An international symposium, “Debunking the ‘War on Terror’”, occurred in London, UK, on Wednesday, 14 July 2010. This featured James Fetzer, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Kevin Barrett, Muslims for 9/11 Truth, and Gilad Atzmon, political commentator. The speakers focused on the false rationales that have been advanced to promote the “war on terror”, including distortions of the events of 9/11, appealing to religious and cultural differences, and loading language to achieve a predetermined political effect. They provided three perspectives for debunking the “war on terror”.
Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Muslims for 9/11 Truth Initiative
[FROM religionandmorality.net]
Scholars for 9/11 Truth, in association with Muslims for 9/11 Truth, will host an international symposium, “Debunking ‘The War on Terror’”, which will be addressed from three points of view. The events of 9/11 solved strategic problems for policymakers in Washington and other Western capitals by enabling the execution of plans by the Bush White House for a massive expansion of the US military and the invasion of Iraq and by neutralizing domestic problems threatening an already unpopular president. The Bush administration has exploited religious and cultural differences between the US and the Middle East to secure public support for a “war on terror” by tacitly pitting Christianity against Islam. The speakers will expose the false rationales that have been advanced in support of these illegal and immoral wars.
Dr. James Fetzer, who is Distinguished McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan association of faculty, students, and scholars, in fields as diverse as history, science, military affairs, psychology, and philosophy, dedicated to exposing falsehoods and to revealing truths behind 9/11. Scholars was the first 9/11 research society to make an impact on public discussion about the events of 9/11. The Scholars’ first book, The 9/11 Conspiracy (2007) and DVD, The Science and Politics of 9/11 (2007), provide evidence of a conspiracy and cover-up, which was designed and executed to manipulate the American people into supporting illegal wars and unConstitutional measures out of the fear those atrocities induced. He will address, “Are wars in Iraq and Afghanistan justified by 9/11?”
Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is the co-founder and acting coordinator of Muslims for 9/11 Truth. He is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror. The co-founders of Muslims for 9/11 Truth, Dr. Kevin Barrett and Dr. A.K. Dewdney are currently working in a project to urgently warn the world’s Muslims that it is time to stand up for 9/11 truth and expose the “war on terror” as a hoax. They are distributing thousands of copies of their letter “Warning of a Global War on Islam” to mosques and Islamic organisations worldwide. Dr. Barrett is the author of Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle Against the 9/11 Big Lie (2007) and of Questioning the War on Terror (2009) as well as the lead editor (with theologian John Cobb and Jewish Studies professor Sandra Lubarsky) of 9/11 & American Empire Vol. II: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out (2007; Arabic version 2009). He will address, “Islam, Neoconservatism, and the Unwarranted ‘War on Terror’”.
Gilad Atzmon is an outspoken opponent of Zionism and highly critical voice of Jewish identity politics. An Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, his album “Exile” was the BBC’s “jazz album of the year” in 2003. Gilad Atzmon’s writings have been published in CounterPunch, Al Jazeera, Uruknet, and Middle East Online. His albums, of which he has recorded nine to date, often explore political themes and the music of the Middle East. He has published at least two comic novels, which have been translated into 24 languages. Gilad will offer his reflections on the nature of state terrorism and analyze the political significance of the language that has been used to promote the “war on terror”. His presentation is entitled, “From Promised Land to Promised Planet: Zionism and Neoconservatism”.
Kenneth O’Keefe, our Master of Ceremonies, was a human shield in Iraq who formally renounced his US citizenship in protest in 2001; he now has Irish as well as Palestinian citizenship. On the morning of the Mavi Marmara attack, as he describes it, he was “directly involved in the disarming of two Israeli Commandos. This was a forcible, non-negotiable, separation of weapons from commandos who had already murdered two brothers that I had seen that day.” Subsequently brutalised by the Israeli military, he is defiant: “I challenge any critic of merit, publicly, to debate me on a large stage over our actions that day. I would especially love to debate with any Israeli leader who accuses us of wrongdoing, it would be my tremendous pleasure to face off with you. All I saw in Israel was cowards with guns, so I am ripe to see you in a new context.”
The Israel Lobby. For many years now the American foreign policy has been characterized by the strong tie between the United States and Israel. Does the United States in fact keep Israel on its feet? And how long will it continue to do so?Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2010/08/ Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
"Val McClatchey had been watching footage of the attacks when she heard the plane. She saw it briefly, then heard the impact. The crash knocked out the electricity and phones. McClatchey grabbed her camera and took the only known picture of the smoke cloud from the explosion.[64][65] Conspiracy theorists have accused her of manufacturing the photograph.[66]"
The mention of Val McClatchey's photo is unnecessary and the claim that it is fake is difficult to verify. Searching her name seems only to turn up conspiracy theorists' websites. I think that the last quoted sentence should be removed. It is distracting from the rest of the article content. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.93.56 (talk) 05:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
I removed it, this page is no place for wacko conspiracy claims. The FBI, and various other agencies have examined the photo and verified it's authenticity. Supertheman (talk) 05:46, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
Jerry Mazza Online Journal Associate Editor 20 August 2010
Residents in Temecula, Calif., protest against a mosque’s proposed worship center.
I have the feeling that like the Broadway Bomber, the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, the Khalid Sheik Mohammed trial and where it should be held, and other ‘false-flag’ events that building this new Mosque two blocks from Ground Zero is inflating the inherent Islamophobia of New Yorkers and America. And that ain’t good, for New York, Muslims, Americans and America, or the world.
I see more and more articles on the proposed mosque, the rabid Republicans taking fiery stands and the wimpy Democrats trying to show they’re just as “tough on terror” as their cohorts in Congress. One of the articles I found particularly noxious was the Money behind the Mosque from the unfair and unbalanced reporting of the New York Post and worldwide media mogul and Zionist, Rupert Murdoch, who is of Jewish decent on his mother’s side. She had the money that put her husband in the catbird seat of an Australian newspaper and Rupert followed in dad’s footsteps right to America and New York City.
The article started off in the typical pattern of understanding, yes, we Americans do have a constitutional right to pursue our religious beliefs as we wish. As the Post stated, “Yesterday’s unanimous vote by the city Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the last municipal impediment to construction of a 13-story mosque and community center just blocks from Ground Zero.” By the way, this building was a tattered, former coat factory, an eyesore to the neighborhood.
Now comes the Post canoodling. “But important questions linger. The vote, which denied landmark protection for a building that must be demolished to make way for the mosque was hailed by Mayor Bloomberg and others as an affirmation of religious liberty of a peculiarly American sort. As, of course, it was.”
