Establishment against asking questions, researching and investigating 9/11 and its history? Cannot the “official truth” of the state stand up to the “outlandish” theories of the “lunatic fringe” so that alternate theories cannot exist and indeed must be dispelled? Indeed, it is the actions of the Establishment and its gatekeeper lackeys that betray the falsity of the official conspiracy theory and the extent to which they will stoop to curtail the truth from rising to be seen.



For what the gatekeepers and opinion makers of the so-called progressive left who would rather smear than try to comprehend fail to understand, what they cannot see in missing the forest for the trees, is that the events of 9/11 gave rise to a paradigm shift in American life, transforming its culture and its people in negative ways, creating authoritarian mentalities, imperial ambitions, fascist ideologies and an overall descent into the corruption of morals and of society itself. 9/11 was the catalyst for a colonial, indeed an imperial war against exclusively Arab and Muslim peoples, against those lands pregnant with the devil’s excrement, resulting in a malevolence not seen since the 1930’s, with preemptive wars; the use of depleted uranium that has and will kill in genocidal figures; the brutal occupation of Iraq and her people, many subjected to torture, rape, mass murder, illegal detention and dehumanization, along with the vicious cycle of violence that creates rather than diminishes terrorism, making of the war on terror a self-fulfilling prophesy. 9/11 has resulted in the complete disregard for international law, in a level of hubris never before seen, in a complete corruption of society, in the deep division of Americans, in the rise and prevalence of xenophobia, bigotry and racism among the populace, the erosion of rights and the evisceration of civil liberties, the destruction and debauchery of democracy, the rise of predatory capitalism, the emergence of an inevitable police state and the introduction of fascist ideology and its implementation of beliefs throughout the American landscape.



What these perfect little people cannot grasp, those of beautiful minds and god-like intellect, is that everything America and the world are being subjected to, whether it is the rising threat of global or regional warfare, the decimation of America’s middle class, the coming collapse of the American economy, the rise of fascist ideology, the inhumane suffering in Palestine, the constant threat of war from America to those nations that do not kiss the ring of imperialism, the stolen elections in developing nations courtesy of America, a dictatorial presidency and the rise of the one-party state, has been born through the sinful events of 9/11.



Without 9/11 Bush is a one-term failure, a mere asterisk in history books, relegated to brushing weeds and avoiding horses in his little Hollywood production set in Texas. Without 9/11 the neocons at the helm of a hijacked America would be living back home in Israel, dreaming of ways to expand the power of the Israeli state. Without 9/11 imperial hegemony would be replaced by multilateral agreement; up to 250,000 Iraqis would still be alive, thousands more would live in peace and tranquility. The Middle East would be a much more peaceful and stable region, with the lives of almost 3,000 American soldiers saved, their energies not wasted in corporate wars for resources and hegemony. Without 9/11 the fascist party would not have become the rubber stamp Congress for a unitary executive approaching dictatorship, checks and balances would still be a reality and the growing police state would be checked at its infancy.



Without 9/11, America would still be the land of the free and the home of the brave, not the land of the meek and the home of the slave. Without 9/11 America would not today be the culture of cowardice, afraid and fearful of hyper-inflated and exaggerated enemies, a people terrorized by its own government into blindly handing liberties, rights and freedoms to authoritarian autocrats camouflaged as government servants. Without 9/11 the dangerous cocktail of jingoism, theology and ignorance would not merge forming one combustible citizenry ready at an authoritarian’s wave to hate, despise and scapegoat dark-skinned minorities whose only crimes is being different in culture and ethnicity to the god-fearing, flag-draped, follower-psychology, supporters of the fascist party.



It is the search for 9/11 Truth, and the subsequent justice spawned from its prosecution, that can put an end to, or at the least slow down, the tyranny at home and the imperial hegemonic aspirations of the Bush Cabal. Lacking the legitimacy of 9/11, with no enemy to blame or wickedness to castigate, those in power cannot continue with their intentions and goals. Were the 9/11 Truth to emerge, perhaps the paradigm shift that occurred on 9/11 would correct itself, insomuch as we could never return to an old image of ourselves, creating a new America, a better America for all, free of the debasement and pollution and corruption and greed born from pathological capitalism, perhaps granting us the window of opportunity needed to self-correct a sinking ship. If 9/11 was indeed an inside job, like many suspect, perhaps the end result would be an enlightenment upon the populace causing a new beginning in the way America treats the world, and itself. Were the truth to emerge, an awakening of everything that has ever been done in our name could be born, an understanding of all that has ever been done to us could materialize, a comprehension of what is presently happening in our nation could surface.



The search for what really happened on 9/11, besides being an investigation into a crime of the most malfeasant and nefarious degree, is also a search for an America lost now lost for five years, hidden beneath the ashes of the Twin Towers on that fateful and horrific day. Every day more and more people from all walks of life, from all corners of the globe walk the giant path across the invisible bridge of truth, displacing long held brainwashing and conditioning, long held chains and shackles that prevented freedom to think and analyze. Upon the great canyon of bravery these millions have taken the blinders off their eyes, finally able to see the shadows hidden throughout society, the dark figures of the state and the corporate world for decades preventing our eyes from seeing a reality disfigured by smoke and distorted by mirrors. Today, more than ever, the smoke is clearing and the mirrors are breaking, a product of millions of individuals joined in unison, marching strong towards the gates of truth.



The universal search for truth and justice is all encompassing, an omnipotent force that is compelling the people of the world, the Second Superpower, you, me and everyone else, towards the inevitable push in uncovering and bringing to justice a mass murder that killed 3,000 of the world’s citizens and altered, perhaps forever, the course of human events. In the quest for truth and justice the memories of the fallen, both in America and Iraq, compel us forward, granting us the energy and the strength needed to reach deep into realms never touched by humankind, forcing power to kneel before the weak, a mass of humanity demanding accountability from those few who think humanity is expendable, simple peons in the grand games nations play.



We seek truth because injustice and wickedness have been perpetrated against us and against those now deceased. We seek truth because to millions of people, the official story just does not add up. We seek truth and justice because to ignore the obvious would be to enslave ourselves to power, yet again, sacrificing the freedoms of our future for the comfort of our beautiful and precious minds. In truth we seek freedom, in freedom we seek a life free from the chains of bondage. In numbers we find strength, in strength we find people power. Our numbers will continue to expand, our power will continue to grow. The human quest for truth is never ending, it cannot be suppressed for long. The inevitability of our momentum and the exponential growth of our movement will make sure that sooner or later, the truth sets the world free.
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#12
THE FAKEST FAKE NEWS: 
THE US GOVERNMENT’s 9/11 CONSPIRACY THEORY 
Edward Curtin
A Review of 9/11Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/10/the-...acy-theory

If you want to fathom today’s world, absolutely nothing is more important than to understand the truth about the attacks of September 11, 2001. This is the definitive book on the subject.  For seventeen years we have been subjected to an onslaught of U.S. government and corporate media propaganda about 9/11 that has been used to support the “war on terror” that has resulted in millions of deaths around the world.  It has been used as a pretext to attack nations throughout the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

It has led to a great increase in Islamophobia since Muslims were accused of being responsible for the attacks. It has led to a crackdown on civil liberties in the United States, the exponential growth of a vast and costly national security apparatus, the spreading of fear and anxiety on a great scale, and a state of permanent war that is pushing the world toward a nuclear confrontation.  And much, much more.

The authors of this essential book, David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth, and all their colleagues who have contributed to this volume, have long been at the front lines trying to wake people up to the real news about 9/11.  They have battled against three U.S. presidents, a vast propaganda machine “strangely” allied with well-known leftists, and a corporate mass media intent on serving deep-state interests, all of whom have used illogic, lies, and pseudo-science to conceal the terrible truth.  Yet despite the establishment’s disinformation and deceptions, very many people have come to suspect that the official story of the September 11, 2001 attacks is not true.

With the publication of 9/11Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigationthey now have a brilliant source book to use to turn their suspicions into certitudes.  And for those who have never doubted the official account (or accounts would be more accurate), reading this book should shock them into reality, because it is not based on speculation, but on carefully documented and corroborated facts, exacting logic, and the scientific method.

The book is based on the establishment in 2011 of a scientific review project comprising 23 experts with a broad spectrum of expertise, including people from the fields of chemistry, structural engineering, physics, aeronautical engineering, airline crash investigation, piloting, etc. Their job was to apply systematic and disciplined analyses to the verifiable evidence about the 9/11 attacks.  They used a model called the Delphi Method as a way to achieve best-evidence consensus.

This best-evidence consensus model is used in science and medicine, and the 9/11 Consensus Panel used it to examine the key claims of the official account(s). Each “Official Account” was reviewed and compared to “The Best Evidence” to reach conclusions. The authors explain it thus:

The examination of each claim received three rounds of review and feedback.  According to the panel’s investigative model, members submitted their votes to the two of us moderators while remaining blind to one another.  Proposed points had to receive a vote of at least 85 percent to be accepted…This model carries so much authority in medicine that medical consensus statements derived from it are often reported in the news.

They represent the highest standard of medical research and practice and may result in malpractice lawsuits if not followed.  This research process went on for many years, with the findings reported in this book.  The Consensus 9/11 Panel provides evidence against the official claims in nine categories:

  1. The Destruction of the Twin TowersThe Destruction of WTC 7The Attack on the PentagonThe 9/11 FlightsUS Military Exercises on and before 9/11Claims about Military and Political LeadersOsama bin Laden and the HijackersPhone Calls from the 9/11 FlightsInsider Trading
Each category is introduced and then broken down into sub-sections called points, which are examined in turn. For example, the destruction of the Twin Towers has points that include, “The Claim That No One Reported Explosions in the Twin Towers,” “The Claim That the Twin Towers Were Destroyed by Airplane Impacts, Jet Fuel, and Fire,” “The Claim That There Were Widespread Infernos in the South Tower,” etc.  Each point is introduced with background, the official account is presented, then the best evidence, followed by a conclusion. Within the nine categories there are 51 points examined, each meticulously documented through quotations, references, etc., all connected to 875 endnotes that the reader can follow.  It is scrupulously laid out and logical, and the reader can follow it sequentially or pick out an aspect that particularly interests them.

The 9/11 Consensus Panel members describe their goal and purpose as follows:

The purpose of the 9/11 Consensus Panel is to provide the world with a clear statement, based on expert independent opinion, of some of the best evidence opposing the official narrative about 9/11.
 
The goal of the Consensus Panel is to provide a ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other investigative body or institution.


As a sociologist who teaches research methods and does much research, I find the Consensus Panel’s method exemplary and their findings accurate. They have unmasked a monstrous lie.  It is so ironic that such serious scholars, who question and research 9/11, have been portrayed as irrational and ignorant “conspiracy theorists” by people whose thinking is magical, illogical, and pseudo-scientific in the extreme.


A review is no place to go into all the details of this book, but I will give a few examples of the acumen of the Panel’s findings.  As a grandson of a Deputy Chief of the New York Fire Department (343 firefighters died on 9/11), I find it particularly despicable that the government agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), that was charged with investigating the collapse of the Towers and Building 7, would claim that no one gave evidence of explosions in the Twin Towers, when it is documented by the fastidious researcher Graeme MacQueen, a member of The 9/11 Consensus Panel, that over 100 firefighters who were at the scene reported hearing explosions in the towers.  One may follow endnote 22 to MacQueen’s research and his sources that are indisputable. There are recordings.

On a connected note, the official account claims that there were widespread infernos in the South Tower that prevented firefighters from ascending to the 78th floor.  Such a claim would support the notion that the building could have collapsed as a result of fires caused by the plane crashing into the building.  But as 9/11 Unmasked makes clear, radio tapes of firefighters ascending to the 78th floor and saying this was not so, prove that “there is incontrovertible evidence that the firefighter teams were communicating clearly with one another as they ascended WTC” and that there were no infernos to stop them, as they are recorded saying.  They professionally went about their jobs trying to save people.
 
Then the South Tower collapsed and so many died.  But it couldn’t have collapsed from “infernos” that didn’t exist.  Only explosives could have brought it down.

A reader can thus pick up this book, check out that section, and use common sense and elementary logic to reach the same conclusion.  And by reaching that conclusion and going no further in the book, the entire official story of 9/11 falls apart.  Or one can delve further, let’s say by dipping into the official claim that a domestic airline attack on the Pentagon was not expected. Opening to page 78, the reader can learn that “NBC’s Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski was warned of the Pentagon attack by an intelligence officer,” who specified the illogical spot where the attack would happen shortly before it did.
 
In Miklaszewski’s words, “And then he got very close to me, and, almost silent for a few seconds, he leaned in and said, ‘This attack was so well coordinated that if I were you, I would stay off the E Ring – where our NBC office was – the outer ring of the Pentagon for the rest of the day, because we’re next.’”

The authors say correctly, “The intelligence officer’s apparent foreknowledge was unaccountably specific.” For if a terrorist were going to fly a plane into Pentagon, the most likely spot would be to dive into the roof where many people might be killed, including top brass and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. To make an impossibly acrobatic maneuver to fly low into an outside wall would make no sense.  And for the government to claim that this impossible maneuver was executed by the alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour, a man who according to documentation couldn’t even pilot a small plane, is absurd. But the intelligence officer knew what would happen, and the reader can learn this, and marvel.

Or the reader can start from the beginning and read straight through the book.  They will learn in detail that the official version of the attacks of 9/11 is fake news at its worst.  It is a story told for dunces.  Griffin and Woodworth and their colleagues simply and clearly in the most logical manner show that the emperor has no clothes, not even a mask.  Since knowing the truth about the attacks of September 11, 2001 is indispensable for understanding what is happening in today’s world, everyone should purchase and read Unmasking 9/11: An International Review Panel Investigation.  Keep it next to your dictionary, and when you read or hear the latest propaganda about the 9/11 attacks, take it out and consult the work of the real experts.  Their words will clarify your mind.

It is the definitive book on the defining event of the 21st century.
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#13
WILL AMERICA ASSASSINATE GENERAL MUSHARRAF?

http://www.icssa.org/assassinate_musharraf.html
Abid Ullah Jan

General Musharraf wants to remain president-in-uniform till 2012. America wants to keep Pakistan occupied by its armed forces for as long as possible. It seems that with these complimentary objectives, Musharraf and Washington are getting along well. The reality, however, is totally different.

The United States extracted all concessions from General Musharraf through sheer blackmail. Musharraf would never have surrendered Pakistan’s sovereignty and independence merely on a phone call from Collin Powell or George W. Bush if he were not blackmailed for the ISI’s role in Operation 9/11.  

