Terrorism: The Most Meaningless and Manipulated Word By Glenn Greenwald February 19, 2010 "Salon" -- Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack's worldview contained elements of the tea party's anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with "the Left" (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America's poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants). All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices: I remember reading about the stock market crash before the "great" depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn't it ironic how far we've come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn't have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it's "business-as-usual" . . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn't so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. Despite all that, The New York Times' Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of "terrorism," even though -- as Dave Neiwert ably documents -- it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term. The issue isn't whether Stack's grievances are real or his responses just; it is that the act unquestionably comports with the official definition. But as NBC's Pete Williams said of the official insistence that this was not an act of Terrorism: there are "a couple of reasons to say that . . . One is he's an American citizen." Fox News' Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials: "I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?," to which Herridge replied: "they mean terrorism in that capital T way." All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies." That's why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist: he's not a Muslim and isn't acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the "definition." One might concede that perhaps there's some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized: it's not "terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way." We all know who commits terrorism in "that capital T way," and it's not people named Joseph Stack. Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims. If a Muslim attacks a military base preparing to deploy soldiers to a war zone, that person is a Terrorist. If an American Muslim argues that violence against the U.S. (particularly when aimed at military targets) is justified due to American violence aimed at the Muslim world, that person is a Terrorist who deserves assassination. And if the U.S. military invades a Muslim country, Muslims who live in the invaded and occupied country and who fight back against the invading American army -- by attacking nothing but military targets -- are also Terrorists. Indeed, large numbers of detainees at Guantanamo were accused of being Terrorists for nothing more than attacking members of an invading foreign army in their country, including 14-year-old Mohamed Jawad, who spent many years in Guantanamo, accused (almost certainly falsely) of throwing a grenade at two American troops in Afghanistan who were part of an invading force in that country. Obviously, plots targeting civilians for death -- the 9/11 attacks and attempts to blow up civilian aircraft -- are pure terrorism, but a huge portion of the acts committed by Muslims that receive that label are not. In sum: a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process. Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers. Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza. Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning. All of this would be an interesting though not terribly important semantic matter if not for the fact that the term Terrorist plays a central role in our political debates. It is the all-justifying term for anything the U.S. Government does. Invasions, torture, due-process-free detentions, military commissions, drone attacks, warrantless surveillance, obsessive secrecy, and even assassinations of American citizens are all justified by the claim that it's only being done to "Terrorists," who, by definition, have no rights. Even worse, one becomes a "Terrorist" not through any judicial adjudication or other formal process, but solely by virtue of the untested, unchecked say-so of the Executive Branch. The President decrees someone to be a Terrorist and that's the end of that: uncritical followers of both political parties immediately justify anything done to the person on the ground that he's a Terrorist (by which they actually mean: he's been accused of being one, though that distinction -- between presidential accusations and proof -- is not one they recognize). If we're really going to vest virtually unlimited power in the Government to do anything it wants to people they call "Terrorists," we ought at least to have a common understanding of what the term means. But there is none. It's just become a malleable, all-justifying term to allow the U.S. Government carte blanche to do whatever it wants to Muslims it does not like or who do not like it (i.e., The Terrorists). It's really more of a hypnotic mantra than an actual word: its mere utterance causes the nation blindly to cheer on whatever is done against the Muslims who are so labeled. UPDATE: I want to add one point: the immediate official and media reaction was to avoid, even deny, the term "terrorist" because the perpetrator of the violence wasn't Muslim. But if Stack's manifesto begins to attract serious attention, I think it's likely the term Terrorist will be decisively applied to him in order to discredit what he wrote. His message is a sharply anti-establishment and populist grievance of the type that transcends ideological and partisan divisions -- the complaints which Stack passionately voices are found as common threads in the tea party movement and among citizens on both the Left and on the Right -- and thus tend to be the type which the establishment (which benefits from high levels of partisan distractions and divisions) finds most threatening and in need of demonization. Nothing is more effective at demonizing something than slapping the Terrorist label onto it. Copyright ©2010 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Mossad's Licence to Kill The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service. One of the leading chroniclers of the agency gives a unique insight into its methods. By Gordon Thomas February 19, 2010 "The Telegraph" -- The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month. The Israeli government's refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad's attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies. In the past year, al-Mabhouh had moved to the top of Mossad's list of targets, each of which must be legally approved under guidelines laid down over half a century ago by Meir Amit, the most innovative and ruthless director-general of the service. Born in Tiberius, King Herod's favourite city, Amit had established the rules for assassination. "There will be no killing of political leaders, however extreme they are. They must be dealt with politically. There will be no killing of a terrorist's family unless they are also directly implicated in terrorism. Each execution must be sanctioned by the incumbent prime minister. Any execution is therefore state-sponsored, the ultimate judicial sanction of the law. The executioner is no different from the state-appointed hangman or any other lawfully-appointed executioner." I first met Amit in 2001 and through him, I talked to the spies of Mossad, the katsas, and finally, to the assassins, the kidon, who take their name from the Hebrew word for bayonet. They helped me write the only book approved by Mossad, Gideon's Spies. Amit said the book "tells like it was – and like it is". Amit showed me a copy of those rules at our first meeting. After two years of training in the Mossad academy at Herzlia near Tel Aviv, each recruit to the kidon is given a copy. The killing in Dubai is a classic example of how Mossad goes about its work. Al-Mabhouh's 11 assassins had been chosen from the 48 current kidon, six of whom are women. It has yet to be established how al-Mabhouh was killed, but kidon's preference is strangling with wire, a well-placed car bomb, an electric shock or one of the poisons created by Mossad scientists at their headquarters in a Tel Aviv suburb. The plan to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been finalised in a small conference room next to the office of Meir Dagan, who has run Mossad for the past eight years. The 10th director-general, Dagan has a reputation as a man who would not hesitate to walk into a nameless Arab alley with no more than a handgun in his pocket. Only he knows how many times he has asked a prime minister for legal permission to kill a terrorist who could not be brought to trial in an Israeli court, along with the kidon to whom he shows the legally stamped document, the licence to kill. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's name had been on such a document, which would have been signed by Benyamin Netanyahu. That, like every aspect of a kidon operation, would be firmly denied by a government spokesman, were he to be asked. This has not stopped Dubai's police chief, Lt-General Tamin, from fulminating against the Israeli prime minister. Two years ago this week, Dagan sent a team of kidon to Damascus to assassinate Imad Mughniyeh. His Mossad file included details of organising the kidnapping of Terry Waite and the bombing of the US Marine base near Beirut airport, killing 241 people. The United States had placed a £12.5 million bounty on his head. Dagan just wanted him dead. Mossad psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioural scientists, psychoanalysts and profilers – collectively known as the "specialists" – were told to decide the best way to kill Mughniyeh. They concluded that he would be among the guests of honour at the Iranian Cultural Centre celebrations in 2008 for the celebration of the Khomeini Revolution. The team rigged a car-bomb in the headrest of the Mitsubishi Pajero they discovered Mughniyeh had rented, to be detonated by a mobile phone. As Mughniyeh arrived outside the Culture Centre at precisely 7pm on February 12, the blast blew his head off. At Mughniyeh's funeral in Beirut, his mother, Um-Imad, sat among a sea of black chadors, a sombre old woman, who wailed that her son had planned to visit her on the day after he died. She cried out she had no photograph to remember him by. Two days later she received a packet. Inside was his photograph. It had been posted in Haifa. The list of kidon assassinations is long and stretches far beyond the Arab world. In their base deep in the Negev Desert – the sand broken only by a distant view of Israel's nuclear facility at Dimona – the kidon practise with a variety of handguns, learn how to conceal bombs, administer a lethal injection in a crowd and make a killing look accidental. They review famous assassinations – the shooting of John F Kennedy, for example – and study the faces and habits of potential targets whose details are stored on their highly restricted computers. There, too, are thousands of constantly updated street plans downloaded from Google Earth. Mossad is one of the world's smallest intelligence services. But it has a back-up system no other outfit can match. The system is known as sayanim, a derivative of the Hebrew word lesayeah, meaning to help. There are tens of thousands of these "helpers". Each has been carefully recruited, sometimes by katsas, Mossad's field agents. Others have been asked to become helpers by other members of the secret group. Created by Meir Amit, the role of the sayanim is a striking example of the cohesiveness of the world Jewish community. In practical terms, a sayan who runs a car rental agency will provide a kidon with a vehicle on a no-questions basis. An estate agent sayan will provide a building for surveillance. A bank manager sayan will provide funds at any time of day or night, and a sayan doctor provides medical assistance. Any of these helpers could have been involved in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Mossad has recently expanded its network of sayanim into Arab countries. A sayan doctor in the West Bank provided details of the homoeopathic concoction Yasser Arafat used to drink. When he died in 2004, his personal physician, Dr al-Kurdi, said "poisoning is a strong possibility in this case".There have been reports that more than a dozen terrorists have died from poisoning in the past five years,. Within the global intelligence community, respect for Mossad grew following the kidon assassination of Dr Gerald Bull, the Canadian scientist who was probably the world's greatest expert on gun-barrel ballistics. Israel had made several attempts to buy his expertise. Each time, Bull had made clear his dislike for the Jewish state. Instead he had offered his services to Saddam Hussein, to build a super-gun capable of launching shells containing nuclear, chemical or biological warheads directly from Iraq into Israel. Saddam had ordered three of the weapons at a cost of $20 million. Bull was retained as a consultant for a fee of $1 million. On the afternoon of March 20, 1990, the sanction to kill Bull was given by the then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Nahum Admoni, the head of Mossad, sent a three-man team to Brussels, where Bull lived in a luxury apartment block. Each kidon carried a handgun in a holster under his jacket. When the 61-year-old Bull answered the doorbell of his home, he was shot five times in the head and the neck, each kidon firing their 7.65 pistol in turn, leaving Bull dead on his doorstep. An hour later they were out of the country on a flight to Tel Aviv. Within hours, Mossad's own department of psychological warfare had arranged with sayanim in the European media to leak stories that Bull had been shot by Saddam's hit squad because he had planned to renege on their deal. The same tactics had been placed on stand-by on October 24, 1995, for the assassination of Fathi Shkaki who, like Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, had reached the top of Mossad's target list as a result of his terrorist attacks. Two kidon – code-named Gil and Ran – had left Tel Aviv on separate flights. Ran flew to Athens, Gil to Rome. At each airport they collected new British passports from a local sayan. The two men arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight and checked into the Diplomat Hotel overlooking Valetta harbour. That evening, a sayan delivered a motorcycle to Ran. He told hotel staff that he planned to use it to tour the island. At the same time, a freighter that had sailed the previous day from Haifa bound for Italy radioed to the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble. While it was fixed, it would drop anchor off the island. On board the boat was a small team of Mossad communications technicians. They established a link with a radio in Gil's suitcase. Shkaki had arrived by ferry from Tripoli, Libya, where he had been discussing with Colonel Gadaffi what Mossad was convinced was a terrorist attack. The two kidon waited for him to stroll along the waterfront. Ran and Gil drove up on the motorcycle and Gil shot Fathi Shkaki six times in the head. It had become a kidon signature. When the police came to search Shkaki's bedroom they found a "Do not disturb" sign on his door – a signature that was repeated in last month's Dubai killing. Gordon Thomas is the author of 'Gideon's Spies'. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2010 .............................................. From The Times February 19, 2010 Dubai wants head of Mossad arrested over Hamas assassination Ron Prosor, the Israeli Ambassador to Britain, attended a meeting at the Foreign Office Hugh Tomlinson in Dubai and Sheera Frenkel in Jerusalem The Dubai chief of police called yesterday for the arrest of Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, if it is proved that the Israeli spy agency was behind the assassination of the Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Interpol, in a statement last night, to issue a red arrest notice seeking Mr Dagan’s extradition “as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is most likely now”. An insider close to the case confirmed that Mr Dagan and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, are top of the Gulf state’s wanted list. “Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh,” General Tamim said. “It is 99 per cent, if not 100 per cent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder.” Times Archive, 1973: British protest over false passports Britain protested to the Israeli Government yesterday over the supply of falsified British passports to agents during their attacks in Beirut * Israel fears UN censure move led by Britain * Israeli agents kill guerilla leaders in Lebanon * Britain demands 'full cooperation' from Israel * Mossad ties are vital for UK security * Dubai points finger at Mossad over Hamas 'hit' Police in Dubai said that they would release new evidence in the coming days that proves that the assassination can be traced to the Mossad headquarters in Herzliya, a suburb north of Tel Aviv. Officials have never ruled Mossad out of their investigation but have stopped short of accusing the Israeli spy agency directly until now. Some Israeli commentators are openly calling for Mr Dagan to resign, arguing that the diplomatic row and negative publicity generated by the assassination are unacceptable. Gideon Levy, a correspondent for the Hebrew daily Haaretz, accused the Mossad chief of acting recklessly. “We have long forgotten that Mossad is supposed to be an intelligence-gathering organisation, not one that sows death, and that a lawful state does not operate hit squads. “To the roars of approval by the pundits, Dagan has just been given another year on job [sic], his eighth. Why? Partly because he’s a specialist at liquidation,” he wrote. However, officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it was “highly unlikely” that Mr Dagan would step down before his tenure expires. The softly spoken former paratrooper was wounded twice in more than 30 years of service in the Israeli Army. He served as head of the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, and became a confidant of Ariel Sharon, the future Prime Minister, during their years in the Israel Defence Forces. A former Mossad agent who worked for Mr Dagan told The Times that he was likely to ride out the storm: “Mossad is facing a lot of anger right now over the use of British and European passports. I don’t know if Mossad was actually involved or how they got those passports, though I can say that Dagan isn’t the kind of man to care about angering a few people to get the job done. He is what you would call a one-man show.” Talk of Mr Dagan’s unwillingness to share power surfaced early in his tenure, when The Jerusalem Post reported that more than 200 Mossad agents had resigned over his style. Officials in Dubai have conceded that it could be almost impossible to catch al-Mabhouh’s killers. Even if the assassins were somehow identified, the United Arab Emirates has no diplomatic relations with Israel, let alone judicial co-operation agreements. So far the only suspects being held are three Palestinians accused of working with the Israelis. Ahmad Hasnin, a Palestinian intelligence operative, and Anwar Shekhaiber, a Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah, were arrested in Amman and have been extradited to Dubai, Jordanian officials said. A third man, named by Palestinian media as Nahro Massoud, a Hamas security operative, was arrested in Damascus. All three were residents of the Gaza Strip until the Hamas takeover in June 2007, and a Hamas official in Gaza said that it was “likely” that they knew al-Mabhouh, who was killed in his hotel room in Dubai on January 19. Dubai’s police chief said that one of the Palestinians extradited from Jordan had been observed meeting one of the suspected Mossad agents. Israel has long had a far-reaching network of Palestinian collaborators. In the past, defence officials have acknowledged that Israel’s security establishment depends highly on “turning” Palestinians into collaborators using various methods that include blackmail, money or threats. Mr Dagan’s predecessor, the British-born Ephraim Halevy, was known for a more diplomatic approach, Amir Oren, a military correspondent for the Israeli daily Haaretz, said. “Dagan, meanwhile, is not trying to come across as diplomatically elegant.” While some Israelis have argued that Mr Dagan should resign, many are pleased with the way he runs the agency. “Mossad have renewed the aura that the name used to generate in the region,” Alon Ben David, an Israeli intelligence analyst, told Israeli radio. The Murder of Palestinian Mahmoud Al Mabhouh http://video.gulfnews.com/services/player/bcpid4267205001?bctid=66672644001 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ9FVKsdTvg&feature=player_embedded