The “affirmation of religious liberty of a peculiarly American sort,” was a reference I suppose to our constitutional right to have these religious freedoms. “As, of course, it was.” And, of course, it is. Of course, here, here for religious freedom!
But on the other hand, the Post goes on to say, “Just imagine the city fathers of, say, Riyadh so graciously clearing the way for construction of a 13-story cathedral in the Saudi capital. As if.”
“As if” is irrelevant, in that Riyadh’s culture has its own very different laws and rules, which may seem harsh to Westerners. But then there is a supposedly civilized America involved in three brutal wars in Muslim countries, with Iraq decimated, and 50,000 troops still on board; Afghanistan under continuing fire, after 30 years of fighting wars, 10 of them against Russia, with a CIA sponsored Mujahedeen, recruited, trained, armed and paid for to do the US’s dirty work in toppling Russia; and now with random drone bombings proceeding in Pakistan, saber rattling against purported Taliban and “Al Qaeda” members, and real peace nowhere in sight in any locale. So why would we be surprised that a cathedral would not be welcomed in Riyadh? And for what reason, to further colonize the Middle East and the Central and Western Caucasus? As you can see, we’re working on a US-centric logic train. And the train is pulling out of the station now.
The Post says, “Indeed, such a notion renders risible [laughable] criticism of the sort leveled by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, among others, before the vote. CAIR had denounced opponents of the projects as ‘bigots and extremists.’”
Toot, toot! Since the project has received such aggressive feedback, such as a Ground Zero construction worker trying to organize his fellow workers not to work on what will be the $100 million construction of this new building, which will house a mosque as well as a cafeteria, a swimming pool, and other facilities open to the public at large, as would a YMCA or YHMA, this would seem to be quite an overreaction. Not to mention some of the more vicious comments to follow, which certainly sound like they comes from “bigots and extremists.” So let’s move our logic train along to the ad hominem attack.
“That’s pretty rich, coming from an organization [CAIR] that in 2007 was named an unindicted co-conspirator in connection with a plot to support the terrorists of Hamas -- and that has seen several of its former officials and staffers convicted on terror-related charges.”
The plot, as mentioned, was an “unindicted co-conspirator” of what? A plot to support the terrorists of Hamas, which is the duly elected government of Palestine, which has been defending Gaza against the incursions and attacks of Israel, which in the larger historical picture has been engulfing and devouring Palestine for over 60 years, starting before the two-state solution went into effect in 1948, in Israel’s self-proclaimed “War of Independence,” which was a massive attack on Palestine that involved one of the largest forced migrations in modern history.
A Palestinian carries a barrel at the site of an abandoned house that was destroyed in an Israeli air strike in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip August 18, 2010.
Around a million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred, and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called “Ethnic cleansing.” And that is exactly what it was, as painfully detailed in Jewish historian Ilan Pappe’s landmark book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Toot, toot! Something is rotten in Palestine, which is today the largest outdoor concentration camp, and a miniscule part of Israel, which has claimed the lion’s share of Palestine’s land. But let us return now to our logic train, now that we have established another point of historical view for the observation of passing current events.
The Post writes, “Fact is, the project has drawn opposition from a lot of level-headed folks -- most particularly families of 9/11 victims.”
In all due respect for my Jewish friends who lost relatives, as for those Muslims families that lost family members, and others, these 9/11 victim families, these people remain in the anguish of grief, depression, anger, and a whole range of emotions that adjoin the sudden, violent loss of loved ones. Even my dear friend, Bob Mcilvaine, who lost a son in 9/11, can hardly get through a few paragraphs of describing the incident without choking up, having tears coming to his eyes, and flat curse out the “sons of bitches” responsible for 9/11, whom he doesn’t happen to think were Muslims. Bob has devoted his life to going around the world and crusading for 9/11 Truth, that is, what really happened that day and who was behind it. He is a noble man, who will tell you up front, he can’t always reign in his emotions. In fact, here is a YouTube of Bob, speaking with Manny Badillo, who lost his uncle, Thomas J. Sgroi who was vice president of IT for Marsh & McLennan, and carries his grief on his lapel as well. This was taped at a meeting for 9/11 Victim families.
Let me also add my friend Ellen Mariani, whose husband perished on Flight 175, and who sued the government both for wrongful death and then presented a RICO suit for the entire Bush Administration, both of which were denied because “they might endanger national security,” the blanket statement for truth-covering.
Appropriate anger remains with Mrs. Mariani since the Victims Compensation Fund considers her not qualified for any kind of compensation because she would not at first accept the “hush money.” Yet, in the denial of two trials, the VCF has not shown any financial award to compensate her, but has tied her and her attorney in legal knots, whose unmitigated violations and fraudulent actions fill a stack of legal briefs, and act as a form of ongoing punishment for her daring to seek justice. God forbid!
That said, let’s get back on the New York Post logic train again, which once more exhorts the rights of Muslim Americans, but then makes a strange leap . . .
“Let’s be clear: Muslim Americans have a right to worship where they please. And that includes a site in the shadow of Ground Zero, if they so insist. Clearly, though, this is a complicated issue. The 9/11 mass murder, after all, was committed in the name of Islam.”
Oh really. That is what I know the government tells us and the 9/11 Commission of Omission, but not what millions of others in the US and around the world believe. As to the facts for instance, WTC Lessee Larry Silverstein and his partners raised the insurance benefit on the WTC on July 24, 2001, just six weeks before 9/11 to $3.6 billion. That was higher than the $3.2 billion paid for the 99-year lease, payable at $100 million per year.
Silverstein and Partners also managed to include insurance liability if airliners hijacked by terrorists hit the buildings. How incredibly prescient of them was that? Also, when exactly that happened and the two towers were hit within seven minutes, they demanded to be paid for two separate incidents, $7.2 billion dollars.
The insurance companies refused. And a suit lingered for years, until then New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in 2007 brokered a deal for receipt of $4.56 billion. As to Mr. Silverstein’s 47-story building, Tower 7, which no airliner hit, he received some $500 million for it. It fell at 5:20 PM on 9/11, after Silverstein said on TV at 3 PM that “there had been so much pain and suffering, that ‘we’ decided to ‘pull it,’” which is jargon for an internal demolition, which cannot be set up in less than two hours, but would take weeks, months, to set up so that the steel-framed building came down in 6.5 seconds into its own footprint, not unlike Towers 1 and 2 did, falling within 10 to 12 seconds at the speed of gravity in freefall into their own footprints, indicating similar, pre-planned internal demolitions.
Some 1200 architects and engineers support this notion, members of Architects and Engineers for ae911truth, headed up by architect Richard Gage.