For further details on how his supporters have blackmailed General Musharraf for the ISI's getting in the 9/11 trap, read From BCCI to ISI.

Or

Of course, the ISI was used to frame Arabs for the 9/11 attacks. But in the process, ISI’s guilt was established as an agency supporting and financing the so-declared hijackers. There are ample reasons to believe that evidence about ISI’s involvement in 9/11 was used to blackmail General Musharraf into the quickest surrender of our age.  

Washington knows that the general did not concede much by choice. With elections for the next parliament due in 2007, General Musharraf is desperately building a political base in the country to get a re-election from the new parliament for the next term or to get a change in the constitution to a presidential democracy to be able to shed the uniform and also to retain the political and executive powers as president. If he succeeds in this plan, this will go in favour of Washington. But Washington sees some serious problems, which would derail Musharraf’s bid to remain the most powerful man in Pakistan. This may lead Washington to settle General Musharraf’s issue the way it dealt with General Zia. The following factors show that assassinating Musharraf might become one of the best options for the United States in the present circumstances.

General Musharraf has not outlived his utility for Washington as yet. However, it is not possible for General Musharraf to remain the army chief forever. The best way Washington believes its interest could be served is to make General Musharraf’s autocratic rule look more democratic. For that, instead of crafting new webs and making another leader to fully submit, Washington would like to see Musharraf become another Hosnie Mubarak in Islamabad. Washington now wants him to shed his uniform and become a civilian president in the present setup.  

The dilemma before Washington, however, is that no civilian ruler can use the military in the service of the United States as effectively as General Musharraf is doing as the military chief. At the same time, the U.S. efforts to create an alternate political leadership in the country to increase pressure on Musharraf also seem to be getting nowhere.  

General Musharraf’s present political allies are more of a liability than asset for him now. The main political allies, the Pakistan Muslim League (PML Quid-e-Azam group), are most corrupt, inefficient and ineffective, with no hope of securing required seats in the next elections. There is also serious internal dissent within the PML (Q).  

General Musharraf’s other ally, Mutahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), is also considered a corrupt, blackmailing, sub-nationalist-minded, mafia-styled gang, which is fully exploiting the weaknesses of the general. MQM is the most unreliable, even treacherous, political ally for him.

Musharraf propped up the religious alliance of Muthahida majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and then used it for constitutional changes in his favour. Musharraf reneged on public promises to MMA to relinquish the post of chief of army staff as part of the process of restoring democracy in Pakistan. Islamabad’s suspension from commonwealth was lifted on the condition that General Musharraf would give up his military uniform by the end of 2004 as a proof of his commitment to democratic reform. Now the religious alliance is sensing his weaknesses and is gearing up its barrage against him.  

There is a very strong perception within the religious parties that the MQM was behind the Karachi blast in April 2006. Scores of people, including prominent MMA leader Haji Hanif Billo, were killed when a bomb went off at a religious gathering in Karachi. Since then, the government has contemplated no action against the MQM, a factor that will agitate more public anger.

Former prime ministers Nawaz, Sharif and Benazir are now flexing their muscles to challenge him in the coming days. There are talks of joint efforts to remove Musharraf and even the MQM is signaling that it is willing to join such a campaign. If Benazir and Nawaz decided to return before the elections, even their arrest would make them political heroes, creating more embarrassment for the general.  

The entire governance and economy is in a big mess. Musharraf relied on Shaukat Aziz, who has miserably failed on all counts. Inflation is wrecking the life of the common man – the vote bank in any elections. That vote bank is not impressed with Shaukat Aziz blowing smoke in their face with economic jargon. For a common man, for example, it is enough to know that the sugar crisis is still haunting the country. The prices have almost doubled in recent months to record levels. Still, there are no imports and all the national demands are being met in abundant supply from local stocks. The price hike gave windfall profits of billions of rupees to a few select sugar cartel mafias within a few months. The much-vaunted National Accountability Bureau was forced to drop the probe immediately after it started. The common man knows that corruption is at an all-time high within the state machinery. Abuse of power and authority are daily headlines. Police and the judiciary system remain most corrupt as well.  

Thus, General Musharraf and Washington are now left with extremely limited, difficult and almost impossible options.  

Even if the military is still behind him, it is highly unlikely that he may decide to confront the Americans, forget about democracy, stop taking international pressures, and take absolute power in his own hands once again as he had when he took power in October 1999. It does not seem possible that Musharraf would once more abolish the assemblies, defer the constitution, draft his own constitution, and declare a presidential system or even martial law. In the past, he formed a team of so-considered honest, selfless and efficient professionals to rectify the damages done in the past few years and tried to bring back control in the economy, security, governance, judiciary and social welfare of the country. He has clearly failed. Of course, the suffering masses are not interested in democracy or martial law. They want security, dignity, cheap food and energy, as well as economic development. It does not matter to them who delivers this. Nevertheless, it will be a huge task to fool them twice with the same mantra. On the part of General Musharraf, it would amount to saying, “I am redoing the eight-year experiment.”

Another option is renegotiating with the Americans. It is not a problem for him to bend backwards even more. He would send Pakistani forces to Iraq, recognize Israel, commit more troops to Miranshah, take responsibility for finishing off the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Madrassas in Pakistan, and allow more unrestricted access to the United States into Pakistan’s security and intelligence, as well as nuke apparatus. Nevertheless, for sustaining all this he has to remain the chief of armed forces. With these measures, he can immediately become the blue-eyed boy of the Americans once again and there will be no further chatter in Washington about democracy. But Musharraf will have a revolt on hand in the home front and perhaps even a rebellion in the army.

The third option is to contest elections with whatever support base the general has so far and keep Benazir, Nawaz and Sharif out of the electoral process to weaken their collective nuisance. Some heavy-duty management will be required to “arrange” the required results and to neutralize the MMA and PPP/Nawaz factor. The general has done this with the help of ISI before and can do the same again. Consequently, MQM will continue to exploit the situation and basically nothing will improve in the country in terms of economy and governance or law and order; likewise, the same team of suspects will reappear to exploit him even further for the next four years. Things can get mismanaged if Nawaz and Benazir decided to come back before the elections and launch a street protest calling their court cases politically motivated. The MMA would also join them and a bit of “hidden hand” support could start an unexpected but very real inferno. Even if everything goes well, the general will have to give up his position as the military chief. Losing his military position will make the general lose all attractiveness to Washington, which is mainly concerned with sustaining Pakistan’s occupation with the Pakistani armed forces and using the Pakistani army in the interest of the United States.

The fourth option is that the general reads the writing on the wall and decides to quit, handing over power to the next army chief who would promise the elections or would decide to stay in power depending upon what he wants to do. Musharraf will have to leave the country with his family and may settle in some friendly or neutral country like Turkey or a country in Europe. This option suits Washington, but General Musharraf is addicted to power to an extent that it is highly unlikely that he will hang his boots up so easily.

The last option is assassination. He may be assassinated either by his army men, any local resistance groups, Baluchistan Liberation army assassins, or someone sent by the Americans to blame “religious extremists” and pave the way for another general to take over and continue Pakistan’s occupation for another decade or so. Being in charge of the general’s personal security in many ways, it is only the Americans who can successfully carry out the assassination operation against him. His departure in a violent manner will serve many of the U.S.’s objectives.    

In the next few weeks or months, events would basically unfold in one of the many options discussed above. Right now, both Musharraf and Washington are confused and have not clearly decided on any of the options.  

The assassination option carries the most weight. We know from experience that leaders in the Muslim world who associated themselves with Washington unconditionally are doomed. The Shah of Iran, General Zia and Saddam Hussein are prominent examples. General Musharraf may continue to rule by force and power, but would not have any grassroots support and hence would remain on shaky ground within his own country.  

Washington is now giving General Musharraf a very tough time. He is not finding the courage to stand up to Washington or to face the nation. He has gone silent these days and is not defending U.S. actions, nor is he making supportive statements about the U.S. strategy in the Muslim world. He was under the misconception that Washington would appreciate his concessions, which it was obtaining from the general through blackmail, as his favors. This, however, was not the case. Washington didn’t appreciate the “sincerity” and “sacrifice” of the entrapped general. Now, the disillusioned general is annoyed and offended by the American rebuffs to his demands and is feeling ditched and betrayed. That is a sick feeling for a man who had put all his eggs in one big American basket and is now left alone and abandoned to be replaced with another strongman, who could keep himself in uniform for a longer period than the burnt out General Musharraf. A more docile and cooperative political leadership would be the last option considered in Washington.  

General Musharraf is in the middle of nowhere at the moment. His only option is to come out clean on his relations with the Americans and to give voice to what he has been hiding from his people and the whole world. He might be portrayed as insane as a result, but to save Pakistan and the world from the scourge of a greater war, he must tell the truth and the whole story of his entrapment to grab the initiative back and restore the confidence of his nation in his words and deeds. Unless General Musharraf restores the confidence of his people in his policies at home by telling the whole truth about the way the ISI was used in 9/11 and how Pakistan has been blackmailed, he is doomed.
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#14
BIN MAHFOUZ LIBEL RULINGS BOOST SAUDI CONFIDENCE
Siraj Wahab
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=87404&d=29&m=10&y=2006


JEDDAH, 29 October 2006 — UK and Swiss court decisions asserting that banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz was libeled by authors who accused him of funneling money to Al-Qaeda in a 2001 book have restored confidence of Saudi businessmen in European justice.

Khalid Bin Mahfouz received an unqualified apology and substantial damages from Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie who alleged in their book, “The Forbidden Truth,” that he had funded Al-Qaeda. The book is now set to be withdrawn from sale worldwide.

“Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Saudi and Muslim businessmen have been under intense attack from upstart Western writers who, passing themselves off as international terrorism financing experts, have been dishing out all kinds of nonsense in the name of journalism. This verdict will serve as a kind of deterrent to would-be mudslingers and character-assassins,” said an ecstatic Jeddah-based businessman. “We can fight back and we should.”

Some businessmen interviewed yesterday by Arab News said Saudis usually avoid going to court for fear of inviting negative publicity — even when grave allegations are leveled against them. The perception is that court proceedings can be lengthy and invite the scrutiny of the media, which often is prone to mudslinging. In such cases truth becomes the first casualty.

“This ruling is extremely important in the sense that it has restored our faith in the rule of law and that in the West authors are after all accountable,” said another Jeddah businessman. “Both Brisard and Dasquie may have earned millions when they first published their allegations, but now their reputations are in tatters and surely they must have lost those millions.”

According to a statement e-mailed to newspapers by the London-based law firm of Kendall Freeman, judges in the UK and Switzerland found that in the book Brisard and Dasquie had defamed Khalid Bin Mahfouz and his son, Abdul Rahman Bin Mahfouz. Upon publication, the book received huge publicity and rave reviews. Brisard published additional allegations in a 2002 report, “Terrorism Financing,” which he submitted to the United Nations.

“The book and the report contain very serious and highly defamatory allegations about Khalid Bin Mahfouz and Abdul Rahman Bin Mahfouz, alleging support for terrorism through their businesses, families and charities and directly,” the authors said in a written apology to the Bin Mahfouz family. “As a result of what we now know, we accept and acknowledge that all of those allegations about you and your families, businesses and charities are entirely and manifestly false.”

They said nothing new substantiates the allegations since the publication of the book and the report. “We, therefore, now unreservedly withdraw all of the allegations about you, both in the book and the report and confirm that we will never repeat them,” the authors wrote.

Brisard and Dasquie also agreed to the publication of the apology on their blogs (http://jcb.blogs.com/) and in a number of newspapers and publications around the world. More importantly, the two have agreed to arrange for the 2001-2002 bestseller to be withdrawn from sale.

This is perhaps the first time that a non-fiction book has been withdrawn from sale because
of falsehoods. In the past, works of fiction have been withdrawn frequently for reasons of plagiarism. Most recently, a teen novel was pulled from the market after author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University sophomore, acknowledged that numerous passages in
“How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life” were lifted from another writer.

The two authors of the Bin-Mahfouz book have also agreed to pay an unspecified amount of damages to the Saudi businessmen which the businessmen will donate to UNICEF.

Khalid Bin Mahfouz was formerly the chairman of the National Commercial Bank (NCB), which his father, Salem Bin Mahfouz, founded in the 1950s. Salem Bin Mahfouz was a Saudi entrepreneur who rose from being a smalltime moneychanger to becoming the founder of the leading Saudi bank.
Reply
#15
TOP US BIN LADEN EXPERT :
CONFESSION VIDEO “BOGUS”

Kevin Barrett
http://mujca.com

Was Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9/11?

The Bush Administration says yes, citing a grainy, badly-edited videotape that surfaced in December, 2001. In that tape, a fat guy who vaguely resembles Bin Laden chortles about the success of the 9/11 attacks. (In earlier interviews, Bin Laden had denied responsibility for 9/11, once even deploring the loss of civilian life in the attacks and calling them un-Islamic.)

Is the famous “confession video” genuine? Despite Bush’s insistence that the tape is authentic, America’s top academic Bin Laden expert has finally gone on the record, joining numerous other experts. “It’s bogus,” says Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program.

Lawrence, author of Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama Bin Laden, offered his historic debunking of the administration’s lie in an interview with Kevin Barrett (“Dynamic Duo,” gcnlive.com, 2/16/2007, first hour). The interview marked Lawrence’s first major public statement since he made headlines last year by suggesting that recent Osama tapes are hoaxes and that the real Osama Bin Laden may be dead.

Why has the Bush Administration been lying for more than five years by telling us that this preposterously bad hoax is a genuine “confession video”? Lawrence, citing informants in the US intelligence apparatus’s
Bin Laden units, said that everyone knows the tape is fake, adding that the hoax has been kept alive because it is politically useful to those who wish to deflect attention from “conspiracy theories” about 9/11.

If Professor Lawrence is right—and anyone with eyes can see that he is, simply by comparing the overweight impostor in the Fatty Bin Laden bogus confession video to other pictures of Osama Bin Laden— the Bush Administration, by repeatedly citing the tape as authentic, is clearly guilty of obstruction of justice at best, high treason and
conspiracy to mass murder at worst. Since the FBI now tells us that Osama Bin Laden is “not wanted for 9/11” because there is “no hard evidence” connecting him to the 9/11 attacks, and since US intelligence personnel all know the “confession tape” is a Bush Administration hoax, it should not be difficult to nail the perpetrators of this outrageous cover-up of the crime of the century.