The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9/11 Truth Movement. A Survey of Attitude Change in 2009-2010 By Elizabeth Woodworth February 16, 2010 "Global Research" -- In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired analytic programs investigating the official account. Increasingly, the issue is treated as a scientific controversy worthy of debate, rather than as a "conspiracy theory" ignoring science and common sense. This essay presents these media analyses in the form of 18 case studies. Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11. This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge. I. Introduction Until 2009, doubts about the official 9/11 story were briefly entertained by the mainstream media on each anniversary of the event, allowing the independent research community only a fleeting moment once a year to publicly voice its findings. But after crucial scientific evidence emerged in April 2009 to challenge the official story of how the towers fell, a spate of European media reports followed. The news coverage of this evidence seems to have opened the door to more serious reflection on all aspects of the 9/11 issue in the major media. The first paper in my series, "The Media Response to 9/11," dealt with the New Statesman's grudging recognition of Dr. David Ray Griffin, the world's "top truther" (as it dubbed him), placing him number 41 among "The 50 People Who Matter Today."1 Since this admission in September 2009, the issue has gathered increasing momentum. The collective content issuing from this new momentum is presented here in the hope that it will embolden other major media to take up the pivotal controversy concerning 9/11, and pursuing the truth wherever it may lead. Observations on the Analysis While carrying out my analysis, I observed five new features in the media treatment of the 9/11 issue that developed as 2009 progressed. They are listed here, so that readers might look for them in the case studies that follow below: 1. The 9/11 issue is increasingly framed not as conspiracy theories versus hard science, but as a legitimate controversy resting on unanswered questions and a search for truth. 2. News reports and television programs examining these controversies have become longer and more balanced. 3. Major media outlets have begun to present the claims of the truth movement first, followed by counter-arguments from defenders of the official story. 4. Major media outlets have begun to include, and even to introduce, extensive evidence to support the claims of the 9/11 truth community. 5. The media treatments increasingly suggest the possibility of a re-investigation into the events of September 11, 2001. The first part of this essay deals with the crucial scientific evidence that emerged in early 2009, the significance of this evidence in relation to the official story of 9/11, and the immediate news coverage it received. II. Scientific Paper Finds Nano-thermite Explosives in World Trade Center Dust, April 3, 2009 A peer-reviewed paper published in the Open Chemical Physics Journal on April 3, 2009,2 reported that a little known high-tech explosive called nano-thermite was found throughout the World Trade Center dust. These physicists and chemists involved in this study discovered "distinctive red/gray chips in significant numbers"3 in four samples of dust collected from the area. The presence of aluminum and iron oxide in the red material provided one of the signs that it might be nano-thermite, which is a high explosive (whereas ordinary thermite is an incendiary.) Another clue was provided when putting a flame to the chips produced an explosive reaction. On the basis of these and other observations, the team concluded that "the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered in the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material."4 The article's first-named author, Dr. Niels Harrit – a University of Copenhagen chemistry professor who specializes in nano-chemistry5 –explained on Danish TV2 News: "Thermite itself dates back to 1893. It is a mixture of aluminum and rust-powder, which react to create intense heat. The reaction produces iron, heated to 2500 degrees Centigrade. This can be used to do welding. It can also be used to melt other iron. "So in nano-thermite, this powder from 1893 is reduced to tiny particles, perfectly mixed. When these react, the intense heat develops much more quickly. Nano-thermite can be mixed with additives to give off intense heat, or serve as a very effective explosive. It contains more energy than dynamite, and can be used as rocket fuel. "You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it: unreacted thermite."6 What was the significance of this sophisticated material? Reported Evidence that Nano-thermite is a Military Substance In a German interview in May 2009, Dr. Harrit said: "There are no experts on nano-thermite without connections to the military…. This stuff has only been prepared under military contracts in the USA and probably in bigger allied countries. This is secret military research…It was not prepared in a cave in Afghanistan."7 Chemist Kevin Ryan, another co-author, had reported in an earlier article that explosive nano-thermite, which may be painted onto surfaces, was developed by US government scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.8 A United States Department of Defense special publication confirms that work on these "energetic materials" has long been "performed in laboratories within all military services."9 According to a June 2009 statement by Britain's prestigious Institute of Nanotechnology,10 the Harrit study "provides indisputable evidence that a highly engineered explosive called nano-thermite was found in the dust of all three buildings that came down on 9/11 2001 in New York city. [sic] This advanced explosive incorporating nanotechnology is only available to sophisticated military labs."11 It thus became known by mid-2009 that explosives of military origin, probably in the United States, had been involved in the World Trade Center collapses. Early Coverage of the Nano-thermite Finding in the European Mainstream Press Although the new scientific evidence against the official story of 9/11 was not reported in the mainstream British or North American media, it did receive attention in continental Europe. The day the article was published, a thorough essay in the Danish journal Videnskab (Science) examined both sides of the controversy about controlled demolition.12 The same issue of Videnskab also carried an interview with Professor Harrit, who answered pointed questions about the peer-review history of the article, and the military nature of nano-thermite.13 The following day, Denmark's politiken.dk reported the scientific nano-thermite paper in an article called (in Danish) "Conspiracy theories about 9/11 get new life."14 Then, the day after Professor Harrit's April 6 interview Danish TV2 News, he was featured on the popular talk show, "Good Morning Denmark", on which he said: "The material we found is super hi-tech frontline military research. It's not a mixture of random chemicals. It's an advanced material which is difficult to get information on. But some conference papers and internal reports have been published…There has to be a normal forensic investigation of this attempt. Our research is high-level forensic work. We have provided technical evidence that can be used in the future investigation."15 On April 13, an online Croatian political newspaper posted the Danish TV2 video interview with Harrit along with an article titled "VIDEO: 9/11 No Longer Taboo Topic in Denmark".16 Russia also took notice. On July 9, Laura Emmett, the London correspondent for RT, interviewed Dr. Niels Harrit for over 10 minutes. (RT, previously known as Russia Today, is a globally broadcast English-language channel sponsored by the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti. It reaches 1.5 million people monthly, including half a million Americans.) Stating that "the evidence for controlled demolition is overwhelming", Harrit reported that the nano-thermite reaction produced pools of molten iron beneath the rubble and inextinguishable fires that lasted for months.17 I turn now to ways that the mainstream news coverage of the case against the official story has changed since the appearance of the nano-thermite paper. III. The Changing Mainstream Media Treatment of 9/11 Evidence from early 2009 to early 2010: 18 Case Studies Two February 2009 news items illustrate the wary mainstream attitude towards conspiracy theorists early in the year. A New York Times article said about actor Daniel Sunjata: The second episode of "Rescue Me's" fifth season, starting in April, may represent the first fictional presentation of 9/11 conspiracy theories by a mainstream media company…Mr. Sunjata's character delivers a two-minute monologue…describing a "neoconservative government effort" to control the world's oil, drastically increase military spending and "change the definition of pre-emptive attack." Mr. Sunjata surprised some of the TV reporters when he said that he "absolutely, 100 percent" supports the assertion that "9/11 was an inside job."18 Fox News was somewhat less constrained, saying: An upcoming episode of the drama "Rescue Me" is about 9/11 being an inside job. The actor who spews the theories on camera, Daniel Sunjata, actually believes in it too. Look, the fact is, actors who barf this crap are doing it for their own egos. It makes them feel smart, because for once they're spouting something provocative instead of puerile. Never mind that it's an insidious insult to the victims of 9/11 – as it is to the rest of us, who may or may not be guilty, according to Sunjata's theory.19 However, things started to change after the appearance of the nano-thermite paper on April 3, as may be seen from the following case studies of media reports, each of which is identified as having corporate, public, or independent ownership. The case studies reveal the evidence which has been introduced into public consciousness during the past year. Case Study 1: The Dutch TV Mock Trial of Osama bin Laden, April 25, 2009 On April 8, 2009, a popular TV program called "Devil's Advocate" held a mock trial of Osama bin Laden with lawyers arguing before a politically balanced civil jury of five people. The case against bin Laden was argued by two real-world opponents: former American correspondent Charles Groenhuijsen, and Dutch-American Glenn Schoen of a US security firm. Real-world lawyer Gerald Spong acted as bin Laden's defense attorney.20 Spong presented new evidence from a videotape of Professor Emeritus of Islamic Studies Gernot Rotter, saying that the American translators who transcribed the bin Laden tapes of the November 9, 2001 "confession video" have "clearly added things in many places – things that are not there even when listening multiple times."21 Spong won. Although the jury found bin Laden to be a terrorist, it said there was no proof that he had ordered the 9/11 attacks. Through this method, this program on AVRO – the Dutch public broadcasting organization – presented evidence, not previously seen in the major media, against the likelihood that bin Laden ordered the attacks. On April 15, Fox News reported the Dutch jury findings in a long and unusually balanced article, in which former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was quoted six times, saying that bin Laden's exoneration sent a "disturbing message" to the world and fueled conspiracy theories. Giuliani variously called this message "bizarre," "dangerous," "aberrational," "irrational," and "unfortunate."22 However, referring to Spong as a "well-known yet controversial attorney," Fox mentioned him 10 times, and more substantively, reporting his evidence that the bin Laden videos seemed inauthentic, as well as his point that the FBI has not indicted bin Laden for the attacks. Concluding Comment: (AVRO is publicly owned, but Fox News is corporate.) Neither of these two mainstream treatments of doubts about the official story was broadcast on the customary anniversary date, and both reached millions of people. Case Study 2: Architect Richard Gage in Canada's "Financial Post", April 25, 2009 One of Canada's top four English-language newspapers, the conservative National Post, publishes its business section as the Financial Post. Three weeks after the nano-thermite story broke, Jonathan Kay, a National Post columnist and editor with degrees in both engineering and law, wrote an article about Richard Gage, the "lucid" San Francisco architect who heads up the 1,000-strong "Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth."23 Kay, who himself endorses the official story of 9/11, described Gage as a "respectable-looking middle-aged" architect, "complete with suit and tie, and receding hairline," and reported that Gage's organization "scored a booth at the upcoming American Institute of Architects conference from April 30 to May 2." In the midst of references to thermite reactions and iron-oxide-based explosives, Kay wrote of controlled demolitions: "As radical as Gage's theory may sound to readers, it's surprisingly popular. The '9/11 Truth Movement'…has millions of adherents across the world. Many believe that the World Trade Center was destroyed on Sept. 11 through controlled demolition set in motion by officials within America's own government and military." Gage's presentation was also described as "effective": "In one particularly effective segment, he puts up shots of the localized fires that broke out in the lower floors of WTC Building 7 hours before it collapsed. Seconds later, he shows footage of Beijing's Mandarin Oriental hotel – which suffered an epic top-to-bottom conflagration in 2009...and remained standing." Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Besides reporting Gage's evidence without any attempted refutation, this corporate-press writer remarked that "no major media outlet has done a truly comprehensive profile or investigation of the Truther movement." He thereby seemed to be suggesting that it is now time to take the 9/11 truth movement seriously. Case Study 3: Norwegian State Radio's Public Debate on 9/11 Truth, May 21, 2009 Professor Harrit, who was lecturing in Norway in late May 2009, was interviewed by public radio program "Here and Now",24 on NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation). Harrit presented the findings of the nano-thermite paper, which were then discussed by three Norwegian scientists who did not support his conclusions. Following the radio program, an extended email debate continued between Dr. Ola Nilsen, who teaches chemistry at the University of Oslo, and Dr. Steven Jones, a co-author of the nano-thermite paper who formerly taught physics at Brigham Young University. This debate, during which Nilsen somewhat modified his original view, was posted to a Norwegian blogsite in English.25 Concluding Comment: (Public). Although NRK in this April program challenged the findings of the Harrit paper, this was to change by late summer, as we shall see below. Case Study 4: Architect Richard Gage on Fox News, May 28, 2009 The hosts of Fox News on KMPH in Fresno, California, began their 7-minute interview by saying, "He's an architect experienced in steel structures. Now Richard Gage is…here to show us why he's calling for a more thorough investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings."26 These two anchors actively encouraged Gage's discussion of the ten key features of controlled demolition. He was allowed to explain the free-fall acceleration of WTC 7 (shown on his two video frames as dropping at the same rate as a second building felled by controlled demolition) and the "uncanny" failure of 40,000 tons of structural steel columns that were designed to resist its collapse. Although normal office fires were said to have caused the collapses, he explained, various firefighters had reported large pools of molten iron at ground level. "What produced all that molten iron?" he asked. The answer, he said, was found in the inches of dust covering lower Manhattan. "The by-product of thermite is molten iron and it's dispersed throughout all this dust…and there are small chips of unignited thermite as well. This is very high-tech thermite – nano-thermite. It's not found in a cave in Afghanistan; it's produced in very sophisticated defense department contracting laboratories…[its] particles are one-thousand times smaller than a human hair." Asked whether bin Laden might have had access to the buildings, Gage said probably not – that someone else who had access to nano-thermite, and to the buildings' security systems, would need to be investigated. Someone who had access to the elevator modernization, which was going on nine months earlier and was "immediately adjacent to the core columns and beams in the building." Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This Fox News show began by asking Gage about his credentials, saying "We ask that for clarification so that as we get into this, we want people to make sure that you're not just someone with a wacky idea…you come with some science to you." The program ended with a sincere thank-you to Gage for "opening up a lot to think about," and an announcement that there is "a great deal of information" on the KMPH.com website. In short, Gage was treated with the respect due to any serious participant in an important and controversial issue. The next major mainstream event was the Russia Today program of July 9, 2009, which was covered above, so we will move directly to the anniversary period of September 2009, when further evidence of the impact of the nano-thermite discovery became apparent. Case Study 5: The National Geographic Documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy", August 31, 2009 In late August, 2009, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) aired a two-hour documentary, "9/11: Science and Conspiracy," which sought to answer several questions, "What caused the collapse of the Twin Towers? Was it from the fires, or were explosives placed inside the buildings, causing them to implode? Did a missile, rather than a commercial airline jet, strike the Pentagon?"27 This "NatGeo" program purported to explore evidence about controlled demolition presented by the 9/11 truth movment. It interviewed Dylan Avery (the maker of the "Loose Change" films), Richard Gage, David Ray Griffin, and Steven Jones. But in reality this NatGeo program was entirely devoted to debunking their claims by using pseudo-scientific demonstrations to refute claims that none of these men have made. For example, in order to refute the claim that nano-thermite could have brought down the buildings, NatGeo used ordinary thermite (with the narrator explaining that they had no access to nano-thermite). Moreover, instead of using the thermite to make shaped charges, which can cut through steel, the NatGeo experimenter simply placed a bag of thermite next to a steel column and lit it. When the burning thermite (entirely predictably) did not melt the column, the narrator concluded, triumphantly, that science had disproved the claim of the conspiracy theorists. A review in Media Life Magazine, while not fully exposing the phoniness of the program's claim to represent "science," did point out some shortcomings, saying: Some of the issues raised by the truthers, however, aren't addressed, or are addressed in brief asides. This leaves this documentary open to charges of picking and choosing which points to cover. "9/11: Science and Conspiracy" spends too much time discussing the psychology behind conspiracy theories – which isn't really a hard science.28 A review in the New York Post quoted Sander Hicks, a journalist who is openly a member of the 9/11 truth community, as saying that its representatives on the program "come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth," and that the program, in spite of its faults, shows "that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn't closed."29 Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This program by National Geographic provides a good reminder of how the 9/11 truth issue has generally been handled by the corporately-controlled media. But it also demonstrates the fact that the controversy is very much alive in the major media. Case Study 6: Germany's Weekly TV Guide, "TV Hören und Sehen," August 31, 2009 "TV Hören und Sehen", with a paid circulation of nearly a million copies, is owned by the Bauer Media Group, which publishes 308 magazines in 14 countries. The TV magazine features interviews and articles by prominent German authors.30 It is therefore significant that on August 31, 2009, this magazine published "Die Geheimakten von 9/11" ("The Secret Files of 9/11") as a full double-page spread, continuing with photos on two subsequent pages. It opened by saying: "9/11 is officially the largest criminal case in history – but classified documents and witness accounts are surfacing, that speak against the official versions of the CIA and Pentagon."31 It then asks what force could pulverize 200,000 tons of steel in 11.4 seconds, quoting US engineer Neel Ginson: "In order to bring down this kind of mass in such a short period of time, the material must have been artificially exploded outwards." Ginson added that, looking closely, one can see small explosions in the Twin Towers always occurring before the floors are reached by the collapse line. The fact that the towers were the first steel-frame buildings in the world to collapse because of fire, he added, was even admitted by NIST (the National Institute of Science and Technology, the government agency that produced the official reports). Among many other questions, the article raises the issue of adjacent World Trade Center 7, the 47-storey steel-frame building with a base the size of a football field that collapsed at 5:20 PM the same day: "But the official 9/11 investigation never mentions the building once." With reference to the Pentagon, this article asks: How were the victims identified by their fingerprints, when even the airplane steel had melted? Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although this article does not specifically mention nano-thermite, it clearly suggests that artificial explosions brought down the buildings. By not defending the official story at all, this large-chain corporate media outlet was among the first to give an open hearing to the independent 9/11 research community. Case Study 7: Two California Newspapers Review the Role of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, September 2009 In September 2009, Metroactive (Silicon Valley's number-one weekly magazine) and the Santa Barbara Independent, each published slightly different versions of a long article on the controversy surrounding the WTC building collapses.32 The Independent article – entitled "Twin Towers, Twin Myths?" – begins: "One of the crucial technical disputes in American history, perhaps second only to global warming, is underway. It pits hundreds of government technicians who say the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by airplane impact against hundreds of professional architects and building engineers who insist that the Twin Towers could never have collapsed solely due to the planes and are calling for a new independent investigation. It is a fight that is not going away and is likely to get louder as more building trade professionals sign on to one side or the other."33 The version in MetroActive – called "Explosive Theory" – says "[E]ight years after 9/11, a growing organization of building trades professionals suspect that there was more to the event than the government will admit." It then gives a short history of Gage's now 1,000-strong organization, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE).34 Deputy Director Michael J. Heimbach of the FBI's counter-terrorism division, this article adds, had recently acknowledged in a letter to the organization that Gage's presentation is "backed by thorough research and analysis." One local AE member was quoted as saying "it takes too much energy" – energy that was not there – to collapse the buildings at free-fall speed, given the resistance that steel offers. This was borne out, this member continued, by a team of scientists "working at technical laboratories in the United States and Denmark [who] reported in April that analysis of dust …gathered at the World Trade Center found evidence of the potent incendiary/explosive 'super thermite,' used by the military." Almost half of this article deals with the controversy over whether nano-thermite was used, with most of the space allotted to evidence supplied by the 9/11 Truth Movement. Near the end, however, spokesman Michael Newman is brought in to defend NIST's research, saying there was "no need" to test the dust for thermite. But the last word was given to engineer Ed Munyak of AE, who said: "The fact is that the collapses don't resemble any fire-induced behavior of structures, but it exactly mimics a controlled demolition, so why not investigate that? It's all very suspicious and that's why an independent investigation is needed so we can all learn from this." "Explosive Theory" also focuses pointedly on the growing number of professional organizations and retired officials calling for a new investigation, including: …two dozen retired U.S. military brass and eight former U.S. State Department officials, along with a number of Republicans who have served in high federal positions since President Reagan, including former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts and former Reagan administration Assistant Defense Secretary (and retired Marine Corps colonel) Ronald D. Ray. The version in the Santa Barbara Independent concludes with an unusually candid observation: And how would America deal with such an investigation against the backdrop of suppositions that some officials in government were complicit? This idea is virtually unthinkable to most of the public, much less something the American political system can handle…The forces of denial, in the system and in most of our minds, are innately powerful and probably sufficient to mitigate against a reopened investigation. Despite this, [Richard] Gage [of AE] sees his role as provoking a better investigation. Concluding Comment: (Independent). The authors of this article, rather than referring to "conspiracy theorists," present the 9/11 issue as a "technical dispute" of historic importance. Both versions of the article represent a 180-degree turnaround in American newspaper reporting, providing a useful introduction to the long-ignored research by independent professionals. The Santa Barbara Independent, curious about public opinion rather than seeking to hide it, published a local poll asking if conspiracy was behind the collapses: 75% of respondents answered "yes".35 Case Study 8: Dr. Niels Harrit on NRK1's "Schrödinger's Cat," September 10, 2009 NRK1 is the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation's main TV channel. It's program "Schrödinger's Cat", which is about scientific research and technology, comes on every Thursday following the evening news. It has won several awards, and averages 487,000 viewers. For the September 10 program, Dr. Harrit was interviewed for about ten minutes in his office and laboratory at the University of Copenhagen Nano-Science Center, where he demonstrated the magnetic quality of a WTC dust sample. He also showed videotape of molten iron flowing from the upper South Tower, which was iron, not aluminum (which melts at a much lower temperature than steel or iron). Emphasizing that an office fire, even if fed by jet fuel, could not possibly get hot enough to melt steel, thereby producing iron, he concluded that the flowing iron had to have been caused by something such as nano-thermite, which produces "an enormous amount of heat", and molten iron is created in the process, with a temperature of 4530 F.36 Although Harrit did not know who placed the explosives, he said, he had no doubt that a crime had occurred. In the final third of the program, three other people were asked for comments. Two of the people tried to cast doubt on Harrit's conclusions, but their comments were weak, even absurd. An architect argued that the energy from the airliners brought the Twin Towers down and then Building 7 came down because the collapse of the towers acted like an earthquake to weaken the ground. American buildings are weak, he explained, because they don't use reinforced concrete. Finally, Dr. David Ray Griffin has stated that "for scientists and people who study the facts, the official story about the Twin Towers is completely ludicrous, but for the general public it has seemed plausible. Jet fuel fires – they seem so hot. Jet fuel's just kerosene." Concluding Comment: (Public). This prime-time coverage by Norway's largest TV channel was quite a turnaround from the earlier NRK radio coverage in May. Most of the time was given to Drs. Harrit and Griffin; the content was groundbreaking; and the opposing views were obviously insubstantial. Considering Norway's NATO membership and military participation in the US-led operations in Afghanistan, the program could prove to be significant. Case Study 9 : London's "Daily Mail" asks whether Osama bin Laden is Dead, September 11, 2009 This long and detailed article opens with the menacing bin Laden audiotape of June 3, 2009, timed to coincide with Barack Obama's arrival on his Middle East tour, and then moves to the new Anglo-American offensive to "hunt and kill" the al Qaeda leader. But, the Daily Mail asks, what if bin Laden isn't alive? What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept 'alive' by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.37 Professors Angelo Codevilla of Boston University and Bruce Lawrence of Duke University point out that the early, verifiable videotapes of bin Laden do not match the tapes that have emerged since 2002 – and even one in late 2001. Telltale distinguishing features include a changed facial structure and increasing secularism in the content of the messages. The article then presents the findings of Dr. Griffin's book on the topic – Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? – as "provoking shock waves". This book presents evidence that bin Laden died, probably due to kidney failure, in mid-December 2001, which would mean that his taped messages since then have been faked to "stoke up waning support for the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan." Perhaps the most controversial of all the tapes was released by the Pentagon on December 13, 2001, claiming that it had been found in a home in Jalalabad. Prior to this tape, bin Laden had, while praising the 9/11 attacks, consistently denied responsibility for them. But the bin Laden of this tape boasts about having planned them. President Bush, the Blair Government, and the mainstream media all hailed this message as offering conclusive proof of bin Laden's guilt. The Daily Mail, however, points to various reasons provided in Griffin's book to believe that the man in this video was an imposter. It refers to the existence of a "highly sophisticated, special effects film technology to morph together images and vocal recordings." And it quotes Griffin as saying: "The confession tape came exactly when Bush and Blair had failed to prove Bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 and both men were trying to win international public support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the anti-terrorist campaign." Far from seeking to ridicule Griffin's book, the Daily Mail concluded thus: "[T]he Bin Laden tapes have emerged with clockwork regularity as billions have been spent and much blood spilt on the hunt for him. Bin Laden has been the central plank of the West's 'war on terror'. Could it be that, for years, he's just been smoke and mirrors?" Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 2400-word article is the first serious mainstream coverage the evidence that Osama bin Laden is dead – and has been for many years. Case Study 10. The New Statesman announces Dr. David Ray Griffin as No. 41 in "The Fifty People who Matter Today," September 24, 2009 Two weeks after the Daily Mail article, a second corporate British publication put Griffin in 41st place in a list of people who "matter today.”38 Because this article was discussed in my earlier paper, Part I of this series, it is mentioned here only as a significant milepost, one that gave (grudging) recognition to the fact that the movement challenging the official account of 9/11 can no longer be ignored. Its impact on the media is shown by the fact that the New Statesman placed Dr. Griffin (who scores 200,000 results when googled) above Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, (who scores over 11 million results) on its list of influential people. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). Although the New Statesman called the movement represented by Dr. Griffin "pernicious", its evaluation of his importance represents a point of no return in the media coverage of 9/11 – as we shall see. Case Study 11: Jean-Marie Bigard on France 2 Public Television, October 28, 2009 Back in September 2008, Jean-Marie Bigard, France's most popular stand-up comedian, was led to apologize for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government.39 But by July 2009, Bigard had started to post humorous videos on his website ridiculing the official account of the September 11 attacks. In October 2009, Bigard and award-winning French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz appeared for an hour in a debate on France 2, the publicly owned French national television channel.40 The hosts, who had refused to include the scientist who was originally supposed to be on the show (Dr. Niels Harrit) attempted to center the debate on "straw man" theories that neither Bigard nor Kassovitz held. This led to arguments, which then allowed Le Figaro, France's second largest newspaper, to dismiss the debate as "noisy sophistry".41 Concluding Comment: (Public). Although this program was aimed at debunking the 9/11 movement, as shown by its refusal to include a scientist, the fact that it was aired on this state-owned network was a breakthrough, ending the era in which 9/11 questioning was ignored in France. Case Study 12: "The Unofficial Story", by CBC's The Fifth Estate, November 27, 2009 On November 26, 2009, Canada's largest newspaper, The Globe and Mail, noting in an objective review42 that the 9/11 truth movement is "gathering steam," reported that a documentary airing that evening "follows up on some fairly startling public-opinion polls of late." It was referring to "The Unofficial Story",43 a program in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's weekly award-winning investigative series, The Fifth Estate.44 Host Bob McKeown, himself a recipient of multiple awards45, opened by saying that eight years after the "most scrutinized day in history", there may be "more questions than ever", and that an increasing number of people now believe the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks. "Incredibly", he adds, "public opinion polls now show that a majority of Americans believe the Bush Administration had advance knowledge of those attacks, and one way or another allowed them to happen, and polls show that one Canadian in three believes that, too." "The Unofficial Story" then allows leading members of the 9/11 truth community to present a spectrum of evidence on various issues: Architect Richard Gage on how the towers were brought down by controlled demolition Canadian scientist A.K. Dewdney on the impossibility of cell phone calls at high altitude David Ray Griffin on the FBI's 2006 admission that, although US Solicitor General Ted Olson had reported receiving two calls from his wife, CNN commentator Barbara Olson on Flight 77, the evidence indicates that she attempted only one call and that it was "unconnected" and hence lasted "zero seconds" Dr. Griffin and Canadian media commentator Barrie Zwicker on the military's explanation of why it did not intercept the airliners 9/11 documentary filmmaker Craig Ranke on the fact that footage of the Pentagon attack is virtually unavailable to the public in spite of many cameras trained on the building Dewdney on evidence that Flight 93 was shot down by the US military Richard Gage on the presence of nano-thermite in the World Trade Center dust In response, defenders of the official account, such as Johnathan Kay (of Canada's National Post) and 9/11 Commission counsel John Farmer, focus more on why the American public is susceptible to conspiracy theories, than on the disputed evidence itself 46 – although Kay does credit Richard Gage for being involved in a serious quest for truth. Jim Meigs, Editor-in-Chief of Popular Mechanics, also directs comments against the skeptics themselves rather than their evidence. Conspiracy theorists, he says, are deluded by "the myth of hyper-competence" in relation to the failure of the US Air Force to intercept the planes. However, Brent Blanchard, presented as a demolition expert, argues against the controlled demolition theory by producing seismographs showing the absence of spikes that, he says, would have been produced by explosions. He also expressed concern that people around the world, by reporting US government complicity in 9/11 "as fact", are affecting how people view America. But actor Daniel Sunjata (of "Rescue Me") ponders the price of not asking the hard questions: "Sometimes boils need to be lanced. Sometimes poison needs to be brought to the surface in order for real healing to take place." McKeown concludes: "We did it not to promote one side or the other, but to shine some light on some of those unresolved issues and unanswered questions." And indeed, the program website published links to both sides of the issue.47 Concluding Comment: (Public). This hour-long documentary was the first truly fair opportunity in North America for advocates of the "unofficial story" of 9/11 to present some of their case on mainstream television. Representatives of the "official story" were also given time to speak, but their case was patently weaker. This imbalance was allowed by the producers, and indeed by the Canadian government, to stand. Aired several times across Canada, this program drew unusually high viewer commentary. Case Study 13: New Zealand TV's "Close Up" hosts Architect Richard Gage, November 27, 2009 The same day "The Unofficial Story" was broadcast by the CBC, Richard Gage appeared on New Zealand TV's popular public affairs program, Close-Up, for a six-minute interview.48 "WTC 7 was never hit by a plane but it still came down," the host begins, "and that's what troubles internationally respected architect Richard Gage." Gage is then allowed to explain that the building fell straight down in 6.5 seconds, and that NIST, the agency tasked with explaining the collapse, admitted that it had come down in absolute free-fall for the first hundred feet or so. "That means the structure had to have been removed," says Gage. "There is evidence of very high-tech explosives in all the dust throughout lower Manhattan – nanothermite." Normal office fires, Gage added, would start "a large, gradual deformation – the building would tip over – it wouldn't go straight down through the path of greatest resistance." This is why 1,000 engineers and architects around the world are demanding a real investigation that includes all of the evidence at the crime scene, not just the planes and the fires, says Gage. "In the nine months prior to 9/11, we had the largest elevator modernization in history going on inside the towers…We're looking for an investigation that includes elevator companies, security companies, etcetera." Concluding Comment: (Public). New Zealand's national television station allowed open and unopposed discussion, by the founder of the world's largest professional organization calling for a new 9/11 investigation, of the claim that nano-thermite was used in a controlled demolition of the World Trade Center. The coincidence that this program and the CBC's "The Unofficial Story" both aired on the same day may prove to be a turning point in media coverage of the 9/11 issue. Case Study 14 : "9/11 Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," TruTV, Premiere December 9, 2009 TruTV is an American cable television network owned by Time Warner through its subsidiary, Turner Broadcasting. Historically, its has given live homicide trial coverage and other criminal justice programming, though it has recently expanded into more caught-on-video reality, which it calls "actuality" television. "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" premiered December 2, 2009, to an audience of 1.6 million television viewers. The former Governor of Minnesota has good cause to look into conspiracies, as seen in his December 29 episode, which shows personal experience that the "secret state" holds more power than the senior elected representatives of the people: "About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capitol to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA…And I said to them, "look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what you're doing here." Because in the CIA mission statement it says that they're not to be operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn't really give me an answer on that. And then I said, "I want to go around the room, and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do." Half of them wouldn't. Now isn't that bizarre? I'm the governor, and these guys won't even answer questions from me."49 Ventura made the 9/11 documentary after being approached by Donna March O'Connor, whose daughter died in the World Trade Center and wanted "every American exposed to the questions" about 9/11.50 Ventura's documentary contained interviews with the following people: Janitor William Rodriguez, the last man out of the North Tower and who was decorated for heroism by President Bush, who reported enormous explosions in the basements just before the plane hit up above, and whose testimony to the 9/11 Commission was ignored Physicist Steven Jones, formerly of Brigham Young University, who isolated super-thermite from the enormous dust clouds of the Twin Towers and Building 7, after which he was contacted by a consultant engineer from the Department of Homeland Security, who warned Jones that, if he published his findings "the pain would be great." Explosives expert Van Romero, of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, demonstrating how super-thermite can be painted onto a steel beam, causing it to burn through Ground Zero rescue worker Mike Mallone, who reported seeing one of the four black boxes removed from the site, and was told of two others – and who was told by the FBI that if he talked about it, "there would be a problem." Investigative journalist Dave Lindorff, who was told "off the record" by a contact in the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the boxes, that all four had been recovered by the FBI and taken away, though officially, the contact said, this would be denied Air crash investigator Dale Leppard, who said that the bright orange heat-resistant boxes are never lost Yet the 9/11 Commission Report claimed that the boxes from American 11 and United 175 were never found. Ventura concluded by asking: "If everything they told us was true, then why would they need to stonewall us?" Concluding Comment: (Corporate). By calling his series "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura", he openly declares that conspiracies do exist, and that they are a legitimate subject to investigate. According to TruTV, the first episode drew 1.6 million viewers, a record for a new series on this network. Case Study 15: German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth Questions the Official 9/11 Investigation, December 15, 2009 Heinz Heise is a German publishing house, which publishes Europe's most popular computer and technology journals. It also owns Heise Online (heise.de), which is a top-50 site in Germany, and a top-1000 website in the world as a whole. On December 15 2008, Heise Online carried an interview with German Federal Judge Dieter Deiseroth on the legality of the Afghanistan war and the question of whether the attacks were adequately investigated in the US.51 In his response, Deiseroth made the following points: The 9/11 Commission consisted of Bush Administration officials who were very close to the military industrial complex. Now, over eight years after 9/11, no independent court has applied legal procedures to review the available evidence on who was responsible for the attacks. It is not acceptable for a constitutional state to dispense with the necessary steps in identifying suspects and instead to declare war, bomb a foreign country where suspects reside, and place it under military occupation. Having made the claim that bin Laden was responsible for the terrorism of 9/11, the United States was under burden of proof, and yet America's own FBI admits that it has no evidence presented in court of Osama bin Laden's responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This “top-50” online journal exposed many German people to the illegal and unconstitutional responses to the 9/11 attacks – which were the underpinning for the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and even to questions about the truth of the official account of 9/11 itself. Case Study 16: Germany's “Focus Money” says: “We Do Not Believe You!” January 8, 2010 With 450,000 to 720,000 readers, Focus Money is the second most popular German weekly business magazine. In January 2010, it published a 5-page, highly detailed, and comprehensively researched glossy feature, "We do not believe you!"52 The article first looks at the many professional 9/11 groups, as well as a 2,000-strong list of prominent and qualified people who question the 9/11 Commission Report at the Patriots Question 9/11 website. It quotes Richard Gage saying: "The towers accelerated without interruption in free fall…as if the lower 90 floors of the building did not exist. The only way to bring them down like that is controlled demolition." The article weighs Gage's list of ten features of a controlled demolition, which were exemplified in the World Trade Center collapses, against the three features of a fire-caused destruction, which were absent. Focus Money also explores the case of Barry Jennings, a former Deputy Director of Emergency Services in New York's Housing Authority, who reported being trapped in WTC 7 after massive explosions in this building occurred in the morning – before the Twin Towers fell. Focus Money also reported that Jennings, aged 53, died mysteriously just days before NIST's report on WTC-7 was to be released in August 2008. The article recommends films that challenge the official report, including "Loose Change", which has been seen 125 million times on Google video alone, "9/11 Mysteries," and "Zero" – all available online. Regarding the Pentagon, experienced commercial pilots are cited as maintaining that no one, let alone a Cessna pilot, could fly the route that Flight 77 allegedly took to hit the building. The article pointed out the lack of debris to support the official story: "There was no tail, there were no wings, no confirmation of the crash of a Boeing 757." And there were no titanium engines, which would have survived the crash. Also cited was Sergeant Lauro Chavez of the US Central Command in Florida, who was involved in exercises the morning of 9/11 to hijack planes and fly them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the White House. He asks why, when it became clear that the attacks were real, were the rogue planes not intercepted? Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, in which he reported a conversation between Dick Cheney and a young officer prior to the strike on the Pentagon, supports Chavez' conviction that there had been a stand-down order. Concluding Comment: (Corporate). This 5,400-word article presented strong evidence against the official 9/11 account to Germany's economic and political decision-makers. Case Study 17: Televised documentary, "The BBC's Conspiracy Files: Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" January 10, 2010 In January 2010, a BBC News article53 summarized evidence supporting both sides of the question stated in the title of its upcoming documentary, "Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" – a title taken from the David Ray Griffin book that was previously discussed in a Daily Mail article.54 The documentary, which was part of the BBC Conspiracy Files series, opened by presenting evidence that bin Laden has long been dead, including the following points: Bruce Riedel, chair of President Obama's policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, says the bin Laden trail is cold, "frozen over," meaning that there has been no intelligence on bin Laden since Tora Bora, either by sightings or intercepted communications. Various lines of evidence suggest that bin Laden was suffering from advanced kidney disease: CBS News reported, for example, that he was being treated in the kidney ward of a hospital in Pakistan the night before the 9/11 attacks, and the last of the undoubtedly authentic videotapes showed him frail and gaunt, with a whitish beard. There were reports of his funeral in mid-December 2001 in Pakistani and Egyptian newspapers. Former CIA agent Robert Baer, who believes bin Laden to be dead, reported that none of his friends in the CIA could state for certain that bin Laden was still alive. Colonel Iman, Pakistan's former troop trainer, also believes him to be dead. The only proof of bin Laden's continuing existence is the audio and videotapes, and Dr. Griffin has presented evidence (about the structure of bin Laden's face and hands, and the secular content of his messages)that some of them are clearly faked, leading to the suspicion that they all are. Pakistan's former Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who knew bin Laden, supports this conclusion with regard to the alleged confession video. Professor Bruce Lawrence of Duke University, a student of the bin Laden tapes, also declared it a fake, especially because bin Laden always loved the spotlight. He asks why bin Laden has been seen so infrequently on video and why his contemporary, Ayman al-Zawahiri is seen so often.55 The BBC narrator says that only six of bin Laden's 40 messages were videotapes, and only two have appeared since Tora Bora in 2001. Dr Griffin says the first video appeared conveniently just before the 2004 US election, which helped Bush to win; and the second appeared in 2007, showing a very black beard, which had formerly been almost white.56 CIA agent Robert Baer confirmed that the alleged bin Laden audio and video tapes could have been faked through digital manipulation. The BBC program also presented evidence that is believed by some to show that the US may not have been intent on capturing or killing bin Laden: Dalton Fury, commander of the secret Delta Force, says it was "odd" that Washington denied him nearby troops and artillery when he had bin Laden trapped at Tora Bora in December 2001. Mike Scheuer, formerly of the CIA bin Laden Unit, said the US had ten chances to easily kill bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. Each time the CIA briefed the White House of the opportunity, the decision was made not to shoot. In the final third of the program, the BBC provided rather weak evidence against "the theory that Osama bin Laden died 8 years ago and the US government is keeping him alive, faking videos, and sending troops to battle and allowing them to die in pursuit of an imaginary foe." However, a reviewer for the TV and Radio section of the The Independent, one of London's leading newspapers, complained that this rebuttal was too little, too late, saying: "The Conspiracy Files film about Osama Bin Laden was a dubious affair, which gave regrettable amounts of air time to an obsessive 9/11 "truther" called David Ray Griffin. . . . Griffin only got the airtime, as it turned out, so that Conspiracy Files could systematically work their way through his claims and dismiss them. But I think they grievously overestimated the capacity of common sense to mop up the pollution of paranoid fantasy that they actively helped to spread around in the first 45 minutes of the film."57 This seemed to be the commentator's way of saying that the BBC's show probably increased the number of people who believe that bin Laden is probably dead. Concluding Comment: (Public). This program attempts to neutralize the evidence that bin Laden has been dead for 8 years, which if true would mean that fabricated tapes are helping to justify a continuing Western offensive in the Middle East. That the program was made at all shows how seriously the BBC is taking the growing challenge to the official story of 9/11. Case Study 18 : An American Union Paper Calls for a New Probe, February 1, 2010 The New Hampshire Union Leader is a daily union newspaper seen by 143,000 people per month in the United States. Beth Lamontagne Hall of the Union Leader wrote in February 2010 that "Keene resident Gerhard Bedding doesn't buy the government's version of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, so he's working on a statewide campaign calling for another investigation into the terrorist attacks.58 Bedding and others, she reported, are petitioning New Hampshire's congressional delegates to push for an independent investigation into "all the evidence and unanswered questions" pertaining to the 9/11 attacks. Quoting Bedding's statement that a new investigation is needed "in light of new evidence that has appeared in the last two years," she pointed out that he mentioned, in particular, the report that scientists had found traces of explosives at the World Trade Center. Concluding Comment: (Independent). This article in a daily union newspaper is a significant indicator, more than eight years after the attacks, of the broadening concern over the truth about 9/11, and is another example of the widespread influence of the nano-thermite paper published by Dr. Harrit and his co-authors. IV. Summary and Concluding Observations 1. In the past year, in response to emerging independent science on the 9/11 attacks, nine corporate, seven public, and two independent media outlets aired examinations of the issue, which were all – with the exception of the National Geographic special – reasonably objective, examining the issue as a legitimate scientific controversy worthy of debate (not as "conspiracy theorists" vs. science and common sense). 2. Eight countries – Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and Russia – have allowed their publicly-owned broadcasting stations to air the full spectrum of evidence challenging the truth of the official account of 9/11. 3. These developments may reflect a relaxation in the international media following the change in the US and British leaderships. 4. These developments definitely reflect, in any case, the fact that scientists in the 9/11 Truth Movement have recently succeeded in getting papers, such as the nano-thermite paper, published in peer-reviewed journals. 5. These developments surely also reflect the general professionalism of the 9/11 Truth Movement, as exemplified by the emergence of not only Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth but also Firefighters, Intelligence Officers, Lawyers, Medical Professionals, Pilots, Political Leaders, Religious Leaders, Scholars, and Veterans for 9/11 Truth. 6. These developments seem to reflect, moreover, an increased recognition of the importance of the 9/11 Truth Movement, which is demonstrated by two honors given to its most influential member, Dr. David Ray Griffin, that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago: the choice by Publishers Weekly of one of his books as a "Pick of the Week," and his inclusion in the New Statesman's list of the most important people in the world today. This more open approach taken in the international media – I could also have included the Japanese media – might be a sign that worldwide public and corporate media organizations are positioning themselves, and preparing their audiences, for a possible revelation of the truth of the claim that forces within the US government were complicit in the attacks – a revelation that would call into question the publicly given rationale for the military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The evidence now being explored in the international media may pave the way for the US media to take an in-depth look at the implications of what is now known about 9/11, and to re-examine the country's foreign and domestic policies in the light of this knowledge. Elizabeth Woodworth is a retired professional health sciences librarian, and a freelance writer. She is the author of two published books and many articles on political and social justice issues. Notes 1 "The 50 People Who Matter Today," New Statesman, September 24, 2009 (http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2009/09/world-fashion-gay-india-church ). Note that Part I of this series, entitled "The Media Response to the Growing Influence of the 9 /11 Truth Movement: Reflections on a Recent Evaluation of Dr. David Ray Griffin," was published by Global Research, December 12, 2009 (http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16505) 2 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol. 2 (April 3, 2009): 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm) 3 Ibid., p. 29. 4 Ibid., p. 29. 5 Dr. Harrit is Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry, and has been a faculty member at the Nano-Science Center at the University of Copenhagen since this Center started in 2001. (http://nano.ku.dk/english/ ) 6 "Danish Scientist Niels Harrit on Nano-thermite in the WTC Dust (English subtitles)," TV2 News, Denmark, April 6, 2009 ( ). 7 By Lars Sobiraj, May 24, 2009,"Germany's gulli.com (link obsolete now) Interviews Dr. Niels Harrit on Nanothermite at the WTC," Sunday May 24th, 2009 1:28 PM, http://911truth.org/article_for_printing.php?story=20090525150347423 8 Kevin R. Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermite," July 2, 2008, (http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST_and_Nano-1.pdf ) 9 Dr. Andrzej W. Miziolek, "Nanoenergetics: An Emerging Technology Area of National Importance," In: US Department of Defense. "Special Issue: DOD Researchers Provide a Look Inside Nanotechnology," Amptiac Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2002, p. 44 (http://www.p2pays.org/ref/34/33115.pdf ) The article reports that, "Very simply, nanoenergetics can store higher amounts of energy than conventional energetic materials and one can use them in unprecedented ways to tailor the release of this energy so as to maximize the lethality of the weapons." p. 43. 10 See the IoN Advisory Group at http://www.nano.org.uk/aboutus/ukboard.htm 11 My italics. [News]: "Active Thermitic Material Confirmed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," June 15, 2009 (http://www.nano.org.uk/news/jun2009/latest1881.htm) 12 Thomas Hoffmann, "Danish scientist: an explosive nano material found in dust from the World Trade Center", Videnskab.dk, April 3, 2009 (http://www.videnskab.dk/composite-1945.htm ) 13 Thomas Hoffmann, "Niels Harrit: Scientific evidence of long-time knowledge of 9/11," Videnskab.dk, April 3, 2009 (http://www.videnskab.dk/composite-2019.htm ) 14 Milla Mølgaard, April 4, 2009, (http://politiken.dk/indland/article684567.ece ) 15 "Niels Harrit presents evidence for nano-thermite in WTC, on GoodMorning Denmark," (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAUUKPfdeQA ) 16 Posted at: http://www.javno.com/en-world/video--911-no-longer-taboo-topic-in-denmark_250703 17 "Did nano-thermite take down the WTC?" (http://rt.com/Best_Videos/2009-07-09/Did_nano-thermite_take_down_the_WTC.html , and http://rt.com/Politics/2009-07-09/Did_nano-thermite_take_down_the_WTC.html?fullstory ) . Also available on youtube as "Dr. Niels Harrit on Russia Today – We need a real 9/11 investigation," (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVbF1ndquZI&feature=PlayList&p=4B3A9D67894B7184&playnext=1&playnext_ from=PL&index=20 ) 18 Brian Stelter, "The Political Suspicions of 9/11," New York Times, February 1, 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/business/media/02fx.html?_r=2&ref=business ) 19 Fox News, "'Rescue Me' From 9/11 Conspiracy Theories," February 4, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,487906,00.html ) 20 The mock trial is available on youtube in 4 parts: "911 Devil's Advocate – English subs – Part 1 of 4", starts at 21 This is said at the beginning of "911 Devil's Advocate – English subs – Part 2 of 4", at See also, Craig Morris, "Mistranslated Osama bin Laden Video – the German Press Investigates," December 23, 2001 (http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/16801 ) 22 Joshua Rhett Miller, "Dutch TV Show Feeds Conspiracy Theories on Bin Laden's Role in 9/11," Fox News, April 25, 2009 (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,516195,00.html ) 23 Johanthan Kay, "Richard Gage: 9/11 truther extraordinaire," Financial Post, Saturday, April 25, 2009 (http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=f54cf9ee-4637-44de-8819-19d918b3241b&k=21893 ) 24 The radio program may be heard at this link, in Norwegian, without subtitles ) 25 Norwegian State Radio initiates public debate on 9/11 Truth (update), (http://zelikow.wordpress.com/2009/05/22/norwegian-state-radio-initiates-public-debate-on-911-truth/ ) 26 Richard Gage interviewed by Kim Stephens and Kopi Sotiropulos on KMPH Fox 26 in Fresno, CA, May 28, 2009 ( ) 27 "9/11: Science and Conspiracy", (http://www.shallownation.com/2009/08/31/national-geographic-9-11-science-and-conspiracy-video-photo s/). National Geographic Channel is a joint venture of National Geographic Television & Film and Fox Cable Networks. 28 Tom Conroy. "'9/11: Science and Conspiracy' not quite," Media Life Magazine, August 31, 2009 (http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/TV_Reviews_21/9_11_Science_and_Conspiracy_not_quit e.asp ) 29 Maxine Shen, "The Story Behind 9/11: Hit or Myth? Taking on the Truthers," New York Post, September 2, 2009 (http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainment/tv/item_tPXUgMFRZVQywHJg28ON7J;jsessionid=5113BAC6DC385827B14 86E60DAA759A8#ixzz0eY7F97Dx) 30 The website for this publication is http://www.tvhus.de/home/home.html 31 Hannes Wellmann, "Die Geheimakten von 9/11," TV Hören und Sehen, August 31, 2009. The article and its English translation have been downloaded to http://www.911video.de/news/020909/ 32 Whereas the article focuses primarily on Bay-Area resident Richard Gage, Santa Barbara is the home of David Ray Griffin, so the Independent version gave more space to him, even including his photo. 33 Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie, "Twin Towers, Twin Myths?" Santa Barbara Independent, September 17, 2009 (http://www.independent.com/news/2009/sep/17/twin-towers-twin-myths/ ) 34 Jay Levin and Tom McKenzie, "Explosive Theory," MetroActive, September 9, 2009, (http://www.metroactive.com/metro/09.09.09/cover-0936.html) 35 "Is conspiracy behind the World Trade Center's collapse?" (http://www.independent.com/polls/2009/sep/wtc09/results/ ) 36 "Norwegian TV examines 911 part 1," September 10, 2009, ( ) The TV program was followed by a written account of it: Lars Ole Skjønberg, "World Trade Center ble sprengt" ("World Trade Center was Blown Up,") September 10, 2009, http://www.nrk.no/programmer/tv/schrodingers_katt/1.6769275 ). Further information and partial transcripts are available at "Norwegian State Television presents 9/11 Truth (en subs), (update) (http://zelikow.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/norwegian-state-television-presents-911-truth/ ) 37 Sue Reid, "Has Osama Bin Laden been dead for seven years – and are the U.S. and Britain covering it up to continue war on terror?" Daily Mail, September 11, 2009 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years--U-S-Britain-c overing-continue-war-terror.html ) 38 New Statesman, "The 50 People who Matter Today." 39 "French comedian apolgises for claiming 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government," Belfast Telegraph, September 10, 2008 (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/french-comedian-apologises-for-claiming-911-was-o rchestrated-by-the-us-government-13968453.html ) 40 "L'objet du scandale, 11 septembre, Bigard, Kassovitz," The program is also available with English subtitles, at http://world911truth.org/911-debate-with-kassovitz-and-bigard/ . The debate was originally intended to include journalist Éric Laurent and Prof. Niels Harrit, but apparently France 2 could not find anyone to debate them. See "France 2 backs away from real debate, censors Niels Harrit and Éric Laurent," October 24, 2009, http://world911truth.org/france-2-backs-away-from-real-debate-censors-niels-harrit-and-eric-laurent/ . 41 Hervé de Saint Hilaire, «L'objet du scandale» : sophismes bruyants, Le Figaro, 30 octobre 2009 (http://www.lefigaro.fr/programmes-tele/2009/10/30/03012-20091030ARTFIG00348-l-objet-du-scandale-sop hismes-bruyants-.php ) 42 Andrew Ryan, "Was 9/11 a conspiracy? 'Truthers' make their case: CBC's fifth estate airs The Unofficial Story," The Globe and Mail, November 26, 2009 (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/was-911-a-conspiracy-truthers-make-their-case/article13789 76/ ) 43 CBC. The Fifth Estate. "The Unofficial Story", November 27, 2009 (http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/the_unofficial_story/ ) 44 The Fifth Estate has won 243 awards, including an Oscar for best documentary, three international Emmy Awards, and 31 Geminis. 45 McKeown's awards include two Emmys, two Geminis, two Edward R. Murrow awards, two Gracies, two National Headliner awards and a National Press Club award. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_McKeown ) 46 It is worth noting that attempts to derail critics of the official story have often framed the issue as "conspiracy theorists" vs. "the science" or vs. "the facts." But as the current essay illustrates, the debate is now increasingly being framed in the media as science on one side of the issue vs. science on the other side. 47 The Fifth Estate, at http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/the_unofficial_story/links.html 48 "Richard Gage AIA on New Zealand National Television," November 27, 2009 ( ) 49 "Conspiracy Theory Episode 4 Big Brother with Jesse Ventura," December 29, 2009 (http://conspiracytheoryjesseventura.com/forums/index.php?board=2.0 ) 50 "9/11 Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," TruTV, Premiere Wed, December 9 at 10PM (http://www.conspiracytheoryjesseventura.com/2009/12/watch-episode-2-911-conspiracy-theory-jesse-ven tura/ ) Also at "Conspiracy theory with Jesse Ventura – 9/11 part 1," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Uw5Bz-oL3w ) 51 Marcus Klöckner, "Das schreit geradezu nach Aufklärung," December 15, 2009 (http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/31/31729/1.html ). The English Google translation is at http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. heise.de%2Ftp%2Fr4%2Fartikel%2F31%2F31729%2F1.html&sl=de&tl=en ) 52 Oliver Janich, Focus Money, No. 2/2010, January 8, 2010 (http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/terroranschlaege-vom-11-september-2001-wir-glauben-euch-nicht_aid _467894.html ). For English Google translation, see http://translate.google.ca/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. focus.de%2Ffinanzen%2Fnews%2Fterroranschlaege-vom-11-september-2001-wir-glauben-euch-nicht_aid_46789 4.html&sl=de&tl=en . For English introduction and commentary, see http://www.911video.de/news/080110/en.html . 53 Mike Rudin, "The Conspiracy Files," BBC News, January 9, 2009 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8444069.stm ) 54 David Ray Griffin, "Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" Interlink Books, 2009. The documentary, "The BBC's Conspiracy Files: Osama bin Laden – Dead or Alive?" January 10, 2010, is now periodically available on BBC stations throughout the world, and presently available on youtube: "BBC: Osama Bin Laden; Dead or Alive (1/6)," (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpqg9SF2x50&feature=related ). 55 A Wikipedia article lists 34 videos of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri that have been released since May 2003. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videos_of_Ayman_al-Zawahiri) 56 Frames from the 2004 and 2007 videos may be seen side by side in the online article: David Ray Griffin, "Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?" Global Research, October 9, 2009 (http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15601 ) 57 Tom Sutcliffe, "Last Night's Television: By The People: The Election of Barack Obama, Sat, BBC2; Conspiracy Files: Osama Bin Laden – Dead or Alive?, Sun, BBC2," The Independent, January 11, 2010 (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/last-nights-television-by-the-people-the -election-of-barack-obama-sat-bbc2brconspiracy-files-osama-bin-laden-ndash-dead-or-alive-sun-bbc2-18 63741.html ) 58 Beth Lamontagne Hall, "NH group cites need for new 9/11 probe," New Hampshire Union Leader, February 1, 2010 (http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleId=c2822a9b-f0c3-4f03-b8c3-09c3e0765b2f&headline=NH+ group+cites+need+for+new+9%2f11+probe )