To continue, on the more dubious NY Post logic train, we arrive at this comment, “Moreover, as Dan Senor of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in The Wall Street Journal, whatever the project’s stated goals, ‘in the minds of many who are swayed by the most radical interpretations of Islam . . . it will be celebrated as a Muslim monument erected on the site of a great Muslim ‘military’ victory.” And “ . . . that’s why the question of who precisely will pay to build the $100 million project is so compelling.
So now, a CFR member tells us, the most radical interpreters of radical Islam will celebrate this Ground Zero Mosque as a Muslim monument erected on the site of a great Muslim ‘military victory,” which in and of itself is an enormous breach of unresolved fact and an even larger insult to the Muslim community at large, inflaming its uninformed opposition with further misguided rage.
I write about major problems: the collapsing US economy, wars based on lies and deception, the police state based on “the war on terror” and other fabrications such as those orchestrated by corrupt police and prosecutors, who boost their performance reports by convicting the innocent, and so on. America is a very distressing place. The fact that so many Americans are taken in by the lies told by “their” government makes America all the more depressing.
Often, however, it is small annoyances that waste Americans’ time and drive up blood pressures. One of the worst things that ever happened to Americans was the breakup of the AT&T telephone monopoly. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in 1981, if 150 percent of my time and energy had not been required to cure stagflation in the face of opposition from Wall Street and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, I might have been able to prevent the destruction of the best communications service in the world, and one that was very inexpensive to customers.
The assistant attorney general in charge of the “anti-trust case” against AT&T called me to ask if Treasury had an interest in how the case was resolved. I went to Treasury Secretary Don Regan and told him that although my conservative and libertarian friends thought that the breakup of At&T was a great idea, their opinion was based entirely in ideology and that the practical effect would not be good for widows and orphans who had a blue chip stock to see them through life or for communications customers as deregulated communications would give the multiple communications corporations different interests than those of the customers. Under the regulated regime, AT&T was allowed a reasonable rate of return on its investment, and to stay out of trouble with regulators AT&T provided excellent and inexpensive service.
Secretary Regan reminded me of my memo to him detailing that Treasury was going to have a hard time getting President Reagan’s economic program, directed at curing the stagflation that had wrecked President Carter’s presidency, out of the Reagan administration. The budget director, David Stockman, and his chief economist, Larry Kudlow, had lined up against it following the wishes of Wall Street, and the White House Chief of Staff James Baker and his deputy Richard Darman were representatives of VP George H.W. Bush and did not want s substantial Reagan success that would again threaten the Republican Establishment’s hold over the party. Baker and Darman wanted to be sure that George H. W. Bush, and not Jack Kemp, succeeded Ronald Reagan, and that required a muted Reagan success that they could claim as theirs for moderating an “extremist” program.
I told Secretary Regan that if I had another deputy assistant secretary, I could reach a reasonable conclusion whether the breakup of AT&T was sensible. He replied that he was sure that was the case, but that once I had three deputies the headlines in the Washington Post and New York Times, Business Week, Newsweek, and so on, would be: “Supply-sider builds empire at Treasury.” He said it would sink me and that without me he could not get the President’s economic program out of the President’s administration. “Which do you want to do,” he asked, “save AT&T or cure stagflation?”
Curing stagflation gave America twenty more years. Ironically, the good times started to erode when Reagan’s other goal was accomplished and the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990. “The end of history” resulted in India and China opening their labor markets to American capitalists, who began producing offshore with foreign labor the products that they sold to Americans. The labor costs savings pushed up corporate profits, shareholders’ returns, and managerial bonuses. But it deprived Americans of middle class incomes and wrecked the balance of trade. The US income distribution and the trade deficit worsened.
Many progressives blame the worsening income distribution on the Reagan tax rate reductions, but the real cause is the offshoring of manufacturing, industrial, and professional service jobs, such as software engineering.
None of us in the Reagan administration foresaw jobs offshoring as the consequence of Soviet collapse. We had no idea that by bringing down the Soviet Union we would be bringing down America. During the Reagan years India was socialist and would not allow foreign corporations, had they been interested, to touch their labor force. China was communist and no foreign capital could enter the country.
However, once the Soviet Union was gone from the earth, the remaining socialist and communist regimes decided to go with the winners. They opened to Western corporations and sucked jobs out of the developed West.
But this is a different story. To get back to deregulation, nothing has worked for the consumer since deregulation. Deregulation permitted corporations to impose their costs of operation on customers without having to send them a bill. For example, corporations use voice recognition technology to keep customers from salaried customer representatives. I remember when a customer with a problem could call a utility company or bank and have the problem immediately corrected.
No more. There was an error in my phone bill today, which I had corrected without result on two previous occasions. As everyone knows by now, it takes 10-15 minutes, usually, to get a live person who can actually fix the problem. After listening to sales pitches for 12 minutes, I got a live person. Once the problem was understood, it was pronounced to be an upper level problem out of his hands. I waited another 10 minutes while he tried to reach a superior who had the code to fix the problem that the phone company had produced in my account. The entire time I listened to product advertisements.
How many times has this happened to you?
Whoever invented these artificial voice capabilities is the enemy of mankind. Whomever a customer calls--utilities, credit card companies, banks, whatever, the customer gets a voice machine. Some voice machines never tell the customer how to get a live person who can, on occasion, actually fix the problem.
In my opinion, the strategy behind the endless delays is to cause the customers to give up, slam the telephone down and play the higher incorrect bill as it is cheaper in time and frustration to correcting the problem and being billed in the correct amount. These ripoffs of the customer are produced by Wall Street pressures for higher earnings.
The frustrations, of course, multiply when one reaches an offshored service somewhere in the Third World. The incentive is to hang up and to pay the excessive bill so that phone, internet, or credit card services are not cut off.
The Corporation
Had Don Regan and I known that the high speed Internet was in our future and that American corporations would use it to destroy the jobs traditionally filled by US university graduates, possibly we would have decided to save the regulated telephone monopoly and to deliver the economy over to stagflation.
The reason is that sooner or later something would have been done about stagflation, but nothing whatsoever has been done about offshoring. Saving the economy from offshoring would have been a greater achievement than saving the economy from stagflation. However, in my time stagflation, not offshoring, was the problem.
I regret that I did not have a crystal ball.
Deregulation proponents will say that the breakup of AT&T gave us cell phones and broadband, as if foreign regulated communication companies and state monopolies do not provide cell phone service or high speed Internet connections. I can remember attending corporate board meetings years ago at which the European members had digital cell phones with which they could call most anywhere on earth, while we Americans with our analogue cell phones could hardly connect down the street.