It is time for Congress or an appropriate judicial authority to mount an investigation of the Fatty Bin Laden bogus confession video. Where did this tape come from? Who was responsible for the administration’s claim that it is authentic, despite widespread knowledge in relevant intelligence agencies that it is bogus? If Bruce Lawrence is correct in asserting that US intelligence personnel know the tape is fake, we need to put them, along with Bush and Cheney, under oath and find out why our government has been lying so outrageously for more than five years in order to obstruct justice by shielding the real perpetrators of 9/11.

Please email your congressional representatives with the subject header “investigate bogus Bin Laden ‘confession video’ NOW!” and include a copy of this article in the body of the message.

Top Bin Laden Expert: The Tapes are Fakes
http://physics911.net/kevinbarrett


Osama Tape Appears Fake, Experts Conclude


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=SCH20060601&articleId=2555

Global Research, June 1, 2006

Bin Laden says he wasn't behind attacks
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/in...en.denial/

September 17, 2001 Posted: 11:21 AM EDT (1521 GMT)

DOHA, Qatar (CNN) -- Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden, the man the United States considers the prime suspect in last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, denied any role Sunday in the actions believed to have killed thousands. In a statement issued to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, based in Qatar, bin Laden said, "The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every occasion its enemies attack it. "I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons," bin Laden's statement said. .

Bin Laden: AUTHENTIC INTERVIEW
by Carol A. Valentine

http://www.public-action.com/911/oblintrv.html

October 16, 2001-- An interview with Osama bin Laden was published in a Karachi-based Pakistani daily newspaper, Ummat, on September 28, 2001. In this interview, bin Laden says of the September 11 attacks in the US: "I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of abattle...

"I was not involved in the September 11 attacks in the United States nor did I have knowledge of the attacks. There exists a government within a government within the United States. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; to the people who want to make the present century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. That secret government must be asked as to who carried out the attacks. ... The American system is totally in control of the Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States."
Reply
#16
9/11, AMERICAN EMPIRE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH
David Ray Griffin

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GRI20060505&articleId=2393



In this essay, I offer a Christian critique of the American empire in light of 9/11, and of 9/11 in light of the American empire. Such a critique, of course, presupposes a discussion of 9/11 itself, especially the question of who was responsible for the attacks. The official theory is that the attacks were planned and carried out entirely by Arab Muslims. The main alternative theory is that 9/11 was a "false flag" operation, orchestrated by forces within the US government who made it appear to be the work of Arab Muslims.



Originally, a false flag attack was one in which the attackers, perhaps in ships, literally showed the flag of an enemy country, so that it would be blamed. But the expression has come to be used for any attack made to appear to be the work of some country, party, or group other than that to which the attackers themselves belong.



I will argue that the attacks of 9/11 were false flag attacks, orchestrated to marshal support for a so-called war on terror against Muslim and Arab states as the next stage in creating a global Pax Americana, an all-inclusive empire. I will conclude this essay with its main question: How should Christians in America respond to the realization that we are living in an empire similar to the Roman empire at the time of Jesus, which put him to death for resistance against it.



1. False Flag Operations



The evidence that 9/11 was a false flag operation is very strong. Many Americans, however, reject this idea on a priori grounds, thereby refusing even to look at the evidence. The main a priori assumption is that America's political and military leaders simply would not commit such a heinous act. This assumption is undermined, however, once we know something about the history of false flag operations.



False Flag Operations by Other Countries



Far from being rare in the history of warfare, false flag operations are very common. They have been especially popular with imperial powers wanting to expand their empires.



In 1931, Japan, which had been exploiting Manchuria for resources, decided to take over the whole province. To have a pretext, the Japanese army blew up the tracks of its own railway near the Chinese military base in Mukden, then blamed the sabotage on Chinese solders. This "Mukden incident" occurred almost exactly 70 years prior to 9/11, on September 18, 1931. It is, in fact, referred to by the Chinese as "9/18."1



A year and a half later, the Nazis, less than a month after taking power, started a fire in the German Reichstag, then blamed it on Communists. Their proof that Communists were responsible was the "discovery" on the site of a feeble-minded left-wing radical, who had been brought there by the Nazis themselves.2 They then used the Reichstag fire as a pretext to arrest thousands of Communists and Social Democrats, shut down unfriendly newspapers, and annul civil rights.3



That was 1933. Six years later, Hitler wanted a pretext to attack Poland. The solution, known as "Operation Himmler," was to have Germans dressed as Poles stage 21 raids on the Polish-German border. In some cases, as in the raid on the Gleiwitz radio station, a dead German convict dressed as a Pole was left at the scene. The next day, Hitler, referring to these 21 "border incidents," presented the attack on Poland as a defensive necessity.4



More germane to the question of 9/11, of course, is whether American leaders would do such things.





U.S. Wars Based on False Charges of Enemy Aggression



In 1846, President James Polk, anxious to expand the American empire, had the U.S. army build a fort on the Rio Grande, some 150 miles south of the commonly accepted border between Texas and Mexico. After 16 US soldiers died in a skirmish, Polk told Congress that Mexico had "shed American blood upon the American soil." This claim was called "the sheerest deception" by a congressman named Abraham Lincoln.5 Nevertheless, the Mexican-American war was on and in 1848, Mexico, being out-gunned, signed a peace treaty ceding away half of its country, including California, for a paltry sum.6



In 1898, the United States falsely accused Spain of blowing up a battleship, the USS Maine, which President McKinley had sent, uninvited, to Havana Harbor. This accusation, which led to the chant "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain," was used as a pretext to start the Spanish-American war, through which America took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. In the latter case, the United States, after helping the Filipinos defeat the Spanish, went to war against the Filipinos, claiming that they had fired on American soldiers. A quarter of a million Filipinos died in the resulting slaughter, which provoked the usually ironic William James to say: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles."7 Many years later, General Arthur MacArthur admitted that American troops had fired first to start a pre-arranged battle.8



In 1964, a false account of an incident in the Tonkin Gulf was used to start the full-scale war in Vietnam, which brought about the deaths of over 58,000 Americans and some two million Vietnamese.9



Of course, we might be tempted to reply, although Americans have done such things to enemy nations ("All's fair in love and war"), they would never deliberately kill citizens of friendly countries for political reasons. That assumption, however, is undermined in a recent book, NATO's Secret Armies, by Swiss historian Daniele Ganser. This book demonstrates that during the Cold War, the United States sponsored false flag operations in many countries of Western Europe in order to discredit Communists and other leftists to prevent them from coming to power through elections.10



Italy suffered a wave of deadly terrorist attacks in the 1970s, including a massive explosion at the Bologna railway station that killed 85 people.11 Between 1983 and '85, Belgium suffered a series of attacks, known as the "Brabant massacres," in which hooded men opened fire on people in shopping centers, "reduc[ing] Belgium to a state of panic." At the time, all these attacks in Italy, Belgium, and other countries were blamed on Communists and other leftists, often by virtue of planted evidence.12



In the 1990s, however, it was discovered that the attacks were really carried out by right-wing organizations that were coordinated by a secret unit within NATO, which was guided by the CIA and the Pentagon.13 A former member of the organization that carried out the massacres in Belgium, which was funded by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, explained that the plan was to "make the population believe that these terrorist attacks were done by the Left."14 The former head of Italian counter-intelligence, in explaining the motivation behind the attacks in Italy, said: "The CIA wanted to create an Italian nationalism capable of halting what it saw as a slide to the left." To achieve this goal, he added, it seemed that "the Americans would do anything."15





Operation Northwoods



If Americans would do anything to achieve their political goals in Europe, would they do similar things within America itself? Early in 1962, which was shortly after Fidel Castro had overthrown the pro-American dictator Batista, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented President Kennedy with a plan, called Operation Northwoods. This plan described "pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba," partly "by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere." Possible actions to create this image included a "Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area . . . and . . . Washington" and a "Remember the Maine" incident, in which: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo Bay and blame Cuba." Although President Kennedy did not approve this plan, it had been endorsed by all the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.16



2. The Probable Motive for 9/11



US political and military leaders, as these examples show, have been fully capable of orchestrating false flag operations that would kill innocent people, including American citizens, to achieve political goals. The political goal during the Cold War was to prevent and overthrow left-leaning governments. But what motive could US leaders have had for orchestrating the attacks of 9/11, a decade after the Cold War had ended? Actually, it was precisely the end of the Cold War that provided the likely motive: the desire to create a global Pax Americana.



Whereas the world during the Cold War was bipolar, the demise of the Soviet Union created in some minds---the minds of that group known as neoconservatives, or neocons---the prospect of a unipolar world. In 1989, Charles Krauthammer published a piece entitled "Universal Dominion," in which he argued that America should work for "a qualitatively new outcome---a unipolar world."17 A year later, he said the United States, as the "unchallenged superpower," should act unilaterally, "unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them."18



The most important neocon has been Dick Cheney. In 1992, the last year of his tenure as secretary of defense, he had two of his assistants, Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, write a draft of the Pentagon's "Defense Planning Guidance," which said America's "first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival."19 Andrew Bacevich, who is a conservative but not a neoconservative, has called this draft "a blueprint for permanent American global hegemony."20 An article in Harper's calls it an early version of Cheney's "Plan . . . to rule the world."21



During the rest of the 1990s, while the Republicans were out of White House, the unipolar dream kept growing. In 1996, Robert Kagan said the United States should use its military strength "to maintain a world order which both supports and rests upon American hegemony."22



In the following year, William Kristol, the son of neocon godfather Irving Kristol, founded a unipolarist think tank called the Project for the New American Century, often called PNAC. Its members included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby, and many other neocons who would become central members of the Bush administration in 2001. In September of 2000, PNAC published a document entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses. Reaffirming "the basic tenets" of the Cheney-Wolfowitz draft of 1992, this document said that "America's grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend [its present] advantageous position" and thereby "to preserve and enhance [the] 'American peace.'"23



What would it take, according to these neocons, to preserve and enhance the Pax Americana? Basically five things. First, control of the world's oil. As Robert Dreyfuss, a critic of the neocons, says, "who[ever] controls oil controls the world."24 For the neocons, this meant bringing about regime change in several oil-rich countries, especially Iraq. Some neocons, including Cheney and Rumsfeld, had wanted the first President Bush to take out Saddam in 1990.25 They continued to advocate this policy throughout the 1990s, with PNAC even writing a letter to President Clinton in 1998, urging him to use military force to "remov[e] Saddam's regime from power."26 After the Bush-Cheney administration took office, attacking Iraq was the main item on its agenda. The only real question, reports former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, was "finding a way to do it."27



A second necessary condition for the envisaged Pax Americana was a transformation of the military in the light of the "revolution in military affairs"---RMA for short---made possible by information technology. At the center of this RMA transformation is the military use of space.28 Although the term "missile defense" implies that this use of space is to be purely defensive, one neocon, Lawrence Kaplan, has candidly stated otherwise, saying: "Missile defense isn't really meant to protect America. It's a tool for global domination."29



In any case, implementing this transformation will be very expensive, which brings us to a third requirement: an increase in military spending. The end of the Cold War made this requirement challenging, because most Americans assumed that, since we no longer had to defend the world against global Communism, we could drastically reduce military spending, thereby having a "peace dividend" to spend on health, education, and the environment.



A fourth neocon requirement for a Pax Americana was a modification of the doctrine of preemptive attack. Traditionally, a country has had the right to launch a preemptive attack against another country if an attack from that country was imminent---too imminent to take the matter to the UN Security Council. But neocons wanted the United States to act to preclude threats that might arise in the more or less distant future.30



These four developments would require a fifth thing: an event that would make the American people ready to accept these imperialistic policies. This point had been made in The Grand Chessboard, a 1997 book by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was Jimmy Carter's national security advisor. Brzezinski is not a neocon but he shares their concern with American primacy (as indicated by the subtitle of his book: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives). Portraying Central Asia, with its vast oil reserves, as the key to world power, Brzezinski argued that America must get control of this region. However, Brzezinski counseled, Americans, with their democratic instincts, are reluctant to authorize the military spending and human sacrifices necessary for "imperial mobilization," and this reluctance "limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation."31 But this impediment could be overcome, he added, if there were "a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."32 The American people were, for example, willing to enter World War II after "the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."33



This same idea was suggested in PNAC's document of 2000, Rebuilding America's Defenses. Referring to the goal of transforming the military, it said that this "process of transformation . . . is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event---like a new Pearl Harbor."34



3. Opportunities Created by the New Pearl Harbor



When the attacks of 9/11 occurred, they were treated like a new Pearl Harbor. President Bush reportedly wrote in his diary on that night: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."35 Many commentators, from Robert Kagan to Henry Kissinger to a writer for Time magazine, said that America should respond to the attacks of 9/11 in the same way it had responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor.36 Rumsfeld said that 9/11 created "the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world." President Bush and Condoleezza Rice also spoke of 9/11 as creating opportunities.37



And it did, in fact, create opportunities to fulfill what the neocons had considered the other necessary conditions for bringing about a Pax Americana. With regard to oil, the Bush administration had, during the summer of 2001, developed a plan to attack Afghanistan to replace the Taliban with a puppet regime, thereby allowing UNOCAL to build its proposed pipeline from the Caspian Sea and the US military to build bases in the region.



The official story of 9/11, according to which it was carried out by members of al-Qaeda under the direction of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, provided the needed pretext for this operation. In 2004, Rumsfeld told the 9/11 Commission that prior to 9/11, the president could not have convinced Congress that the United States needed to "invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban." 38



9/11 also provided a necessary condition for the attack on Iraq. It did not provide a sufficient condition. The administration still had to wage a propaganda offensive to convince the public that Saddam was involved in 9/11, was connected to al-Qaeda, and illegally possessed weapons of mass destruction. But 9/11 was a necessary condition. As neocon Kenneth Adelman has said: "At the beginning of the administration people were talking about Iraq but it wasn't doable. . . . That changed with September 11."39 Historian Stephen Sniegoski, explaining why 9/11 made the attack on Iraq possible, says:



The 9/11 attacks made the American people angry and fearful. Ordinary Americans wanted to strike back at the terrorist enemy, even though they weren't exactly sure who that enemy was. . . . Moreover, they were fearful of more attacks and were susceptible to the administration's propaganda that the United States had to strike Iraq before Iraq somehow struck the United States.40



Sniegoski's view is supported by Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker. Lemann says that he was told by a senior official of the Bush administration that, in Lemann's paraphrase,



the reason September 11th appears to have been "a transformative moment" is not so much that it revealed the existence of a threat of which officials had previously been unaware as that it drastically reduced the American public's usual resistance to American military involvement overseas.41



The new Pearl Harbor also opened the way for the revolution in military affairs. Prior to 9/11, Bacevich reports, "military transformation appeared to be dead in the water." But the "war on terror" after 9/11 "created an opening for RMA advocates to make their case."42



9/11 also allowed for great increases in military spending, including spending for space weapons. On the evening of 9/11 itself, Rumsfeld held a news briefing at the Pentagon. Senator Carl Levin, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was asked:



Senator Levin, you and other Democrats in Congress have voiced fear that you simply don't have enough money for the large increase in defense that the Pentagon is seeking, especially for missile defense. . . . Does this sort of thing convince you that an emergency exists in this country to increase defense spending?43



Congress immediately appropriated an additional $40 billion for the Pentagon and much more later.



