During that same time period, the same army shot 11 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, overwhelming during peaceful demonstrations; conducted 41 military raids into Palestinian communities, arrested 63 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children, as well as continuing the annexation of Palestinian land and destruction of homes in the West Bank, and the suffocation of Gaza.
“The Goldstone threat”
The goal behind the rapid and enthusiastic Israeli response is clearly therefore not a concern for human life, but rather the logical alternative, namely a conscious and well-planned PR operation. This much was indeed admitted by the IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Yair Golan, who stated that “we had three missions: Saving lives, providing medical services, and representing the State of Israel honorably”. Given that the latter element overarches the first two, it follows that the prime motivation behind Israel’s activities in Haiti was to clean up the nation’s tarnished image on the world stage. This is a need that is seen as being so urgent following the Goldstone Report into the Gaza massacre (note, not the massacre itself), as to be almost existential. Benyamin Netanyahu, addressing the Knesset in December, stated that there is a triple threat facing the state: “the Iranian [nuclear] threat, the missile threat and a threat I call the Goldstone threat”. The nature of the “Goldstone threat” is clearly one solely of image, and so Israel needs to do what it can to ensure that this threat, namely that of negative perception in the West, is neutered. Israel’s leaders largely felt that the mission to Haiti had been a major step towards achieving this. As Netanyahu stated gleefully to the returning soldiers, “You have raised human spirits and elevated the name of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces. As many plot against us, distort and muddy our names, you have shown the real IDF.” IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said that “Many have tried recently to tarnish our image. With your deeds, you have proven that the opposite is true.” Ashkenazi was taking a break from his own efforts to prevent such “tarnishing”, namely by stymieing any attempts at the remote possibility of a moderately serious internal probe into Israeli conduct during Operation Cast Lead; it is thus only natural that he should praise the soldiers for sharing some of his burden.
Chief of Staff for the IDF, Gabi Ashkenazi
Closer inspection of the Israeli relief effort tells the same story. Professor Yoel Donchin, director of the Patient Safety Unit at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, and veteran of Israeli relief efforts, states that Israel’s priorities were not non-showy staples such as chemical toilets and water purification systems- “If we went down that track we would miss out on seeing that child who was born with the assistance of our physicians”- but rather a 2 week field hospital that Donchin states will have little significant effect, since “(t)o be truly effective a field hospital needs to remain for two or three months, but that’s a condition that Israel cannot meet…It is much more media savvy to show an Israeli hospital, replete with stars of David and of course the dedicated doctors and nurses, dressed in their snazzy uniforms with an Israeli flag on the lapel…It is only in the Israeli aid compound in Haiti that large signs carrying the donor country’s name hang for all to see.”
An IDF soldier in Haiti
From a more general perspective, despite Netanyahu’s statement that the mission was “in accordance with the best Jewish tradition of aiding one’s fellow men”, the most telling proof of such a contention, namely donations to third world countries, tells precisely the opposite story. Israel donates only 0.042% of its GDP in aid to developing countries, which is 1/5 the average amount donated by countries of the OECD, the organization which Israel is seeking to join. Hence Israeli arguments about deep concern for human life, already impossible to take seriously during the regular Palestinian assaults, apparently extend to the rest of the developing world as well- ironic, given the degree to which Israel is itself dependent on aid from a paternal benefactor, namely the US.
US aid to Israel
Helping Haitians in order to better torture Palestinians
Of course giving tuppence with the left hand to conceal daylight robbery with the right is an art at which Israel has become expert. In fact the biggest example of such is the entire peace process itself. Certainly since the Taba talks in 2001, it is just inconceivable that even the most sincere sounding blandishments at peace from Israel have been anything but a smokescreen to continue advancing what apologists for Israeli crimes call “the realities on the ground” further and further away from any situation that would allow for any sort of a peace to be established. That this is the case can be easily demonstrated. The only realistic peaceful solution is the 2 state settlement. The greater the annexation of land in the West Bank, the less viable the second state (the Palestinian state) becomes. This is because the aforementioned “realities on the ground”- large Jewish settlements like Ma’ale Adumim, the Separation Wall, Israeli transport networks etc- turn the West Bank into a series of small, cramped bantustans, thus removing the potential for contiguity; a prerequisite for any state. Since Taba, settlement activity, destruction of Palestinian homes, and seizure of Palestinian land, have continued unabated; thus Israeli actions to vitiate any potential peace agreement have carried on at the same time as their continual statements of their desire for peace. They are stating they want peace with words, while vitiating any potential peace with their actions. Given that actions count for more than words, it follows that Israeli comments as to their desire for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians are merely a public relations veneer for actions which remove the potential for peace in the most drastic way possible.
A further tactic that assists this goal is to attach impossible prerequisites to any peace agreement. The most commonly heard one, is requests that for any peace negotiations to occur, Palestinians must, among other conditions, recognize Israel and renounce violence. Given that Israel does neither of the two, it is obviously impossible to expect that Palestinians would ever agree to do the same. Yet making such statements allows Israel to plead to the world that it is making strong efforts for peace but is being held back by the intractable Palestinians. Anyone who takes the time simply to look and think can see that such demands illustrate that Israel does agree to road maps, on the sole proviso that they start at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Personal responsabilities
Though Israel is guilty in its stunning malevolence of helping Haitians in order that it might better torture Palestinians, there is a grave hypocrisy that casts a blight over what has otherwise been a heart-warming global effort to assist the suffering Haitians. A brief look at the history of Haiti shows that the reason why 200,000 people should have died in a 7.0 earthquake is that the country has been crucified by twin torturers the US and France, ever since being the first country in the world to stage a successful slave-led anti-colonialist revolt in 1804. Due to their impudence at daring to feel that they should not be in bondage to their Caucasian overlords, they were forced, with significant pressure imposed by the US, to pay reparations to the French for the next 70 years, bankrupting the country. Further, there was an embargo placed on the island by France, and the US, who wanted to counter the threat of the good example- the real ‘domino effect’, which is a doctrine that exists to this day as a justification behind some of the US’s most egregious crimes- in order to discourage any idea of slave revolution in the US. The torture continued further with Woodrow Wilson’s invasion in 1915, and then 19-year occupation, in order to secure American corporate interests, and then with Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, father and son US-backed military dictators, whose economic and brutally oppressive policies further ravaged the country during their reign between 1957 and 1986. Clinton’s neo-liberalism caused further economic destruction in the 1990’s, and then George W. Bush’s support for the coup against the democratically elected president, and one ray of hope, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, nailed the coffin lid shut. Such that when the earthquake hit, so ramshackle was the country and its infrastructure that it collapsed like a house of cards, killing everyone underneath. So though CNN may entitle its coverage “Saving Haiti”, the efforts that would need to be taken in reality to save Haiti- i.e. a liberation from US imperialist and neo-liberal domination- is an effort that CNN, as well as the rest of the mainstream media, would far more likely prevent than contribute to.
Destruction in Haiti
The critical point is that though financial aid may help restore a fractional part of what has been destroyed, financial participation in the policies that lay the groundwork for such destruction is by far the more significant element. And this is what is occurring right now in Gaza. Were there to be an earthquake tomorrow in Israel- and it is predicted that Israel is due for one- Gaza, with its rickety housing and tinpot infrastructure, would most likely suffer a similar torment to the one that Haiti is currently suffering. This torment is one for which our governments- and thus we- are currently sowing the seeds with the support for the utter asphyxiation in every way of a territory of 1.5 million people. It is worth wondering whether the people in the US and the UK, among those who contributed around $300m for Haiti following the celebrity fundraiser, thought about the fact that while they are contributing to the Haitian aid effort out of a desire to help lift people out of suffering, their tax dollars and pounds are being spent by their governments to create the exact same groundwork necessary for an identical destruction to occur elsewhere. Humans are compassionate creatures, and it is hard to imagine that were people fully apprised of this, that they would stand for such abuses of power by their elected officials. It is in this way, that by a cruel twist of circumstance, the people of the West are participating inadvertently in the same aforementioned dynamic as Israel, namely that of giving tuppence with the left hand, while taking massively with the right. With a greater clarity into the PR devices employed by Israel, people will have a greater capacity to take actions that sit comfortably with their conscience, and the injustices of the past that lead to the catastrophes of the present will be more likely avoided.
Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the Israeli assault on Gaza. Note the language- the episode was not a war, nor a conflict; both terms presuppose 2 comparable forces existing in opposition. If an elephant stomps on an ant, this does not qualify as a conflict between the elephant and the ant. Similarly, all attempts to label the attack as a war or a conflict paint an erroneous picture as this having been a contest between 2 vaguely equal belligerents, rather than what it was, namely an assault of possibly the world’s most sophisticated military force against a helpless and suffocating largely civilian population. Such an assertion is born out by figures: 1307 Palestinian deaths vs 13 Israeli; 252 under 16’s killed vs 0 Israeli, and 773 civilians killed, vs 3 Israeli (all figures from the Israeli NGO B’tselem); as well as other facts and testimony, to which we will return. By the end of the assault, 1 in every 250 Gazans was either dead or significantly injured.
The “Truce”
The causes of the conflict are very simple and amply documented, and the confusion that surrounds them has been a result of plain and brazen dishonesty on the part of apologists for gross violence and civilian massacre, pretty much all pervasive in US-UK media and political circles. Jeremy Bowen of the BBC, who is truly at the left end of the mainstream spectrum when it comes to the conflict illustrates this point perfectly, stating: “What happened is still controversial. Israel and Hamas disagree on every point – why it started, how it started and what has happened since”. So by Bowen’s logic, were Nazi Germany to have disputed the commonly accepted reasoning for their invasion of Poland, this would render the reasons behind their invasion “controversial”. A truce between Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip, and Israel went into effect on the 19th June 2008. The conditions were that Hamas should cease rocket attacks against Israel, which had been responsible for around 16 deaths in the past 7 years. In return, Israel was to cease the blockade it had imposed on Gaza. Though Israel withdrew the 10,000 odd settlers that were living in annexed parts of Gaza in 2005, they had proceeded to turn their annexation into a suffocation, only allowing on average 70 trucks of supplies- including basic necessities of life such as medicines and food- through to the territory, turning it into what the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes describes as “a giant open-air prison”. Under the truce agreement, they would have to return to 2005 levels of 500-600 per day, the amount that had been deemed liveable. Israel refused to adhere to the truce, only increasing supplies to 90 trucks per day. Rocket attacks on the other hand, plummeted dramatically, from an average of around 200 per day in 2008 pre-truce, to 7 a day between July and October. These numbers reflect simply the number of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel; as Israel admits, none of these rockets came from Hamas.
Sourced from The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center
The Threat of The Peace Offensive
The critical point about the truce was that it was in itself with near certainty part of the Israeli invasion plan. The attack on Gaza was planned “over 6 months in advance”, according to Ha’aretz (Israel’s equivalent of the New York Times), which means that its planning was concomitant with the planning of the truce. Given that both were planned by the same people it follows that the truce was almost certainly part of the plan for the assault itself. This is evident from the fact that Israel engaged in the strongest possible conduct to ensure that Hamas broke the truce- namely, not adhering to the truce themselves- and that they would recommence rocket fire. However, this notion was foiled by Hamas’s total adherence to the truce, and the Israelis were forced, as so often in their history, to counter what was first described in 1982 by Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv as a Palestinian “peace offensive”. This alludes to the fact that when the Palestinians are committing violence, Israel can achieve its aims- terrorising the population, destroying infrastructure, demolishing houses and annexing land, all with the main goal of territorial expansion- without fear of criticism or censure, under the guise of protection from Palestinian violence/terrorism. However when the Palestinians are peaceful, then there is no such cover for such actions, and as such it follows that peaceful Palestinian conduct is more of a threat to the aims of the Israeli state than non-peaceful. This notion, with its corollary of consistent Israeli rejectionism of peace deals in line with the international consensus as outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 242, first surfaced in 1971, where Anwar Sadat, the then president of Egypt, offered Israel full peace in return for withdrawal from Egyptian occupied territories- an Arab peace offensive. Israel reacted by accelerating settlement activity, in contravention of both international law, and the conditions that had been specified for peace.
Anwar Sadat, whose 1971 peace offensive against Israel was greeted by increased Israeli settlements, setting a precedent that lasts until this day
Furthermore, the PLO’s tacit acceptance as early as 1976 for the first time of full recognition of Israel in return for withdrawal from the occupied territories, was again greeted by Israeli aggression, culminating in Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1978 and again, brutally, in 1982 (the occasion that catalysed Yaniv’s comment). More recently, following the commencement of the Second Intifada (“Uprising”) against the occupation in September 2001, Israel reacted to protests primarily characterised by civil disobedience and stone throwing at occupying soldiers, by firing, in the first three weeks alone, 1.3 million bullets- one for every Palestinian child, as was noted by an Israeli officer
The standard Israeli reaction to Palestinian peace overtures is clearly couched not only in their concern in the face of Palestinian peace offensives, but also in visceral disgust for the Palestinians themselves. As one of the legendary figures in the history of Israel, Moshe Dayan stated in the late 60’s, when occupation had just started, “We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads.” The Palestinians were characterised by one of the greats of Israeli military history, former IDF (Israeli Army) Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan as “drugged cockroaches scurrying in a bottle”, and by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin as “Two-legged beasts”, a phrase that bears remembering for its striking resemblance to the term “Untermenschen” (Sub-humans) used by the Nazis to describe the Jews. A resemblance that is sadly, not coincidental.
Ex-IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan
There was only one logical way out of the horrible predicament that Hamas had put Israel in with their wicked peace offensive, and that was to provoke violence. This was done in the most opportune way, with the Israelis waiting until the 4th November, the date of the highly anticipated US election between Barack Obama and John McCain when eyes would be elsewhere, to launch an attack against 6 Hamas militants in a tunnel on the border between Gaza and Egypt. The reason for the existence of the tunnels is obvious- since Israel only allows in around 15% of the supplies that are needed, such supplies need to come from elsewhere. As intended, the response from Hamas was predictably a return to rocket fire- though these do little damage whatsoever, as noted above- at the levels of before the truce, which prompted serious threats from the Israelis, along with requests for Hamas to stop- jaw-droppingly, but predictably dishonest, given what has been discussed- which threats were consummated on the 27th December with the beginning of “Operation Cast Lead”.
“Trapped In A Tiny Cage With Nowhere To Flee”
As with the build up to the attacks, the attack itself was also planned with meticulous rigour. It started at 1130am, when the streets of Gaza, one of the most densely populated regions in the world, were even more densely populated than usual, as school kids returned home from the end of the school day. Given this, it only took 220 seconds for 88 Israeli planes to kill 225 people- over 4 7/7s in under 4 minutes. As Noam Chomsky states, “an auspicious opening to the mass slaughter of defenseless civilians trapped in a tiny cage with nowhere to flee”. The principle initial target for the attack was a graduation ceremony for Palestinian policemen- 140 died- an act so egregious it was even criticised by Israeli lawmakers in the months leading up to the invasion.