What deregulation did was to permit Wall Street to push the deregulated industries-- phone service, airlines, trucking, and later Wall Street itself-- to focus on profits and not on service. Profits were increased by curtailing service, by pushing up prices and by Wall Street creating fraudulent financial instruments, which the banksters used America’s reputation to market to the gullible at home and abroad.
Consider air travel. Admit it, if you are my age you hate it. The deterioration in service over my lifetime is phenomenal. Studies in favor of airline deregulation focused on short flights between A and B and concluded that small airlines serving high density areas were more efficient because they were not regulated. What was left out of the analysis is that regulated airlines served low density areas and permitted free stopovers. For example, if one was flying from the US to Athens, Greece, the traveler could stopover in London, Paris, and Rome without additional charges. Moreover, passengers were fed hot meals even in tourist class. In those halcyon days, it was even possible to travel more comfortably in tourist class than in first class, because flights were not scheduled in keeping with full capacity. Several rows of seats might be unoccupied. It was possible to push up the arm rests on three or four center aisle seats, lay down and go to sleep.
Perhaps the best benefit of regulated air travel for passengers was that airlines had spare airliners. If one airplane had mechanical problems that could not be fixed within a reasonable time, a standby airliner was rolled out to enable passengers to meet their connections and designations. With deregulation, customer service is not important. The bottom line has eliminated spare airliners.
With deregulated airlines, Wall Street calls the tune. If your flight has a mechanical problem, you are stuck where you are unless you have some sort of privileged status that can bump passengers from later fully booked flights. “Studies” that focus only on discounted ticket price omit major costs of deregulation and thereby wrongly conclude that deregulation has benefited the consumer.
When trucking was regulated, truckers would stop to provide roadside assistant to stranded travelers. Today, with deregulated trucking, every minute counts toward the bottom line. Not only do truckers no longer stop to aid stranded travelers, they travel at excessive speeds that endanger automobile drivers. Trucks have expanded in size, weight and speed. Trucks raise the stress level on interstate highway drivers and destroy, at taxpayers expense, the roads on which they travel.
Conservatives and especially libertarians romanticize “free market unregulated capitalism.” They regard it as the best of all economic orders. However, with deregulated capitalism, every decision is a bottom-line decision that screws everyone except the shareholders and management.
In America today there is no longer a connection between profits and the welfare of the people. Unregulated greed has destroyed the capitalist system, which now distributes excessive rewards to the few at the expense of the many.
If Marx and Lenin were alive today, the extraordinary greed with which Wall Street has infected capitalism would provide Marx and Lenin with a better case than they had in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diaries" provided documented evidence of America's out-of-control lawlessness, including Special Forces death squads (Task Force 373) extrajudicially murdering or capturing suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda figures, many hundreds or perhaps thousands on a so-called Jpel (joint prioritized effects) list, also willfully killing civilian men, women and children, the London Times Kabul-based Jerome Starkey reporting earlier on these crimes, suppressed in US media accounts, presenting an embedded view of the war, omitting the targeting of Americans until then Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged it in February, explaining that:
CIA operatives and Special Forces death squads have been authorized to kill US citizens abroad, suspected of terrorist involvement, Blair saying:
"If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," the criteria being "whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved. We don't target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it," based on suspicions, not evidence.
Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen living in Yemen, was perhaps the first "announced" candidate, targeted for opposing US belligerency, not crimes.
In late June, Deputy White House National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John O. Brennan, acknowledged a hit list with dozens of other names, saying:
"There are, in my mind, dozens of US persons who are in different parts of the world, and they are very concerning to us, not just because of the passport they hold, but because they understand our operational environment here, they bring with them certain skills, whether it be language skills or familiarity with potential targets, and they are very worrisome, and we are determined to take away their ability to assist with terrorist attacks."
"If an American person or citizen is in Yemen or in Pakistan or in Somalia or another place, and they are (suspected of) trying to carry out attacks against US interests, they also will face the full brunt of a US response. What we need to do is to apply the appropriate tool and the appropriate response," leaving little doubt what he meant, putting all Americans at risk globally, based on suspicions, not proof - potential targets for lawless assassinations with impunity.
It was standard policy under George Bush's November 2001 Military Order Number 1, authorizing the capture, kidnapping, or otherwise neutralizing of non-citizens (and later citizens) suspected of terrorist involvement, holding them indefinitely without charge, evidence, or due process, treating them as non-persons, disappearing them forever, the practice continuing under Obama.
Last September, it was learned that then Central Command head General David Petraeus issued a secret directive to send covert US Special Operations forces to friendly and hostile states in the Middle East, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and by implication anywhere in the world to "penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy" terror threats and "prepare the environment" for planned military attacks.
On June 4, Washington Post writers Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe headlined, "US 'Secret War' Expands Globally as Special Operations Forces Take a Larger Role," saying:
The Obama administration "has significantly expanded a largely secret US war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups with Special Ops forces in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year."
On June 5, London Sunday Times writers Tim Reid and Michael Evans repeated it, headlining, "Obama secretly deploys US special forces to 75 countries across the world," saying:
He usurped even greater power than George Bush to pursue an "aggressive secret war against al-Qaeda and other radical groups," using increased drone attacks and 9,000 Special Forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians, operations continuing daily.
Petraeus' order "also allowed for US special forces to enter Iran to gather intelligence" for potential future operations. The Pentagon's Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order authorizes Special Ops forces sent anywhere, and its Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) deploys covertly to kill suspected suspects, including US citizens.
Washington Denying Anwar al-Awlaki's Right to Legal Representation
US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) regulations, under The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, prohibit lawyers from defending accused terrorists pro bono without government permission, violators subject to up to 20 years imprisonment and fines up to $1 million.
According to Bill Quigley, Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the prohibition is unconstitutional, violating the Separation of Powers and First Amendment protection of "the right of non-profit lawyers and legal organizations to give pro bono legal representation to any US citizen," guaranteed also under the Fifth Amendment. CCR/ACLU'/s brief states:
"The notion that the government can compel a citizen to seek its permission before challenging the constitutionality of its actions in court is wholly foreign to our constitutional system, (and as) non-profit organizations dedicated to protecting civil liberties and human rights, Plaintiffs have a First Amendment (Fifth Amendment, and Separation of Powers) right to represent clients in litigation consistent with their organizational missions."
US law, not al-Awlaki, is at issue, the Obama administration exceeding its predecessor's lawlessness, expanding its imperial wars, threatening other parts of the world on every continent, openly targeting US citizens globally, perhaps even in America covertly by disappearing them, and denying lawyers the right to represent them - a clear example of despotism.