The new Pearl Harbor also paved the way for the new doctrine of preemptive warfare. "The events of 9/11," observes Bacevich, "provided the tailor-made opportunity to break free of the fetters restricting the exercise of American power."44 Bush alluded to this new doctrine at West Point the following June.45 It was then fully articulated in the administration's 2002 version of the National Security Strategy. The president's covering letter said that America will "act against . . . emerging threats before they are fully formed."46 The document itself said:



Given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. . . . We cannot let our enemies strike first. . . . [T]he United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.47





4. 9/11 as a False Flag Operation



If 9/11 provided the "tailor-made opportunity" for enunciating this new doctrine, as Bacevich has observed, it equally provided the opportunity to realize all the other things that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and other neocons had been dreaming about during the previous decade. Should not this fact lead us to suspect that 9/11 was not simply a godsend? In any criminal investigation, the first question is always cui bono—who benefits? Why should we not apply this principle to 9/11? Let us now look at some evidence, to see if it supports the view that 9/11 was a false flag operation, orchestrated to produce precisely the effects that it did in fact produce.



The Alleged Hijackers



The official account of 9/11, by blaming the attacks on Arab Muslims, provided a basis for the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq wars---not a legal basis, but an emotional basis sufficient to marshal support from a the American people and Congress. But there are many problems with this official story.



For one thing, the alleged hijackers are portrayed as devout Muslims, ready to meet their maker. Mohamed Atta, called the ringleader, is said by the 9/11 Commission to have become very religious, even "fanatically so."48 But some journalists found that he loved cocaine, alcohol, gambling, pork, and lap dances. Several of the other alleged hijackers reportedly had similar tastes.49



Also, the flight manifests that have been released for the four flights have no Arab names on them.50



It appears, moreover, that evidence was planted. Authorities allegedly found two of Atta's bags at the Boston airport. These bags contained Atta's passport and his will along with various types of incriminating evidence. But why would Atta have planned to take his will on a plane that he planned to fly into the World Trade Center?51





The Legend of Osama bin Laden



There are also many problems in the official story about Osama bin Laden. In June of 2001, when he was already America's "most wanted" criminal, bin Laden reportedly spent two weeks in the American Hospital in Dubai, where he was visited by the local CIA agent.52



Also, after 9/11, when America was supposedly trying to get bin Laden "dead or alive," the U.S. military evidently allowed him to escape on at least four occasions, the last one being the "battle of Tora Bora," which the London Telegraph labeled "a grand charade."53



Moreover, although the Bush administration promised that Secretary of State Colin Powell would provide a white paper with proof that the attacks had been planned by bin Laden, this paper was never produced. And although the Taliban said that it would hand bin Laden over if the United States presented evidence of his involvement in 9/11, the Bush administration refused.54



Finally, although this administration claims that bin Laden admitted responsibility for the attacks in a video allegedly found in Afghanistan, the man in this video has darker skin, fuller cheeks, and a broader nose than the Osama bin Laden of all the other videos. We again seem to have planted evidence. Indeed, within the 9/11 truth movement, this video is known as "the fake bin Laden video."55





Reasons to believe that 9/11 was a false flag operation are also provided by various features of the attacks that could not have been accomplished by the alleged hijackers. One of these is the destruction of the World Trade Center.



5. The Destruction of the World Trade Center



According to the official explanation, the Twin Towers and Building 7 collapsed primarily from their fires---plus, in the case of the Twin Towers, the impact of the airplanes. But this explanation faces several formidable problems.



First, many people have been led to believe that the steel in these steel-frame buildings was melted by the fires. But steel does not begin to melt until 2800 degrees F, whereas open fires burning hydrocarbons such as kerosene---which is what jet fuel is---can in the most ideal circumstances rise only as high as 1700 degrees.



Second, the fires in these three buildings were not very big, very hot, or very long-lasting, compared with fires in some steel-frame high-rises that did not collapse. A fire in Philadelphia in 1991 burned 18 hours; a fire in Caracas in 2004 burned 17 hours. But neither of these fires resulted in even a partial collapse.56 By contrast, the north and south towers burned only 102 and 56 minutes, respectively, before they collapsed. Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, had fires on only a few floors, according to all the photographic evidence57 and several witnesses.58



The collapse of Building 7 has been recognized as especially difficult to explain. The FEMA report said that the most likely scenario had "only a low probability of occurrence."59 The collapse of building 7 was not even mention in the 571 pages of The 9/11 Commission Report, even though this collapse was, according to the official account, a historic event: the first time a steel-frame high-rise had ever collapsed from fire alone. The latest official report, put out by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has claimed that the Twin Towers collapsed because the airplanes knocked the fire-proofing off the steel,60 but it has yet to explain why Building 7, which was not hit by a plane, also collapsed.



A third problem with the official account is that total collapses of steel-frame high-rise buildings have never, either before or after 9/11, been brought about by fire alone, or fire combined with externally produced structural damage. All such collapses have been caused by explosives in the procedure known as "controlled demolition."



A fourth problem is that the collapses of these three buildings all manifested many standard features of controlled demolition. I will mention six:



1. The collapses began suddenly. Steel, if weakened by fire, would gradually begin to sag. But if you look at videos available on the Web, you will see that the buildings are perfectly motionless up to the moment they begin to collapse.61



2. These huge buildings collapsed straight down, instead of toppling over, which would have caused enormous death and destruction. This straight-down collapse is the whole point of the type of controlled demolition known as implosion, which only a few companies in the world are qualified to perform.62



3. All three buildings collapsed at virtually free-fall speed, which means that the lower floors, with all their steel and concrete, were offering no resistance to the upper floors.



4. The collapses were total collapses, resulting in piles of rubble no more than a few stories high. This means that the enormous steel columns in the core of each building had to be broken into rather short segments---which is what explosives do.



5. Fifth, great quantities of molten steel were produced, which means that the steel had been heated up to several thousand degrees. Witnesses during the clean-up reported, moreover, that sometimes when a piece of steel was lifted out of the rubble, molten metal would be dripping from the end.63



6. Dozens of people, including journalists, police officers, WTC employees, emergency medical workers, and firefighters, reported that explosions went off prior to and during the collapses of the north and south towers. For example, Fire Captain Dennis Tardio said: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."64 Firefighter Richard Banaciski said: "It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions."65



One more feature of the collapses of the Twin Towers was that virtually everything except the steel---all the desks, computers, and concrete---was pulverized into tiny dust particles.66



The official theory cannot explain one, let alone all, of these seven features---at least, as physicist Steven Jones has pointed out, without violating several basic laws of physics.67 But the theory of controlled demolition easily explains all of them.



This evidence for controlled demolition contradicts the idea that al-Qaeda terrorists were responsible. They could not have obtained access to the buildings for all the hours needed to plant the explosives. Agents of the Bush-Cheney administration, by contrast, could have gotten such access, given the fact that Marvin Bush and Wirt Walker III---the president's brother and cousin, respectively---were principals of the company in charge of security for the WTC.68 Al-Qaeda terrorists would also probably not have had the courtesy to ensure that these huge buildings came straight down, rather than falling over onto other buildings. They also would not have had the necessary expertise.



Another relevant fact is that evidence was destroyed. An examination of the buildings' steel columns could have shown whether explosives had been used to slice them. But virtually all of the steel was quickly sold to scrap dealers, trucked away, and sent to Asia to be melted down. It is usually a federal offense to remove anything from a crime scene. But this removal of thousands of tons of steel, the biggest destruction of evidence in history, was allowed by federal officials.



Evidence was also apparently planted. The passport of one of the hijackers on Flight 11 was allegedly found in the rubble, having survived not only the fire but also whatever caused everything in the north tower except its steel to be pulverized into dust.69



6. The Strike on the Pentagon



The official account of the strike on the Pentagon is equally problematic. According to this account, the Pentagon was struck by American Airlines Flight 77, under the control of al-Qaeda hijacker Hani Hanjour. But this claim is challenged by many facts.

First, Flight 77 allegedly, after making a U-turn in the mid-west, flew back to Washington undetected for 40 minutes. And yet the US military, which by then would have known that hijacked airliners were being used as weapons, has the best radar systems in the world, one of which, it brags, "does not miss anything occurring in North American airspace."70



Second, the aircraft, in order to hit the west wing, reportedly executed a 270-degree downward spiral, which some pilots have said, would have been difficult if not impossible for a Boeing 757 even with an expert pilot. Hani Hanjour, moreover, was known as a terrible pilot, who could not safely fly even a small plane.71



Third, terrorists brilliant enough to get through the U.S. military's defense system would not have struck the Pentagon's west wing, for many reasons: It had been reinforced, so the damage was less severe than a strike anywhere else would have been. The west wing was still being renovated, so relatively few people were there; a strike anywhere else would have killed thousands of people, rather than 125. And the secretary of defense and all the top brass, whom terrorists would presumably have wanted to kill, were in the east wing. Why would an al-Qaeda pilot have executed a very difficult maneuver to hit the west wing when he could have simply crashed into the roof of the east wing?



Fourth, there is considerable evidence that the aircraft that struck the Pentagon was not even a Boeing 757, which is what Flight 77 was. For one thing, unlike the strikes on the Twin Towers, the strike on the Pentagon did not create a detectable seismic signal.72 Also, the kind of damage and debris that would have been produced by the impact of a Boeing 757 were not produced by the strike on the Pentagon, according to both photographs73 and eyewitnesses.

Former pilot Ralph Omholt, discussing the photographic evidence, writes:



There is no viable evidence of burning jet fuel. . . . The pre-collapse Pentagon section showed no "forward-moving" damage. . . . There was no particular physical evidence of the expected "wreckage." There was no tail, no wings; no damage consistent with a B-757 "crash."74



CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre, reporting live from the Pentagon on 9/11, said: "From my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon."75 Karen Kwiatkowski, who at the time was an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel working at the Pentagon, has written:



I would think that if a 100-plus-ton aircraft . . . going several hundred miles an hour were to hit the Pentagon, it would cause a great deal of possibly superficial but visible damage to the . . . entire area of impact. But I did not see this kind of damage.76



Fifth, evidence was again destroyed. Shortly after the strike, government agents picked up debris and carried it off.77 Shortly thereafter the entire lawn was covered with dirt and gravel, so that any remaining forensic evidence was literally covered up.78 Finally, the videos from security cameras on the nearby gas station and nearby hotels, which would show what really hit the Pentagon, were immediately confiscated by agents of the FBI, and the Department of Justice has subsequently refused to released them.79



Evidence again appears to have been fabricated. For example, proof that Flight 77 was hijacked and heading back towards Washington was allegedly provided in a phone call from passenger Barbara Olson to her husband, attorney Ted Olson. But no evidence from telephone records has been provided to confirm that this call occurred. The only evidence that has been submitted is the claim of Ted Olson, who works for the Bush-Cheney administration.





These are only a few of the many reasons, which I have discussed in my books, for concluding that 9/11 was simply one of the latest examples of false flag terrorism.



7. How Should Christians Respond?



I come now to the main question of this essay: How should Christians respond to this realization? The key consideration in answering this question, I suggest, is the evidence that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out for the sake of preserving and extending the American empire. This means that there is a two-way relation between 9/11 and this empire. On the one hand, understanding the ideas driving the present phase of US empire-building enables us to understand why 9/11 occurred. On the other hand, 9/11 serves as a revelation of the nature of the American empire---an empire that has been in the making, on a bipartisan basis, for a long time. 9/11 reveals the nature of the values that have underlay this empire-building project for over a century, especially the past 60 years.





Evil Empire?



If so, then we must ask whether the term "evil," which US leaders have used so freely to describe other nations, must be applied to our own. There can be no doubt about the application of this term to 9/11. We can here quote President Bush himself, who on the evening of 9/11 said: ""Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror. . . . Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature."80 No explanation of why the attacks were despicable was necessary. The proposition was self-evident. This proposition is even more self-evident, of course, if the attacks were orchestrated by our own government.



Accordingly, if we accept 9/11 as a revelation of the American empire---of the basic values it embodies---must we not conclude that this empire is itself evil?



This suggestion, of course, runs directly counter to our deeply inculcated self-image, which has embodied the notion of "American exceptionalism."81 According to this view, America is qualitatively different from other countries, hence its empire is qualitatively different from all prior empires. Americans in the 19th century said that whereas other empires were self-seeking, greedy, and brutal, the United States had an "empire of liberty," an "empire of right."82



Neoconservatives have recently revived this idea. According to Ben Wattenberg, "The American empire is not like earlier European imperialisms. We have sought neither wealth nor territory. Ours is an imperium of values."83 Robert Kagan calls the United States "The Benevolent Empire."84 Dinesh D'Souza describe America "the most magnanimous imperial power ever."85 Max Boot says: "America isn't like the empires of old. It does not seek to enslave other peoples and steal their lands. It spreads freedom and opportunity."86 Charles Krauthammer says that America's claim to being a benign power is verified by its "track record."87



But many other commentators, who base their views on an actual examination of this track record, have come to opposite conclusions. Andrew Bacevich, in his book American Empire, rejects the claim "that the promotion of peace, democracy, and human rights . . . --not the pursuit of self-interest--[has] defined the essence of American diplomacy." Against those who justify American interventions on the grounds that America's foreign policy is to promote democracy, Bacevich points out that in previous countries in which America has intervened, "democracy [did not] flower as a result."88



Many other intellectuals have similar views. Chalmers Johnson, who like Bacevich was once a conservative who believed that American foreign policy aimed at promoting freedom and democracy, now describes the United States as "a military juggernaut intent on world domination."89 A recent book by Noam Chomsky is subtitled America's Quest for Global Dominance.90 Richard Falk has written of the Bush administration's "global domination project," which poses the threat of "global fascism."91



Bacevich sums up the nature of the American empire by employing the statement, made in 1939 by the famous historian Charles Beard, that "America is not to be Rome."92 In the 1990s, Bacevich says, most Americans "still comforted themselves with the belief that as the sole superpower the United States was nothing like Rome." But, he says: "The reality that Beard feared has come to pass: like it or not, America today is Rome."93



This comparison is helpful. To begin answering the question how those of us who are Christians should respond to the realization that we are living in the new Rome, we can ask how Jesus responded to the original Rome.