Chomsky is right- the opening was indeed auspicious, setting the tone as it did for attacks on ambulances, schools and aid facilities. According to the UN inquiry into attacks on its personnel and facilities during the assault, the IDF intentionally struck a U.N.-run school, exhibiting a “reckless disregard for the lives and safety” of civilians. They attacked a major storage facility within the UN Gaza compound, which sheltered hundreds of Palestinian refugees, and tons of food. These were 2 of over 50 UN facilities that were damaged, of which 28 in the first 3 days of the operation. According to the World Health Organisation, they attacked 34 medical facilities (hospitals and primary health care clinics), including the A-Raeiya Medical Center, which served 100 patients a day, and was clearly marked as a medical facility, the Caritas Catholic relief clinic, and a Christan Aid mother and infant clinic. The standard Israeli response was that such facilities were being used by “terrorists” as bases; this contention is supported by nobody but Israel itself, with refutations from the (non partisan) organisations attacked ranging from “total nonsense” (UN), to “completely and utterly unacceptable based on every known standard of international humanitarian law” (The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies describing the attacks it suffered). According to UNRWA, “The IDF had been supplied with the GPS coordinates of every UNRWA installation in Gaza, moreover all UN installations are clearly marked with UN insignia visible both day and night”; medical facilities are also demarcated in a similar fashion. Further illustration of contempt for Palestinian life, and, crucially, complete contravention of Israel’s stated aims for the war- to stop rocket attacks- was served by civilian attacks such as the “Zeitoun incident”, where 110 Palestinians, mainly women and children, were ordered into a house, only for the IDF to shell the building 24 hours later.
An UNRWA warehouse before the IDF attacked...
... and the same warehouse after
“Like A Child Burning Ants”
Further illumination into the concrete realities of IDF conduct, rather than the repeated claims of the Israeli propaganda machine that “Israel does not target civilians” (an assertion supported by little to nothing since the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians so integral to the state’s founding, which started in 1947), came from the testimonies of IDF soldiers published 6 months after the end of the conflict. The testimonies put a lie to 2 notions: firstly that this was a war, rather than an assault/massacre; and secondly the myth of Israeli “purity of arms”, again, a concoction of the Israeli hasbara (propaganda) machine, which has the simple aim of providing a greasy veneer for its atrocities. One soldier states that the combat was so unequal, “(y)ou feel like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants.” The same soldier states conduct was even more shocking elsewhere, “i was very lucky being assigned to a unit with people older than myself….and not with my own battalion. Because i know that there, the guys were running a ‘Wild West’ scene: draw, cock, kill…i understood that conduct there had been somewhat savage… if you sight it, shoot it.” Another solder tells of how a colleague of his “said he just couldn’t finish this operation without killing someone”, and so shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian – “I can definitely say the soldier regarded this as some children’s game and was delighted and laughing after this.” Contrary to Israeli claims of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields, the reverse was indeed common practice: “to every house we close in on, we send the neighbor in, ‘the Johnnie,’ and if there are armed men inside, we start, like working the ‘pressure cooker’ in the West Bank.” {“Johnnie” is the name given to Palestinian civilians). And as a general comment as to the inequality of the violence: “i was expecting combat…We were under the impression we were going into battle, not some outpost routine procedure’, and from the same soldier: “they were told that from a certain distance when they approach a house, no matter who it is – even an old woman – take them down.”
The assault ended shortly before the inauguration of Obama on January 18th. As reported by Seymour Hersh, the Obama administration did not want anything to overshadow his inauguration. Hence they cut a deal with the Israelis, whereby they would stop the assault (Hersh states they would have continued another week), and the Obama administration would not interfere with the pre-arranged flow of arms to Israel, arms that would have only one possible purpose- further such attacks in the future.
“The Army Has Never Distinguished Civilian From Military Targets”
Subsequently, the attack was condemned roundly by UN agencies, human rights Agencies, and notably, The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, a.k.a. the Goldstone Report. Richard Goldstone, a jurist of international repute, a Jew, and an ardent Zionist who “loves Israel”, presided over the commission, which though accusing Hamas of war crimes, reserved the overwhelming majority of its criticism for Israel, disputing that the attacks were indeed a response to the rockets, and rather stating that the target was the “people of Gaza as a whole”, with the assault designed to “humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability”. Precisely in line with the evident facts mentioned above, and amply documented elsewhere. The attacks also included “wanton” destruction of food production, water and sewerage facilities, and the killing of civilians “while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags”.
Richard Goldstone
Destruction of Palestinian civilian populations and infrastructure is in line with the strategy outlined by one of the major doves of Israeli political history, Abba Eban, who described the “rational prospect” that a civilian population, when attacked, will reject the organisation which is stated, even in the most superficial terms, to have been the target of the attack, and pressure for acquiescence to Israeli demands. Eban stated “that affected populations would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities”, which therefore provided the justification for state terrorism. Similarly, prominent Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff stated : “the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously…the Army has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets…[but] purposely attacked civilian targets.”
The Right To Defense
But even if we are to leave these simple and obvious facts to the side, acceptance of the justifications of Israeli apologists for the attacks, that they are simply in response to Hamas rocket attacks, and, in the words of Barack Obama, based on the fact that Israel has the right to protect its civilians, would require an intellectual capacity so underdeveloped, that it would put a remedial 8 year old to shame. The attack has 2 aspects that need to be justified; its quantity and quality. Regarding quantity first, if one accepts that one rocket is less serious than 100 rockets, then it follows that the concept of proportionality of response exists, since the response to 100 rockets would be greater than that for 1, assuming that the response is planned by a human being with thinking faculties (someone please explain this basic truism to Michael Bloomberg). Given that proportionality exists, an attack that has the devastating consequences on civilians and a civilian centre as did the Gaza assault, killing 225 people in its first 220 seconds, can hardly be justified as proportionate, when the stimulus for the attack was, according to the Israelis, rocket attacks that were killing less than 3 people per year. This is, of course, predicated on the assumption, highly controversial in Western circles, that a Palestinian life is worth the same as an Israeli. Compare the coverage of the capture of Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured by members of the country he is occupying, with the lack of mention in Western media of the name of just 1 of the thousands of Palestinian political (not military) prisoners captured by the Israelis without charge, held indefinitely, and probably tortured in what George Galloway describes as the “Israeli dungeons”. However, if we allow this elementary moral truism, we can conclude that in terms of proportionality, justification for the Israeli attack does not get off the ground. Correspondingly it follows that any agreement as to the attacks being proportionate is indeed based on the notion that an Israeli life is worth many Palestinian lives.
This man understands the notion of proportionality
More critically is the question of the quality of the Israeli response, namely violence. Though it follows that every state has the right to protect itself from violence, as Chomsky has pointed out, it does not follow, based on this, that every state has the right to protect itself using violence. No one in their right minds would claim that the UK had no right to bomb Northern Ireland in retaliation for IRA attacks in the 70’s and 80’s, or indeed that they had the right to bomb Boston where much of the funding for the attacks was coming from, or for that matter Washington, who were sheltering those wealthy Bostonian elites. Indeed this fact should be especially well noted by current apologists for Israeli violence given that the current US special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, brokered peace between the different factions, the means for which was not UK bombing of the source of the violence, but rather a negotiated settlement where differences were resolved.
Polticide- The Death Of A Nation
Of course for such a resolution to happen requires that both sides are willing to reconcile the differences with the other along generally accepted reasonable bounds (such as international consensuses); although the Palestinians have accepted this since 1976 given that the Israeli-US axis is so dead set against such an outrageous course of action, such a negotiated settlement will never happen. Israel will continue to pursue expansionism with the same abandon it has since its founding; the population of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem will continue to suffocate and die, and the world will continue to watch while Israeli statements that “Israel doesn’t target civilians”, and Americans calls for “restraint on both sides” serve as sufficient of a veneer for Israel to have carte blanche for even the most monstrous outrage, in line with Thucydides maxim that “(t)he strong do as they can, while the weak suffer what they must”. Meanwhile, though thinking people will do what they can to resist, we will also mourn, as bit by bit, Palestine will disappear, and within the next 50 years, under the crushing weight of annexation, house demolition, and military assault, Palestine will die.