Amin, Akhi Allah u Baahne We all need a wake up call from time to time. Note to Nomads: eNuri is temporarily unjustifiably preoccupied with worldly concerns, I guess in these difficult days, being busy can also be a blessing! alhamdulillah Nur

Breaking News! TERRORIST GROUPS IN THE MASJIDS ( MOSQUES) Latest news reports are that five terrorist cell groups have been operating in many of our masjidS. They have been identified as: Bin Gossipin', Bin Arguin', Bin Fightin', Bin Complainin', and Bin Missin'. Their leader, Iblis Bin Shaitan, trained these groups to destroy the muslim community. The plan is to enter the masjid disguised as Muslims and to work from within to discourage, disrupt, and destroy. However, there have been reports of a sixth group. A tiny cell known by the name Bin Prayin' is actually the only effective counter terrorism force in the masjid. Unlike other terrorist cells, the Bin Prayin' team does not blend in with whoever and whatever comes along. Bin Prayin' does whatever is needed to uplift and encourage the muslim community. We have noticed that the Bin Prayin' cell group has different characteristics than the others. They have Bin Workin', Bin Studyin', Bin Fastin', Bin Givin' and Bin Patiently Perseverin' in the cause of Allah! Author: Unknown

Nomads As of this writing, hundreds of thousands of Somalis are in dire need for your assistance. Please uplift their spirits by giving a helping hand Justify the value of your existence on earth, Give a little of yourself for a worthy cause, the Internally Displaced, The Orphans, Widows, the poor, and your own needy Qaraabo. Nur

Akhi Ngonge you write: ^^ Khaaf Allah ya Nur and LX. If you don't know, can't articulate yourself or are confused just say so. Best advice on the forum, may Allah reward you for that great advice and make me heed it always. Akhi, Wallahi, I am juggling many balls these days, and I hardly have time to articulate and post. This problem is compounded by the fact that my habit ha always been to write my thoughts on the go, and lately, all the time I get is enough for checking the content on the board to make sure that everyone is abiding by SOL golden rules. Akhi, if there is any topic that I have spent most of my time reading, researching and then simplifying for others, it is the Tawheed, Shirk, Kufr and Nifaaq topics. The reason that I have posted pointers on the Dawlah Riddah thread instead of fully developed thesis, is due to scarcity of time. I have thus opted to post parts of the argument blocks as place holders for me as well as food for thought for the audience follwing the topic. InshAllah, I will connect the dots in time ( A Month is an ample period, hopefully I wouldn't need it) Rest assured akhi that I never take any criticism as personal, never sensed harshness at all, but a brotherly advice and empathy. My job requires Islamic Ethics of " Quuluu lil naasi xusnaa" and " Quulluu qawlan sadiidaa" Nur

Rayaan bro lol at Waxaad leedayay Chief Little BigHorn of Sio.ux rules. Also, Big Mush, Black Fox, Pontiac, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, powhatan and Little horn! Nur

Akhi Xiin I have just added some draft ( not a finished work yet) , so bear with me, InshAllah, I will clean it up and complete all of my thoughts on this topic since I have no time in my hands these days, and the topic is irresistibly red hot!) Nur

Akhi Xiin I've posted that article on the Suicide bombing thread, not this one, my intention was fro the record only as the article dated back to 2005, its relevance was not as an answer to questions you have raised, but a substantiation of the point of view that utter injustice is one of the drivers of this phenomena, mind you, i do not agree with all the issues that I post, just parts of them, and i leave everyone to make their minds on what the writer means. Remember, as we read an article, each one sees a different perspective, and in a discussion board like this one, the more of these perspectives the more enriching. What I intended you to comment was my above article about the Kufrness of the Constitution. I kindly ask you to read slowly, and post your comment on it. Nur

Akhi Xiin Let us study the verse that you have used to prove that its not Major Kufr to rule by the revelation of Allah. When we discuss issue this grave, its important that we not only narrate the Xukum of the Sheikh, because before him Ibn Cabbas has also said the same thing, but the difference is the Early Islamic State context in which Ibnul Cabbaas' interpretation of the verse was based and the current context of nation states that are not based on Islamic Khilafah and the supremacy of Allah's word. Akhi, first and foremost: 1. The context in which the above verse with respect to : A. The Historical Environment during the revelation of the verse is the following: The Setting is Madina, early years when Jews and Muslims who share common past revelations lived together. "O Messenger (Muhammad )! Let not those who hurry to fall into disbelief grieve you, of such who say: "We believe" with their mouths but their hearts have no faith. And of the Jews are men who listen much and eagerly to lies - listen to others who have not come to you. They change the words from their places; they say, "If you are given this, take it, but if you are not given this, then beware!" And whomsoever Allah wants to put in Al­Fitnah [error, because of his rejecting the Faith], you can do nothing for him against Allah. Those are the ones whose hearts Allah does not want to purify (from disbelief and hypocrisy); for them there is a disgrace in this world, and in the Hereafter a great torment. B. The Occasion of the revelation The verses were revealed according to the Hadeeth that was reported by Al Baraa Ibn Caazib in which a Jew with darkened face due to punishment of adultery passed by the Messenger of Allah SAWS, the Messenger asked him : " I Ask you in Allah's name, What is the judgement in your holy book about the punishment of adultery? for which the answered him, because you have asked in the name of Allah, so I have to tell you the truth, our holy book has the punishment of stoning to death for adulterer, but because our wealthy members commit a lot of that crime, we changed it for darkening the face in shame and lashing only." C. The People that the verses addressed in the first place and the actions that the verse has condemned. The Jews. who as the verses say they were Kaafiroon or disbelievers in Muahammds message although they believed in Allah SWT and the past prophets such as Abraham and Moses. 2. Definition of Xukum and Xaakim context. The word Xaakim literally means "The one who makes judgement in a given matter or a dispute" Thus a Xaakim can be one of the following: 1. The highest person in the state 2. A Minister ( Wazeer, Vizier) 3. A Judge 4. A Clerk. 5. A Counselor. The context of the gravity of the Xukum can depend on the hierarchy of the Xaakim, and I will come to it later inshaaAllah. Now, what we need to understand is the issue to be judged. We ask ourselves; is the Xukum an issue that will adversely affect: 1. The faith (affecting the Dawa work and encouraging kufr) 2. Wealth and property (affecting distribution of wealth) 3. The Mind ( allowing alcohol and Qat to be consumed) 4. Family Allowing Zinaa and Fusuuq) 5. Life ( allowing unjust killing of innocent people) Now, in light of the above , let us go back to the verses of the Holy Quraan in the same context. 44. Verily, We did send down the Taurat (Torah) [to Musa (Moses)], therein was guidance and light, by which the Prophets, who submitted themselves to Allah's Will, judged the Jews. And the rabbis and the priests [too judged the Jews by the Taurat (Torah) after those Prophets] for to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's Book, and they were witnesses thereto. Therefore fear not men but fear Me (O Jews) and sell not My Verses for a miserable price. And whosoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, such are the Kafirun. 45. And We ordained therein for them: "Life for life , eye for eye, nose for nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal." But if anyone remits the retaliation by way of charity, it shall be for him an expiation. And whosoever does not judge by that which Allah has revealed, such are the Zalimun Allah SWT warned Muhammad SAWS from playing misinterpreting the verses: but beware of them lest they turn you (O Muhammad ) far away from some of that which Allah has sent down to you. And if they turn away, then know that Allah's Will is to punish them for some sins of theirs. And truly, most of men are Fasiqun (rebellious and disobedient to Allah). The Tawheed Context We need to always keep TAWHEED CONTEXT of the issue in our minds. The Message of Prophet Muhammad SAWS that was opposed by Qureish, his own tribe revolved around TAWHEED CONTEXT. This TAWHEED CONTEXT OF Allah's SOVEREIGNTY was pioneered by Abraham May peace be upon him, the Great Patriarch of both JEWS, CHRISTIANS and MUSLIMS. Allah says in Quraan that this TAWHEED CONTEXT was meant as a road map to check if we are indeed on Allah's path or if we have diverged from it. The three cousin faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have this common word, the epitome of monotheism, the word of Allah, that "We should not worship other than Allah, and that we should not take some of us as Sovereigns over others instead of Allah" It was in the context of Allah's SOVEREIGNTY that the Jewish Jurists decided to hide or deny knowingly the stoning punishment verdict of an adulterer who happened to belong to the wealthy Jewish class, which prompted the revelation of verses of Surah Al Maidah from that same context of Tawheed (Ultimate Sovereignty of Allah as a Law Giver) From that background, we notice that in the early period, the Jews in Yathrib aka Medina, held the view that they were superior to the Polytheist Bedouins by virtue of their monotheist covenant with Allah to uphold the law of Allah which was given to Moses and hence, never to diverge from the path of Allah SWT. As we know, verses in Surah Maidah were revealed to Muslims as a reminder and a clear warning that if they fail to uphold the Law of Allah like the Jews have done, or if they manipulate the administration of Allah's Law as a double standard (one standard for the poor, and the other for the influential that they will similarly be Kuffar like the Jews. The verses conclude that the crime of not ruling according to the Torah, earned the Jews in Madina the title of Kuffaar, not a baby kufr, but a Papa Kufr. Because Kufr is a function which operates on Jews, Christians and Muslims alike if they do the Kufr action. "Lam yakuni alladina kafaruu min ahlil kitaabi wal mushrikiina munfakiina xataa ta'tiyahumul Bayinah, Rasuuluun minal Allahi yatluu suxufan Mutaharah" To see the connection between the actions of the Muslims today and the actions of the Jews in Madina, it does not take rocket science to note that if there is a legal precedent on a crime's ruling, then, naturally the same ruling will apply to a similar situations, unless we claim exceptionalism like the Jews, who claim to be the beloved and chosen people of Allah SWT and the Christians who claim to have been forgiven for all of their sins. There is a stark similarity between the Jews of Madina during the revelation of these verses and today's " Muslims", both groups claim that their actions are not grave, and its only a minor sin and hence they will only check-in an stay in "Hell Motel" for a limited time, because only Major Kufr can make them dwell in hell forever, but the crime of not ruling according to Allah's revelations is not a major league KUFR, so they reasoned. What is a mockery to assume that the contempt of the Law is a minor violation like petty theft or ignoring a traffic signal? The Prophet SAWS has warned this Ummah not to follow the straying steps of the Jews, who sold the spirit of the covenant of Allah in the form of Torah Law which was based on justice for all of humanity (Not only for the Jews as they claim) in exchange of immediate worldly gains. In his famous Hadeeth , The Messenger of Allah, Muhammad SAWS had forecasted that Muslims will follow the footsteps of the people of the book ( Jews and Christians), to the extent that that if they enter an alligator's hole ( as incredibly impossible it sounds), Muslims will follow them. From my observation, I may add, "Muslims" today, would beat them to that hole. Again, to fathom the far reaching ramifications of the concept or CONTEXT of TAWHEED, Surah al maaidah, ties two components of the TAWHEED AL ULUHIYA intimately closer; The concept of Judicial / Legislative and the Allegiance to Allah's Law (Wilaayah). The reason of this intimate connection between the Judicial aspect of Tawheed and the Allegiance aspect of the TAWHEED which the Surah al Maidah has stressed in more than one way, is based on the premises that: 1. Allah is the ONLY ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGN whose dominion covers all of the seen and unseen universe. 2. The Laws of Allah, revealed to Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad, may peace be upon them, are representing Allah's Sovereignty. 3. The Law given to Moses, may peace be upon him was complemented with that given to Jesus, may peace be upon him. (its like a new enhanced version/release of the same software by the same manufacturer) 4. The law given to Jesus, may peace be upon him was replaced by the Law given to Muhammad SAWS. (here we have a major new release that is built on the basic components of the Abrahamic Monotheist Software 5. Executing Allah's law is a sign of surrender to Allah's SOVEREIGNTY. It is a serious business! 6. Rejecting Allah's law or modifying it for the sake of worldly gain, is similar to what the Jews have done according to Surah Al Maidah, and it is a sign of denial or a contempt of the law and the law maker, Allah SWT, or as the verses describe them: KAAFIROON, FAASIQOON, ZAALIMOON, meaning, major Kufr. Major FISQ, and MAJOR ZULM, No Injustice is greater than rejecting Allah's Law and replacing it with a human Law on matters of human life which is the very creation of Allah SWT. 7. "Muslims" who claim to believe in Allah's Sovereignty aka ( TAWHEED), and that Allah's Law aka Sharia, must be followed, SHOULD NOT TAKE THOSE WHO REJECT ALLAH's LAW as WALIYY, because they are criminals according to Allah's Law, and hence from Allah's perspective, their Wilayaah for them means aiding and abetting a criminal, which is as well a crime according to all Divine scriptures such as the Torah, Gospel and Holy Quraan. The concept of Wilaayah states that: 1. Willayah of believers belongs to Allah alone 2. Those who have given wilaayah to Allah alone must have wilaayah between themselves. 3. Ruling according to Allah's Sharia is a form of worship and surrender to Allah, and the opposite is Kufr. 4. If any Somali public official with a mandate to govern fails to rule according to Sharia, rejects the supremacy of the Sharia or refuses a Sharia judgement against him/her, then, it follows that the public's Wilayah of that public official is permanently broken due to his/her blatant kufr. According to Sharia law, that person should be required to register as an agent to a foreign kufr entity, he should not be ashamed of going public with his/her beliefs since it is his/her choice. Now, let us look into the Nature of the Wilayah Concept that is described in Surah Al Maidah, in which the New Converts and believers of Islam ( Jews, Christiana and Polytheists) were commanded not to take the Jews and Christians as their Waliyy due to the corrupted nature of their beliefs and for forsaking Allah's Laws or for forgery of its morals. We first begin with following preambles: 2. Sovereignty of Allah is the basis of the issuance of the Sharia code. This implies, that any law without a Sovereign backer is not a Law. So, either Allah is the Sovereign endorsing the Law of the His Land, or its the People who lay a claim on the Land, and thus Sovereignty ( in what is known as Democracy ) 3. Sharia code is the basis of the Xukum of any situation Muslims find themselves in. This implies that all issues and disputes should be referred to Sharia Law as it represents the Sovereign whose authority we have surrendered by Default at birth and by choice when we adopted Islam as a way of life. 4. The Xukumis the basis of validity or invalidity of any action All actions or their absence are based on a particular Xukum that is either apparent or abstract which needs further substantiation. 5. If the action that was committed ( Not Ruling According to Allah's Revelation) refutes the very Judicial Xukum that the Ruler aka Xaakim was ordered to uphold and protectthen, it follows that the refutation of that given Xukum causes the infringement of the Sharia Code, which in turn causes the Sovereignty of Allah to be compromised. 7. That action of NOT RULING ACCORDING TO ALLAH'S REVELATION then becomes an action of Kufr, Not the minor Kufr, but in this context, it is the Major KUFR! 8. And the person who commits this action becomes a Kaafir. consequently, Kufr breaks The Divine Wilaayah bond between ruler and ruled according to Sharia Law. 9. Therefore, the person claiming to be the Ruler of Somalia has no Wilaayah if its shown that he did not willfully rule, even on a single instance according to Allah's revelation, and that is if we assume that he was not coerced , and that he ascended to power by virtue of Sharia law to have an authority over the public, because if the way he assumed power is not according to Sharia, then, the discussion needs to take a break and resolve that fact first. The question to ask here is " Did the "Transitional National Government" come to power by virtue of the Sharia Law, or by virtue of secular means and support? 10. Hence, in the above scenario, obedience to Allah conflicts with obedience to other than Allah, and it was reported that the Prophet SAWS said, "There is no obedience to a creature in the disobedience of Allah SWT" B. Rejection of Sharia is a denial of the Glory of Allah ( Allahu Akbar) The main objective of our creation is the worship of Allah SWT, of which recognizing His favors and appreciating His care ( Lateef) we hymn. Allah can be glorified and celebrated in many forms, both our words and actions should manifest His glory. It therefore follows that a rejection of Allah's ruling is a tantamount to contempt of Allah's Glory.Being in contempt of Allah is thus a major Kufr. C. Munaafiqqin among Believers 1.Its well known that there will always be among the believers others who do not believe and who don't accept the Sharia as the Law of the Land. These people openly announce their allegiance to Islam but in private , they undermine its application, they are known as Munafiqin or Hypocrites. And because Nifaaq resides in the hearts, and that no one can see it except Allah. Allah wanted the believers to know who the Munaafiqs among them are, because Iman and Nifaq are Intangibles in the heart, Only actions can manifest what is in a heart. And since believers can only know the Munafiqs through their actions, Allah creates a situation of Fitna ( Litmus test) that will manifest true colors of test subjects. In these Fitna times, believers surrender to Allah Law and Xukum and take fellow believers as waliyy, while Munafiqs on the other hand reject Allah’s Law and Xukum, and take NONBELIEVERS as their Waliyy! D. Composition of Iman of Ahlul Sunnah 1.Ahlul Sunnah are of the belief that iman is composed of belief and action 2.Iman is composed of Tasdeeq and Inqiyaad 3.Tasdeeq of the heart is for the revelation , like actions are for commandments 4.If there is no belief in the revelation, we say , there is no tasdeeq of the heart 5.If there is no inqiyaad of Jawaarix, we say, there is disobedience 6.Disobedience to Allah’s commandment manifests itself in two categories that differ in terms of their drivers and the duration. 7.If the motive lasts a short duration , and the driver is lust ( Sex), anger ( Murder) or greed ( Stealing), its usually a sin 8.If the motive is sustained over a longer period of time without remorse and repentance, and the driver is arrogance, or juxuud, it’s usually Kufr. 9.Rejecting to Rule according to Allah’s revelation can thus be of two categories: a. A Borderline case of a Minor Kufr (aka Major Sin), in the case of Judge on the bench who rules according to his own desire ( Ahwaa) at a single case driven by an impulse or quick greed of kickback, or bribe, b. A Major kufr in the case of Ruler who decrees a decree that is against the Sharia and then enforces it with orders to his police and soldiers, even if he claims to believe in the revelation of Allah. 10. Reference: Nisaa 60- 61, 65, .( Surah Nour 47-51) E. Moral of the Law ( Maqaasidul Sharica) 1.The Maqased Al Shariica's highest level purpose is protection of the Deen. 2.Establishing the Sharia thus requires the highest level of protection, hence the highest deterrence. 3.Rejecting any part of the Sharia represents a contempt of the whole Deen ( Tuminoona bi bacdin wa takfuruuna bi bacdin). 4.Contempt of the whole deen represents Kufr. (Surah Muhammad in detail) F. Al Maidah Verses about the violation of not Judging according to Allah's revelations. 1. The Order to Rule according to Allah’s revelations in Surah Al Maaida 49: And so judge (you O Muhammad ) between them by what Allah has revealed and follow not their vain desires, but beware of them lest they turn you (O Muhammad ) far away from some of that which Allah has sent down to you. 2. Prohibition of seeking the Xukum of the unbelievers (Today aka Democracy) because there is no system of Xukum better than Allah’s Law Almaidah 50: Do they then seek the judgement of (the Days of) Ignorance? And who is better in judgement than Allah for a people who have firm Faith. 3. Warning for compromising with any of Allah’s 4. Failure of ruling according to Allah;s xukum results in Kufr, Fisq and Zulm Verily, We did send down the Taurat (Torah) [to Musa (Moses)], therein was guidance and light, by which the Prophets, who submitted themselves to Allah's Will, judged the Jews. And the rabbis and the priests [too judged the Jews by the Taurat (Torah) after those Prophets] for to them was entrusted the protection of Allah's Book ( Torah), and they were witnesses thereto. Therefore fear not men but fear Me (O Jews) and sell not My Verses for a miserable price. And whosoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, such are the Kafirun. The above verse was addressing the Jews, warning Muslims not to follow their ways, because if they sell Allah's verses in exchange of money or if they fail to judge according to the scripture for fear of men, then like the Jews before them, they will be Disbelievers in Allah. 5. Al Kufrul Asghar is the kufr of a nicmah, like killing between Muslims and a husband who sodomizes his wife, and both crimes are severe sins, because a sin that Allah referred as kufr, is a major sin. Legalizing the Xaraam, is an action of kufr, al akbar Maaidah, 41 Mawaanic Al Takfeer( Justifications of apostate). a. Natural Justifications): Mental Challenge ( Disability) due to illness or age (too young/too old) In this case, the person who said or acted with Kufr action is Muslim By Default, Fitra b. Justifications by choice: 1. Ignorance: Depending on location, and content that he is ignorant, if he lives with Muslims and the subject is Tawheed related, he is apostate If he does not live in predominantly Muslim country and the subject is Tawheed related, he is first educated and then if he doesn't accept he becomes apostate. 2. Error: Error in judgement means no intention, any action or statement of Kufr in error is does not make a Muslim apostate. 3. Scholarly Interpretation ( Taaweel) In this case, a scholar who uttered a kufr statement with the wrong interpretation can not be declared apostate, unless he rejects clear proofs. 4. Fear/ Force/Torture: Actions or statements said under duress do not make a Muslim apostate Conclusion: Apostasy ( Takfeer) in Islam can be declared with proofs against a: 1. Person: as we have discussed above (Takffeer al mucayan) 2. Group: If the given Muslim group does not protest against the Kufr situation (in the form of not applying Sharia, or by taking those who hate Islam as allies ) or if they take no action in changing the kufr being committed in their midst by any member of the group, even though some complacent members may not agree with the Kufr being committed in their name, they collectively become Kuffar from the outset. If a given "Muslim" group commits what the kuffar have committed in Surah Al Maaidah that earned them the kufr name, it follows that they are like the kuffar according to the verse (Innakum idan mithluhum), although each person's individual case will be judged separately according to the singular conditions that govern declaring a specific person to be a kaafir as clarified above. Wallaahu Aclam Nur 2010 eNuri Caqeedah Vigils When You Kneel Down For Allah Alone, You Stand up against any Challenge!