Jesus and the Roman Empire



This question has been treated by New Testament historian Richard Horsley in his book Jesus and Empire. Horsley's short answer is that Jesus preached an "anti-imperial gospel," which called for the reign of Caesar to be replaced by a reign of God.94



To understand why this would have been central, we need to understand something about Rome and its occupation of Palestine.



Rome was not nice. Although Rome's rulers spoke of Pax Romana, with one of its emperors even calling himself the "Pacifier of the World,"95 this pacification was achieved by means of Rome's overwhelming military might, which it used ruthlessly. As a Caledonian chieftain put it, the Romans "rob, butcher, plunder, and call it 'empire'; and where they make desolation, they call it 'peace.'"96



By the time of Jesus, Palestine had been under Roman domination for almost a century.97 Rome ruled through puppets—first Herod the Great, then Herod Antipas in Galilee and Pontius Pilate in Judea--and this rule was devastating.



Roman legions killed tens of thousands of people and enslaved many more. One traumatic attack was the burning of Sepphoris, only a few miles from Nazareth, near the time of Jesus' birth.98 Some 2,000 rebels were crucified at about the same time.99



Besides killing and enslaving the Palestinians, the Romans taxed them severely, pushing many of them permanently into debt. By the time of Jesus, there was "a crisis of debt and dispossession that touched and transformed the lives of nearly every peasant family in Galilee."100



Jesus' anti-imperial gospel is apparent in what we call "the Lord's Prayer," which is a modification of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the establishment of God's kingdom. The central phrase of Jesus' prayer was, therefore, "thy kingdom come"--an abbreviation of the Kaddish's petition, "May God establish his kingdom in your lifetime." That Jesus was not talking about some exclusively otherworldly realm is shown by the next line: "thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Thus, says Horsley, "God's activity was political and Jesus' preaching of that activity was political--with obvious implications for the 'imperial situation' then prevailing in Palestine." The reign of the Roman emperors was to be replaced by the reign of God, which would transform "the social-economic-political substance of human relations."101



The centrality of the economic issue is shown by two other elements in this prayer: the petition for "our daily bread" and the idea that we should "forgive our debtors"—an allusion to the fact that unjust and unforgiven debt regularly forced peasants into servitude to rich landlords (as reflected in the parable of the wicked tenants).102



That Jesus opposed Roman rule even more directly is suggested by evidence that Jesus challenged the payment of the Temple tax and the tribute to Rome103 and that he protested the Temple's system of collecting money.104



That Jesus was regarded as a rebel against the empire is implied by the very fact that he was crucified. The death penalty could be authorized only by the Romans, and crucifixion was an exclusively Roman manner of execution, used primarily for those regarded as challengers to Roman authority. "That Jesus was crucified by the Roman governor," says Horsley, "stands as a vivid symbol of his historical relationship with the Roman imperial order."105



One dimension of the Roman imperial order that particularly offended Jesus and his fellow Jews was Rome's claim that its empire was divinely authorized.106 Early Christians had a very different view, as shown by the final book of the New Testament, which portrays Rome as a dragon, symbolizing Satan.107 For the early Christians, Horsley says,



Rome was the Beast, the Harlot, the Dragon, Babylon, the Great Satan. They knew that Rome's empire was made possible not by divine order but by the acquisition of vast territories through the deadly violence of the Roman legions.108



America as the New Rome



Is Bacevich right to say that today America is Rome? One way to answer this question is in terms of four commonly accepted features of the Roman empire.109 First, it portrayed itself, as we have seen, as guided by divine providence. Americans have said the same about their own empire. In 1850, an American editor wrote: "We have a destiny to perform, a 'manifest destiny' over . . . South America, . . . the Chinese empire . . . and the . . . Japanese. . . . The eagle of the republic shall poise itself over [the rest of the world] and a successor of Washington ascend the chair of universal empire!110 The Christmas card sent out by Dick and Lynne Cheney in 2003 asked, rhetorically: "[I]f a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"111



A second feature of the Roman empire was the development and employment of overwhelming military power. Bacevich, summing up this feature of our own empire, says that the present aim of the U.S. military is "to achieve something approaching omnipotence: 'Full Spectrum Dominance.'"111



A third feature of the Roman empire was rule through puppets, such as Herod, backed up by the empire's pervasive military presence. Some of the most notorious US puppets have been Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier in Haiti, Marcos in the Philippines, Diem in Vietnam, and Suharto in Indonesia. More recently, America has installed a puppet regime in Afghanistan and has been trying to do the same in Iraq.



A fourth feature of the Roman empire was that through its imposition of exorbitant taxes, it impoverished the countries it dominated. America's taxation is more indirect, being exercised through the global economy enforced by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. But it impoverishes just as effectively.



An increasing number of commentators have come to speak of "global apartheid," thereby pointing to the fact that the world as a whole reflects the same kind of systemic inequality that characterized South Africa under apartheid. In a 1992 book on global apartheid, Titus Alexander said:



Three-quarters of the land [in apartheid South Africa] and all its natural resources could only be owned by whites, a sixth of the population. The West also has a sixth of the world's population and commands over three-quarters of global resources. . . . [In South Africa,] democracy for a few meant oppression for the many. So it is for most people in the global economy. . . . Free trade and consumer choice for a few means low incomes, long hours and a struggle for subsistence among the many.113



The only difference between the two systems is that---as Gernot Köhler, who coined the term, put it--"global apartheid is even more severe than South African apartheid."114



What is the relevance of this to the nature of the American empire? This question can be answered in three points.

First, global apartheid did not exist three centuries ago but is a product of European colonialism.115



Second, since the end of World War II, when the United States replaced Britain as the leader of the global capitalist economy, it has become increasingly responsible for the state of this economy.



Third, during this period, the gap between the rich and the poor has become much greater. As John Cobb has pointed out: "The disparity in per capita income between the US and the undeveloped nations is estimated as having been about thirteen to one in 1947. In 1989, . . . the disparity had reached around sixty to one."116 According to the Human Development Report of 2005, moreover, the situation is now still worse, with the richest 10 percent of the world's population receiving 54 percent of the world's income and the poorest 40 percent---meaning 2.5 billion people---receiving only 5 percent of the total income.117



The poverty in which billions of God's children on this earth live has dire consequences. Every year, starvation and other poverty-related causes take the lives of about 18 million people, 11 million of whom are children under the age of 5. This means that about 180 million people are dying from poverty-related causes every decade.118



We have rightly considered the Nazi and Stalinist regimes evil, in large part because each one was responsible for the deaths of some 60 million people. But then what term do we use for an empire that is ultimately responsible for three times that many deaths each decade?



Part of the reason we call the Nazi and Stalinist regimes evil, of course, is that many of their victims were killed deliberately. Do American leaders realize what they are doing?



There is evidence that they do. For example, in 1947, George Kennan, who was Director of the Policy Planning Staff in the U.S. State Department, said in a "top secret" memo:



We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. . . . In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.119



A more recent example showing that our leaders know what they are doing is provided by a 1997 document of the US Space Command entitled "Vision for 2020." This document, explaining why the United States needs to dominate space so as to have "full spectrum dominance," says: "The globalization of the world economy . . . will continue with a widening between 'haves' and 'have-nots.'"120 In other words, as the United States and its rich allies become still richer while the rest of the world becomes still poorer, the United States will need to be able to attack from space to keep the have-nots in line. In 2005, the head of the US Space Command said that by putting weapons in space, the United States will have the ability to destroy things "anywhere in the world. . . in 45 minutes."121



As these parallels between Roman and American imperialism show, we can speak of the latter as evil without even bringing 9/11 into the picture. But the awareness that the attacks of 9/11 were carried out to further America's global domination project, and hence increase global apartheid, helps us, as I have suggested elsewhere, to "fully grasp the extent to which this project is propelled by fanaticism based on a deeply perverted value system."122 9/11 can thereby serve as a wake-up call to Christians in America, forcing us to ask how to respond to the realization that we are citizens of the new Rome.



Christians and the New Rome



Any attempt to answer that question would be very long. I will here simply suggest a first step: the formation of an anti-imperial church movement, in which the rejection of America's imperial project is considered a necessary implication of Christian faith. Such a movement would be analogous to the movement of "Confessing Christians" formed in Germany in 1934, a year after the Nazis had come to power. This movement, two leaders of which were theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, opposed the movement known as the "German Christians," which treated Hitler as a new messiah who would bring Germany the greatness it deserved. In their famous Barmen Declaration, the Confessing Christians said that support for National Socialism violated basic principles of the Christian faith. One had to choose either Christian faith or National Socialism. One could not affirm both.123



Later in the century, some Christian bodies decided that rejection of the system of apartheid in South Africa was a necessary implication of Christian faith. In 1977, the Lutheran World Federation declared that although with regard to most political questions, "Christians may have different opinions," the system of apartheid in South Africa was "so perverted and oppressive" that it "constitute[d] a status confessionis"—a confessional situation. The Christian faith, these Lutherans declared, required that "churches would publicly and unequivocally reject the existing apartheid system."124



An analogous question before churches in America today is whether the American empire, with its imperialism and global apartheid, is "so perverted and oppressive" that the public rejection of it should be regarded as an implication of fidelity to God as revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a Roman cross.
Reply
#17
MODERN PROPHET IN THE AGE OF US EMPIRE : A TRIBUTE TO DAVID RAY GRIFFIN
Michael Welch, Richard Gage, Carol Brouillet, Barrie Zwicker, and Elizabeth Woodworth
https://www.globalresearch.ca/modern-pro...in/5802511


“I close with the observation that, insofar as Americans participate in this anti-imperialist movement, their activities will be deeply patriotic, because they will be seeking to call our nation back to its moral ideals, which stand diametrically opposed to the values implicit in the global domination project.”

– David Ray Griffin [1]


LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Near the end of last month, the last fading breaths of a special person with extraordinary intellect offset by almost a humble and unassuming personality finally petered out, and left much of the public diminished in a fundamental way. [2]

A friend. A mentor. A prophet. A conspiracy theorist. David Ray Griffin was considered all of these things and more.

His philosophical journey which started in academia found a sideline into investigating and communicating about the truth about the problems with the official story of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. And it was not a diversionary track. For him, it was consistent with his commitment as a theologian and one who follows the truth no matter where it leads and no matter the cost to his reputation and life.

He may not have been the first voice out of the gate spreading the word, but with his background as an academic and his skills as a teacher, he was definitely a giant in the field of 9/11 investigation. He exposed the evidence that officials within the U.S. military, political and intelligence apparatus had full knowledge of the terrorist attacks in advance and either allowed or made them happen on purpose. People came to him by the hundreds, and tuned into radio by the thousands to hear about his understanding of what really happened on that horrible day.

The Global Research News Hour, and Global Research itself remain committed to similarly getting to the bottom of the vicious event which propelled the U.S. and the world into a new venture of war-making abroad and diminished rights at home. We recognize the particular importance of Dr Griffin on the roster of champions who would not be forced into silence when the growling hounds of conformity try to coerce a more “respectable” opinion out of him.

Investigating the Truth of 9/11. Healing the Wound and Paying the Price

For the entire hour, we will get the perspectives of people who have been in contact with him and value his work, to share perspectives not only about his 9/11 work, but also in his other pursuits from theological studies to his role in revealing the U.S. empire in all its horrible glory. We coax them to reveal more about him on a personal level – both his strentgths and his Persian flaws. Our guests include Carol Brouillet, Ken Jennings, Richard Gage AIA, Barrie Zwicker and Elizabeth Woodworth.

David Ray Griffin may have shuffled off his mortal coil, but his memory and legacy will live on!

Carol Brouillet is Co-Founder of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, and organizer of many, many, conferences, film festivals, rallies, marches. Mother, Congressional candidate, radio-show host for many years, concerned and active on many different issues, especially global economics. Her website is http://www.communitycurrency.org/.

Ken Jenkins helped co-found The Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance. HE has a degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, and has done extensive postgraduate study in psychology. He has produced dozens of 9/11 DVDs – nine with leading 9/11 Truth author David Ray Griffin. His website is http://9-11tv.org

Richard Gage, AIA is a 30-year San Francisco Bay Area architect and member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founder and former  CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He now leads the charge for a new WTC investigation.His current site is RichardGage911.org

Barrie Zwicker is a former journalist and media critic. He wrote for the Globe and Mail, Toronto StarVancouver ProvinceSudbury StarDetroit News, and Lansing State Journal. He is the author of the 2006 book, Towers of deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11.

Elizabeth Woodworth, a career medical librarian and author/co-author of five books, worked with David Ray Griffin in various capacities from 2006-2022.  She did proof-reading/editing on about 12 of his books and many of his essays, co-authored two books with him directly, and has also written in-depth reviews of most of his books from the 2006-2022 period on Amazon.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 373)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW





Click to download the audio (MP3 format)




DAVID RAY GRIFFIN (1939-2022). THE MAN AND HIS WORK :
A SYNOPSIS
Elizabeth Woodworth
Global Research, December 01, 2022
https://www.globalresearch.ca/david-ray-...is/5800929

 
 
How big can a mind be?

If we’re lucky, we have threescore and ten years — in a very big wide world, full of history — to experience as much as we can take in.Threescore-ten is not nearly enough, but some extraordinary people manage to encompass and give order to a lot of it.

And some even more extraordinary people manage to rise above their own lives to interpret creation and the fabric of the universe as having consistent meaning across cultures and throughout the ages.

David Ray Griffin was Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, from 1973-2004.  With his senior, Dr. John Cobb Jr., he co-founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973. Griffin has stated that “the task of a theologian is to look at the world from what we would imagine the divine perspective, one that would care about the good of the whole and would love all the parts.” 