Without a drastic change, the course of history will be hard to reverse
“We have got to understand that people in 3rd world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us
We have got to understand that they are us; we are them.”
- Rachel Corrie, aged 10
In 2005, Brazilian football star Ronaldo travelled to Palestine and Israel as the UN Goodwill Ambassador. Having visited the West Bank and Israel, he was then due to visit Gaza, where he has been invited, amongst others, by a 12-year-old boy named Hamad Al-Nairib. Hamad had written a letter to Ronaldo, which went as follows:
“Dear Ronaldo,
My name is Hamad al-Nairab, I am 12-year-old, live in the Refugee Camp of al-Shabboura in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. I like football very much, and love you very much. I am one of the supporters of the Brazilian football team. Everyday, I watch football matches on TV to see you while playing football.
I used to play football in our quarter. I used to wear the yellow shirt with number 9. I hoped to visit Brazil to see you there, play with you and to take picture with you.
I had a dream to be older and older and to become a famous professional footballer like you, I had a dream to be the Ronaldo of Palestine. Dear Ronaldo, I cannot play football because I lost my left leg. On May 19, 2004, me and my friends participated in a peaceful march in Rafah. The Israeli helicopters hit us with missiles. A lot of friends were killed and others wounded. On that day, I lost my leg and my dreams dead. No more playing football.
I was so pleased and surprised when I heard that you are visiting our homeland Palestine. But, unfortunately, I will be not able to see you because of the Israeli checkpoints and my health condition. All of my friends love you so much, and love football, they hope just to see you even for seconds. Seeing you is one of their big dreams.
I invite you to visit Rafah and beg you to agree, to award me the opportunity to shake hand with you and to take pictures with you. And to see how much the people here love you. All of them talk about you and about your visit. I hope you will not disappoint the children of Rafah and all the people here who love you.
We are waiting for you,
Hamad al-Nairab.”
Ronaldo
It’s obviously heart breaking and thought provoking to understand that even the most basic of dreams for the youngest of people are so tough to hold on to in this and of course other conflicts. If such a story were to have occurred in the West it would be imprinted on all our consciences; but there is no reason why it should not do likewise wherever it occurs. This is the insightfulness of Rachel Corrie’s abovementioned dictum.
I, like many others the world over, owe much of my political awareness to the work of Noam Chomsky. Described in 1979 by the New York Times, indeed of his many targets within establishment politics and media, as “arguably the most important intellectual alive, Chomsky’s dissection of political affairs certainly benefits from his formidable intellectual capacities. A study done by the Arts and Humanities Index in 1992, showed that between 1980 and 1992, he was the 8th most cited source in arts and humanities journals during that time. The complete list ran: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero. So it is not without substance that one can state that he ranks on a par with the greatest intellectuals in history including antiquity.
However it is not his intellectual capacities that makes him such an unparalleled incisive commentator. There are 2 factors that make him stand out:
1. His range. He knows an unbelievable amount of detail about an unbelievable number of topics. From libertarian anarchism, to American militarism, to the origins of the US Republic, to economics, to every conflict the West has been involved in the world over for the last few centuries, his passion for social justice is surely what fires his voracity for knowledge in these domains. As a result, his command of the facts regarding any particular situation will often immediately put him far ahead of any other commentator or detractor.
2. His moral clarity. So detached is Chomsky from the indoctrinations of propaganda systems that condition us to see black as white, that he is able to make observations that are startling and penetrating solely for their simplicity. When Condaleeza Rice stated that for violence in Iraq to cease there would need to be an end to “foreign fighters coming over the border”, though no mainstream journal noted it, it was left to Chomsky to point out the absurdity that the US army was precisely such an army, and one would be correct in concluding that they were indeed responsible for the bloodshed, as Rice unwittingly intimated.
Moral clarity is not something that is complicated- it usually just requires detachment from ones own interests in a given situation. We all know what is right and what is wrong. Where Chomsky rises above other intellectuals and writers in my eyes, is the fact that he combines not just the intellectual powers of a great scholar with the depth of knowledge of a hardened journalist, but also the moral clarity and steadfastness of any of the great popular leaders of the last century. It is the fusion of these 3 elements that make Chomsky what he is.
The following video is, even by Chomsky’s standards, just indispensable viewing.
Check out this unbelievable clip of the IDF (the Israeli army) tear gassing not only peaceful Palestinian protesters, but then, amazingly, an Al Jazeera correspondent reporting the protest live on air !
Despite this, the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, stated today that the US does not at the moment take the report seriously, since they have a “very serious concern with the mandate that was given by the Human Rights Council prior to our joining the council, which we viewed as unbalanced, one-sided, and basically unacceptable”. So a massacre has been committed by one side against another, and there is an expectation that a report into such a massacre should focus equally on the victims of such, as well as its perpetrators.
Such apathy, of which I have given but 2 very different examples, towards Israeli crimes, and then the contempt which this breeds within Israel for basic standards of right and wrong, as judged by the civilised people everywhere, makes me beg the question- how far is too far for Israel? Namely, what would they have to do, what unprecedented crime would they have to add to their unrivalled sordid history, for something to actually happen? For the international political community to actually take some sort of punitive action against them? For the US to stop providing them with billions of dollars in military aid every year? For the mainstream media, especially in the US, to stand up and say “This is enough!”; or even, possibly, for military action to be taken against them?. I really do wonder, if, hypothetically speaking, Israel were to start systematically gassing Palestinians; if they were to poison the water of Gaza; if they were to nuke the West Bank; would anything happen? They have committed so many atrocities already, with no serious backlash; how much further do they have to go for something to happen?
There are certain notions that are taken as absolute truths. Our governments are benign, if occasionally misbehaving entities; our national histories and cultural heritages are glorious and dazzling; and conspiracy theories, whatever they may be about, are wrong. This is accepted axiomatically, with the result that it removes all credibility from whatever it can tar with its brush. All you need to do is label something as a conspiracy theory, and then people will acquiesce towards the belief that since it is, or could conceivably be a conspiracy theory, it must be wrong. Not only that, but so serious is the problem, that “conspiracy theorist” is far more than a description of someone who believes in conspiracy theories; it is someone who has a deep and intrinsic flaw in his system of reasoning, in his world view, even in his personality. Illustrating the latter, he is described as a tin-foil hat wearer, a kool-aid drinker- designations that reflect not just on his belief with regard to that particular set of circumstances, but on his entire character.
What is considered a typical conspiracy theorist
This is a notion that does not just limit itself to social discussions, but pervades more influential domains, such as politics and journalism. No member of either domain is going to be keen to endorse anything that could be labelled as a conspiracy theory, since not only are they endorsing something that is, according to dogma, de facto wrong, but they are also by extension conspiracy theorists, and thus mentally deficient. And it is hard for them to defend themselves in the public domain, because all a critic has to state is “conspiracy theory/theorist”, and his/her argument has already gained a huge amount of currency in the eyes of Joe Public. It is much easier to argue based on labels than it is on facts.