Akhii Xin InshAllah I will post my response on that thread which is very much related to this topic from the Aqeedah perspective. Inshallah, I will also continue these "Shallow commentaries" hoping that simple people like me, who are confused by your "deep commentaries" will sort out their confusion. Nur

But you can differentiate the following two statements: 1. I would die for Islam ( a Muslim ) 2. I would kill him for his beliefs. ( A Fundamentalist Christians) My point, is, someone is in defense of his homeland and religion. The other, is on the attack for economic interests in someone else homeland. I am sure that you remember what the Crusaders have done in Palestine, rivers of blood flowing as recorded by Christian Historians, also if we enumerate killings anywhere, no adherents of any faith can compare with Christians who are ironically said to believe in turning their other cheeks and loving their enemies. 1. The Crusade 2. The Imperial invasions and subjugation of many nations worldwide 3. The Abominable Slavery in America 4. The genocide of 6 million Jews in Europe ( Germany, France, Poland and Spain) 5. The first and second Nuclear intentional use on civilians and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians 6. The killing of millions of Vietnamese 7. The killing of 1.6 Million Iraqi people 8. The killing of thousands of innocent Afghans, Palestinians, Somalis, in the name of terror. All the above was committed by Christians. ( Yet, I do not blame all of these attrocities on all Chrsitians, only those who have committed these crimes are responsible, in Islam, Allah says, ( Allaa taziru waaziratun wizra ukhraa) meaning That No one carries the burden of another. But " Fundamentalist Christian Leaders influencing foreign policy in some western countries have made every Muslim as guilty for the convenient Terror accusation. Now, compare that with very few incidents of desperate violent actions committed by Muslims, which was a direct result of unbearable accumulated oppression caused by injustice committed by the help of "Christians". Nur

The Terrorism Conundrum By Philip Giraldi January 21, 2010 "Antiwar" -- Jan. 20, 2010 -- In the wake of 9/11, almost anything the US government did was accepted uncritically by the public. The Patriot Act was quickly passed, abridging the freedoms that Americans had enjoyed for more than two hundred years with barely a whimper from Congress and the media. George W. Bush declared war on the world, defining his security doctrine as the right of the United States to act preemptively anywhere and at any time against any nation that the White House perceived to be a threat. Bush also declared his global war on terror, committing his administration to intervene using military and intelligence resources wherever his definition of terrorists was to be found. It was a devil’s bargain, reassuring the American people that the government was doing something to make them more secure while at the same time stripping them of many fundamental rights and turning topsy-turvy the international order where acts of war had hitherto been condemned as the gravest of crimes. Right from the beginning, some voices even in Congress and the mainstream media urged calm, but they were overwhelmed by those who were crying out for revenge. Revenge soon morphed into a number of ill-advised policies leading to the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Looking back on those years from the perspective of 2010 it is possible to see that it was fear that drove the nation at that time. Fear enabled the process that turned America down a dark path and was itself fed by the shapeless threat of terrorism, which was regularly invoked by those in the government. Unfortunately little has changed since 9/11 and it would be easy to close one’s eyes in Barack Obama’s America and imagine that it is 2001 and that George Bush is still president. American soldiers are ensconced in Iraq, surging in Afghanistan, and poised to intervene in places like Yemen and Somalia. Hellfire missiles fired from pilotless drones rain down on Pakistani tribesmen more frequently now than under George W. Bush. Guantánamo Prison is still open and Bagram Prison promises to become the new Abu Ghraib. And there is still fearmongering to drive the entire process, solemn words from the White House warning the American people about the continuing global terrorist threat. From the start many Americans were skeptical of George Bush’s global war on terror, recognizing it for the sloganeering that it was, security policy by bumper sticker. Terror is not a nation nor is it a group. It is a tactic. It has existed since men first picked up rocks to strike each other but in its modern form it was developed in Palestine in the 1940s when the Haganah and Stern Gangs struck against civilian targets like the King David Hotel to drive the British out. It was then used by the nascent state of Israel against Palestinian Arabs to force them to leave their homes. Terrorism consists of attacking civilian targets to demoralize the local population and weaken its ability to resist. So a terrorist must be someone who uses terror, right? Well, by some definitions yes, but not really and the word terrorist is ultimately no more enlightening than references to terror. It is much more useful to regard the groups that employ terror as political entities, using the tactic in support of what is almost invariably a broader agenda. Recognizing that reality, it has become cliché that today’s terrorist can become tomorrow’s statesman as the political winds shift. One might profitably look at some examples from groups currently or at one time considered to be “terrorist” by the world community, like Hezbollah. Hezbollah became prominent because it resisted the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. To be sure, it used the terror tactic to attack Israeli civilians in the settlements in the northern part of the country, but its principal objective was to drive out the Israeli occupiers. It finally did so in 2006, using conventional military tactics, not terror, while burnishing its reputation by providing goods and services to many of the poor in the area where it holds sway. It has become a partner in government in Lebanon, morphing into a largely conventional political party. It still skirmishes with Israel along the border between the two countries but its ability to threaten the rest of the world and, more particularly the United States, is zero. And then there were the Viet Cong in Vietnam. Did they use terror? Certainly. But they did so to establish political control over a large part of the countryside and also to spread fear in Vietnam’s cities. When they felt themselves strong enough they also engaged in stand up fights with US forces and the South Vietnamese Army. And they were overwhelmingly a political group with a political objective, i.e to replace the US puppet Vietnamese government. Did the Viet Cong ever threaten the United States through its ability to employ the terror tactic? Not in the least. Finally there is the example of the Taliban. The Taliban is referred to by the US government as a terrorist organization and it has indeed killed civilians to establish control over parts of Afghanistan. But it also fights against US and NATO forces in a conventional fashion, has worked to defeat the warlords and root out corrupt government officials, and has promised equal justice under Islamic Sharia law for the Afghan people. In many areas it is more popular than the government of President Hamid Karzai. When it previously ruled Afghanistan, it introduced strict religious rule but also eliminated drug production and warlordism. So calling it a terrorist group and indicating that you will not deal with it, except by imprisoning or killing its adherents, means that you are missing something. The group is essentially political and sees itself as a potential party of government only using terrorism as a tactic when it considers it to be necessary. The US government has essentially adopted an Israeli paradigm in refusing to deal with political opponents who employ terror. Its dismissal of groups like the Taliban as terrorists means that opportunities to engage them in terms of their true interests are being wasted. And it also makes for convenient political shorthand, rendering it unnecessary to consider the possibility that the groups involved have either legitimate grievances or positive motives. And it shapes the entire argument so as to avoid conclusions that might be considered unpleasant. It is frequently argued that the US is fighting in Afghanistan because it is better to fight “them” over there than over here. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Taliban has absolutely no interest in the United States except insofar as the US is occupying Afghanistan. As Ron Paul puts it, correctly, when there is a terrorist incident they are only over here because we are over there. When we leave “there” the “they” will not be coming over here because they have no reason to do so. So the problem is that the language we use shapes how we think about an issue. Once you get rid of the buzz words terror and terrorist, meant to create fear and uncertainty, it is possible to come to grips with a reality that is quite different. The groups that the White House and State Department calls terrorist are really political organizations that seek change that will favor their own assumption of power. There have always been such groups and always will be. Most want US forces to leave their countries, many want Washington to stop supporting corrupt and autocratic Arab governments, and nearly all want the US-tolerated Israeli humiliation of the Palestinians to cease. Looking at them in that light, it is not difficult to discern what their motives are in opposing the United States. And it is also possible to see the various groups as individual cases that have to be dealt with selectively, not as part of a nonexistent worldwide conspiracy. The truth is that the US government prefers to have an enemy that can be defined simply, in Manichean terms. It seeks to create fear among the American people by presenting terrorism as some sort of monolith while it is in reality little more than a hodge podge of diverse political groupings that have varying motivations and objectives. The only thing that they have in common is that they sometimes use terror as a tactic. And the terror tactic is itself losing appeal. The only reason that groups that espouse terror appear to be increasing in numbers is because the countries the US is occupying or attacking are also growing in number, but nevertheless the numbers are unimpressive. There are certainly fewer than a couple of thousand adherents to groups that use terror worldwide. Young Muslim men are increasingly reluctant to be drawn into the fray and there are signs that the allure of jihad as a religious duty has waned. And those who use terrorism are themselves becoming more marginal and amateurish, as was evident in the Nigerian underwear bomber, a plot that could hardly succeed even with the best of luck. If there had not been errors made in the security process and exchange of information, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have been detained before boarding the plane in Amsterdam. Americans should no longer talk of terrorism or fear it because it is largely an empty threat. One is more likely to be eaten by a shark than killed in a terrorist attack. The effectiveness of the US government in sustaining fear through its combating of terror guarantees continuous war, makes for big government, and blinds America’s policymakers to reality. There are many groups out in the world vying for power. Some are unscrupulous in how they would achieve control, including willingness to employ terror. But most could care less about Washington as long as the United States leaves them alone. Leaving them alone might well be the best foreign and security policy that the United States could embrace. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance.

Murders at Gitmo? By Conor Friedersdorf January 21, 2010 "Daily Beast" - -A new report alleges that the U.S. covered up the 2006 murders of three detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Conor Friedersdorf on why the GOP must reckon with the illegal, immoral acts of the Bush administration before mounting a return to power. With their victory in Massachusetts, Republicans are eager to defeat the Democratic health-care bill and obstruct a big-government domestic agenda that they regard as creeping tyranny. But an article in Harper’s magazine reminds us that the right is far less willing to question government and champion liberty in foreign policy. In the magazine’s March issue, writer Scott Horton provides circumstantial evidence that the United States government covered up the 2006 murders of three Guantanamo Bay detainees. The official report issued by the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service called the deaths suicides, implausibly claiming that the trio simultaneously hung themselves in separate, non-adjacent cells after binding their own hands and shoving rags down their own throats. Now four military personnel assigned to guard duty on the night in question “provide evidence that authorities initiated a coverup within hours of the prisoners’ deaths,” Mr. Horton writes, disclosing evidence “that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths.” Why raise this story now that a new administration is running the war on terrorism? We’ve long known that under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney the U.S. government set up a secret prison system where detainees were tortured, and that numerous prisoners held in extra-legal settings died due to extreme abuse by American guards or interrogators. This new case is nevertheless worth our attention. Beyond the fact that laws were broken and lives extinguished, the Gitmo Three may provide additional proof that the United States perpetrated extreme abuses of power in recent memory—a painful fact that we must acknowledge if we’re to prevent its recurrence. And yet conservatives are so far content to ignore the story. If I may address the skeptics on the right directly, it is penny wise and pound foolish to worry about creeping tyranny via government-run health care or gun control when we’re another terrorist attack away from popular support for an archipelago of secret prisons where anyone can be whisked away and tortured without any evidence against them. Look to Europe if you doubt whether government-run health care or black sites run by secret police are a more immediate threat to the liberty of innocents. Do you think that I exaggerate? Know that one of the Gitmo Three was arrested at age 17, held for some years without being charged, and scheduled for release at the time of his death due to the military’s conclusion that no evidence linked him to al Qaeda or the Taliban. We may never know exactly how he and his fellow detainees died: A conclusive, independent autopsy is impossible because their bodies were returned to their families with their throats missing. But it is notable that the ongoing coverup of circumstances surrounding their deaths implicates enlisted men; naval officers; interrogators from the CIA or the Joint Special Operations Command; the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology; and civilians in the Defense Department and the Justice Department. When a country’s armed forces and civilian leadership conspire in coverups involving dead bodies, it is inevitably corrosive to the rule of law, the morale of the brave folks who risk their lives to protect us, and our standing in a world that rightly abhors deadly corruption at secret prison sites like the one now revealed to be at Gitmo. We’ll continue to suffer all those consequences whenever we use “harsh interrogation techniques” so indefensible in their particulars that government officials sooner break the law than admit their real-world consequences. The Obama administration is to be commended for ending the torture of detainees. But President Obama is derelict in his oath to protect and defend the Constitution if he refrains from aggressively investigating cases like the Gitmo Three, and prosecuting any significant illegal acts. Equally bound by the Constitution of the United States are members of the Republican opposition. I happen to agree with them that the Democratic domestic agenda imprudently seeks to concentrate too much power in the federal government. But the GOP doesn’t deserve to control any branch of government so long as its members defend or ignore illegal, immoral acts that weakened our armed forces and disgraced our intelligence agencies the last time they held power (including years long after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks—remember that the Gitmo Three did not die until 2006). As Megan McArdle wrote, “I don’t think it’s particularly bleeding heart to think that we shouldn’t have to fake suicides to cover up for abusing prisoners. In fact, I think that’s the stance of a hard-core believer in law and order.” It is my stance because I am anxious about concentrating too much power in the federal government, and cognizant that a complex of secret prisons where we torture is a far more perilous mile marker on the road to serfdom than anything proposed by our current elected officials, however misguided their policies. Conor Friedersdorf, a Daily Beast columnist, also writes for The American Scene and The Atlantic Online's ideas blog

Nomads This discussion needs some structuring, let me try to help inshAllah. The poster of this thread, Laba X, maintains that although all of the constitutional laws in Somalia, Somaliland, Puntland claim that Islam is the basic source of the legislation, the actual articles that follow that statement act contrary to the Islamic Sharia and the Sovereignty of Allah represented in the principle of Tawheed. For this discussion to be healthy, what we need from anyone refuting the writers point of view, is the following: 1. Are all the articles in the constitution Sharia Compliant? 2. Are all the articles in the constitution Aqeedah Compliant? Note: In this context, Shariah governs the practical human-human relationship aspects such as rights, responsibilities, processes, structure, etc. while Aqeedah governs the Human - Divine relationship of Sovereignty, Supreme Authority blessing the constitution which validates it and acts as the authority that interprets it for application(The question to ask here: is it the people who are elected as lawmakers who reserve the right to legislate, or is it Allah SWT, their creator's revelations( Quraan and Sunnah) interpreted by the Ulema and Fuqahaa)?, . The outcome of the above could be one of four cases: 1. Shariah Compliant, Aqeedah Compliant ( Real Authority and Real Legislation belong to Allah ALONE) 2. Shariah Compliant, Aqeedah Non-Compliant (Real Authority belongs to the people, Sharia is fully applied, but the people reserve the right to change the Sharia at a later time by virtue of their collective supreme Authority aka Democracy) 3. Shariah Non-Compliant, Aqeedah Compliant (Real Authority belongs to Allah, Other laws used intermittently with Sharia coating) 4. Shariah Non- Compliant, Aqeedah Non- Compliant ( Both Authority and Legislation belong to the people) A. The first case is the right one B. The Second case and the last case , are clear Kufr C. The Third case , is NOT KUFR, it is a MAJOR SIN, its precisely here where the Khawaarij lost their way, this sin or ailment needs a workshop to be rectified for the constitution to become fully Sharia Compliant. (Aqeedah Compliance means that the people accept Allah's Supremacy without challenge, and that the non-compliance to the Sharia was caused by ignorance or a lack of knowledge, once the problem is presented, if the people accept Allah's authority, it reflects their Aqeedah compliance, if on the other hand they reject, it reflects their non compliance to Allah's authority, hence non compliance to Aqeedah, hence Kufr. For a detailed classification of Kufr, Nifaaq and Islam, refer to my old Aqeedah thread originally written back in 2002 below) A reader confused about her contradictory beliefs and actions once wrote me the following question for which I have responded as below: Am I A Munafiq? For which I responded with the following article: Well, that is a difficult question, first let us learn the relationship between iimaan, sin and kufr to see where Nifaaq belongs. 1. No Soul will go to Jannah if it hasn't surrendered to Allah's Authority, hence not a Muslim(a) 2. No one can be Muslim without Shahaada ( Declaration of Allah's Absolute Supremacy, Sovereignty and Unity(Tawxiid) 3. Shahaada is information, we are required to believe in and bear witness thereof. 4. The test to see if we indeed believe in information represented by the Shahaada are our deeds: So our faith is composed of a A. set of Information we are required to believe. B. Set of Commands we are ordered to obey The extent of your belief in the information that our Prophet SAWS delivered is measured by the extent of orders that we obey. In other words, our obedience to the orders of Allah, is a reflection of our belief in the information delivered to us. So , Islam is composed of a two sets: A) A set of information to be believed in, like Allah, Day of Judgement, Jannah, angels, etc . B) A set of orders to abide with, such as Prayers, (Salat), Fasting, Upholding Justice, etc . The orders are subdivided in to two categories: 1. Orders to DO something Like " Establish Regular Prayers, Judge According to Allah's Revelations of Quraan and Sunnah) 2. Orders to stay away from doing something (Do Not Kill, Do Not Lie, Do not get close to Zina, etc) First Scenario: If Allah orders us TO DO something, and we fail to comply, the reason could be: a. We do not believe in the information i.e. Allah's Sovereignty ( SAMAD), and Supremacy of Sharia. b. We believe in it but we are arrogant We believe in the Supremacy of Sharia but we insist on using our man made laws c. We are MENTALLY CHALLENGED ( Too much Miraa, Qaat, Khaat Alcohol, or fermented Camel Milk) If (a) that is clear Major Kufr If (b) That is also kufr Juxuud, the type of Sheitan, who believed in Allah yet isisted on disobeying Allah's order to bow down for Adams respect. If © Our case is similar to a mentally challenged person, we are not responsible for our actions or lack of. Second Scenario If Allah orders us DON'T DO something, and we don't comply, we have the following scenario: a. We do not believe in the information b. We are arrogant c. We can not resist temptation Like a Court Judge making a wrong judgement for Rer Qansax, momentarily blinded by influence of camel milk d. We are MENTALLY CHALLENGED All but case © are covered above. If case ©, then that is called disobedience (Sin)(Macsiyah) and it is what Adam and Eve , (Xawaa) aleyhimaa assalaam have committed. It does not make one a kaafir by itself. (The Khawaarij are the only to claim that a sin can make one a Kafir ) To generalize the above. If a person does something he is ordered NOT TO DO , the driver is more likely weakness against temptation, and that person is not a kaafir, this is the case of Adam and Eve, Aleyhimaa assalaam . If a person refuses to comply with something he is ordered TO DO the driver of his action is more likely arrogance, like the case of Sheitan, Arrogance challnges the Authority of Allah and His sovereignty, hence the Kufr al Kibar Now we visit a new territory: There is a principle for detecting iiman ( Faith) levels developed by Sheikh Ibn Taymiyah. Called (Talaazumul Dhaahir wal Baatin )( Synregy of the Apparent actions of a person with the Hidden Motives within the consciousness ) I will simplify it for you again. The inside beliefs and the outward actions of a person are always working in harmony. Except when an outside disturbance influences that person attention. When as a result, the outwardly actions of that person projects and acts contrary of what is supposed to be inside . Meaning. In Systems Science, when we input a signal into a balanced system, we observe an output that reflects the shape of the original signal output + the function of the signal that operated on the system. In the absence of outside disturbance, we can always predict the output. But when an outside element disturbs the system, the output will not be predictable. A person who is a kaafir therefore will normally act as a kaafir. Sabeelul kaafireen And a person who is a Muslim will always act like a Muslim. Sabeelul Mumineen In general, if you leave anyone alone, what he/she does is reflecting what they believe . But the minute that person feels that he/she is being observed, that feeling will somewhat effect the action of that person. An example is when you catch a child making funny faces on a mirror the child will immediately alter his behaviour to an acceptable manner. This is called conforming. End of Am I A Munaafiq Topic What we need in this argument is to refer to the above as a reference model to either prove or disprove the writers conclusion, and that will be the appropriate scholarly way of discussing an issue as important as the constitution of Somalia. Nur