A US army Black Hawk helicopter flies as the sun sets over Baghdad, Iraq.
Several times it tried unsuccessfully to kill al-Awlaki. Covert efforts continue. CCR and ACLU want to defend him, saying civil law must decide, not Treasury regulations or Pentagon/CIA assassins. His father said "If the government has proof his son violated the law, then they should charge him in public and let the law take its course."
According to Quigley and others supporting the rule of law, "The right to go to court to challenge the government is a core US value."
As a result, on August 3, CCR and the ACLU sued Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Adam Szubin, Office of Foreign Assets Control Director, "challeng(ing) the legality of a regulatory scheme that requires attorneys to seek permission from the government before providing uncompensated legal representation to or for the benefit of individuals whom the government has designated as terrorists. In this case, the effect of the scheme may be to deny legal representation to a United States citizen whom the government is attempting to kill without any legal process."
The suit seeks an emergency order, invalidating the Treasury's unconstitutional regulation, permitting pro-bono representation to proceed without criminal or monetary penalties. If successful, a second suit will try to enjoin al-Awlaki's assassination. However, in today's lawless environment, the federal courts stacked with right-wing ideologues, and a reckless, out-of-control administration, CCR and ACLU lawyers face daunting obstacles to succeed - despite only wanting constitutional law enforced.
In early July, Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar's father, retained CCR and the ACLU on his behalf. On July 16, OFEC named him a "specially designated global terrorist," prohibiting legal representation without permission. CCR and ACLU sought it but were denied, their suit challenging OFAC's decision "to invalidate the regulations and to make clear that lawyers can (represent "designated") individuals without first seeking the government's consent."
Its purpose is to challenge the lawless decision to kill American citizens, including al-Awlaki, without charge, evidence, trial, or due process - authority not allowed under US and international law.
"Under international human rights law, lethal force may be used in peacetime only when there is an imminent threat of deadly attack and (killing) is a last resort."
Designating US citizens terrorists, providing no criminal proof of guilt or evidence of an imminent threat, and denying them legal representation is lawless and egregious by any standard. Yet, post-9/11, "the US government has (targeted and) detained thousands of men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself later to discover that the evidence (or charge) was wrong or unreliable and released them."
No one should be denied due process and judicial fairness. US policy is shocking, egregious and illegal, CCR, ACLU, numerous human rights groups, and others challenging it courageously, representing our rights like al-Awlaki's, fighting for the rule of law to prevent further democratic freedom erosions, vanishing in plain sight.
A Final Comment
In a late development, Politico.com reports that the Treasury Department will let CCR and ACLU represent al-Awlaki, OFAC Director Szubin saying Treasury's policy "is to broadly authorize the provision of pro bono legal services....To the extent that the particular legal services that the ACLU (and CCR wish) to provide in this instance do not fall into any of the broad categories that are generally licensed, (OFAC) will work with (them) to ensure that the legal services can be delivered."
At issue now is enjoining al-Awlaki's assassination, CCR Executive Director saying:
"President Obama is claiming the power to act as judge, jury and executioner while suspending any semblance of due process....The US government is going outside the law to create an ever-larger global war zone and turn the whole world into a battlefield. Would we tolerate it if China or France secretly decided to execute their enemies inside the US?"
In a separately filed March Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit, the ACLU wants information on procedures followed to put individuals like al-Awlaki on an unconstitutional hit list.
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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
It is now beyond reasonable doubt (BRD) that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by his own National Security State in what was a violent coup d'état that is, an overthrowing of the legitimate elected government of the United States by force through the use of the clandestine black-ops services of the CIA, elements of the Secret Service, the US military, the FBI and organized crime.[1]
Probability and Statistics:
Various scientific calculations have been done which indicate that there is less than 1 chance in a trillion that JFK's death was the result of one man acting alone. There were at least 15 separate violations made by the US Secret Service in their handling of Presidential Security in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.[2] These were unprecedented breaches in protocol. It would have been unusual if even one of these breaks in procedure had occurred let alone 15 during one Presidential visit. It defies credulity to think that such a scenario could have occurred on the basis of chance alone. Obviously the Secret Service “stood-down” so as to facilitate the conspirator’s killing teams in accomplishing the dastardly deed.[3] This means there was an extremely well orchestrated conspiracy to kill the President.
Perhaps even more astoundingly, during the 3 year period following the assassination of JFK and the murders of Lee Harvey Oswald and Officer J. D. Tippit, some 17 witnesses who were involved either directly or peripherally died, 72% of which were unnatural deaths, 52% being murders. The probability that even 15 of the 17 witnesses would be dead by 1967 is 100 quadrillion to 1 or 10(-17).[4]
The 35th President of the United States was murdered at essentially high noon on a bright autumn day in the middle of an American city while his security detail looked on and did nothing. The conspirators’ message was simple; “we’re in charge and there is nothing you can do about it.” Within the first hour after the Assassination, a pre-arranged “patsy” who had been placed in position at the Texas School Book Depository[5] was hunted down and apprehended long before any agency should have even suspected that he might have been involved. Lee Harvey Oswald--who as a result of the FIA[6] and the JFK Records Act[7] is now known to have been an American intelligence operative[8]--whether wittingly or by some last minute ruse played the part of the “fall-guy." During the entire time Oswald was in custody he denied killing President Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit. There exists more and more evidence that Oswald was not involved in the killing of either JFK or Officer Tippit.
Before being given the opportunity to disclose his role as an intelligence operative and what he might have known about the conspiracy to kill JFK[9], Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered on national TV in a room full of police and FBI agents whose only responsibility was to protect him. The night before his killing, the Dallas Police Department received 2 separate calls from unknown person(s) who reported that Oswald was to be murdered. Despite the warning, the Dallas Police made no attempt to prevent the killing of ostensibly the most important prisoner in US custody at the time. It defies all logic to believe that both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald were killed by lone “deranged” gunmen.