The Problem
However, there is a problem in the camp of the anti-conspiracy theorist. They do not know what “conspiracy theory” means. Trust me, I always ask the question nowadays. Try it yourself- you will not get an answer that supports an a priori opposition to a conspiracy theory. Two examples from recent days, both from bright individuals: a conspiracy theory is “a theory not believed by the majority of the population” (so we can add Copernicus to the list of kool-aid drinkers then); and “explains an event or series of events as the result of a liberated plan by a group of, usually, powerful and often unidentified people” (so powerful, unidentified people don’t plan events I suppose). Yet these were the definitions both these people used initially that they believed satisfied their a priori opposition to conspiracy theories. Its just another example of the lack of uncommon common sense- no great brain power required, just a second’s thought, and then you realise that the argument, which you are often fervently defending, and which is accepted axiomatically in society, has no basis.
Copernicus. Also a tin foil hat wearer, by some definitions
A slightly, though not much better effort is offered by David Aaronovitch, journalist for the Times, rewarded for his apologetics for UK government crimes by getting the chance to interview Tony Blair for Blair’s farewell “tribute show” on UK TV. His definition, from his book: “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History” goes as follows: “the attribution of secret action to one party that might far more reasonably be explained as the less covert and less complicated action of another”. There are two main problems with this definition, given that Aaronovitch, as suggested by the title, is also one who deems a conspiracy theory to be wrong a priori. Firstly, the word “might”. If it “might” be far more reasonably explained by X, then it also might be far more reasonably explained by Y. So the use of the word “might” removes any possibility the definition may have had of being an axiomatic truth. Further, even if we give him the benefit of the doubt over the “might”, all the definition essentially states is that a conspiracy theory is a theory that is wrong, since it “…might far more reasonably be explained…” by something else. But this means that in order to ascertain whether a theory is a conspiracy theory or not, you should have to ascertain whether it is true or not; but under Aaronovitch’s reasoning, this is not the case- a conspiracy theory is that which we understand as a conspiracy theory, and all conspiracy theories are wrong, since they are all more reasonably explained by something else. Thus Aaronovitch’s definition does not satisfy his intention for it, namely to illustrate a logically sound a priori opposition to conspiracy theories, since it falls prey to the basic logical fallacy of circular reasoning- a conspiracy theory is always wrong, since it is defined as a theory that is always wrong.
David Aaronovitch, whose ability to articulately not question state crimes, rightly earned him a seat as Tony Blairs propaganda mouthpiece for "The Blair Years"
This is not to say that a priori reasoning has no place. You can point to a type of argument that can be shown to lack coherent reasoning, such as the circular argument illustrated above, and state that the logic used there is faulty, and so the argument cannot carry. But the ability to do this rests on your being able to prove that the reasoning rests on a structure that is inherently faulty. This is easy to do with circular reasoning. But with conspiracy theories, this, it would appear, is beyond most people; or at least most of its decriers.
The Definition
I’ll offer my definition of the term shortly, but it is important to say that even the definition that advocates of conspiracy theorists, such as 9/11 Truthers give, is also faulty in my view. The likes of the highly praiseworthy David Ray Griffin state that a conspiracy theory is simply a theory that proposes that 2 or more people have conspired to do something. That is a literal definition, but it clearly does not hold outside of the relatively meaningless literal domain. Hitler and the Nazis conspired successfully to invade Poland, yet that the Germans invaded Poland is not a conspiracy theory, evidently. One needs to distinguish between the literal definition and the vernacular definition. The literal definition is worthless- Arabs are also Semites ethnically, but this doesn’t mean that anti-Semitism is also anti-Arabism. Given that the dispute around the term revolves around its use in the vernacular, the definition that we have to identify is the vernacular one. I would define a conspiracy theory as this:
A theory that asserts that a misdemeanour has been committed by a member of any hierarchy, and that has then been either ignored, or had the blame/responsibility shifted onto someone or something else, by members of the same and/or a related hierarchy
Conspiracy theories always involve a crime or misdemeanour having taken place. They always attribute the guilt for that misdemeanour on a higher power. They always state that the guilt/cause has then either been ignored by other higher powers (as well as the same higher power), or that those higher powers have then placed the blame/responsibility for it on someone or something else- a patsy.
I think that you can apply this definition to any conspiracy theory:
9/11:
The crime/misdemeanour: complicity in the terrorist attacks of that day
The purportedly guilty higher power: the US government/intelligence establishment
The related higher power that has shifted the blame: the mainstream media
The patsy: Al Qaeda
The JFK assassination:
The crime/misdemeanour: assassination of JFK
The purportedly guilty higher power: US Intelligence; military-industrial complex
The related higher power that has shifted the blame: the mainstream media
The patsy: Lee Harvey Oswald
The Iraq War being about oil (declared by Tony Blair to be a conspiracy theory, read the opening remarks of the article for clarification on why)
The crime/misdemeanour: The invasion of Iraq for oil
The purportedly guilty higher power: The US/UK government
The related higher power that has shifted the blame: the mainstream media
The patsy: Iraq’s supposed WMDs
You can even apply it to conspiracy theories that I do not believe in:
The Moon landings:
The crime/misdemeanour: Faking of the 1969 Moon landings
The purportedly guilty higher power: the US government/NASA
The related higher power that has shifted the responsibility: the mainstream media
The patsy: The crew of the Apollo 11
Elvis’s “death”
The crime/misdemeanour: Faking of the death of Elvis
The purportedly guilty higher power: Elvis himself (I suppose?)
The related higher power that has shifted the responsibility: his family, his coroner
The patsy: His supposed drug overdose
(Just to repeat- I do not believe in these last two!)
Note that a patsy is not necessarily someone who is accused of a crime, but as I outline in my definition, it can also be someone/something on whom the responsibility for an action, even a positive action, is placed. The action is attributed to the patsy, although it was not him/it that carried it out, and it is the circumstances that revolve around this action that constitute the crime.
We can test this definition further by removing one of the variables. Let’s say that the crime/misdemeanour has not been covered up by members of a related hierarchy. In other words, let’s say that the conspiracy theory of, for example, 9/11, had been fully endorsed by the mainstream media. Imagine if tomorrow, every newspaper ran a headline stating a variant of “9/11: Inside Job”; TV station such as the BBC, CNN, MSNBC started running reports about how the event clearly appears to have been a government plot, and that from that point on, in all their reports on the War on Terror, it was acknowledged that this war was founded on a lie. If this happened, the conspiracy theory of 9/11 would no longer be a conspiracy theory. It is basically a contradiction to state that the mainstream media can as a body endorse a conspiracy theory, since their refutation of it is one of the prerequisites of it being such. We have empirical examples of this. Iran-Contra was at one point a conspiracy theory, satisfying all of my definitions- it was a crime/misdemeanour (selling arms to Iran and funnelling profits to the Nicaraguan Contras); alleged to have been commited by members of a hierarchy (the US government); initially ignored both by that hierarchy, and then by a related one (the mainstream media), and this time, with no blame shifted on anyone else, since the event was being ignored. But no one would allege today that Iran-Contra is a conspiracy theory. The only factor that has varied is that it has been accepted by the related hierarchies in question- the corporate media and the government- as having occurred. The fact that a test of whether a conspiracy theory is such or not, is whether it is admitted to by members of the same hierarchy within which guilt is suspected, illustrates the absurdity of deeming a conspiracy theory to be a priori false.
So the critical point is not that conspiracy theories are necessarily all true, but that to allege that they are all necessarily false, is ill thought out. That hierarchies commit crimes, and then either ignore them or blame them on someone else is a sequence of events so evident, logical and normal, that it barely needs elaboration.