Suicide Bombers Die to Attain Justice for Others Terry Eagleton, The Guardian LONDON, 27 January 2005 ” While have been blowing themselves apart in Israel and Iraq, a silence has prevailed about what suicide bombing actually involves. Like hunger strikers, suicide bombers are not necessarily in love with death. They kill themselves because they can see no other way of attaining justice; and the fact that they have to do so is part of the injustice. It is possible to act in a way that makes your death inevitable without actually desiring it. Those who leapt from the World Trade Centre to avoid being incinerated were not seeking death, even though there was no way they could have avoided it. Ordinary, nonpolitical suicides are those whose lives have come to feel worthless to them, and who accordingly need a quick way out. Martyrs are more or less the opposite. People like Rosa Luxemburg or Steve Biko give up what they see as precious (their lives) for an even more valuable cause. They die not because they see death as desirable in itself, but in the name of a more abundant life all round. Suicide bombers also die in the name of a better life for others; it is just that, unlike martyrs, they take others with them in the process. Both believe that a life is only worth living if it contains something worth dying for. On this theory, what makes existence meaningful is what you are prepared to relinquish it for. Blowing yourself up for political reasons is a complex symbolic act, one that mixes despair and defiance. It proclaims that even death is preferable to your wretched way of life. The act of self-dispossession writes dramatically large the self-dispossession that is your routine existence. Laying violent hands on yourself is a more graphic image of what your enemy does to you anyway. At the same time, the bomber forces a contrast between the extreme kind of self-determination involved in taking his own life and the lack of such self-determination in his everyday existence. If he could live in the way he dies, he would not need to die. At least his death can be his death, and thus a taste of freedom. The only form of sovereignty left to you is the power to dispose of your own death. Suicide bombers and hunger strikers are out to transform weakness into power. Because they are ready to die while their enemies are not, they score a spiritual victory over them. The ultimate freedom is not to fear death. If you no longer fear it, political power can have no hold over you. Those with nothing to lose are deeply dangerous. But suicide bombers also cheat their antagonists of the only aspect of themselves that they can control: Their bodies. By depriving their masters of this manipulable part of themselves, they become invulnerable. Nothing is less masterable than nothing. By slipping through the fingers of power, leaving it grasping at thin air, they force it to betray its own vacuousness. It is, to be sure, a pyrrhic victory. But it proclaims that what your adversary cannot annihilate is the will to annihilation. Like the traditional tragic hero, the suicide bomber rises above his own destruction by the very resolution with which he embraces it. Blowing himself to pieces in a packed marketplace is likely to prove by far the most historic event of the bombers life. Nothing in his life, to quote Macbeth, becomes him like the leaving of it. This is both his triumph and his defeat. However miserable or impoverished, most men and women have one formidable power at their disposal: The power to die as devastatingly as possible. And not only devastatingly, but surreally. There is a smack of avant-garde theater about this horrific act. In a social order that seems progressively more depthless, transparent, rationalized and instantly communicable, the brutal slaughter of the innocent warps the mind as well as the body. It is an assault on meaning as well as on the flesh is an ultimate act of defamiliarization, which transforms the everyday into the monstrously unrecognizable. ” Terry Eagleton is professor of cultural theory at Manchester University, UK

Jahnny Saxib Which believer is more aggressive, a believer who writes his conviction on his headband, or a believer who writes his conviction on his high-powered rifle sights? Nur

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has 'Always' Added New Testament References By JOSEPH RHEE, TAHMAN BRADLEY and BRIAN ROSS Jan. 18, 2010 "ABC News " — Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found. At the end of the serial number on Trijicon's ACOG gun sight, you can read "JN8:12", a reference to the New Testament book of John, Chapter 8, Verse 12, which reads: "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." The ACOG is widely used by the U.S. military. The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army. U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash. 'It violates the Constitution' The company's vision is described on its Web site: "Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom." "We believe that America is great when its people are good," says the Web site. "This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals." Spokespeople for the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps both said their services were unaware of the biblical markings. They said officials were discussing what steps, if any, to take in the wake of the ABCNews.com report. It is not known how many Trijicon sights are currently in use by the U.S. military. The biblical references appear in the same type font and size as the model numbers on the company's Advanced Combat Optical Guides, called the ACOG. A photo on a Department of Defense Web site shows Iraqi soldiers being trained by U.S. troops with a rifle equipped with the bible-coded sights. "It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws," said Michael "Mikey" Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military. 'Firearms of Jesus Christ' "It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they're being shot by Jesus rifles," he said. Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they've told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as "spiritually transformed firearm of Jesus Christ." He said coded biblical inscriptions play into the hands of "those who are calling this a Crusade." According to a government contracting watchdog group, fedspending.org, Trijicon had more than $100 million in government contracts in fiscal year 2008. The Michigan company won a $33 million Pentagon contract in July, 2009 for a new machine gun optic, according to Defense Industry Daily. The company's earnings from the U.S. military jumped significantly after 2005, when it won a $660 million long-term contract to supply the Marine Corps with sights. "This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," said Weinstein. "It's literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we're fighting. We're emboldening an enemy." Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures

The Guantánamo “Suicides”: A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle By Scott Horton January 18, 2010 "Harpers" -- 1. “Asymmetrical Warfare” When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006. Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners. As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Camp America to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion. Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS report was carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report—a reconstruction of the events—was simply unbelievable. According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously. Al-Zahrani, according to the report, was discovered first, at 12:39 a.m., and taken by several Alpha Block guards to the camp’s detention medical clinic. No doctors could be found there, nor the phone number for one, so a clinic staffer dialed 911. During this time, other guards discovered Al-Utaybi. Still others discovered Al-Salami a few minutes later. Although rigor mortis had already set in—indicating that the men had been dead for at least two hours—the NCIS report claims that an unnamed medical officer attempted to resuscitate one of the men, and, in attempting to pry open his jaw, broke his teeth. The fact that at least two of the prisoners also had cloth masks affixed to their faces, presumably to prevent the expulsion of the rags from their mouths, went unremarked by the NCIS, as did the fact that standard operating procedure at Camp Delta required the Navy guards on duty after midnight to “conduct a visual search” of each cell and detainee every ten minutes. The report claimed that the prisoners had hung sheets or blankets to hide their activities and shaped more sheets and pillows to look like bodies sleeping in their beds, but it did not explain where they were able to acquire so much fabric beyond their tightly controlled allotment, or why the Navy guards would allow such an obvious and immediately observable deviation from permitted behavior. Nor did the report explain how the dead men managed to hang undetected for more than two hours or why the Navy guards on duty, having for whatever reason so grievously failed in their duties, were never disciplined. A separate report, the result of an “informal investigation” initiated by Admiral Harris, found that standard operating procedures were violated that night but concluded that disciplinary action was not warranted because of the “generally permissive environment” of the cell block and the numerous “concessions” that had been made with regard to the prisoners’ comfort, which “concessions” had resulted in a “general confusion by the guard and the JDG staff over many of the rules that applied to the guard force’s handling of the detainees.” According to Harris, even had standard operating procedures been followed, “it is possible that the detainees could have successfully committed suicide anyway.” This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached. All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred. 2. “Camp No” The soldiers of the Maryland-based 629th Military Intelligence Battalion arrived at Guantánamo Naval Base in March 2006, assigned to provide security to Camp America, the sector of the base containing the five individual prison compounds that house the prisoners. Camp Delta was at the time the largest of these compounds, and within its walls were four smaller camps, numbered 1 through 4, which in turn were divided into cell blocks. Life at Camp America, as at all prisons, was and remains rigorously routinized for both prisoners and their jailers. Navy guards patrol the cell blocks and Army personnel control the exterior areas of the camp. All observed incidents must be logged. For the Army guards who man the towers and “sally ports” (access points), knowing who enters and leaves the camp, and exactly when, is the essence of their mission. One of the new guards who arrived that March was Joe Hickman, then a sergeant. Hickman grew up in Baltimore and joined the Marines in 1983, at the age of nineteen. When I interviewed him in January at his home in Wisconsin, he told me he had been inspired to enlist by Ronald Reagan, “the greatest president we’ve ever had.” He worked in a military intelligence unit and was eventually tapped for Reagan’s Presidential Guard detail, an assignment reserved for model soldiers. When his four years were up, Hickman returned home, where he worked a series of security jobs—prison transport, executive protection, and eventually private investigations. After September 11 he decided to re-enlist, at thirty-seven, this time in the Army National Guard. Hickman deployed to Guantánamo with his friend Specialist Tony Davila, who grew up outside Washington, D.C., and who had himself been a private investigator. When they arrived at Camp Delta, Davila told me, soldiers from the California National Guard unit they were relieving introduced him to some of the curiosities of the base. The most noteworthy of these was an unnamed and officially unacknowledged compound nestled out of sight between two plateaus about a mile north of Camp Delta, just outside Camp America’s perimeter. One day, while on foot patrol, Hickman and Davila came across the compound. It looked like other camps within Camp America, Davila said, only it had no guard towers and it was surrounded with concertina wire. They saw no activity, but Hickman guessed the place could house as many as eighty prisoners. One part of the compound, he said, had the same appearance as the interrogation centers at other prison camps. The compound was not visible from the main road, and the access road was chained off. The Guardsman who told Davila about the compound had said, “This place does not exist,” and Hickman, who was frequently put in charge of security for all of Camp America, was not briefed about the site. Nevertheless, Davila said, other soldiers—many of whom were required to patrol the outside perimeter of Camp America—had seen the compound, and many speculated about its purpose. One theory was that it was being used by some of the non-uniformed government personnel who frequently showed up in the camps and were widely thought to be CIA agents. A friend of Hickman’s had nicknamed the compound “Camp No,” the idea being that anyone who asked if it existed would be told, “No, it doesn’t.” He and Davila made a point of stopping by whenever they had the chance; once, Hickman said, he heard a “series of screams” from within the compound. Hickman and his men also discovered that there were odd exceptions to their duties. Army guards were charged with searching and logging every vehicle that passed into and out of Camp Delta. “When John McCain came to the camp, he had to be logged in.” However, Hickman was instructed to make no record whatsoever of the movements of one vehicle in particular—a white van, dubbed the “paddy wagon,” that Navy guards used to transport heavily manacled prisoners, one at a time, into and out of Camp Delta. The van had no rear windows and contained a dog cage large enough to hold a single prisoner. Navy drivers, Hickman came to understand, would let the guards know they had a prisoner in the van by saying they were “delivering a pizza.” The paddy wagon was used to transport prisoners to medical facilities and to meetings with their lawyers. But as Hickman monitored the paddy wagon’s movements from the guard tower at Camp Delta, he frequently saw it follow an unexpected route. When the van reached the first intersection, instead of heading right—toward the other camps or toward one of the buildings where prisoners could meet with their lawyers—it made a left. In that direction, past the perimeter checkpoint known as ACP Roosevelt, there were only two destinations. One was a beach where soldiers went to swim. The other was Camp No. 3. “Lit up” The night the prisoners died, Hickman was on duty as sergeant of the guard for Camp America’s exterior security force. When his twelve-hour shift began, at 6 p.m., he climbed the ladder to Tower 1, which stood twenty feet above Sally Port 1, the main entrance to Camp Delta. From there he had an excellent view of the camp, and much of the exterior perimeter as well. Later he would make his rounds. Shortly after his shift began, Hickman noticed that someone had parked the paddy wagon near Camp 1, which houses Alpha Block. A moment later, two Navy guards emerged from Camp 1, escorting a prisoner. They put the prisoner into the back of the van and then left the camp through Sally Port 1, just below Hickman. He was under standing orders not to search the paddy wagon, so he just watched it as it headed east. He assumed the guards and their charge were bound for one of the other prison camps southeast of Camp Delta. But when the van reached the first intersection, instead of making a right, toward the other camps, it made the left, toward ACP Roosevelt and Camp No. Twenty minutes later—about the amount of time needed for the trip to Camp No and back—the paddy wagon returned. This time Hickman paid closer attention. He couldn’t see the Navy guards’ faces, but from body size and uniform they appeared to be the same men. The guards walked into Camp 1 and soon emerged with another prisoner. They departed Camp America, again in the direction of Camp No. Twenty minutes later, the van returned. Hickman, his curiosity piqued by the unusual flurry of activity and guessing that the guards might make another excursion, left Tower 1 and drove the three quarters of a mile to ACP Roosevelt to see exactly where the paddy wagon was headed. Shortly thereafter, the van passed through the checkpoint for the third time and then went another hundred yards, whereupon it turned toward Camp No, eliminating any question in Hickman’s mind about where it was going. All three prisoners would have all reached their destination before 8 p.m. Hickman says he saw nothing more of note until about 11:30 p.m, when he had returned to his preferred vantage at Tower 1. As he watched, the paddy wagon returned to Camp Delta. This time, however, the Navy guards did not get out of the van to enter Camp 1. Instead they backed the vehicle up to the entrance of the medical clinic, as if to unload something. At approximately 11:45 p.m.—nearly an hour before the NCIS claims the first body was discovered—Army Specialist Christopher Penvose, preparing for a midnight shift in Tower 1, was approached by a senior Navy NCO. Penvose told me that the NCO—who, following standard operating procedures, wore no name tag—appeared to be extremely agitated. He instructed Penvose to go immediately to the Camp Delta chow hall, identify a female senior petty officer who would be dining there, and relay to her a specific code word. Penvose did as he was instructed. The officer leapt up from her seat and immediately ran out of the chow hall. Another thirty minutes passed. Then, as Hickman and Penvose both recall, Camp Delta suddenly “lit up”—stadium-style flood lights were turned on, and the camp became the scene of frenzied activity, filling with personnel in and out of uniform. Hickman headed to the clinic, which appeared to be the center of activity, to learn the reason for the commotion. He asked a distraught medical corpsman what had happened. She said three dead prisoners had been delivered to the clinic. Hickman recalled her saying that they had died because they had rags stuffed down their throats, and that one of them was severely bruised. Davila told me he spoke to Navy guards who said the men had died as the result of having rags stuffed down their throats. Hickman was concerned that such a serious incident could have occurred in Camp 1 on his watch. He asked his tower guards what they had seen. Penvose, from his position at Tower 1, had an unobstructed view of the walkway between Camp 1 and the medical clinic—the path by which any prisoners who died at Camp 1 would be delivered to the clinic. Penvose told Hickman, and later confirmed to me, that he saw no prisoners being moved from Camp 1 to the clinic. In Tower 4 (it should be noted that Army and Navy guard-tower designations differ), another Army specialist, David Caroll, was forty-five yards from Alpha Block, the cell block within Camp 1 that had housed the three dead men. He also had an unobstructed view of the alleyway that connected the cell block itself to the clinic. He likewise reported to Hickman, and confirmed to me, that he had seen no prisoners transferred to the clinic that night, dead or alive. 4. “He Could Not Cry out” The fate of a fourth prisoner, a forty-two-year-old Saudi Arabian named Shaker Aamer, may be related to that of the three prisoners who died on June 9. Aamer is married to a British woman and was in the process of becoming a British subject when he was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2001. United States authorities insist that he carried a gun and served Osama bin Laden as an interpreter. Aamer denies this. At Guantánamo, Aamer’s fluency in English soon allowed him to play an important role in camp politics. According to both Aamer’s attorney and press accounts furnished by Army Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the Camp America commander, Aamer cooperated closely with Bumgarner in efforts to bring a 2005 hunger strike to an end. He persuaded several prisoners to break their strike for a while, but the settlement collapsed and soon afterward Aamer was sent to solitary confinement. Then, on the night of June 9, 2006, Aamer says he was the victim of an act of striking brutality. He described the events in detail to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, who was permitted to speak to him several weeks later. Katznelson recorded every detail of Aamer’s account and filed an affidavit with the federal district court in Washington, setting it out: On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out. The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face “so he could not cry out” is alarming. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners. The United Kingdom has pressed aggressively for the return of British subjects and persons of interest. Every individual requested by the British has been turned over, with one exception: Shaker Aamer. In denying this request, U.S. authorities have cited unelaborated “security” concerns. There is no suggestion that the Americans intend to charge him before a military commission, or in a federal criminal court, and, indeed, they have no meaningful evidence linking him to any crime. American authorities may be concerned that Aamer, if released, could provide evidence against them in criminal investigations. This evidence would include what he experienced on June 9, 2006, and during his 2002 detention in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield, where he was subjected to a procedure in which his head was smashed repeatedly against a wall. This torture technique, called “walling” in CIA documents, was expressly approved at a later date by the Department of Justice. 5. “You All Know” By dawn, the news had circulated through Camp America that three prisoners had committed suicide by swallowing rags. Colonel Bumgarner called a meeting of the guards, and at 7 a.m. at least fifty soldiers and sailors gathered at Camp America’s open-air theater. Bumgarner was known as an eccentric commander. Hickman marveled, for instance, at the colonel’s insistence that his staff line up and salute him, to music selections that included Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the reggae hit “Bad Boys,” as he entered the command center. This morning, however, Hickman thought Bumgarner seemed unusually nervous and clipped. According to independent interviews with soldiers who witnessed the speech, Bumgarner told his audience that “you all know” three prisoners in the Alpha Block at Camp 1 committed suicide during the night by swallowing rags, causing them to choke to death. This was a surprise to no one—even servicemen who had not worked the night before had heard about the rags. But then Bumgarner told those assembled that the media would report something different. It would report that the three prisoners had committed suicide by hanging themselves in their cells. It was important, he said, that servicemen make no comments or suggestions that in any way undermined the official report. He reminded the soldiers and sailors that their phone and email communications were being monitored. The meeting lasted no more than twenty minutes. (Bumgarner has not responded to requests for comment.) That evening, Bumgarner’s boss, Admiral Harris, read a statement to reporters: An alert, professional guard noticed something out of the ordinary in the cell of one of the detainees. The guard’s response was swift and professional to secure the area and check on the status of the detainee. When it was apparent that the detainee had hung himself, the guard force and medical teams reacted quickly to attempt to save the detainee’s life. The detainee was unresponsive and not breathing. [The] guard force began to check on the health and welfare of other detainees. Two detainees in their cells had also hung themselves. After praising the guards and the medics, Harris—in a notable departure from traditional military decorum—launched his attack on the men who had died on his watch. “They have no regard for human life,” Harris said, “neither ours nor their own.” A Pentagon press release issued soon after described the dead men, who had been accused of no crime, as Al Qaeda or Taliban operatives. Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon, the Pentagon’s chief press officer, went still further, telling the Guardian’s David Rose, “These guys were fanatics like the Nazis, Hitlerites, or the Ku Klux Klan, the people they tried at Nuremberg.” The Pentagon was not the only U.S. government agency to participate in the assault. Colleen Graffy, a deputy assistant secretary of state, told the BBC that “taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good P.R. move.” The same day the three prisoners died, Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly completed a reporting trip to the naval base, where, according to his account on The O’Reilly Factor, the Joint Army Navy Task Force “granted the Factor near total access to the prison.” Although the Pentagon began turning away reporters after news of the deaths had emerged, two reporters from the Charlotte Observer, Michael Gordon and photographer Todd Sumlin, had arrived that morning to work on a profile of Bumgarner, and the colonel invited them to shadow him as he dealt with the crisis. A Pentagon spokesman later told the Observer it had been expecting a “puff piece,” which is why, according to the Observer, “Bumgarner and his superiors on the base” had given them permission to remain. Bumgarner quickly returned to his theatrical ways. As Gordon reported in the June 13, 2006, issue of the Observer, the colonel seemed to enjoy putting on a show. “Right now, we are at ground zero,” Bumgarner told his officer staff during a June 12 meeting. Referring to the naval base’s prisoners, he said, “There is not a trustworthy son of a ***** in the entire bunch.” In the same article, Gordon also noted what he had learned about the deaths. The suicides had occurred “in three cells on the same block,” he reported. The prisoners had “hanged themselves with strips of knotted cloth taken from clothing and sheets,” after shaping their pillows and blankets to look like sleeping bodies. “And Bumgarner said,” Gordon reported, “each had a ball of cloth in their mouth either for choking or muffling their voices.” Something about Bumgarner’s Observer interview seemed to have set off an alarm far up the chain of command. No sooner was Gordon’s story in print than Bumgarner was called to Admiral Harris’s office. As Bumgarner would tell Gordon in a follow-up profile three months later, Harris was holding up a copy of the Observer: “This,” said the admiral to Bumgarner, “could get me relieved.” (Harris did not respond to requests for comment.) That same day, an investigation was launched to determine whether classified information had been leaked from Guantánamo. Bumgarner was suspended. Less than a week after the appearance of the Observer stories, Davila and Hickman each heard separately from friends in the Navy and in the military police that FBI agents had raided the colonel’s quarters. The MPs understood from their FBI contacts that there was concern over the possibility that Bumgarner had taken home some classified materials and was planning to share them with the media or to use them in writing a book. On June 27, two weeks later, Gordon’s Observer colleague Scott Dodd reported: “A brigadier general determined that ‘unclassified sensitive information’ was revealed to the public in the days after the June 10 suicides.” Harris, according to the article, had already ordered “appropriate administrative action.” Bumgarner soon left Guantánamo for a new post in Missouri. He now serves as an ROTC instructor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. Bumgarner’s comments appear to be at odds with the official Pentagon narrative on only one point: that the deaths had involved cloth being stuffed into the prisoners’ mouths. The involvement of the FBI suggested that more was at issue. 6. “An Unmistakable Message” On June 10, NCIS investigators began interviewing the Navy guards in charge of Alpha Block, but after the Pentagon committed itself to the suicide narrative, they appear to have stopped. On June 14, the interviews resumed, and the NCIS informed at least six Navy guards that they were suspected of making false statements or failing to obey direct orders. No disciplinary action ever followed. The investigators conducted interviews with guards, medics, prisoners, and officers. As the Seton Hall researchers note, however, nothing in the NCIS report suggests that the investigators secured or reviewed the duty roster, the prisoner-transfer book, the pass-on book, the records of phone and radio communications, or footage from the camera that continuously monitored activity in the hallways, all of which could have helped them authoritatively re-construct the events of that evening. The NCIS did, however, move swiftly to seize every piece of paper possessed by every single prisoner in Camp America, some 1,065 pounds of material, much of it privileged attorney-client correspondence. Several weeks later, authorities sought an after-the-fact justification. The Justice Department—bolstered by sworn statements from Admiral Harris and from Carol Kisthardt, the special agent in charge of the NCIS investigation—claimed in court that the seizure was appropriate because there had been a conspiracy among the prisoners to commit suicide. Justice further claimed that investigators had found suicide notes and argued that the attorney-client materials were being used to pass communications among the prisoners. David Remes, a lawyer who opposed the Justice Department’s efforts, explained the practical effect of the government’s maneuvers. The seizure, he said, “sent an unmistakable message to the prisoners that they could not expect their communications with their lawyers to remain confidential. The Justice Department defended the massive breach of the attorney-client privilege on the account of the deaths on June 9 and the asserted need to investigate them.” If the “suicides” were a form of warfare between the prisoners and the Bush Administration, as Admiral Harris charged, it was the latter that quickly turned the war to its advantage. 7. “Yasser Couldn’t Even Make a Sandwich!” When I asked Talal Al-Zahrani what he thought had happened to his son, he was direct. “They snatched my seventeen-year-old son for a bounty payment,” he said. “They took him to Guantánamo and held him prisoner for five years. They tortured him. Then they killed him and returned him to me in a box, cut up.” Al-Zahrani was a brigadier general in the Saudi police. He dismissed the Pentagon’s claims, as well as the investigation that supported them. Yasser, he said, was a young man who loved to play soccer and didn’t care for politics. The Pentagon claimed that Yasser’s frontline battle experience came from his having been a cook in a Taliban camp. Al-Zahrani said that this was preposterous: “A cook? Yasser couldn’t even make a sandwich!” “Yasser wasn’t guilty of anything.” Al-Zahrani said. “He knew that. He firmly believed he would be heading home soon. Why would he commit suicide?” The evidence supports this argument. Hyperbolic U.S. government statements at the time of Yasser Al-Zahrani’s death masked the fact that his case had been reviewed and that he was, in fact, on a list of prisoners to be sent home. I had shown Al-Zahrani the letter that the government says was Yasser’s suicide note and asked him whether he recognized his son’s writing. He had never seen the note before, he answered, and no U.S. official had ever asked him about it. After studying the note carefully, he said, “This is a forgery.” Also returned to Saudi Arabia was the body of Mani Al-Utaybi. Orphaned in youth, Mani grew up in his uncle’s home in the small town of Dawadmi. I spoke to one of the many cousins who shared that home, Faris Al-Utaybi. Mani, said Faris, had gone to Baluchistan—a rural, tribal area that straddles Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan—to do humanitarian work, and someone there had sold him to the Americans for $5,000. He said that Mani was a peaceful man who would harm no one. Indeed, U.S. authorities had decided to release Al-Utaybi and return him to Saudi Arabia. When he died, he was just a few weeks shy of his transfer. Salah Al-Salami was seized in March 2002, when Pakistani authorities raided a residence in Karachi believed to have been used as a safe house by Abu Zubaydah and took into custody all who were living there at the time. A Yemeni, Al-Salami had quit his job and moved to Pakistan with only $400 in his pocket. The U.S. suspicions against him rested almost entirely on the fact that he had taken lodgings, with other students, in a boarding house that terrorists might at one point have used. There was no direct evidence linking him either to Al Qaeda or to the Taliban. On August 22, 2008, the Washington Post quoted from a previously secret review of his case: “There is no credible information to suggest [Al-Salami] received terrorist related training or is a member of the Al Qaeda network.” All that stood in the way of Al-Salami’s release from Guantánamo were difficult diplomatic relations between the United States and Yemen. 8. “The Removal of the Neck Organs” Military pathologists connected with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology arranged immediate autopsies of the three dead prisoners, without securing the permission of the men’s families. The identities and findings of the pathologists remain shrouded in extraordinary secrecy, but the timing of the autopsies suggests that medical personnel stationed at Guantánamo may have undertaken the procedure without waiting for the arrival of an experienced medical examiner from the United States. Each of the heavily redacted autopsy reports states unequivocally that “the manner of death is suicide” and, more specifically, that the prisoner died of “hanging.” Each of the reports describes ligatures that were found wrapped around the prisoner’s neck, as well as circumferential dried abrasion furrows imprinted with the very fine weave pattern of the ligature fabric and forming an inverted “V” on the back of the head. This condition, the anonymous pathologists state, is consistent with that of a hanging victim. The pathologists place the time of death “at least a couple of hours” before the bodies were discovered, which would be sometime before 10:30 p.m. on June 9. Additionally, the autopsy of Al-Salami states that his hyoid bone was broken, a phenomenon usually associated with manual strangulation, not hanging. The report asserts that the hyoid was broken “during the removal of the neck organs.” An odd admission, given that these are the very body parts—the larynx, the hyoid bone, and the thyroid cartilage—that would have been essential to determining whether death occurred from hanging, from strangulation, or from choking. These parts remained missing when the men’s families finally received their bodies. All the families requested independent autopsies. The Saudi prisoners were examined by Saeed Al-Ghamdy, a pathologist based in Saudi Arabia. Al-Salami, from Yemen, was inspected by Patrice Mangin, a pathologist based in Switzerland. Both pathologists noted the removal of the structure that would have been the natural focus of the autopsy: the throat. Both pathologists contacted the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, requesting the missing body parts and more information about the previous autopsies. The institute did not respond to their requests or queries. (It also did not respond to a series of calls I placed requesting information and comment.) When Al-Zahrani viewed his son’s corpse, he saw evidence of a homicide. “There was a major blow to the head on the right side,” he said. “There was evidence of torture on the upper torso, and on the palms of his hand. There were needle marks on his right arm and on his left arm.” None of these details are noted in the U.S. autopsy report. “I am a law enforcement professional,” Al-Zahrani said. “I know what to look for when examining a body.” Mangin, for his part, expressed particular concern about Al-Salami’s mouth and throat, where he saw “a blunt trauma carried out against the oral region.” The U.S. autopsy report mentions an effort at resuscitation, but this, in Mangin’s view, did not explain the severity of the injuries. He also noted that some of the marks on the neck were not those he would normally associate with hanging. 9. “I Know Some Things You Don’t” Sergeant Joe Hickman’s tour of duty, which ended in March 2007, was distinguished: he was selected as Guantánamo’s “NCO of the Quarter” and was given a commendation medal. When he returned to the United States, he was promoted to staff sergeant and worked in Maryland as an Army recruiter before settling eventually in Wisconsin. But he could not forget what he had seen at Guantánamo. When Barack Obama became president, Hickman decided to act. “I thought that with a new administration and new ideas I could actually come forward, ” he said. “It was haunting me.” Hickman had seen a 2006 report from Seton Hall University Law School dealing with the deaths of the three prisoners, and he followed their subsequent work. After Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, he called Mark Denbeaux, the professor who had led the Seton Hall team. “I learned something from your report,” he said, “but I know some things you don’t.” Within two days, Hickman was in Newark, meeting with Denbeaux. Also at the meeting was Denbeaux’s son and sometime co-editor Josh, a private attorney. Josh Denbeaux agreed to represent Hickman, who was concerned that he could go to prison if he disobeyed Colonel Bumgarner’s order not to speak out, even if that order was itself illegal. Hickman did not want to speak to the press. On the other hand, he felt that “silence was just wrong.” The two lawyers quickly made arrangements for Hickman to speak instead with authorities in Washington, D.C. On February 2, they had meetings on Capitol Hill and with the Department of Justice. The meeting with Justice was an odd one. The father-and-son legal team were met by Rita Glavin, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; John Morton, who was soon to become an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security; and Steven Fagell, counselor to the head of the Criminal Division. Fagell had been, along with the new attorney general, Eric Holder, a partner at the elite Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, and was widely viewed as “Holder’s eyes” in the Criminal Division. For more than an hour, the two lawyers described what Hickman had seen: the existence of Camp No, the transportation of the three prisoners, the van’s arrival at the medical clinic, the lack of evidence that any bodies had ever been removed from Alpha Block, and so on. The officials listened intently and asked many questions. The Denbeauxs said they could provide a list of witnesses who would corroborate every aspect of their account. At the end of the meeting, Mark Denbeaux recalled, the officials specifically thanked the lawyers for not speaking to reporters first and for “doing it the right way.” Two days later, another Justice Department official, Teresa McHenry, head of the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section, called Mark Denbeaux and said that she was heading up an investigation and wanted to meet directly with his client. She went to New Jersey to do so. Hickman then reviewed the basic facts and furnished McHenry with the promised list of corroborating witnesses and details on how they could be contacted. The Denbeauxs did not hear from anyone at the Justice Department for at least two months. Then, in April, an FBI agent called to say she did not have the list of contacts. She asked if this document could be provided again. It was. Shortly thereafter, Fagell and two FBI agents interviewed Davila, who had left the Army, in Columbia, South Carolina. Fagell asked Davila if he was prepared to travel to Guantánamo to identify the locations of various sites. He said he was. “It seemed like they were interested,” Davila told me. “Then I never heard from them again.” Several more months passed, and Hickman and his lawyers became increasingly concerned that nothing was going to happen. On October 27, 2009, they resumed dealings with Congress that they had initiated on February 2 and then broken off at the Justice Department’s request; they were also in contact with ABC News. Two days later, Teresa McHenry called Mark Denbeaux and asked whether he had gone to Congress and ABC News about the matter. “I said that I had,” Denbeaux told me. He asked her, “Was there anything wrong with that?” McHenry then suggested that the investigation was finished. Denbeaux reminded her that she had yet to interview some of the corroborating witnesses. “There are a few small things to do,” Denbeaux says McHenry answered, “then it will be finished.” Specialist Christopher Penvose told me that on October 30, the day following the conversation between Mark Denbeaux and Teresa McHenry, McHenry showed up at Penvose’s home in south Baltimore with some FBI agents. She had a “few questions,” she told him. Investigators working with her soon contacted two other witnesses. On November 2, 2009, McHenry called Mark Denbeaux to tell him that the Justice Department’s investigation was being closed. “It was a strange conversation,” Denbeaux recalled. McHenry explained that “the gist of Sergeant Hickman’s information could not be confirmed.” But when Denbeaux asked what that “gist” actually was, McHenry declined to say. She just reiterated that Hickman’s conclusions “appeared” to be unsupported. Denbeaux asked what conclusions exactly were unsupported. McHenry refused to say. 10. “They Accomplished Nothing” One of the most intriguing aspects of this case concerns the use of Camp No. Under George W. Bush, the CIA created an archipelago of secret detention centers that spanned the globe, and authorities at these sites deployed an array of Justice Department–sanctioned torture techniques—including waterboarding, which often entails inserting cloth into the subject’s mouth—on prisoners they deemed to be involved in terrorism. The presence of a black site at Guantánamo has long been a subject of speculation among lawyers and human-rights activists, and the experience of Sergeant Hickman and other Guantánamo guards compels us to ask whether the three prisoners who died on June 9 were being interrogated by the CIA, and whether their deaths resulted from the grueling techniques the Justice Department had approved for the agency’s use—or from other tortures lacking that sanction. Complicating these questions is the fact that Camp No might have been controlled by another authority, the Joint Special Operations Command, which Bush’s defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had hoped to transform into a Pentagon version of the CIA. Under Rumsfeld’s direction, JSOC began to take on many tasks traditionally handled by the CIA, including the housing and interrogation of prisoners at black sites around the world. The Pentagon recently acknowledged the existence of one such JSOC black site, located at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, and other suspected sites, such as Camp Nama in Baghdad, have been carefully documented by human-rights researchers. In a Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture released last year, the sections about Guantánamo were significantly redacted. The position and circumstances of these deletions point to a significant JSOC interrogation program at the base. (It should be noted that Obama’s order last year to close other secret detention camps was narrowly worded to apply only to the CIA.) Regardless of whether Camp No belonged to the CIA or JSOC, the Justice Department has plenty of its own secrets to protect. The department would seem to have been involved in the cover-up from the first days, when FBI agents stormed Colonel Bumgarner’s quarters. This was unusual for two reasons. When Pentagon officials engage in a leak investigation, they generally use military investigators. They rarely turn to the FBI, because they cannot control the actions of a civilian agency. Moreover, when the FBI does open an investigation, it nearly always does so with great discretion. The Bumgarner investigation was widely telegraphed, though, and seemed intended to send a message to the military personnel at Camp Delta: Talk about what happened at your own risk. All of which suggests it was not the Pentagon so much as the White House that hoped to suppress the truth. In the weeks following the 2006 deaths, the Justice Department decided to use the suicide narrative as leverage against the Guantánamo prisoners and their troublesome lawyers, who were pressing the government to justify its long-term imprisonment of their clients. After the NCIS seized thousands of pages of privileged communications, the Justice Department went to court to defend the action. It argued that such steps were warranted by the extraordinary facts surrounding the June 9 “suicides.” U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson gave the Justice Department a sympathetic hearing, and he ruled in its favor, but he also noted a curious aspect of the government’s presentation: its “citations supporting the fact of the suicides” were all drawn from media accounts. Why had the Justice Department lawyers who argued the case gone to such lengths to avoid making any statement under oath about the suicides? Did they do so in order to deceive the court? If so, they could face disciplinary proceedings or disbarment. The Justice Department also faces questions about its larger role in creating the circumstances that lead to the use of so-called enhanced interrogation and restraint techniques at Guantánamo and elsewhere. In 2006, the use of a gagging restraint had already been connected to the death on January 9, 2004, of an Iraqi prisoner, Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Jameel, in the custody of the Army Special Forces. And the bodies of the three men who died at Guantánamo showed signs of torture, including hemorrhages, needle marks, and significant bruising. The removal of their throats made it difficult to determine whether they were already dead when their bodies were suspended by a noose. The Justice Department itself had been deeply involved in the process of approving and setting the conditions for the use of torture techniques, issuing a long series of memoranda that CIA agents and others could use to defend themselves against any subsequent criminal prosecution. Teresa McHenry, the investigator charged with accounting for the deaths of the three men at Guantánamo, has firsthand knowledge of the Justice Department’s role in auditing such techniques, having served at the Justice Department under Bush and having participated in the preparation of at least one of those memos. As a former war-crimes prosecutor, McHenry knows full well that government officials who attempt to cover up crimes perpetrated against prisoners in wartime face prosecution under the doctrine of command responsibility. (McHenry declined to clarify the role she played in drafting the memos.) As retired Rear Admiral John Hutson, the former judge advocate general of the Navy, told me, “Filing false reports and making false statements is bad enough, but if a homicide occurs and officials up the chain of command attempt to cover it up, they face serious criminal liability. They may even be viewed as accessories after the fact in the original crime.” With command authority comes command responsibility, he said. “If the heart of the military is obeying orders down the chain of command, then its soul is accountability up the chain. You can’t demand the former without the latter.” The Justice Department thus faced a dilemma; it could do the politically convenient thing, which was to find no justification for a thorough investigation, leave the NCIS conclusions in place, and hope that the public and the news media would obey the Obama Administration’s dictum to “look forward, not backward”; or it could pursue a course of action that would implicate the Bush Justice Department in a cover-up of possible homicides. Nearly 200 men remain imprisoned at Guantánamo. In June 2009, six months after Barack Obama took office, one of them, a thirty-one-year-old Yemeni named Muhammed Abdallah Salih, was found dead in his cell. The exact circumstances of his death, like those of the deaths of the three men from Alpha Block, remain uncertain. Those charged with accounting for what happened—the prison command, the civilian and military investigative agencies, the Justice Department, and ultimately the attorney general himself—all face a choice between the rule of law and the expedience of political silence. Thus far, their choice has been unanimous. Not everyone who is involved in this matter views it from a political perspective, of course. General Al-Zahrani grieves for his son, but at the end of a lengthy interview he paused and his thoughts turned elsewhere. “The truth is what matters,” he said. “They practiced every form of torture on my son and on many others as well. What was the result? What facts did they find? They found nothing. They learned nothing. They accomplished nothing.” © The Harper's Magazine Foundation.