Metaphysical Certainty:
In light of all of the cumulative JFK Assassination evidence now available, there exists metaphysical certainty that JFK was killed by a massive conspiracy with the power not only to murder the President but to successfully perpetrate a cover-up of monumental proportions which included securing massive medical fraud in the forensic evidence.[10] David Lifton, Douglas P. Horne and Dr. David W. Mantik and others have amply documented the details of how the medical fraud was accomplished.[11] The absolutely critical concept to understand is that no foreign or domestic entity would have had the access, power and requisite technological expertise to direct and accomplish the cover-up other than the American National Security State including US military physicians, 3 of which conducted the sham autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Shadow Government in Control:
Unless and until the United States publicly discloses to the citizenry that its duly elected government was overthrown in 1963 and that since then the replacement/imposter government has been at least technically/legally speaking illegitimate[12] it will likely be impossible to reverse the increasingly rapid disintegration of America. The reality is that since the murder of President John F. Kennedy, there has been an extra-constitutional imposter “government” in place which prior to that time existed only in the shadows. It has been given many different names including the “war party” the MIMIC (media, intelligence, military, industrial complex) the secret government, the shadow government etc. That entity or “Regime” as a result of the JFK assassination appears to have profoundly altered the trajectory of the United States by placing the country on a constant war footing and building and sustaining an enormous foreign military base presence throughout the world which serves to project American power and enlarge the “empire.”
Beginning with the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and his reversal of John F. Kennedy’s NSAM # 263 (within 4 days of the JFK Assassination) calling for an end to all US presence in Vietnam by 1965[13], the course which the US took was that of increasing militarization and empire-building rather than the move toward peace, nuclear disarmament and ending of the cold war begun by JFK in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.[14] As should be readily apparent, the result has been catastrophic for the United States and much of the world. Since the death of President Kennedy, the confidence of the American people in their government has been drastically reduced suggesting that at a subliminal level at least, Americans are aware that something extremely troubling has transpired. Moreover, the polarization of the major political parties which now exists can be traced to the Johnson administration’s prosecution of the Vietnam War and its terrible sequelae.
Hegelian Dialectic and the Manipulation of US Population:
A form of Hegelian dialectic[15] is currently being utilized successfully by the oligarchical “Regime” to control the masses through an artificial binary division of reality[16] into a politics of left vs.: right in combination with the unrelenting “bread and circus” entertainment extravaganza being foisted upon the people the latest incarnation of which is the absurd reality TV phenomenon. Most Americans are too busy attempting to survive to be able to sort through the maze of distractions. They seek refuge in meaningless electronic games, TV shows and sporting events as a way to escape from the dismal realities of their increasingly hopeless lives. For those with more time and the requisite interest in politics and current events, the shadow government provides a steady diet of right vs.: left diatribes carried out by various “experts”, talking heads and partisan political hacks many of whom function as US intelligence assets and "cut-outs" of various kinds.[17] Few Americans realize that this left/right dichotomy is totally artificial and contrived so as to limit the universe of acceptable public discourse.
Effect of Dumbing-Down of America:
Americans have been “dumbed-down” for over 50 years such that as an aggregate entity we are no longer capable of reason or for that matter intellectually sound individual thought. The completely artificial bi-polar division between right and left, liberal and conservative so dominates the public discourse that one would think that it totally exhausts the entire panoply of possibilities. This of course is the sine que non of the Hegelian dialectic which is served up on a nightly basis in the form of cable “news” TV shows which attempt to promote an endless debate over which political worldview is best while demonizing its opponent. The idea that on many topics the position of neither left nor right is credible--seems to have been totally missed by most Americans.
The Left/Right Divide and the Hiding of the Truth:
For example, we have become accustomed to there being only 2 possibilities in any given dispute over issues of public policy; the position of the liberal (progressive) left and that of the neoconservative right.[18] How many Americans understand that the neoliberal left and the neoconservative right are but artificial constructs in the Hegelian tradition, designed to allow for the appearance of debate all the while serving to disguise the truth that the resolution/synthesis has already been predetermined by the oligarchical Regime currently in charge? The Regime has as its greatest weapon the fact that no one wishes to believe the truth. For most of us it is simply too painful, unnerving and overwhelming. As many propagandists have indicated, “the bigger the lie the more readily it will be believed.” It is viscerally more comfortable to believe the lie that our government exists of, by and for the people rather than for an elite few who wield all the power and influence and for whom everyone else exists only to be utilized, abused and discarded. The mercenary (all volunteer) US military is a perfect example of the latter being made up almost exclusively of the offspring of impoverished Americans. This has been the case since the draft was ended in the 1970’s.
Theater of the Absurd:
Every four years the Regime treats us to another “theater of the absurd” in which US citizens are allowed to vote for one of 2 Presidential candidates, each of whom has been vetted by the oligarchy such that from its standpoint it matters little which one is elected. Irrespective of what campaign promises are made, once in power, the new Presidential administration hues to the wishes of the not so hidden “shadow government.” It should be intuitively obvious that no serious candidate for high office could rise to that level without demonstrating a willingness to regurgitate the “party line” of their respective political affiliation. As a result so-called third-party candidates are virtually never successful when running for the highest office in the land. The only real opportunity for rank and file US citizens to effect change in their government is to elect a Representative to the US House who is committed to representing their views. Unfortunately, the mega corporations now appear to enjoy monopoly control[19] due to the campaign finance laws which allow for virtually unlimited contributions to candidates.[20] The practical effect is to nullify the political power of the average citizen.
The Political Process is Broken:
The current political process then is broken. So what can we do? It is obvious that under the current set of circumstances, it makes no difference who is elected President and what major political party has the White House or Congress for that matter. To say this of course is considered heresy among the pundit/ruling class who earn their livings by pretending the system is legitimate. Unfortunately however, it is true and they are wrong. There are simply too many powerful individuals and multinational corporations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Examples include the banking, health care, munitions and energy industries and their lobbies and individual pundits who make up the afternoon and evening chattering class on cable TV such as Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Ed Schultz, Keith Oberman and others.[21]
All of the above individuals to one degree or another represent special interest groups across the political spectrum. None are truly independent thinkers. They owe their jobs to their willingness to hue a particular political line as representatives of the media entity to which they belong. For example, O’Reilly, Hannity and Beck regurgitate the Neoconservative party line for Fox News with very little difference in their messages that is, there are differences in style but not substance.
Matthews (frequently repeats the claim that JFK and RFK were both killed by a lone deranged individual and he accepts/advertizes the poor work of scholarship that is Pozner's "Case Closed" which is easily debunked), Oberman (who also accepts Pozner's conclusions in "Case Closed") and Schultz largely follow the left or liberal party line with minor differences in substance and major differences in style. All advance the liberal political views of MSNBC.
CNN on the other hand touts itself as simply reporting the facts without an obvious political orientation. However, the most powerful CNN pundit is Wolf Blitzer who is essentially an Israeli (Zionist) intelligence cut-out all the while presenting himself as a non-editorializing straight-up journalist. CNN is completely loyal to Zionist Israel and the Zionist Lobby. It never criticizes the genocidal policies of the Jewish state so in that sense at least it is completely biased in favor of the Israeli Jews and against the Palestinian Arabs. It has failed to report the Apartheid nature of modern Israel where the human rights granted to Jews are denied to Arabs.