The Explanation
So two things happen now. Firstly, the absurdity of an a priori opposition to something because it is a conspiracy theory is illustrated, since it demonstrates a normal, possibly even regular, sequence of events. Secondly, the reason why the term “conspiracy theory” gets such a bad press in the mainstream becomes evident. Since it is a theory that suggests that powerful interests commit misdemeanours, and either cover them up, or pin the blame for them on others less powerful than themselves, it’s obvious why said powerful interests would want to encourage an understanding of such a term that was completely pejorative. If a theory that was a threat to powerful interests was actually examined carefully by the public, namely the facts behind it were studied and considered dispassionately, then this would vastly restrict the possibility for such powerful interests to commit their necessary crimes. Imagine if the term “conspiracy theory/theorist” were absent from debates around 9/11- the dynamic would be unrecognisable, since the debate would revolve solely around facts. But since powerful interests want, logically and completely understandably, to deflect any discussion away from the facts, since the facts will indict them, the notion of a conspiracy theory as being something which is de facto wrong, is cultivated by them and then swallowed uncritically by the public, until it becomes an opposition that is actually quite violent in its fervour, and of course completely unthinking, to the extent where it is essentially used as a cudgel against any popular accusations of serious government crimes. Given my definition of conspiracy theory, it follows that such theories only pertain to very high crimes, and thus the importance of cultivating a correspondingly high, automatic and mindless opposition to it.
So the next time you are in a discussion with someone, and they deem something to be “just a conspiracy theory”… you should know what to say.
This is Paddy O’Connell, BBC presenter, who we met outside BBC Television Centre on the 9/11 Anniversary protest. The sound sucks at the start, but gets better as it goes on:
His point was essentially, that he didn’t know enough about the various scientific arguments to pronounce an opnion on them, except to say that they did not merit further investigation. The non scientific elements, such as the death of Barry Jennings, he concluded that though he was sure that Jennings “believed what he said”, he did not believe that the events he recounted actually happened, thus suggesting that Jennings’ experience was in his eyes hallucinatory.
The goal of the 9/11 Truth Movement (hererafter “TM”) is for there to be a criminal investigation into possible complicity by the US government in the attacks of that day. Consequently, the baseline proposition of the TM is, logically, that there is sufficient evidence of government complicity in 9/11 to warrant such an investigation.
This distinction, one that is rarely made, is crucial, since it changes drastically the dynamic of most, if not all, of the debates that have been happening in the public domain about the subject. Given that the goal of the TM is one of illustrating evidence of a sufficiently significant gravity to warrant a criminal investigation, there are many “debunking” tactics that have absolutely no relevance any more. The idea that it is the role of the TM to prove the government’s guilt, for instance, is a common assertion that, with a moment’s reflection, is illustrated to be neither here nor there. It is not the duty of the TM to prove something so that it can then be proved. To state that there is an onus on the TM to prove the guilt of an accused party, regardless of whether it can or cannot, is as ridiculous as if one were to ask someone who is accusing someone else of murder to prove it, and only then can any criminal investigation into the murder take place. Since it is not the TM’s job to be judge jury and executioner, such arguments have no place.
A similar dynamic is true for another accusation, which is that the TM needs to construct an alternative scenario under which the attacks could have proceeded, one that is watertight, and covers all eventualities. This again, just shows a drastic misunderstanding the TM, and the entire dynamic of the debate. It is not the TM that is constructing an scenario to be defended- this is the job of the other side. They have drawn up a very intricate and improbable scenario that needs to be defended at every corner; a scenario that if there is one flaw, the whole tapestry comes crashing down. Though it is tempting to make hypotheses about who did what and when, this is something that I feel the TM should not get into too publicly, since it is not something that has any relevance. I don’t care who did what and when to WTC7, and the details are utterly irrelevant- all that matters is that I can show that there is sufficient evidence to illustrate that the government could have been criminally involved in its demise to warrant an investigation into such. That’s all I need to show, given the goal and baseline proposition of the TM as outlined at the top.
The collapse of World Trade Center 7
Furthermore, one of the most common retorts, “Yes, but maybe it was just a coincidence/built that way/an off day for NORAD…” again, no longer has any validity whatsoever. While it may well be that, for instance, military grade incendiaries got into the WTC dust by accident, the point is that this is a significant piece of evidence pointing to government complicity that needs to be part of a criminal investigation. Even the man with a smoking gun may have a genuine alibi, but does this mean that you do not perform a criminal investigation against him? Of course not. So the standards that are being demanded of the TM do not really represent a serious analysis of the situation on the part of any of its detractors.
Professor Niels Harrit, whose paper illustrating the presence of the military grade incendiary nano-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center, has been published in a peer reviewed academic journal
A priori reasoning is also something that doesn’t hold. It is useless, logically speaking, to state, “It’s impossible, since there would have had to have been x thousand people involved”. Or, “It’s impossible, since there’s no way a US government would do that to its own people”. Or, “Bush isn’t smart enough to have pulled off such a complex plot- he couldn’t even plant WMDs in Iraq”. It is not a problem to employ such axioms if you can prove them to be axiomatic. But how can you do such a thing with the above 3 comments- 3 of the most common a priori rejoinders to any TM argument? Since none of them hold axiomatically, they cannot be employed as axioms. Thus any serious analysis of the situation would have to avoid such prima facie arguments.
Deductive vs. Cumulative reasoning
Structurally therefore, the position of the TM is one that is essentially impossible to refute. Given that there are probably around 100 different pieces of serious evidence that point to government complicity, the job of an opponent is not just to prove that they each might be wrong, as has been the stance until now, but that each of them stand so little chance of being right, that the sum total of all of the 100 or so accusations’ probabilities of having actually occurred is lower than the probability necessary for the overall accusation to warrant criminal investigation. This becomes mathematically impossible. To take an example, if the chances that NORAD’s inactivity was not indicative of criminal complicity on the behalf of the government were, for the sake of argument, ¾ and then you apply the same reasoning to just 20 arguments that the TM has proffered- very easy to list- then your combined probability of the weight of the evidence not being indicative of criminal complicity on the part of the government is 1/300. So in essence, the debunkers, once they have understood what the debate actually is, cannot but lose. This is because the arguments are structurally different. The TM argument relies on cumulative reasoning, which is to say that only one argument has to be true for the argument to carry. At the same time, the weight of the case is reflected by the combined probabilities of the total accusations. On the other hand, the government case is based on deductive reasoning, which means that only one element in the chain has to be wrong for the entire story to fold. If, for example, it was indeed the case that Dick Cheney told the young man in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center not to shoot the plane down, as Transport Secretary Norm Mineta intimated, then the entire rest of the government story (that is not contingent on that piece of the jigsaw of course) may well be true, but it would not make a bit of difference- the government story would be wrong, and criminal complicity would be proven. If one can illustrate that that piece of testimony is sufficiently serious that it deserves a criminal investigation, then the reasoning of the TM carries. And if you are not sure about that one piece, for whatever reason, then it is simply a matter of numbers, since there are so many serious accusations of holes in the government story, that the combined probability of these accusations makes any acceptance of the need for criminal enquiry essentially impossible to hold off.
Norm Mineta, the US Transportation Secretary, who intimated that Dick Cheney ordered no shoot down to happen on the hijacked planes on the morning of 911
The need to rebuild America’s defences
To look at how this works in detail, let us take what I feel to be one of the strongest examples, and that is the policy statements of the neo-conservatice think tank, the Project for a New American Century. Now one thing that startles me about 9/11, is that if it is so simple for an amateur pilot to hijack a plane and fly it into the Pentagon, one of the most secure buildings in the world, well then why don’t terrorists fly planes into less secure buildings- surely this should be easier? Why don’t Algerian terrorists fly into the Algerian Parliament building, or some other such building? Why don’t Sri Lankan terrorists fly into an important building in Sri Lanka? These buildings do not have a fraction of the protection of the Pentagon- why has it so far proved impossible to pull off? Why has this never happened in the history of mankind, given that on one day it occurred with relative ease, on not one, but 3 such buildings? The simple answer is that even in a tinpot security infrastructure, pulling off such an attack is very hard to do. So how did it happen in the US? In our quest for an answer to that question, it is useful to start with the neo-conservative policy white paper that was published in September 2000, exactly 1 year prior to the attacks. The document is called “Rebuilding America’s Defences”.