Not only was David an outstanding theologian and one of the two best-known living scholars of Alfred North Whitehead’s process theology (the other being John Cobb):  His books also spanned the related fields of postmodernism, theodicy (defence of God against evil), primordial truth, panentheism, scientific naturalism, parapsychology, Buddhist thought, and the mind-body interaction.About the time that he retired in 2004, he was approached by some people who admired his candor, and pointed to evidence that the 9/11 event was highly suspicious.

At first David thought that 9/11 was simply blowback from the way America had treated the Middle East — but upon researching it more deeply he realized that there was indeed a very serious likelihood that the US had contrived 9/11 as a false flag operation to manufacture consent to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq for their oil.

This injustice fired his energy to research in depth, then write a dozen scholarly books on 9/11 — books that were not acknowledged in the media but which engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the purveyors of the official 9/11 narrative, who continually adapted their story to cover up the weaknesses that David tracked and revealed as their tattered narrative evolved.

The first and most famous of these books was The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, published by his much-appreciated Interlink press in March 2004. That best-seller was followed in 2005 by a devastating takedown of the Bush Administration’s whitewash Commission titled The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which exposed 115 problems in “the 571-page lie”.

Following these early 9/11 works, David was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2008 and 2009, and was named among “The 50 People Who Matter Today” by the New Statesman, on September 24, 2009. In November, 2008, David’s seventh book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbour Revisited, was one of only 51 books awarded as “pick of the week” that year by Publishers Weekly.

What followed was extraordinary.

As the foremost book reviewing tool in the English language, Publishers Weekly’s spotlight should have led to reviews in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Library Journal, and many other top reviewing sources — but the word was out in the narrative-controlled media to give it a pass.

In 2011, David and I founded an organization called the 9/11 Consensus Panel, comprised of more than 20 professionals expert in various aspects of the 9/11 attacks. In 2018, the 51 consensus points that were developed during this unique evidence-based reviewing project were published under the title 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation (2018).

During that seven-year project, David addressed the existential crisis of climate change, penning his encyclopaedic 2015 reference, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? (I took that book to the COP21 Paris climate summit in 2015, and presented it there, following up with a YouTube documentary on that enormous gathering of humanity – the largest meeting since World War II.)

David then turned his attention to US imperialism – writing Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World in 2016, and producing the incredible work of scholarship, The American Trajectory:  Divine or Demonic, in 2018.

David was at last able, in 2019, to turn to his long-planned The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology.  It is a magnum opus of enormous breadth and depth. In it, for example, he confronts the science vs religion issue, showing that some scientists – former atheists – have been overwhelmed by the extent of exceedingly precise ratios between the chemical elements of earth that are required for life, to now saying that the universe was “fine-tuned for life,” thus reflecting a “fine-tuner” (or divine creator).

In 2022, as he approached the end of his life, and following a long struggle with prostate cancer, David wrote the beautiful and crowning reflections of his maturing theology, James and Whitehead on Life after Death. In the spirit of James and Whitehead, he explains that the universe is not separate from, but is within God, and is itself the very nature of God. This evolving world view requires a new understanding of the divine reality – panentheism, meaning “all in God”.  The causal principles of the universe exist naturally, being inherent in the nature of things, because they exist in the very nature of God.

This chapter on the infinitely fine-tuned nature of the universe to support life is a transporting gift.  But he was not done yet!  Forthcoming in March, 2023, from the publisher Clarity Press, is David’s America on the Brink: How the US Trajectory Led Fatefully to the Russia-Ukraine War – which was completed during the last days of his life.  In total David Ray Griffin has written 50 books and more than 200 essays. (He was once asked if he had ever had an unpublished thought!)

In all of his books – and most notably those on American imperialism – he read and cited recent scholarly investigations from top university presses, effectively overriding the propaganda that has passed down through many years.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote: “David has served truth to the hilt. He is a hero of our time.” There is no question that his body of work will go down in history as providing some of the most elegant thinking our century has witnessed. And at some point, his chronicling of historically suppressed truths must emerge into full daylight, to allow reality-based civilization to advance.

Let us keep his work alive, so that earth’s future peoples will inherit the great spectrum of wisdom he has left them:  from a hopeful common-sense theology, to the exposés of imperialist propaganda and false flag operations, to the full extent of the climate crisis, to our evolving perception of the nature of the divine, to the evidence that our spirits will survive after death. David Griffin stands with the greats – yet was quiet, humorous, down to earth, and unassuming.
Consult David Griffin’s archive on Global Research.
David Griffin has passed away. His Legacy Will Live
Reply
#18
PRESIDENT DISCUSSES GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR

Capital Hilton Hotel
Washington, D.C.

National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
The President's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism
In Focus: National Security
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/...905-4.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nsct/2006
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/...60905.html


THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Thank you all. Please be seated. General Hendrix, thank you for the invitation to be here. Thanks for the kind introduction. I'm honored to stand with the men and women of the Military Officers Association of America. I appreciate the Board of Directors who are here, and the leaders who have given me this platform from which to speak. I'm proud to be here with active members of the United States military. Thank you for your service. I'm proud to be your Commander-in-Chief. (Applause.)

I am pleased also to stand with members of the diplomatic corps, including many representing nations that have been attacked by al Qaeda and its terrorist allies since September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.) Your presence here reminds us that we're engaged in a global war against an enemy that threatens all civilized nations. And today the civilized world stands together to defend our freedom; we stand together to defeat the terrorists; and were working to secure the peace for generations to come.

I appreciate my Attorney General joining us today, Al Gonzales. Thank you for being here. (Applause.) The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, is with us. (Applause.) Three members of the United States Senate -- I might say, three important members of the United States Senate -- Senate President Pro Tem Ted Stevens of Alaska. Thank you for joining us, Senator. (Applause.) Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi. (Applause.) The Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, John Warner of Virginia. (Applause.)

I thank Norb Ryan, as well, for his leadership. I do appreciate all the folks that are at Walter Reed who have joined us today. I'm going to tell the parents of our troops, we provide great health care to those who wear the uniform. I'm proud of those folks at Bethesda and Walter Reed -- are providing you the best possible care to help you recover from your injuries. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for joining us here today. May God bless you in your recovery. (Applause.)

Next week, America will mark the fifth anniversary of September the 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. As this day approaches, it brings with it a flood of painful memories. We remember the horror of watching planes fly into the World Trade Center, and seeing the towers collapse before our eyes. We remember the sight of the Pentagon, broken and in flames. We remember the rescue workers who rushed into burning buildings to save lives, knowing they might never emerge again. We remember the brave passengers who charged the cockpit of their hijacked plane, and stopped the terrorists from reaching their target and killing more innocent civilians. We remember the cold brutality of the enemy who inflicted this harm on our country -- an enemy whose leader, Osama bin Laden, declared the massacre of nearly 3,000 people that day -- I quote -- "an unparalleled and magnificent feat of valor, unmatched by any in humankind before them."

In five years since our nation was attacked, al Qaeda and terrorists it has inspired have continued to attack across the world. They've killed the innocent in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, in Central Asia and the Far East, and beyond. Most recently, they attempted to strike again in the most ambitious plot since the attacks of September the 11th -- a plan to blow up passenger planes headed for America over the Atlantic Ocean.

Five years after our nation was attacked, the terrorist danger remains. We're a nation at war -- and America and her allies are fighting this war with relentless determination across the world. Together with our coalition partners, we've removed terrorist sanctuaries, disrupted their finances, killed and captured key operatives, broken up terrorist cells in America and other nations, and stopped new attacks before they're carried out. We're on the offense against the terrorists on every battlefront -- and we'll accept nothing less than complete victory. (Applause.)

In the five years since our nation was attacked, we've also learned a great deal about the enemy we face in this war. We've learned about them through videos and audio recordings, and letters and statements they've posted on websites. We've learned about them from captured enemy documents that the terrorists have never meant for us to see. Together, these documents and statements have given us clear insight into the mind of our enemies -- their ideology, their ambitions, and their strategy to defeat us.

We know what the terrorists intend to do because they've told us -- and we need to take their words seriously. So today I'm going to describe -- in the terrorists' own words, what they believe… what they hope to accomplish, and how they intend to accomplish it. I'll discuss how the enemy has adapted in the wake of our sustained offensive against them, and the threat posed by different strains of violent Islamic radicalism. I'll explain the strategy we're pursuing to protect America, by defeating the terrorists on the battlefield, and defeating their hateful ideology in the battle of ideas.

The terrorists who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001, are men without conscience -- but they're not madmen. They kill in the name of a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs that are evil, but not insane. These al Qaeda terrorists and those who share their ideology are violent Sunni extremists. They're driven by a radical and perverted vision of Islam that rejects tolerance, crushes all dissent, and justifies the murder of innocent men, women and children in the pursuit of political power. They hope to establish a violent political utopia across the Middle East, which they call a "Caliphate" -- where all would be ruled according to their hateful ideology. Osama bin Laden has called the 9/11 attacks -- in his words -- "a great step towards the unity of Muslims and establishing the Righteous… [Caliphate]."

This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. We know this because al Qaeda has told us. About two months ago, the terrorist Zawahiri -- he's al Qaeda's second in command -- declared that al Qaeda intends to impose its rule in "every land that was a home for Islam, from [Spain] to Iraq. He went on to say, "The whole world is an open field for us."

We know what this radical empire would look like in practice, because we saw how the radicals imposed their ideology on the people of Afghanistan. Under the rule of the Taliban and al Qaeda, Afghanistan was a totalitarian nightmare -- a land where women were imprisoned in their homes, men were beaten for missing prayer meetings, girls could not go to school, and children were forbidden the smallest pleasures like flying kites. Religious police roamed the streets, beating and detaining civilians for perceived offenses. Women were publicly whipped. Summary executions were held in Kabul's soccer stadium in front of cheering mobs. And Afghanistan was turned into a launching pad for horrific attacks against America and other parts of the civilized world -- including many Muslim nations.

The goal of these Sunni extremists is to remake the entire Muslim world in their radical image. In pursuit of their imperial aims, these extremists say there can be no compromise or dialogue with those they call "infidels" -- a category that includes America, the world's free nations, Jews, and all Muslims who reject their extreme vision of Islam. They reject the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the free world. Again, hear the words of Osama bin Laden earlier this year: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

These radicals have declared their uncompromising hostility to freedom. It is foolish to think that you can negotiate with them. (Applause.) We see the uncompromising nature of the enemy in many captured terrorist documents. Here are just two examples: After the liberation of Afghanistan, coalition forces searching through a terrorist safe house in that country found a copy of the al Qaeda charter. This charter states that "there will be continuing enmity until everyone believes in Allah. We will not meet [the enemy] halfway. There will be no room for dialogue with them." Another document was found in 2000 by British police during an anti-terrorist raid in London -- a grisly al Qaeda manual that includes chapters with titles such as "Guidelines for Beating and Killing Hostages." This manual declares that their vision of Islam "does not… make a truce with unbelief, but rather confronts it." The confrontation… calls for… the dialogue of bullets, the ideals of assassination, bombing, and destruction, and the diplomacy of the cannon and machine gun."

Still other captured documents show al Qaeda's strategy for infiltrating Muslim nations, establishing terrorist enclaves, overthrowing governments, and building their totalitarian empire. We see this strategy laid out in a captured al Qaeda document found during a recent raid in Iraq, which describes their plans to infiltrate and take over Iraq's western Anbar Province. The document lays out an elaborate al Qaeda governing structure for the region that includes an Education Department, a Social Services Department, a Justice Department, and an "Execution Unit" responsible for "Sorting out, Arrest, Murder, and Destruction."

According to their public statements, countries that have -- they have targeted stretch from the Middle East to Africa, to Southeast Asia. Through this strategy, al Qaeda and its allies intend to create numerous, decentralized operating bases across the world, from which they can plan new attacks, and advance their vision of a unified, totalitarian Islamic state that can confront and eventually destroy the free world.

These violent extremists know that to realize this vision, they must first drive out the main obstacle that stands in their way -- the United States of America. According to al Qaeda, their strategy to defeat America has two parts: First, they're waging a campaign of terror across the world. They're targeting our forces abroad, hoping that the American people will grow tired of casualties and give up the fight. And they're targeting America's financial centers and economic infrastructure at home, hoping to terrorize us and cause our economy to collapse.

Bin Laden calls this his "bleed-until-bankruptcy plan." And he cited the attacks of 9/11 as evidence that such a plan can succeed. With the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden says, "al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America… lost -- according to the lowest estimate -- $500 billion… Meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars” of America. Bin Laden concludes from this experience that "America is definitely a great power, with… unbelievable military strength and a vibrant economy, but all of these have been built on a very weak and hollow foundation." He went on to say, "Therefore, it is very easy to target the flimsy base and concentrate on their weak points, and even if we're able to target one-tenth of these weak points, we will be able [to] crush and destroy them."

Secondly, along with this campaign of terror, the enemy has a propaganda strategy. Osama bin Laden laid out this strategy in a letter to the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, that coalition forces uncovered in Afghanistan in 2002. In it, bin Laden says that al Qaeda intends to "[launch]," in his words, "a media campaign… to create a wedge between the American people and their government." This media campaign, bin Laden says, will send the American people a number of messages, including "that their government [will] bring them more losses, in finances and casualties." And he goes on to say that "they are being sacrificed… to serve… the big investors, especially the Jews." Bin Laden says that by delivering these messages, al Qaeda "aims at creating pressure from the American people on the American government to stop their campaign against Afghanistan."

Bin Laden and his allies are absolutely convinced they can succeed in forcing America to retreat and causing our economic collapse. They believe our nation is weak and decadent, and lacking in patience and resolve. And they're wrong. (Applause.) Osama bin Laden has written that the "defeat of... American forces in Beirut" in 1983 is proof America does not have the stomach to stay in the fight. He's declared that "in Somalia… the United States [pulled] out, trailing disappointment, defeat, and failure behind it." And last year, the terrorist Zawahiri declared that Americans "know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet."

These terrorists hope to drive America and our coalition out of Afghanistan, so they can restore the safe haven they lost when coalition forces drove them out five years ago. But they've made clear that the most important front in their struggle against America is Iraq -- the nation bin Laden has declared the "capital of the Caliphate." Hear the words of bin Laden: "I now address… the whole… Islamic nation: Listen and understand… The most… serious issue today for the whole world is this Third World War… [that] is raging in [Iraq]." He calls it "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam." He says, "The whole world is watching this war," and that it will end in "victory and glory or misery and humiliation." For al Qaeda, Iraq is not a distraction from their war on America -- it is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided.