The Power of the Israel Lobby:
Not one of the above cable entities or individual pundit’s dares to criticize the Israeli government or its immoral policies however. In fact no major network or cable entity is willing to risk doing so due to the power of the Zionist (Israel) Lobby. Only in foreign venues or on the internet among bloggers does one find a willingness to question Israel’s Apartheid/genocidal policies or the actions of the Zionist Lobby. There is a complete symbiosis between the corporate oligarchy in control of the US government and the Israeli neo-Fascist entity whose interests are protected by the extensive Zionist Lobby which has infiltrated virtually every branch of the US government, most major ‘think-tanks” and much of US academia. There exists only a very small Jewish minority in the United States who admit that the actions of the modern state of Israel are not only immoral but counterproductive to the ultimate survival of the Jewish state. Fortunately, in Israel, Jewish intellectuals and academics such as Ilan Pappe have begun to break the strangle hold that radical Zionist’s such as Benyamin Netanyahu, Igor Lieberman and others have held over successive Israeli governments.
Is there a Solution?
While the internet is still relatively unregulated, it behooves every US citizen to peacefully but actively spread the truth that in the wake of World War II/the creation of the CIA and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the constitutional representative democratic republic which was brought into being in 1789 was replaced[22] with a not so secret shadow government which does the bidding of the elites and is antithetical to the needs, desires and goals of everyone else.
This effort should include organizing at the state and local levels. It should include electing to the US House of Representatives individuals who cannot be purchased by the multinational corporations and special interest groups. Finding such highly morally committed individuals will not be easy.
Finally, interested and committed individuals of like-mind should ban together for the purpose of pooling their various resources in order to better oppose the corporate media and their relentless attempts to “brain-wash” the public. Time is short for the survival of the American experiment. Please help Spread the word!
Notes:
[1] The evidence is simply overwhelming. For those who are not yet familiar with some of the seminal works they include but are not limited to those in the selected reference section appended to this essay. [2] Philosopher of Science Professor James H. Fetzer performed a calculation assuming that the probability that any one of them would be breached was only 10% which is more than likely too high. For even 12 to be breached at the same time yields a probability of 10(-12). [3] Evidence now strongly suggests that there were likely at least “3” teams, one in the TSBD, one behind the fence at the grassy knoll, and one at the southwest end of the overpass in the storm drain. It is also possible that a 4th team was positioned at the southeast end of the overpass and another in the Dal-Tex building fairly close to ground level. The exact identity and number of the assassin’s is of course irrelevant to the issue of whether a conspiracy existed. [4] Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact. The Warren Commission, the Authorities and the Report. (New York: Random House, 1975) chapter 16, p. 302. [5] Only someone in the US Secret Service would have been privy to the last minute change in the Dallas parade route which took the motorcade directly past the TSBD on Elm Street rather than down Main Street which had been the published route up until that point. The “last-minute” change was no doubt arranged to lessen the number of witnesses who would see the shooting and to be certain that Oswald was placed in the correct strategic position to be framed. [6] Abbreviation for “Freedom of Information Act.” [7] Passed in 1992 in response to the Motion Picture by Oliver Stone about the JFK Assassination. The law is known as the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act ordered all assassination-related material to be placed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). [8] See for example, James Di Eugenio and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003) and John Newman. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995). [9] Judyth Vary Baker who alleges a romantic affair with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963 while the two worked under-cover at the Reilly Coffee Co. of New Orleans also claims that Oswald discovered the plot to kill Kennedy and had hoped to derail it but was unable to do so. Oswald apparently suspected that the result might be his own death as well as President Kennedy’s. Please see the extensive set of interviews on this site in which Judyth Baker is questioned in detail about Oswald. [10] This included altering the wounds on the body of JFK prior to the “official” autopsy, substituting a different brain, falsifying the location of the alleged back wound in order to make the magic bullet hypothesis plausible, altering the skull X-rays and photographs of the head etc. See Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009). Also see David Lifton. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980). [11] See for example Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V. (2009), especially volume IV. [12] We have lost the legitimate succession of power from one Presidential Administration to the next by direct “propagation” due to the violent removal of President John F. Kennedy from office and the resultant complete turnabout in policy that Lyndon B. Johnson ordered and presided over. [13] Johnson signed NSAM # 273 which began the increasing build-up of land forces in Vietnam 4 days after JKF’s Assassination. [14] For an excellent detailed discussion of President Kennedy’s move toward peace in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis see James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008). [15] Problem, reaction, solution or (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). [16] This metaphysical construct is extremely dangerous since it results in a complete polarization of the population into left vs.: right. [17] See for example Carl Bernstein. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977 for a discussion of the many media personages who are under the control of the national security state. [18] The traditional or Paleoconservative “right” no longer exists for all practical purposes in that the neoconservatives have taken over the right wing of the US political spectrum. Neoconservatism has its roots in Trotsky and its branches in Nazism/Fascism. Newt Gingrich and former Vice President Dick Cheney are illustrative of the more radicalized Neoconservative right. [19] The Health Insurance Lobby was the major beneficiary of the recently passed Health Reform Bill, the Banking Lobby virtually wrote the Banking Reform legislation. [20] "Bundling" of funds by large corporate donors is a favorite tactic. [21] One possible exception is the courageous Dylan Ratigan who has been willing to speak truthfully about the reality of the present circumstances at least with respect to the various lobbies which control the Congress. He has not to date challenged the Zionist Lobby which presumably would result forthwith in his dismissal from MSNBC. [22] A true violent Coup d'etat. I specifically use this term recognizing that Peter Dale Scott disagrees with the use of that term when applied to the JFK Assassination.