Some of the members of the Project for a New American Century, who openly stated the usefulness to policy of a "new Pearl Harbor". Many of these people who be responsible for protecting the US from an attack that they openly viewed as propitious to policy
Basically speaking, this document, signed by a significant number of the men and women who would be charged with defending the US from a catastrophic terror attack on and up to 9/11, detailed that such an attack would in fact be propitious to US policy. This is because the document cites the need to create a new paradigm that will allow for a decades long shift in military and strategic radicalisation. With the threat of the Cold War gone, the US can no longer rest on its laurels as it did under Clinton- it needed to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam, develop the capacity to fight 2 major wars at the same time, utilise space as a defence mechanism, utilise cyberspace as a defence mechanism, secure radical upheavals in defence spending etc. This, it stated, would be very hard to achieve “absent a catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbor”. Now given that such an event is close to impossible to occurring in a country with a tinpot security infrastructure like Sri Lanka or Algeria, the chances that it should happen within a trillion dollar security infrastructure, like the US, without government involvement, moreover when the same government- in fact the people charged with preventing such an attack within said government- had effectively advocated such an occurrence only 12 months prior, are very slim indeed. So the case against the TM, bearing in mind our precisions about burdens of proof necessary as stated at the top, is already looking pretty tough. What the administration did when it came to power- the lengths the administration went to to secure its election victory over Gore in 2000 now making more sense- was, within 6 days, to demote the main guy who was charged with preventing a terror attack who was not one of them- head of counter terrorism, Richard Clarke. He was demoted, incidentally, one day after handing Condaleeza Rice a document entitled “Strategies for eliminating the threat of Al Qaeda”. And this 3 months after the bombing of the USS Cole, by Al Qaeda. As has been outlined in overwhelming detail by Paul Thompson, this pattern of warnings being ignored, and safeguards against threats being defused, was very much par for the course on a regular basis leading up to the attacks. Even the 9/11 Commission Report states that Bush was given 40 Presidential Daily Briefs that warned him that Al Qaeda was plotting to attack the US. 40 times he did nothing. We are told that George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, stated that the threat level was “unprecedented”, and that he was running around “with his hair on fire”. And yet nothing was done in response.
There is only so far that apathy can go before it ceases to become something passive and transforms into something active, and there is one evident way to explain the active apathy of the Bush administration prior to 9/11 faced with daily warnings of a catastrophic terror attack against them- and that is, as we know, that the occurrence of such an attack was effectively openly stated policy. Once viewed in this light, the insouciance becomes perfectly normal, and things make sense again. Otherwise there is no explanation why an administration made up of some of the most hawkish figures in recent American political history, would not violently react to the idea that there was anything threatening national security- a rare legitimate use of the term.
Let’s just pull back for a second and analyse this data in the light of our earlier expounded framework of reasoning. It could well be the case that the pieces of evidence I have cited do indeed lead nowhere. It could well be that it was just a coincidence that a once in a lifetime event should occur 12 months after it was more or less wished for by the people- undeniably ruthless and unscrupulous people at that- who were in a position to make it happen. This I don’t deny. But it’s irrelevant. The point is that one cannot look at that evidence and state that this is not sufficiently indicative of criminal complicity to warrant an investigation into such. That cannot be said, in any serious way. And this is merely one of dozens of such pieces of evidence.
Shortly after the planes hit the towers, the entire WTC 7 was evacuated. Barry Jennings and Michael Hess, 2 high level city bureaucrats, happened to enter the Mayor’s Emergency Command Center on the 23rd floor, found it deserted, and were told by emergency staff to leave the building. On their way down, there was an explosion within the building that blew up part of the 6th floor. This was, according to Jennings, a significant time before either Twin Tower had collapsed. They made their way down to the ground floor, where Jennings describes how it was “in total ruins”, as if from explosions, and saying that in the lobby, he was told “not to look down” by a firefighter, and that, walking through the lobby, he was “stepping over people”- the suggestion being, of course, dead people.
Jennings was interviewed for the excellent Loose Change Final Cut, but then asked for his testimony to be removed, due to threats he was receiving, and then shortly after, being interviewed for the BBC Conspiracy files debunking attempt, he reneged on his testimony. Shortly after that he was dead, in his early-mid 50’s.
The events he relayed all happened on the morning of 9/11. The building collapsed later in the day. There is, in fact, little need to go into the specifics of something so simple- watch the collapse for yourself, and you can witness that it is as much of a controlled demolition as you are likely to see.
Official explanations of the building’s demise, initially evaluated by FEMA as having “a low probability of occurrence” evolved into the notion that that due to the fires that were set off by falling debris from the twin towers, and the water supply being cut off for the firefighters, the metal beams in the building underwent “thermal expansion”, making the building unsteady, and causing its collapse. Were this explanation one taken seriously by even its formulators, there is something very evident that we would see, namely a revision of fire and building codes for skyscrapers all over the world, since if a fire can cause a building to collapse at the speed of gravity, we had better all go and work in bungalows. Since this is not a serious explanation, there have been no such revisions that I am aware of anywhere in the world- the notion that a fire can cause a building to collapse on itself in the manner of WTC7 is clearly not one that makes any sense.
More sense is provided by first responder witnesses to the collapse. Along with Craig Bartmer, Kevin Mcpadden who was one of the first responders that day, gives testimony that is devastating to the official story, stating that there was a countdown leading up to the collapse of the building.
First responder Indira Singh also states that they were told to evacuate the area, since with regards to WTC7, “(they) were going to have to bring it down”.
To add further fuel to the fire, the leaseholder of the World Trade Center complex, Larry Silverstein, who had purchased the lease weeks prior to the attacks, interviewed for a PBS special on the attacks, stated the following:
“I remember getting a call from the Fire Department Commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire. I said, you know, we’ve had such a terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is, pull it. They made that decision to pull, and we watched the building collapse.”
Larry Silverstein, the leaseholder on the WTC complex
Now, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding by both sides of the debate surrounding this comment. Some members of the TM initially stated that “to pull” is industry jargon for “to implode”, which is not correct. Opponents of the TM sided with Silverstein’s later clarification attempt, when he put out a statement saying that by “pull”, he meant in fact “pull the firemen out of the building”. The debate has centred around the first interpretation, which is, in my eyes, totally misguided- given that Silverstein is not a demolition professional, the idea that he would be using demolition jargon, especially in a reported conversation with a fireman, for a public television show, is not very well thought through. The position from which one should be interpreting this comment, is that of a layperson- i.e. a non demolition industry insider, since this is the standpoint from which Silverstein is coming. If such a person were to hear, or indeed make that comment, it is fairly clear what their interpretation of it would be- that the building was brought down intentionally, by one means or another. Hence the consecutive nature of “making the decision to pull- watching the building collapse”. There is only one thing that pull could be referring to, realistically, and it certainly is not firemen. So Silverstein’s comment, when analysed intelligently, is another piece of evidence indicating insider complicity in the attacks.
This is not to state, as I have emphasised above, that the evidence given rules out all possibility of an alternative explanation. It may well have been the first time in history that a building collapsed by fire, while coincidentally exploding on the inside and its owner subsequently making suspect comments as to its demise; but it is this very fact that renders the probability of its veracity so unlikely, and screams for the need for an investigation into the attacks.