Here is what al Qaeda says they will do if they succeed in driving us out of Iraq: The terrorist Zawahiri has said that al Qaeda will proceed with "several incremental goals. The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq. The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or amirate, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of Caliphate… The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq. And the fourth stage: …the clash with Israel."

These evil men know that a fundamental threat to their aspirations is a democratic Iraq that can govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself. They know that given a choice, the Iraqi people will never choose to live in the totalitarian state the extremists hope to establish. And that is why we must not, and we will not, give the enemy victory in Iraq by deserting the Iraqi people. (Applause.)

Last year, the terrorist Zarqawi declared in a message posted on the Internet that democracy "is the essence of infidelity and deviation from the right path." The Iraqi people disagree. Last December, nearly 12 million Iraqis from every ethnic and religious community turned out to vote in their country's third free election in less than a year. Iraq now has a unity government that represents Iraq's diverse population -- and al Qaeda's top commander in Iraq breathed his last breath. (Applause.)

Despite these strategic setbacks, the enemy will continue to fight freedom's advance in Iraq, because they understand the stakes in this war. Again, hear the words of bin Laden, in a message to the American people earlier this year. He says: "The war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever."

Now, I know some of our country hear the terrorists' words, and hope that they will not, or cannot, do what they say. History teaches that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. In the early 1900s, an exiled lawyer in Europe published a pamphlet called "What Is To Be Done?" -- in which he laid out his plan to launch a communist revolution in Russia. The world did not heed Lenin's words, and paid a terrible price. The Soviet Empire he established killed tens of millions, and brought the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. In the 1920s, a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews. The world ignored Hitler's words, and paid a terrible price. His Nazi regime killed millions in the gas chambers, and set the world aflame in war, before it was finally defeated at a terrible cost in lives.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is: Will we listen? Will we pay attention to what these evil men say? America and our coalition partners have made our choice. We're taking the words of the enemy seriously. We're on the offensive, and we will not rest, we will not retreat, and we will not withdraw from the fight, until this threat to civilization has been removed. (Applause.)

Five years into this struggle, it's important to take stock of what's been accomplished -- and the difficult work that remains. Al Qaeda has been weakened by our sustained offensive against them, and today it is harder for al Qaeda's leaders to operate freely, to move money, or to communicate with their operatives and facilitators. Yet al Qaeda remains dangerous and determined. Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in hiding in remote regions of this world. Al Qaeda continues to adapt in the face of our global campaign against them. Increasingly, al Qaeda is taking advantage of the Internet to disseminate propaganda, and to conduct "virtual recruitment" and "virtual training" of new terrorists. Al Qaeda's leaders no longer need to meet face-to-face with their operatives. They can find new suicide bombers, and facilitate new terrorist attacks, without ever laying eyes on those they're training, financing, or sending to strike us.

As al Qaeda changes, the broader terrorist movement is also changing, becoming more dispersed and self-directed. More and more, we're facing threats from locally established terrorist cells that are inspired by al Qaeda's ideology and goals, but do not necessarily have direct links to al Qaeda, such as training and funding. Some of these groups are made up of "homegrown" terrorists, militant extremists who were born and educated in Western nations, were indoctrinated by radical Islamists or attracted to their ideology, and joined the violent extremist cause. These locally established cells appear to be responsible for a number of attacks and plots, including those in Madrid, and Canada, and other countries across the world.

As we continue to fight al Qaeda and these Sunni extremists inspired by their radical ideology, we also face the threat posed by Shia extremists, who are learning from al Qaeda, increasing their assertiveness, and stepping up their threats. Like the vast majority of Sunnis, the vast majority of Shia across the world reject the vision of extremists -- and in Iraq, millions of Shia have defied terrorist threats to vote in free elections, and have shown their desire to live in freedom. The Shia extremists want to deny them this right. This Shia strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous, and just as hostile to America, and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East. And the Shia extremists have achieved something that al Qaeda has so far failed to do: In 1979, they took control of a major power, the nation of Iran, subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny, and using that nation's resources to fund the spread of terror and pursue their radical agenda.

Like al Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims: They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East. To achieve these aims, they are funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which allow them to attack Israel and America by proxy. Hezbollah, the source of the current instability in Lebanon, has killed more Americans than any terrorist organization except al Qaeda. Unlike al Qaeda, they've not yet attacked the American homeland. Yet they're directly responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans abroad. It was Hezbollah that was behind the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 Americans. And Saudi Hezbollah was behind the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans, an attack conducted by terrorists who we believe were working with Iranian officials.

Just as we must take the words of the Sunni extremists seriously, we must take the words of the Shia extremists seriously. Listen to the words of Hezbollah's leader, the terrorist Nasrallah, who has declared his hatred of America. He says, "Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute… Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, Death to America will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: Death to America."

Iran's leaders, who back Hezbollah, have also declared their absolute hostility to America. Last October, Iran's President declared in a speech that some people ask -- in his words -- "whether a world without the United States and Zionism can be achieved… I say that this… goal is achievable." Less than three months ago, Iran's President declared to America and other Western powers: "open your eyes and see the fate of pharaoh… if you do not abandon the path of falsehood… your doomed destiny will be annihilation." Less than two months ago, he warned: "The anger of Muslims may reach an explosion point soon. If such a day comes… [America and the West] should know that the waves of the blast will not remain within the boundaries of our region." He also delivered this message to the American people: "If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future… bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender. If you don't accept [to do this], the Iranian nation will… force you to surrender and bow down."

America will not bow down to tyrants. (Applause.)

The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Americans -- and now the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons. The world is working together to prevent Iran's regime from acquiring the tools of mass murder. The international community has made a reasonable proposal to Iran's leaders, and given them the opportunity to set their nation on a better course. So far, Iran's leaders have rejected this offer. Their choice is increasingly isolating the great Iranian nation from the international community, and denying the Iranian people an opportunity for greater economic prosperity. It's time for Iran's leader to make a different choice. And we've made our choice. We'll continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution. The world's free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. (Applause.)

The Shia and Sunni extremists represent different faces of the same threat. They draw inspiration from different sources, but both seek to impose a dark vision of violent Islamic radicalism across the Middle East. They oppose the advance of freedom, and they want to gain control of weapons of mass destruction. If they succeed in undermining fragile democracies, like Iraq, and drive the forces of freedom out of the region, they will have an open field to pursue their dangerous goals. Each strain of violent Islamic radicalism would be emboldened in their efforts to topple moderate governments and establish terrorist safe havens.

Imagine a world in which they were able to control governments, a world awash with oil and they would use oil resources to punish industrialized nations. And they would use those resources to fuel their radical agenda, and pursue and purchase weapons of mass murder. And armed with nuclear weapons, they would blackmail the free world, and spread their ideologies of hate, and raise a mortal threat to the American people. If we allow them to do this, if we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity, and demand to know why we did not act.

I'm not going to allow this to happen -- and no future American President can allow it either. America did not seek this global struggle, but we're answering history's call with confidence and a clear strategy. Today we're releasing a document called the "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism." This is an unclassified version of the strategy we've been pursuing since September the 11th, 2001. This strategy was first released in February 2003; it's been updated to take into account the changing nature of this enemy. This strategy document is posted on the White House website -- whitehouse.gov. And I urge all Americans to read it.

Our strategy for combating terrorism has five basic elements:

First, we're determined to prevent terrorist attacks before they occur. So we're taking the fight to the enemy. The best way to protect America is to stay on the offense. Since 9/11, our coalition has captured or killed al Qaeda managers and operatives, and scores of other terrorists across the world. The enemy is living under constant pressure, and we intend to keep it that way -- and this adds to our security. When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it's harder for them to plan and execute new attacks.

We're also fighting the enemy here at home. We've given our law enforcement and intelligence professionals the tools they need to stop the terrorists in our midst. We passed the Patriot Act to break down the wall that prevented law enforcement and intelligence from sharing vital information. We created the Terrorist Surveillance Program to monitor the communications between al Qaeda commanders abroad and terrorist operatives within our borders. If al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, we need to know why, in order to stop attacks. (Applause.)

I want to thank these three Senators for working with us to give our law enforcement and intelligence officers the tools necessary to do their jobs. (Applause.) And over the last five years, federal, state, and local law enforcement have used those tools to break up terrorist cells, and to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters in New York, and Oregon, and Virginia, and Texas, and New Jersey, and Illinois, Ohio, and other states. By taking the battle to the terrorists and their supporters on our own soil and across the world, we've stopped a number of al Qaeda plots.

Second, we're determined to deny weapons of mass destruction to outlaw regimes and terrorists who would use them without hesitation. Working with Great Britain and Pakistan and other nations, the United States shut down the world's most dangerous nuclear trading cartel, the AQ Khan network. This network had supplied Iran and Libya and North Korea with equipment and know-how that advanced their efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. And we launched the Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition of more than 70 nations that is working together to stop shipments related to weapons of mass destruction on land, at sea, and in the air. The greatest threat this world faces is the danger of extremists and terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction -- and this is a threat America cannot defeat on her own. We applaud the determined efforts of many nations around the world to stop the spread of these dangerous weapons. Together, we pledge we'll continue to work together to stop the world's most dangerous men from getting their hands on the world's most dangerous weapons. (Applause.)

Third, we're determined to deny terrorists the support of outlaw regimes. After September the 11th, I laid out a clear doctrine: America makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they're equally guilty of murder. Thanks to our efforts, there are now three fewer state sponsors of terror in the world than there were on September the 11th, 2001. Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror. And the nation of Libya has renounced terrorism, and given up its weapons of mass destruction programs, and its nuclear materials and equipment. Over the past five years, we've acted to disrupt the flow of weapons and support from terrorist states to terrorist networks. And we have made clear that any government that chooses to be an ally of terror has also chosen to be an enemy of civilization. (Applause.)

Fourth, we're determined to deny terrorist networks control of any nation, or territory within a nation. So, along with our coalition and the Iraqi government, we'll stop the terrorists from taking control of Iraq, and establishing a new safe haven from which to attack America and the free world. And we're working with friends and allies to deny the terrorists the enclaves they seek to establish in ungoverned areas across the world. By helping governments reclaim full sovereign control over their territory, we make ourselves more secure.

Fifth, we're working to deny terrorists new recruits, by defeating their hateful ideology and spreading the hope of freedom -- by spreading the hope of freedom across the Middle East. For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits. And we saw the consequences on September the 11th, when the terrorists brought death and destruction to our country. The policy wasn't working.

The experience of September the 11th made clear, in the long run, the only way to secure our nation is to change the course of the Middle East. So America has committed its influence in the world to advancing freedom and liberty and democracy as the great alternatives to repression and radicalism. (Applause.) We're taking the side of democratic leaders and moderates and reformers across the Middle East. We strongly support the voices of tolerance and moderation in the Muslim world. We're standing with Afghanistan's elected government against al Qaeda and the Taliban remnants that are trying to restore tyranny in that country. We're standing with Lebanon's young democracy against the foreign forces that are seeking to undermine the country's sovereignty and independence. And we're standing with the leaders of Iraq's unity government as they work to defeat the enemies of freedom, and chart a more hopeful course for their people. This is why victory is so important in Iraq. By helping freedom succeed in Iraq, we will help America, and the Middle East, and the world become more secure.

During the last five years we've learned a lot about this enemy. We've learned that they're cunning and sophisticated. We've witnessed their ability to change their methods and their tactics with deadly speed -- even as their murderous obsessions remain unchanging. We've seen that it's the terrorists who have declared war on Muslims, slaughtering huge numbers of innocent Muslim men and women around the world.

We know what the terrorists believe, we know what they have done, and we know what they intend to do. And now the world's free nations must summon the will to meet this great challenge. The road ahead is going to be difficult, and it will require more sacrifice. Yet we can have confidence in the outcome, because we've seen freedom conquer tyranny and terror before. In the 20th century, free nations confronted and defeated Nazi Germany. During the Cold War, we confronted Soviet communism, and today Europe is whole, free and at peace.

And now, freedom is once again contending with the forces of darkness and tyranny. This time, the battle is unfolding in a new region -- the broader Middle East. This time, we're not waiting for our enemies to gather in strength. This time, we're confronting them before they gain the capacity to inflict unspeakable damage on the world, and we're confronting their hateful ideology before it fully takes root.

We see a day when people across the Middle East have governments that honor their dignity, and unleash their creativity, and count their votes. We see a day when across this region citizens are allowed to express themselves freely, women have full rights, and children are educated and given the tools necessary to succeed in life. And we see a day when all the nations of the Middle East are allies in the cause of peace.

We fight for this day, because the security of our own citizens depends on it. This is the great ideological struggle of the 21st century -- and it is the calling of our generation. All civilized nations are bound together in this struggle between moderation and extremism. By coming together, we will roll back this grave threat to our way of life. We will help the people of the Middle East claim their freedom, and we will leave a safer and more hopeful world for our children and grandchildren.

God bless. (Applause.)
Reply
#19
“9/11: THE CONSPIRACY FILES,”
THE BBC JOINS THE RANKS OF THE   UNTRUSTWORTHY UNITED STATES MEDIA

Debbie Lewis
Global Research, February 24, 2007

More than five years after the disaster of September 11, 2001, England’s BBC stepped into the ring of media outlets airing programs about the tragedy that is now referred to as “9/11” on February 18, 2007. The program, entitled “9/11: The Conspiracy Files,” took the time to interview some well-known Americans on both sides of the 9/11 argument. The hour-long program looked as if it might reveal something worthwhile, for about nine minutes. Guests like the outspoken Alex Jones, 911 Scholars for Truth Co-Founder Dr. Jim Fetzer, and Loose Change producer Dylan Avery actually got to make several excellent points before the real conspiracy was revealed.

At about eight minutes into the program, the narrator began to talk about the happenings of that catastrophic day. She told of that day’s United States Air Defense Command exercise and the mishaps that caused between Civil Air Traffic Control and the military getting the interceptors scrambled. The narrator went on to tell of the confusion of the interceptor pilots, not knowing in what direction they were to fly, and some flying the wrong direction. Further into the program she said “They found plenty of evidence of confusion and chaos, but no deliberate attempt to mislead the public…” You would think if the military was conducting an “exercise” and were costing the taxpayers money by using real planes, they would KNOW where their planes were, they would have alerted Civil Air Traffic Control, and there would be no confusion.