References:
1. Bernstein, Carl. “The CIA and the Media.” Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977 2. Boyle, Francis A. Biowarfare and Terrorism. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2005). 3. Boyle, Francis A. Tackling America’s Toughest Questions. (Atlanta Georgia: Clarity Press Inc., 2009). 4. Crenshaw, Charles A. et.al. Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed. (New York: Paraview Press, 2001). 5. Di Eugenio, James and Lisa Pease, Editors. The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003). 6. Douglas, James W. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters. (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2008). 7. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998). 8. Fetzer, James H., Editor. Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn’t Know Then about the Death of JFK. (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2000). 9. Fetzer, James H., Editor. The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK, (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2003). 10. Fonzi, Gaeton. The Last Investigation. (Ipswich, Mass.: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 1993). 11. Hersh, Burton. The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA. (New York: Scribner’s, 1992). 12. Horne, Douglas P. Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK, Volumes I-V, 2009). 13. Hurt, Henry. Reasonable Doubt. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985). 14. Lane, Mark. Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991). 15. Lifton, David. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 1980). 16. Livingstone, Harrison E. High Treason 2. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1992). 17. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing Kennedy: And the Hoax of the Century. (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1995). 18. Livingstone, Harrison E. Killing the Truth. Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc., 1994). 19. Mangold, Tom. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’ Master Spy Hunter. (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1992). 20. Meagher, Sylvia. Accessories After the Fact. (New York: Random House, 1975). 21. Melanson, Philip H. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelligence. (New York: Praeger, 1990). 22. Newman, John. Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth about the Unknown Relationship between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995). 23. Prouty, L. Fletcher. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy. (New York: Carroll Publishing Group, 1996). 24. Russell, Dick. The Man Who Knew Too Much. (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1992). 25. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). 26. Scott, Peter Dale. Deep Politics II: The New Revelations in U.S. Government Files 1994-1995. (Ipswich, Mass: Mary Ferrell Foundation Press, 2003). 27. Talbot, David. Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. (London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2007). 28. Thompson, Josiah. Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-study of the Kennedy Assassination Proving that Three Gunmen Murdered the President. (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967).Source URL: https://0832zy.blogspot.com/2010/08/ Visit The People Blog for Daily Updated Hairstyles Collection
Israel cannot handle its past. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu decided this week to extend from 50 to 70 years the time state archives remain classified. Israel realizes that it has too much to hide.
Haaretz reported this week (in its Hebrew edition only), that the first documents will be released to the public only in 2018 (1948+70). Many of the documents that are stored in the archive are relevant to the history of the first 20 years of the Jewish state: the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people, the massacres in Deir Yassin, Tantura and many others, the 1956 Suez conflict, the Israeli nuclear project and so on. Disclosing such documents may bring to light some facts that could “shatter myths and cause embarrassment to many entities and individuals” said the Israeli paper. I guess that president Shimon Peres is one of those ‘many individuals’.
In my latest work I elaborated on the concerning fact that history is foreign to the Jewish religion, ideology and politics. Israeli and Jewish history are set as phantasmic tales. Facts and historical documents are either pushed aside, shoved under the carpet, eliminated or simply destroyed. As we all know, truth seeking is interpreted by Israelis and Zionist as anti Semitism or even holocaust denial.
As it seems, 50 years were not enough for Israel to tackle its original sin. The reason is simple, the crimes that are entangled with the foundation of the Jewish state have never been resolved. Millions of Palestinian refugees are still awaiting to return to their land. Israel is still driven by racist and supremacist laws. The Jewish state has never matured of its lethal philosophy of constant physical intimidation. Consequently, the IDF, the Mossad and the security services mounted pressure on the government to extend the classification status of these 50 year old documents. And no surprise Netanyahu has provided the required extension.
Haaretz pointed out that it is slightly peculiar that PM Netanyahu, the son of Benzion Netanyahu, a Zionist historian, gave his hand to a crude attempt to conceal historical research and truth seeking. I read Benzion Netanyahu, I actually learned a lot from him. Benzion wasn’t exactly an ordinary historian, he was a Zionist historian (as opposed to a historian of Zionism). He was there to give the Jewish national aspiration a contextual pseudo academic meaning. PM Netanyahu's decision to hide facts for another 20 years is actually in line with his father’s philosophy.
A disclosure of the truth regarding Israel's early days would reveal that the Jewish state was a murderous lethal attempt from its very beginning. As much as Zionist and Israeli leaders vowed publicly to make Jews ‘people like all other people’, behind closed doors they commanded their army and secret services to kill like their imaginary Biblical forefathers.
I would argue that from a historical perspective, Israel can keep sitting on its secret files as long as it wants. We do not really need the Israeli archive in order to examine the true murderous meaning of the Jewish state and the Jewish national project. However, the fact that Israel insists on hiding its past, means that there is a little bit of shame and consciousness left in this tribal collective. This is actually a positive sign.
There you go, Oliver Stone apologized for suggesting that the Jewish lobby controls Washington's foreign policy and that Hitler's actions should be put into context.
In fact, Stone’s apology confirms Stone’s argument. We are subject to constant assault by Jewish and Israeli gatekeepers who insist on controlling the political and historical discourse and defy any possible criticism of Jewish national affairs.
“In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret,” Stone said in a statement released late Monday, the day after his remarks were published in a British newspaper.
Oliver Stone. 'It was wrong of me' Photo: Getty Images Bank
JTA reported today that Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, was among the Jewish organizations and Israeli officials to condemn the remarks.
Steinberg in a statement said Stone's apology "was necessary and we accept it. But whether he acted out of sincerity or as a desperate response to the moral outcry at his comments is an open question," he added. "He must be judged by his future words and deeds.”
Steinberg demands “sincerity” and future subservience. I would actually expect him to join Stone and be slightly more enthusiastic about historical research and contextual thinking.
Israel's propaganda minister’, Yuli Edelstein, was also among those who had condemned Stone's remarks early Monday. "They are nauseating, anti-Semitic and racist, Not only is he showing ignorance, he is demonizing Jews for no reason and returning to the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'
Interesting indeed. Stone doesn’t refer to race. There is nothing anti Semitic in his remark whatsoever unless telling the truth is a form of anti Semitism. Moreover, Stone didn’t demonize Jews for being Jews, he described some actions committed by Jewish institutional lobbies, actions that are now academically documented and studied. He did it for a good reason. Stone is probably patriotic or pragmatic enough to gather that peace is important.
Richard Gizbert sits down with Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone to talk about his new film South of the Border and the surprising role that media, both Latin American and North American play in shaping and reflecting the narrative of South America’s political history.
"When a man of Stone's stature speaks in this way”, said Edelstein, “it can bring waves of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, and may even damage Jewish communities and individuals." Edelstein is almost correct. Stone was brave enough to tell the truth about Jewish power, he probably wasn’t courageous enough to stand for it, which is understandable. However, Edelstein and other Jewish leaders better realise that Stone is far from being mad, anti Semitic or racist. Stone told the truth as we all see it.
Instead of silencing criticism, Edelstein, Steinberg and others better look in the mirror because the time is running out for Israel and its supporters.
Update: Haim Saban to CBS: Cancel Oliver Stone's Showtime Series
The New Yorker reported last month that at a conference last fall, Saban described his pro-Israeli formula, outlining “three ways to be influential in American politics…make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” ...
Now comes the Post canoodling. “But important questions linger. The vote, which denied landmark protection for a building that must be demolished to make way for the mosque was hailed by 