Very often, people point to official reports as support for their argument that the government was not involved. This is clearly erroneous, as since the government is the entity that is suspected of misdemeanour, pointing to a report issued by one of its agencies that defends its point of view is not an impartial way of viewing things. A useful thought experiment to do if one wants to analyse the situation impartially, is to consider if this event had happened in the country of a “designated enemy”, say Iran, and a building containing its secret service and other secretive agencies had collapsed in the same manner as WTC7, with the same background and motives for the attacks as the US had for 9/11, and what our reaction would be when Iranian government scientists came out and said that no, there is no conspiracy, nothing to see here. People just wouldn’t take it seriously. Yet when the shoe is on the other foot, and it is us who are the potential suspects, a government agency’s defence of the government is seen as being something representing serious academic rigour. This is a level of double standards that needs to be bypassed if any progress is to be made in our analysis of such situations. One prima facie refutation that is often given cited above is that the US Government would never kill its own people. But it is not a stretch to believe that the US government would kill 3,000 of its own for imperial grand strategy. After Hurricane Katrina, it is widely accepted that government apathy in the face of spending money to save poor black people led to the death of close to 2,000 there. So if that is accepted to be the case, is it really inconceivable that they would engineer the deaths of a similar number to ensure lasting power and hegemony for the foreseeable future? Not at all. We are aware that the US will willingly sacrifice lives of millions of foreign civilians, and thousands of its own military, to ensure its own global power, so when viewed in this light, and in the stark light of events in New Orleans, it becomes hard to accept the idea that 9/11 is indeed a step that the US Government would not go beyond.
If the government could look the other way while 2,000 poor people died in New Orleans just to save money, it is little stretch to suggest that they would be complicit in the deaths of 3,000 americans to achieve global hegemony
The financing of the attacks
The attacks, according to the co-chair of the 9/11 Commission Report, Tom Kean, cost $400,000-500,000 to carry out. A critical question therefore, though Kean inexplicably deemed it to be “of little practical significance”, is where did this money come from. As has been reported in The Guardian, The Times of India, Asia Times, as well as the Wall Stree Journal, the Australian, and other media outlets from France to India, Indian Intelligence were informed by the FBI that $100,000 of this came from Mahmoud Ahmed, who was the head of the ISI- the Pakistani Intelligence Service- via renowned terrorist Saeed Sheikh. In any normal circumstances, Ahmed would surely be living in hiding having been labelled as a sponsor of state terrorism. But this is not the case. Ahmed, the man who is widely reported to have financed 20-25% of the worst ever terrorist attack on the US, spent the week of those attacks in Washington, meeting with senior government and intelligence officials of the country whose people he was helping to attack. This included breakfasting on the morning of 9/11 with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, the heads of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as well as meetings with George Tenet, the Director of the CIAon the 9th September.
Mahmoud Ahmed, the former head of the ISI. He is also one of the alleged financers of 9/11, at which time he was tightly allied to US intelligence and government
Given the historical links between the CIA and the ISI, going back to US rapprochement with China under Nixon-Kissinger, and then the adding to that equation of the Taliban during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, it is unsurprising that revelations should surface linking the CIA and the ISI to attacks that are purported to have come out of Afghanistan. What is manna from heaven from anyone suspecting government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, is that such a link should have been made so explicit, with such wide reports regarding the financing, and then such an obvious connection manifested between the financer and US intelligence. Once more, if we apply these inputs to the framework of reasoning that is outlined above, the case for 9/11 Truth becomes increasingly hard to reject.
Some of the other issues
As stated at the top, the strucural strength of the movement comes from the fact that there are so many areas of improbability in the government report, and only one of them has to turn out to be false and indicative of government complicity for the TM argument to carry. Due to this nature of the argument, I will not be able to list all of the issues in this piece, but an excellent list of 50 key points is provided here by Jon Gold. To deal with some key questions:
- This is the crash sight of United 93 in Shanksville.
- Is it normal that a plane, flown by an inexperienced pilot, should be able to crash into the walls of a 6 storey building, at 500mph, leaving no mark on the lawn, and leaving a 20 foot sized hole in the wall? Or that for a building which had dozens of security cameras around it, not one piece of serious footage has been released of the impact- footage that would put any qualms regarding this instance to rest?
The unmarked lawn of the Pentagon
The initial 16 foot hole in the Pentagon (shortly before the roof collapse)
Absent government complicity, how can it be, as is now peer reviewed science, that traces of a military incendiary that can be used to slice through steel girders, have been found in the dust from the World Trade Center Collapse?
Is it normal that there should be molten metal for weeks after the event on the site of the collapse of the building, “running like lava”, when there was, according to the official story, no elements that could have caused such a phenomenon?
Molten metal at Ground Zero on the day of 9/11
Red hot metal 3 weeks after the attacks
Conclusion
If we return to our original proposition, which is that there is sufficient evidence of government complicity in the attack, I think it is hard to conceive that even given the limited number of instances I have been able to look at into depth here (given time and space considerations), that this is not the case. This is not at all to say that there is not a conceivable scenario under which the government’s story could hold. As I have been at pains to underscore, the validity of the TM’s case is not contingent on it offering judge, jury and executioner proof of the guilt of the US Government in the attacks. This is the job of an official investigative body, whose pursuits will be catalysed by the evidence that the TM is, and has been able to bring to light. The job of the TM, and one that has been rendered very easy, given the evident facts of the day, is simply to illustrate the instances that point to likely criminal conduct on the part of the US Government. This serves as the basis for an investigation to be conducted.
Engaging in belief and understanding
The reaction of many people I meet to whom I explain some of these basic facts, is one of what I would call disengaged belief. That’s to say that they understand the facts, they are convinced by them, but the engagement in the belief is not there. This fact also explains the discrepancy between poll numbers- which show that around 40% of Americans are convinced by the TM’s overall case- and the fact that such numbers are not out on the street in open revolt against what they have understood to be their criminal government. To actually engage in the belief means to fully comprehend its implications. It means to fully comprehend the nature of government, industry and other power centres, and the lengths to which these entities will go to to preserve their own power. It would mean the drastic reevaluation of the images that we see on television and the internet of the leaders that we elect, and an utterly unpalatable realisation of our own implication and responsibility in the crimes our government commits. Such a radical reevaluation of world affairs is difficult for almost all people to swallow. As J Edgar Hoover said, “The individual is handicapped confronted with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists”. This was precisely the phenomenon he was referring to. What handicaps the individual is the dichotomy between his current world view where leaders and power centres are essentially benign, if occasionally misbehaving individuals, and a reality where such “monstrous” conspiracies, implemented to further the true interests of power centres, are possible, logical, and do happen. They are indeed all the more likely to happen given the handicap of general members of the public, and their inability to engage in their belief in a monstrous conspiracy. It is just simple fact that if 40% of the US, 120 million people, engaged in their belief that the government needs to be investigated for possible criminal connections to 9/11, life in that country would become unrecognisable- precisely what it must become if justice is to be served.
It is essential that when reading this article, the belief that gets engendered must be engaged upon- it is no use just believing it and setting it aside, and becoming another one of the 120 million who believes, but does not act. If you do this, you become part of Hoover’s handicapped public, that allows for future conspiracies to unfurl. This in turn allows for future murders, wars, and repressions. The issue of government connivance in the murder of 3,000 of its own citizens to launch a fraudulent war, the War on Terror, is not one that needs to be explained. Engage in the belief, actively demand a new investigation, and that way, not only will you be on the side of justice for the over 1 million who have died as a result of that day, but you will be involved in the effort to make such a catastrophic event less likely in the future.
Posted by mjd1982 