My Children Were Tortured, This Trial is a Sham: Aafia By Press TV January 20, 2010 "Press TV" -- Pakistani citizen Aafia Siddiqui has told jurors at her trial that she was held in a secret prison in Afghanistan, her children were tortured, and the case against her is a sham. On Tuesday, Siddiqui was thrown out of the New York courtroom where her trail is being held after shouting the remarks at the jurors. The MIT-educated neuroscientist is currently on trial, facing charges of trying to kill US soldiers and FBI agents in Afghanistan in 2008 and connections with Al-Qaeda operatives. She was ejected from her federal court trial after her second outburst, Bloomberg reported. “Since I'll never get a chance to speak," she said in the courtroom. "If you were in a secret prison, or your children were tortured…" She insisted that she knew nothing about a plan to carry out terrorist attacks on targets in New York, The New York Daily News reported. "Give me a little credit, this is not a list of targets of New York," she said. "I was never planning to bomb it. You're lying." Siddiqui vanished in Karachi, Pakistan with her three children on March 30, 2003. The next day it was reported in local newspapers that she had been taken into custody on terrorism charges. US officials allege Aafia Siddiqui was seized on July 17, 2008 by Afghan security forces in Ghazni province and claim that documents, including formulas for explosives and chemical weapons, were found in her handbag. They say that while she was being interrogated, she grabbed a US warrant officer's M-4 rifle and fired two shots at FBI agents and military personnel but missed and that the warrant officer then fired back, hitting her in the torso. She was brought to the United States to face charges of attempted murder and assault. Siddiqui faces 20 years in prison if convicted. However, human rights organizations have cast doubt on the accuracy of the US account of the event. Many political activists believe she was Prisoner 650 of the US detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they say she was tortured for five years until one day US authorities announced that they had found her in Afghanistan. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui Case - A Detailed Story of Lies And Deception By The Americans By M. Junaid Khan January 20, 2010 "Pro Pakistan" - We have regularly covered Dr. Aafia case at Pro-Pakistan. We have highlighted the injustices done to her and her family by the Americans in a completely one sided trial. However, the current article is just another effort to share with our readers how this whole drama unfolded till date and how the media reported it. The reason we chose this day is because of the fact that today the American court is again holding another purported trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The irony is that the current case against her rest on a crime she committed after being arrested by the Americans in Afghanistan in 2008. Or at least that is how Americans put it while the reality is that she was arrested in 2003 by FBI agents in Karachi, Pakistan. The arrest news was spread in the national and international media and here is just one instance of NBC5 quoting the story back in 2003. According to NBC5, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is in US custody: U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly interrogating a Pakistani woman alleged to have moved funds and assisted with logistics planning for al-Qaida. FBI Seeking Siddiqui According to the Press Trust of India in an article published on its Web site Thursday, the woman has been identified as 31-year-old Aafia Siddiqui, who was being sought by U.S. officials last week along with two other men, including one whose last known address was in Miramar, Fla. According to the PTI, Siddiqui was arrested in Karachi recently after returning from an overseas trip last month. The service quoted reports in the Boston Globe and Oklahama (TV) News Channel’s Web site. The FBI had issued a worldwide alert for Siddiqui, already said this … ‘a housewife and mother of three who holds a doctorate in neurological science and degrees from Braindeis University and M.I.T. ) Siddiqui reportedly lived in Boston with her husband for several years.’ NBC News reported last week that senior U.S. officials that Siddiqui may be a so-called “fixer” for al-Qaida and not an actual member. According to those reports, Siddiqui may have been used by the organization move money and provide other logistical support. One official said, “The Intel indicates that she is tied to some very radical individuals in Pakistan.” Now here is the problem, the American kept her under rigorous detention in Bagram jail (Afghan equivalent of Guantanamo Prison) and were not accepting her presence until the story was shared by ex inmates of the jail to the media. She was constantly tortured for 5 years and was sexually and physically abused each and every day for 5 consecutive years while the American put their best resources at work to find a single flaw in her past. Ironically, they failed to find a single wrong in her past and hence Americans were in a fix how to get rid of her. The real problem started after the press conference in Pakistan by British journalist Yvonne Ridley in which she shared the story of the Prisoner 650, the gray Ghost lady of Bagram prison. In the mean while, we must keep this in mind that Western media left no stone unturned to label her the big catch of Al Qaeda in the hands of the Americans while Americans themselves couldn’t prove a single instance of her involvement in terrorist activities in their 5 years of non stop search for something (anything) to implicate her and save their face. After Yvonne Ridley’s press conference, it became evident that Dr. Aafia Siddiqui is the unfortunate soul to bear the brunt of the worst kind of treatment in the modern history of the world. A well educated lady was made to suffer 5 years of non stop physical and sexual abuse at the hands of American military and intelligence officials. The issue of Prisoner 650 became public and every media house in the world started giving it coverage and soon protesters came out on the roads in several Pakistani cities and in few Western countries for her release. The American intelligence agency, who failed to find any evidence against Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, however was quick to stage a ****** drama, that speaks volumes about their thinking patterns. Even hollywood movie writer would have done a better job then the drama script written by the American intelligence agencies. Here is how Dr. Aafia emerged again from the Bagram Prison in front of the World. This is the story some dumb *** American intelligent agent wrote (PS: US agent! please don’t mind my language but trust me your script sucks! At least try to watch 24 and come out with something better next time). And i am quoting direct American biased justice department source so that you know how they report such dramas on thir website to impress their own citizens. According to website of the US Justice Department: NEW YORK- Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Mark J. Mershon, the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (”FBI”), and Raymond W. Kelly, the Police Commissioner of the City of New York, announced today the arrest of Aafia Siddiqui on charges related to her attempted murder and assault of United States officers and employees in Afghanistan. Siddiqui arrived in New York this evening and will be presented tomorrow before a United States Magistrate Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. According to the Complaint filed in Manhattan federal court: On July 17, 2008, officers of the Ghazni Province Afghanistan National Police (”ANP”) observed Siddiqui outside the Ghazni governor’s compound. ANP officers questioned Siddiqui, regarded her as suspicious, and searched her handbag. In it, they found numerous documents describing the creation of explosives, as well as excerpts from the Anarchist’s Arsenal. Siddiqui’s papers included descriptions of various landmarks in the United States, including in New York City. Siddiqui was also in possession of substances that were sealed in bottles and glass jars. On July 18, 2008, a party of United States personnel, including two FBI special agents, a United States Army Warrant Officer, a United States Army Captain, and United States military interpreters, arrived at the Afghan facility where Siddiqui was being held. The personnel entered a second floor meeting room — unaware that Siddiqui was being held there, unsecured, behind a curtain. The Warrant Officer took a seat and placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor next to the curtain. Shortly after the meeting began, the Captain heard a woman yell from the curtain and, when he turned, saw Siddiqui holding the Warrant Officer’s rifle and pointing it directly at the Captain. Siddiqui said, “May the blood of [unintelligible] be directly on your [unintelligible, possibly head or hands].” The interpreter seated closest to Siddiqui lunged at her and pushed the rifle away as Siddiqui pulled the trigger. Siddiqui fired at least two shots but no one was hit. The Warrant Officer returned fire with a 9 mm service pistol and fired approximately two rounds at Siddiqui’s torso, hitting her at least once. Despite being shot, Siddiqui struggled with the officers when they tried to subdue her; she struck and kicked them while shouting in English that she wanted to kill Americans. After being subdued, Siddiqui temporarily lost consciousness. The agents and officers then rendered medical aid to Siddiqui. Can anyone imagine why someone Siddiqui, a 36-year-old Pakistani woman who previously resided in the United States, is charged in a criminal Complaint filed in the Southern District of New York with one count of attempting to kill United States officers and employees and one count of assaulting United States officers and employees. If convicted, Siddiqui faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on each charge. Just try to see a logic behind the purported story shared with the world by the Americans! What Dr. Aafia was doing outside Governor house? Trying to gather intelligence? Trying to blow it up? Trying to get herself arrested? Or just roaming around for a morning or evening walk? In any of the above cases, can you tell me why will she take with her the method of making bombs in her handbag? Was she sitting in some park where she was trying to prepare her lecture or was she trying to memorize some new techniques in the open? Or was she just keeping them in her bag to make sure when she is arrested, she provide enough evidence against her arrest to the government to use it against her? Moreover, she was also carrying landmarks of American buildings etc etc etc! I wonder if anyone would really need landmarks in this modern era? Don’t you think we have a lot more public information available even to a primary kid on the internet and hence there is no need to carry it with you. Moreover, why would she carry these things with her when she was roaming around Governor palace in Afghanistan? Was she on way to airport to land directly at JFK? Or was there not enough space in her home to keep that documents? A logical mind fail to see a relation in those two set of documents inside the bag of a lady strolling for morning walk in the peaceful and serene streets of war torn Afghanistan! Sounds interesting! Lets see what else she got? Okies! She got some SUBSTANCE (i repeat SUBSTANCE) that was sealed inside a jar and some bottles! Now this has further complicateed the already very tough case here! Can anyone of my reader guide us all here? Because i am lost here! What do you mean by “SUBSTANCE?” Is chocolate a substance or is cookies counted as substance? Do you also count sweets as Substance? If not then share with us what does “SUBSTANCE” stands for? And why would an evening or morning stroller keep these in her bag when she was actually on a picnic in the serene city of Afghanistan? May be she could use it to blow up the Governor’s palace? Or may be she could eat it? I don’t know but it is beyond my level of intellect and I need guidance from our readers since they might have a clue! The irony is that Americans are trying to tell the world that their dumb story is based on facts while a mere search on internet will confirm our concerns about the real drama run by someone sitting in Langley or Pentagon. Here is how a famous Pakistani newspaper reported a story where an Intelligence Official admitted arresting Dr. Aafia in 2003 and handing her over to American FBI while the same FBI claims to have captured her in 2008 in Afghanistan. This is on the record of a Pakistani court and hence enjoys a legal status unlike Americans provided evidence that only exist in their own records and not to be shared with anyone in the world. She was later shifted to America where she is facing court trial for a crime she never committed in America at first place. Even the American FBI and Intelligence officials failed to provide the evidence of her finger prints on the gun she supposedly used to shoot her investigators and the interpreters. Even no bullets were recovered from the room which she allegedly fired at the Americans. Here is a link to the details of the court hearing. According to Yvonne Ridley, who first shared her story with the world, there is some senior ranking American intelligence official responsible for all the debacle since it was his authority to sign the papers authorising her kidnapping, rendition, five years of non stop torture and then keeping her in jail without sharing the details. Even the way she was reproduced is done on the orders of the same intelligence official who is sitting on the most important position in the American intelligence network. He is still using all his available resources to cover his tracks but i think now the thing has gone out and the decision rests with the American Judiciary. The trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui has gained tremendous support in USA itself and people from the length and breadth of America have come to the court to witness it despite the fact that the judge changed the dates constantly to create confusion and to bring down the case profile. The case will be presented today at a US Court. According to the Dawn story: The trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist under US detention, will begin today in New York City after jury selection was completed last week A JA jury of seven women and five men were chosen on Thursday, with four alternate jurors. Dr Aafia had earlier objected over the composition of the jury. She is accused of trying to kill US Army officers — who were interrogating her in Afghanistan in July 2008, a charge vehemently denied by her. No one was hit in the alleged shooting incident, but she was shot twice in the stomach. Dr. Aafia has repeatedly said she will boycott her own trial and has even disowned the lawyers retained for her defence by the Pakistan government. Meanwhile, the lead lawyer for Dr. Aafia said that her legal defence team will fight for her acquittal with a strong case it has built over the past four months. Lets see how long this drama goes on and to what extent the American Intelligence official, backed by other powerful American politicians, goes to hide the crimes he committed against an innocent woman and her family. The outcome of the case is very important since the eyes of the world Muslim population and those who believe in the American justice system are fixed on this case as a benchmark. Let’s see if Justice prevails in the Wild Wild West! New York Trial Prompts Outrage in Pakistan By Saeed Shah January 20, 2010 "Globe and Mail" -- In the United States, she's been dubbed “the most dangerous woman in the world.” In Pakistan, she is seen as a victim of American injustice in the fight against al-Qaeda. And at the opening of her trial in New York, the judge found her too disruptive and had her removed from the courtroom. “I was never planning a bombing! You're lying!” Aafia Siddiqui shouted as she was taken out of court less than two hours into the proceedings yesterday. The outburst came as U.S. Army Captain Robert Snyder testified that documents found in Dr. Siddiqui's possession included targets for a mass casualty attack, including the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. There was shouting in Pakistan, too, at demonstrations in cities across the country in support of Dr. Siddiqui, who is a national cause célèbre as a symbol of Muslims mistreated during U.S. antiterrorism efforts, just like the prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or Bagram, the Afghan prison where her supporters say she was secretly held for years. Dr. Siddiqui's frail appearance and tormented outbursts in pretrial hearings have added to allegations that she has had to endure years of torture since going missing from her hometown of Karachi in 2003. But according to her detractors, including her former husband Amjad Khan, she was a jihadist who spent those years on the run. Some have even suggested that she became a double agent, working at some point against al-Qaeda. U.S. officials have accused Dr. Siddiqui, a 37-year-old neuroscientist educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of working for al-Qaeda, in particular as a facilitator for the 9/11 hijackers. The only charges she faces in the New York court, however, are related to the extraordinary circumstances of her supposed capture in Afghanistan in 2008. “They couldn't find a more innocent person,” says Fauzia Siddiqui, Aafia's sister in Karachi. “I don't believe that there's any justice possible in the post-9/11 U.S. system.” Fauzia Siddiqui cares for 13-year-old Ahmed, one of her sister's three children, who were all with her when she disappeared. The whereabouts of the other two, Suleman, who would now be 7, and Maryam, 10, remain a mystery. Dr. Siddiqui's family says she was abducted by Pakistani intelligence and then handed over to American agents. Shortly after the stories of Dr. Siddiqui's alleged detention at Bagram hit the international headlines in 2008, she turned up in American custody. U.S. authorities said she was arrested after acting suspiciously in Ghazni, Afghanistan, a town 80 kilometres south of Kabul, and found with documentation on U.S. landmarks and jars containing chemicals. According to the U.S. account, when in custody at a police station in Ghazni, the petite Dr .Siddiqui jumped out from behind a curtain, grabbed an M-4 rifle that was lying at the foot of a U.S. soldier, and shot at him twice, missing. A second soldier fired back, hitting her in the stomach. She was then flown to the United States. In New York, she faces life in prison on charges of attempted murder, armed assault on U.S. officers and employees and discharging a firearm during a crime of violence – all stemming from the Ghazni incident. Defence lawyer Charles Swift – whom Dr. Siddiqui has disowned – told jurors there was no conclusive evidence she ever picked up the rifle. “There are many different versions of how this happened,” he said. In Pakistani cities such as Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, there were small but emotional demonstrations. “They [the Americans] are just trying to lock up people to show they have some bad guys, to try to prove they are winning the war,” 18-year-old student Mohammad bin Ismail said in Islamabad. “They are using people like trophies.” The fact that Dr. Siddiqui is a woman seems to have generated much anger in conservative Pakistan, where her support is noticeably from the religious right. “It's a case of rendition,” said Amina Janjua, a local campaigner for missing people. “We feel that as a Pakistani nation, our respect, honour and dignity is at stake.” Special to The Globe and Mail

Stop Terrorizing The World “War on Terror” as a Cover for US Terrorism By Paul J. Balles "Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism " - Chris Hedges January 20, 2010 "Redress" -- It's ironic. It's hypocritical. It's a fraud. The "war on terrorism" branded by America is a propaganda cover for the worst terrorists in the world. What was the invasion and occupation of Iraq but an act of terrorism? Everyone now knows that the faux war was born of a fraud. The deception had no legitimate purpose except to terrorize countries that (a) produce oil, (b) harbour Al-Qaeda or © threaten Israel. Even the invasion of Afghanistan, considered a legitimate response to 9/11, could have been avoided. The Taliban appropriately asked the US to provide evidence of Osama bin Laden's complicity in the 9/11 affair before deporting him. Instead, we attacked Afghanistan to the cheers of terrorizing avengers. "We'll show you what we do to those who terrorize America!" was the mantra. The USA is still terrorizing Afghanistan, thereby increasing Al-Qaeda cells. The icing on the spread-fear cake has involved the USA terrorizing Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Not only are the countries America bombs terrorized. Every other country that might disobey our commands is threatened and made to fear for its existence. Human life outside America and its stooges isn't worth a tinker's damn to terrorist America. Some 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died from American sanctions on Iraq. On 60 minutes in 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: "We think the price is worth it." As of January 2010 and since the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, 1,366,350 Iraqi lives have been lost to terrorist slaughterers. "Never mind," you say? "The price is worth it. Beside, they’re only Muslims who want to multiply and take over the world." Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and rendition programmes have been nothing but terrorizing to plant fear in the hearts and minds of any Arab or Muslim with negative feelings toward America. Something about being a terrorist of "lesser breeds” tends to become a mindset that disregards national identities. Even Americans can become the objects of American terrorists. American Arabs and Muslims have been the objects of terrorism ever since 9/11. According to Chris Hedges, “An Arab American, Syed Fahad Hashmi, made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world”. That led to his arrest and prosecution on trumped up charges, in much the same way that Professor Sami al-Aryan lost his job and freedom for being an outspoken critic of US and Israeli policy. Hedges relates the terrorizing effect of these prosecutions even of American citizens. “The state,” he says, “can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last. Chris Floyd points to incidents in countless towns and villages across America's terror war fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen where a multitude of grieving, angry Iraqis are further embittered against the American occupation by America's terrorist killings. "You want to stop the 'radicalization' of young Muslims? Chris asks. "It's simple: stop killing innocent Muslims in wars of domination all over the world. Stop running ‘covert ops’ in every nation of the world (as Obama's ‘special envoy’ Richard Holbrooke admitted last week) – murders, kidnappings, corruption and deception that make a howling mockery of the very ‘civilized values’ these wars and ops purport to defend." If America wants to stop terrorism, it needs to stop terrorizing the world. Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com .

One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists By Chris Hedges December 28, 2009 "Truthdig" -- Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak. This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can. The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial. Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence. “My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.” The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves. “Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense. “The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.” Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last. “Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.” Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.” The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots. “Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.” Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact. There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather. Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism. Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003). Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Crimes Against Humanity Complaint Filed Against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. International Arrest Warrants Requested January 20, 2010 "ICH" - -Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C. The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C. statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states. The Complaint requests (1) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor open an investigation of the Accused on his own accord under Rome Statute article 15(1); and (2) that the I.C.C. Prosecutor also formally “submit to the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under Rome Statute article 15(3). For similar reasons, the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration risk the filing of a follow-up Complaint with the I.C.C. if they do not immediately terminate the Accused’s criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition,” which the Obama administration has continued to implement. The Complaint concludes with a request that the I.C.C. Prosecutor obtain International Arrest Warrants for the Accused from the I.C.C. in accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), 58(1)(b)(i), 58(1)(b)(ii), and 58(1)(b)(iii). In order to demonstrate your support for this Complaint you can contact the I.C.C. Prosecutor by letter, fax, or email as indicated below. Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law Law Building 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue Champaign, Illinois 61820 Phone: 217-333-7954 Fax: 217-244-1478 The Honorable Luis Moreno-Ocampo Office of the Prosecutor International Criminal Court Post Office Box 19519 2500 CM, The Hague The Netherlands Fax No.: 31-70-515-8555 Email: OTP.InformationDesk@icc-cpi.int January 19, 2010 Dear Sir: Please accept my personal compliments. I have the honor hereby to file with you and the International Criminal Court this Complaint against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice , and Alberto Gonzales (hereinafter referred to as the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition.” This term is really a euphemism for the enforced disappearances of persons, their torture, severe deprivation of their liberty, their violent sexual abuse, and other inhumane acts perpetrated upon these Victims. The Accused have inflicted this criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” upon about one hundred (100) human beings, almost all of whom are Muslims/Arabs/Asians and People of Color. I doubt very seriously that the Accused would have inflicted these criminal practices upon 100 White Judeo-Christian men. The Accused’s criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” are both “widespread” and “systematic” within the meaning of Rome Statute article 7(1). Therefore the Accused have committed numerous “Crimes against Humanity” in flagrant and repeated and longstanding violation of Rome Statute articles 5(1)(b), 7(1)(a), 7(1)(e), 7(1)(f), 7(1)(g), 7(1)(h), 7(1)(i), and 7(1)(k). Furthermore, the Accused’s Rome Statute Crimes Against Humanity of enforced disappearances of persons constitutes ongoing criminal activity that continues even as of today. The United States is not a contracting party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless, the Accused ordered and were responsible for the commission of these I.C.C. statutory crimes on, in, and over the respective territories of several I.C.C. member states, including many located in Europe. Therefore, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction over the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes in accordance with Rome Statute article 12(2)(a), which provides as follows: Article 12 Preconditions to the Exercise of Jurisdiction … 2. In the case of article 13, paragraph (a) or ©, the Court may exercise its jurisdiction if one or more of the following States are Parties to this Statute or have accepted the jurisdiction of the Court in accordance with paragraph 3: (a) The State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred … So the fact that United States is not a contracting party to the Rome Statute is no bar to the I.C.C.’s prosecution of the Accused because they have ordered and been responsible for the commission of Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity on, in, and over the respective territories of several I.C.C. member states. Consequently, I hereby respectfully request that the Court exercise its jurisdiction over the Accused for these Crimes against Humanity in accordance with Rome Statute article 13©, which provides as follows: Article 13 Exercise of Jurisdiction The Court may exercise its jurisdiction with respect to a crime referred to in article 5 in accordance with the provisions of this Statute if: … © The Prosecutor has initiated an investigation in respect of such a crime in accordance with article 15. Pursuant to Rome Statute article 13©, I hereby respectfully request that you initiate an investigation proprio motu against the Accused in accordance with Rome Statute article 15(1): “The Prosecutor may initiate investigations proprio motu on the basis of information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.” My detailed Complaint against the Accused constitutes the sufficient “information” required by article 15(1). Furthermore, I respectfully submit that this Complaint by itself constitutes “a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation” under Rome Statute article 15(3). Hence, I also respectfully request that you formally “submit to the Pre-Trial Chamber a request for authorization of an investigation” of the Accused under Rome Statute article 15(3) at this time. Please inform me at your earliest convenience about the status and disposition of my two requests set forth immediately above. Based upon your extensive human rights work in Argentina, you know full well from direct personal experience the terrors and the horrors of enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture. According to reputable news media sources here in the United States, about 100 human beings have been subjected to enforced disappearances and subsequent torture by the Accused. We still have no accounting for these Victims. In other words, many of these Victims of enforced disappearances and torture by the Accused could still be alive today. Their very lives are at stake right now as we communicate. You could very well save some of their lives by publicly stating that you are opening an investigation of my Complaint. As for those Victims of enforced disappearances by the Accused who have died, your opening an investigation of my Complaint is the only means by which we might be able to obtain some explanation and accounting for their whereabouts and the location of their remains in order to communicate this critical information to their next-of-kin and loved-ones. Based upon your extensive experience combating enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture in Argentina, you know full well how important that objective is. The next-of-kin, loved-ones, and friends of “disappeared” human beings can never benefit from psychological “closure” unless and until there is an accounting for the fates, if not the remains, of the Victims. In part that is precisely why the Accused’s enforced disappearances of about 100 human beings constitutes ongoing criminal activity that continues as of today and will continue until the fates of all their Victims have been officially determined by you opening an investigation into my Complaint. Let us mutually suppose that during the so-called “dirty war” in Argentina the International Criminal Court had been in existence. I submit that as an Argentinean human rights lawyer you would have moved heaven and earth and done everything in your power to get the I.C.C. and its Prosecutor to assume jurisdiction over the Argentine Junta in order to terminate and prosecute their enforced disappearances and torture of your fellow Argentinean citizens. I would have done the same. Unfortunately, the I.C.C. did not exist during those darkest of days for the Argentine Republic when we could have so acted. But today as the I.C.C. Prosecutor, you have both the opportunity and the legal power to do something to rectify this mass and total human rights annihilation, and to resolve and to terminate and to prosecute the “widespread” and “systematic” policy and practice of enforced disappearances and consequent torture of about 100 human beings by the Accused. Unfortunately, the new Obama administration in the United States has made it perfectly clear by means of public statements by President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder that they are not going to open any criminal investigation of any of the Accused for these aforementioned Crimes against Humanity. Hence an I.C.C. “case” against the Accused is “admissible” under Rome Statute article 1(complementarity) and article 17. As of right now you and the I.C.C. Judges are the only people in the entire world who can bring some degree of Justice, Closure, and Healing into this dire, tragic, and deplorable situation for the lives and well-being of about one hundred “disappeared” and tortured human beings as well as for their loved-ones and next-of-kin, who are also Victims of the Accused’s Crimes against Humanity. On behalf of them all, as a fellow human rights lawyer I implore you to open an investigation into my Complaint and to issue a public statement to that effect. Also, most regretfully, the new Obama administration has publicly stated that it will continue the Accused’s policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition," which is really their euphemism for enforced disappearances of human beings and consequent torture by other States. Hence the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration fully intend to commit their own Crimes against Humanity under the I.C.C. Rome Statute – unless you stop them! Your opening an investigation of my Complaint will undoubtedly deter the Obama administration from engaging in any more “extraordinary renditions” -- enforced disappearances of human beings and having them tortured by other States. Indeed your opening of an investigation into my Complaint might encourage the Obama administration to terminate its criminal “extraordinary rendition” program immediately and thoroughly by means of issuing a public statement to that effect. In other words, your opening an investigation of my Complaint could very well save the lives of a large number of additional human beings who otherwise will be subjected by the Obama administration to the Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity of enforced disappearances of persons and their consequent torture by other States, inter alia. The lives and well-being of countless human beings are now at risk, hanging in the balance, waiting for you to act promptly, effectively, and immediately to save them from becoming Victims of Rome Statute Crimes against Humanity perpetrated by the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration as successors-in-law to the Accused by opening an investigation of my Complaint. Otherwise, I shall be forced to file with you and the I.C.C. a follow-up Complaint against the Highest Level Officials of the Obama administration. I certainly hope it will not come to that. Please make it so. Finally, for reasons more fully explained in the Conclusion to my Complaint, I respectfully request that you obtain I.C.C. arrest warrants for the Accused in accordance with Rome Statute articles 58(1)(a), article 58(1)(b)(i), article 58(1)(b)(ii), and article 58(1)(b)(iii). The sooner, the better for all humankind. I respectfully request that you schedule a meeting with me at our earliest mutual convenience in order to discuss this Complaint. I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. This transmission letter is an integral part of my Complaint against the Accused and is hereby incorporated by reference into the attached Complaint dated as of today as well. Please accept, Sir, the assurance of my highest consideration. Francis A. Boyle Professor of International Law

Jazaakillahu Kheir Ismahaan sis Nur