As if the BBC knew they were rubbing salt in the wounds of those seeking only the truth, they also interspersed comments by Davin Coburn, Researcher for Popular Mechanics Magazine. Coburn and Popular Mechanics, if you recall Charles Goyette’s August 23, 2006 show, claim World Trade Center Building 7, which was not hit by a plane that day and yet still “collapsed,” was “scooped out” by the falling debris of the Twin Towers. Scooped out? They made this claim, yet provided no proof. Goyette even went so far as to say that the owner of those photos let a magazine publisher view them but would not allow others searching for truth to view them, stating in his frustration, “I didn’t know they had different classes of citizens!”

The program narrator talked about the collapse of Building 7 and how “…with so much else going on that day, the event was barely reported…” Could this be the reason, nearly five years later, 43% of those polled by Zogby in May 2006 were unaware that Building 7 had collapsed? In the same pole, 48% of those polled said they did not think the government or the 9/11 Commission were “covering up” anything. Taking these two bits of information into account, would it be safe to speculate that if the 43% of people unaware of the Building 7 collapse WERE aware, would that alter the percentage of people who thought the government and 9/11 Commission were ”covering” something up?

It was clear that the tone of “9/11: The Conspiracy Files” was going against exposure of the truth when they began talking about the collapse of Building 7. Before Coburn was brought back on camera to explain the collapse, the program showed a couple of shots of other buildings being “demolished.” The program narrator commented that the collapse looks very similar to the “demolitions” they aired. Coburn also showed a video of the Building 7 collapse. The cameraman shooting Coburn’s interview made the comment that “it does look exactly like a controlled demolition” yet Coburn went on to say that he could see why people felt that way, but if they knew how the building was constructed and supported itself, along with the damage it sustained from the collapse of the towers, “the idea that it was a demolition holds no water.” Why did Building 7 “collapse” but not the buildings closer to the towers? Why was Building 7 a “raging inferno” but not the buildings closer to the towers? There were diesel storage tanks in Building 7, but a plane didn’t hit it. There was no jet fuel to ignite a fire there. How did Building 7 get “scooped out” but not the buildings closer to the towers?

The program went on to discuss the crash at the Pentagon. While the program admits the hole left by the Boeing 757 that slammed into the Pentagon was a mere 18 to 20 feet across, they claim that the building collapsed only “minutes later.” In actuality, it took nearly thirty minutes later to collapse. Photographic evidence of this is very clear from the documentary “911 In Plane Site.” What can also be clearly seen in this documentary, the first of it’s kind providing video images and asking brutally revealing questions about all the plane crashes that day, is that there is no debris consistent with the crash of a plane of that size and weight, fully fueled, on the lawn of the Pentagon. No fuselage, no wing parts, no engines, no tail section, no luggage, no passengers; nothing of the sort. Allyn Kilsheimer, one of those who came to help that day, claims he saw “a tire and a wheel and a fuselage section...pieces of…molten metal, that came from something as it hit the building.” It is very clear, from the video evidence shown in “In Plane Site” that there is NO fuselage section. View the preview for the documentary “911 In Plane Site” at www.911inplanesite.com, and you will further understand the outrageous claim that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon.

Lt. Col Steve O’Brien, a C-130 Pilot, was in the air that day over Washington D.C. He saw a “distinctive silver” plane roll into about “30 to 40 degrees of bank, which is considerable for a commercial airliner.” Dr. Fetzer states -“…the story is inconsistent with the evidence we had. It’s not even physically possible, given the laws of aerodynamics, that a Boeing 757 could have taken the trajectory attributed to it, which I assume he confirmed, which was this plane barely skimmed the ground en route to it’s target. That’s not even physically possible.”

Near the end of the program, Senator Bob Graham is interviewed. He had quite a lot to say in just a few sentences. "I can just state that within 9/11 there are too many secrets, that is information that has not been made available to the public for which there are specific, tangible, credible answers and that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security…embarrassment, apology, regret, those are not characteristics associated with the current White House…if, by conspiracy, you mean more than one person involved, yes, there was more than one person, and there was some collaboration of efforts among agencies and the administration to keep information out of the public’s hands.” The narrator of the program ended with “The other 9/11 Conspiracy theories are just that, theories. The evidence doesn’t support them.”

Civil Justice Foundation award winner and Transportation Safety Consultant Paul Sheridan has been an example to many Americans. Sheridan has written many people in search of answers, including then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former New York Attorney General, now Governor Eliot Spitzer. He wants, on behalf of all United States citizens, answers to some very simple questions. From Rumsfeld, as a witness at the Pentagon that day to confirm there is “no doubt in your mind that American Airlines Flight 77… Boeing 757 passenger aircraft” hit the Pentagon on 9/11. From Spitzer, Sheridan wants to know why Governor Spitzer will not allow the “common people…such access” to the photographs seen by Popular Mechanics. Sheridan goes on to ask how, in the light of the existence of such photograph’s that could “prove” what happened on 9/11, “The People’s Lawyer” can “allow such an outrage to go unresolved; legally, morally and in the context of compassion and respect for the 9/11 victims and their families?”

As the narrator points out in the program, “…many simply don’t accept the official conclusion, however distressing that may be for the relatives of those who died.” The relatives of those who died in the 9/11 tragedy have a right to know what really happened, as do the relatives of the service men and women being sent to Iraq to be slaughtered, daily, for this unfounded “War on Terrorism,” as do the United States Citizens, who are being asked to give up many of our freedoms, in light of these “terrorist attacks.” Dr. Fetzer proudly states that like all American Military officers, he took his oath to “protect, preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic.” President George W. Bush, as every President before him, took the same oath before stepping into office. Fetzer just didn’t think defending the Constitution “would lead in this direction.”

Early in the program, Dr. Fetzer reveals the true conspiracy, “The very idea that 19 Islamic fundamentalists…hijacked these four commercial airliners, outfoxed the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, perpetrated these atrocities, unscathed, under control of a man in a cave in Afghanistan is only the most outrageous of the conspiracy...” In the documentary “One Nation Under Siege,” Journalist and author Jim Marrs agrees with Dr. Fetzer. “Nineteen Muslim fanatics…bypassed our forty billion dollar defense system…hi-jacked four planes…were totally lost from FAA Radar… satellite radar and NORAD Radar, made their way to New York and crashed into two prominent landmarks… the World Trade Center…another one crashed into the Pentagon…another one crashed in Pennsylvania, and all of this under the direction of a Muslim Cleric hiding in a cave in Afghanistan with a computer. Now, if that isn’t about the craziest conspiracy theory I ever heard…” “911 In Plane Site” and “One Nation Under Siege” producer William Lewis says in light of this world wide war on terrorism, effecting people worldwide, “someone really needs to ask the question ‘Why haven’t we been given all the facts?’”
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#20
THERE IS NO WAR ON TERRORISM
Jack Duggan
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columni...erorrism-0

All the stories we see in the TV news, print and Internet media today are like mice in a small room occupied by a grizzly bear. We can see the bear, hear him panting and growling as he attempts to stomp on us, but everyone pretends he's just not there, even though he's eating all the food and we mice are starving.

The bear is the U.S. government and media cover up of the 9/11 attacks. They never came
close to proving that foreign "terrorists" were involved. Of all four missing planes' passenger manifests, not one Middle Easterner was on any of them. A jihadist who is bravely going to his death for the sake of his beliefs in Allah and Islam is a martyr and wants the whole world to know it. Martyr's families receive reverential praise and support in their communities for decades. Yet not one of the "terrorists" the American government insists were on the aircraft used their real names or were listed on the passenger lists. At least seven of the nineteen 'hijackers' are still alive.

The 9/11 attacks were created for justification of U.S. covert plans to grab influence over oil politics in the Middle East and as an excuse to take away the rest of Americans' liberties through a manufactured threat-scenario called, "The War On Terror."

What good are all the thousands of articles about politics, global warming, education, scandals, religion, economics and how we must always go out and vote so that we can "make a difference"? If our votes really did make a difference, they'd be illegal.

Who cares about such articles when the cover up of what really happened on 9/11 is hands-off, an untouchable leper? What good are they when in the name of a phony "terrorist attack," our way of life no longer exists except at the pleasure of corporate-driven federal socialists? We are being starved of our liberties by a ursus horribulus that stomps every mouse who dares get in his way or mention that he's there.

I see a lot of authors write all around the grizzly bear, almost approaching the truth, but none seem to have the conviction to call for an open door to run the bear out of the house. Our
Founding Fathers would have made a bearskin rug.

I will tell you here and tell you now with no equivocation: THE 9/11 ATTACKS WERE NOT DONE BY TERRORISTS.

There is absolutely no need for the PATRIOT Act, the FEMA Police, Homeland Security, airline and stadium searches and warrantless monitoring of every phone call and e-mail conversation we make.

In the name of a false threat that never existed, all of our rights and freedoms have been trivialized. Every branch of federal government has been suborned, including the U.S. Supreme Court, whose judicial activists invent law and have recently canceled our rights to own property, in Kelo v.City of New London, making eminent-domain confiscations of our homes to increase politicians' tax profits 'constitutional.'

Central government today is one-hundred times worse than under George III, yet how many Americans can see this? Perhaps most don't want to see it, because it might compel them to drop their precious remote controls.

There is no war on terror

If there was, the whole nation would be told to take up arms. Everybody would be armed, even on aircraft. Inexpensive AK47's would be stored in every closet, much like arms are stored in homes all over Switzerland because the Swiss government has nothing to fear from its populace. There is only a war against our freedom in the name of a created threat that doesn't exist. We have been duped into surrendering our liberty in the false name of security by a government that sends us out into the " War On Terror" unarmed because we cannot be trusted with guns. The most basic of all rights is the right of self defense against criminal attacks. A great equalizer between the weak and the strong, guns in the hands of women could reduce assaults upon them by stronger male attackers by 80%. How can it be said that women have equal rights if they cannot carry, yet Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush all hide behind guns for their protection because they're much more important than our wives, sisters and daughters? Again, the only 'war' is on our freedoms.

People are so used to being indoctrinated by government that they have actually been convinced to ignore their own eyes. Everyone who saw the videos of the World Trade Center Towers saw them fall exactly like other high-rise buildings that were dropped by sequential demolition charges, at the speed of gravity because there was no structural resistance below to impede their collapse into their basement footprints. Yet almost every viewer has been convinced by the lap-dog media that measly jet-fuel fires could melt the massive steel girders of both buildings, then make everything collapse. Just like a pilot's foot pedals could make a passenger jet burst into flames, then crash in Rockaway, NY. Apparently the federal government has learned that the public will buy any lie, no matter how absurd, if it's repeated often enough.

There were dozens and dozens of reports by rescue workers on the ground at the WTC complex that heard explosions over an hour after the planes crashed into the towers. They felt explosions under their feet that were so powerful that seismographs registered them at 2.1 and 2.3 on the Richter scale. Only explosions could have caused them.

The weekend before the 9/11 WTC demolition, all power was shut down to install "computer cables." No one was allowed inside and all security cameras and alarms had no power for 30 hours. Computer cables don't connect with building electricity, so the need to turn off and close both towers to do so is indicative of another motive, like planting charges without alarms and video surveillance. Marvin Bush, brother to President George and Jeb, was a principal in Securacom, which was in charge of security for the World Trade Center. Didn't hear that on the TV news, did you?

Suckers who still buy into the monumental lie that aircraft crashes caused the collapse of both WTC Towers, cannot explain how a steel beam weighing twice as much as a Boeing 767 flew from one WTC building over 390 feet to bury itself very deeply into the neighboring
American Express building.

Even harder to explain is why WTC Building 7, a block away, collapsed "because of fire," when it received no damage from the Twin Towers' collapse. No other skyscraper in the world ever collapsed because of a fire of any type, including that from a B25 bomber crashing into the Empire State Building decades ago.

Of all the air crashes in the USA over the past three decades, how many ground crashes resulted in not recovering their black boxes, containing pilots' voices (CVR's) and aircraft telemetries (FDR's) before and during impact? Yet not one usable black box was ever recovered from any of the four planes that reputedly were hijacked on
9/11. Not one.

Flight 93 that contained the "Let's roll!" myth, where four passengers supposedly tried to overpower the hijackers, did not crash into one small area like it should have. It's debris was spread over 8 miles, indicating that it was shot down by a military fighter jet, exploding in the sky and raining down debris over eight miles, "like confetti."

The WTC was the biggest crime, mass murder, 'hijackings' and air crashes in US history. Yet all the forensic evidence was immediately removed, buried or shipped to smelters so that not one investigator from any agency could inspect it. Who has that kind of power?

President Bush and all his staff swore to God to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America , then apparently went on to violate their oaths of office by completely ignoring the Constitution. Bush maintains that he can ignore the U.S. Constitution and tap into private computers, phone lines, medical records and any other private citizens' data whenever he wants, by his self-declared doctrine of "Unitary Executive.” He claims that as Commander-In-Chief the president is the sole judge of the law, is unbound by the Geneva Conventions against torture and possesses inherent authority to subordinate the entire government to his rule - including Congress and the courts.

Bush also originated "Extraordinary Rendition.” This program, also condoned by Vice President Dick Cheney, involves the clandestine transfer of suspected terrorists to countries ruled by regimes that torture and commit other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Dr. William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, referring to a set of CIA flight logs obtained by his organization, said the logs were “...irrefutable proof that the United States is ‘disappearing’ people into secret facilities where they are held incommunicado without charge, trial, or access to the outside world.”

The American Reichstag Fire of the 9/11 "terrorist attacks" was created so that the American public would back the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran in the name of "The War On Terror," while stripping away the rights of the same American public. The results have been the same as in Nazi Germany, suspensions of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and private ownership of property. Citizens are forbidden to own the same weapons that their "servants," their police and military, carry to defend themselves. There is literally more freedom in most Third-World countries than now in the USA, which has ten times the per-capita prison population than the People's Republic of China.

Alexis de Tocqueville wisely observed, “I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”

The 'War On Terror' is a sham to enable U.S. power to confiscate, to torture, to imprison without due process and to invade any country that the military-industrial complex fancies. When God was kicked out of public life, we know who stepped in.

Where are the cries for impeachment?

Where are the defenders of liberty? None of them seem to work in the broadcast or print media.

When are citizens going to demand that the cover up of 9/11 be kicked out the door along with the people who invented it? When will the truth be told, that THERE IS NO WAR ON TERROR, but only on oil and on citizens' rights?

The bear is there, but where are the mice with the courage to force him out the door?
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