My response follows. -Karin
Demand for immediate retraction and publication of correction
Saturday, May 16, 2009 1:13 PM
From: "Mark Potok" mark.potok@splcenter.org
This is for Karen Friedemann and regards your May 16 "Letter From America"article in the Khaleej Times Online entitled "Americans Divided by HateCrimes Bill." http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/opinion/2009/May/opinion_May80.xml§ion=opinion&col=
You make the following claim in your article:
"The ADL, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is alreadyheavily involved in Homeland Security's locally based 'fusion centres,'which collect personal data for intelligence databases that synchronise national intelligence collection with local police. ADL and SPLC have arecord of illegally spying on American citizens and providing falseinformation to law enforcement officials."
The statements about the SPLC -- that we have a record of "illegally spying"on Americans and "providing false information" to authorities -- are both materially false and also libelous and defamatory. Both statements containno shred of truth -- apparently, you've attributed the ADL's problems in the Roy Bullock case to the SPLC. We have never been charged or convicted oreven accused of these things.
As I noted above, these statements arelibelous and false. As a result, I write to demand that you immediatelywithdraw these statements from wherever they have been published, including the Khaleej Times, and publish a correction making clear that SPLC has not done the things you falsely accuse us of. I have written a similar note to the editor of the Khaleej Times and expect action to be taken by this Monday afternoon at the latest.
Mark Potok
Director, Intelligence Project
Editor, Intelligence Report/Hatewatch
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104
===
Response to Mark Potok
Karin Friedemann
The US Department of Justice released FBI documents indicating that the Southern Poverty Law Center engaged in undercover surveillance of Oklahoma militia groups in 1995 before and after the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The local FBI team, which should have obtained a warrant to dispatch real FBI agents, criminally conspired with SPLC agents to get around Attorney General Janet Reno’s legal limitations on domestic spying. Because the conspiracy was criminal, the espionage was illegal.
In “The Watchdogs: A close look at Anti-Racist ‘Watchdog’ Groups,” Laird Wilcox documents the SPLC’s extensive intelligence networks monitoring editorials, observing meetings, and compiling files on people they consider offensive. Wilcox told WorldNetDaily: “By alleging ‘dangerousness’ on the basis of mere assumed values, opinions and beliefs, they put entirely innocent citizens at risk from law enforcement error and misconduct.”
Mark Potok himself admits the SPLC criminally spied on the Animal Rights 2001 Conference by secretly recording attendees. “We were at that conference, we collected the quote ourselves, in person and on a videotape to boot,” he wrote in response to complaints from Friends of Animals President Priscilla Feral about misleading SPLC characterizations of her organization.
In an article libeling Muslim clerics, the online SPLC Intelligence Report links videos apparently made in violation of federal wiretapping and eavesdropping statutes.
Many organizations and individuals accuse SPLC of publishing false and misleading information and manipulating crime data and terminology. Federal law enforcement agencies and Homeland Security Fusion Centers were issued a warning against relying upon faulty and politicized SPLC research reports.
The Turkish American Legal Defense Fund is currently suing the SPLC for defaming an 85-year-old emeritus professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts.
Harper's Magazine accused the SPLC of scare mongering to fund relatively lavish lifestyles for the organization's directors.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Americans Divided by Hate Crimes Bill
Khaleej Times
Despite lingering concerns about threats to Constitutional protections such as freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the Federal Hate Crimes bill, HR 1913, passed recently in the House of Representatives.
If passed by the Senate, the legislation will expand the federal definition of such crimes to include those motivated by gender identity and permit increased federal power to investigate and prosecute crimes as “hate crimes.” The meat of the hate crimes bill is a $10 million grant for the establishment of a federally funded surveillance centre.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R, NC) argued HR 1913 would move America “down a slippery slope” to loss of freedom as has happened in Canada and Europe, where imprisonment for “thought crimes” has become a regular occurrence.
Susan Fani of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights warns: “The problem in general with hate crimes legislation is that it invites the government to probe way beyond motive. And in instances like this, it trespasses on free speech and religious liberty.”
Although the bill “declares that nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit the exercise of Constitutionally-protected free speech,” it sets a dangerous precedent of punishing motivations rather than actions because the actions — stalking, assault, etc. — are already illegal.
Anisa Abd el Fattah, President of National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) points out: “Before our Congress passes such a law there are many questions to be answered, the most important of which is ‘who’ will decide that a given act is a ‘hate crime’?” The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) originally wrote this bill. Arab, Latino and African-American organisations support it because they hope that prosecuting “hate” will decrease racist attacks on their communities. Serious fears exist, however, about the government surveillance centre, given the highly politicised nature of hate crimes labeling.
The ADL, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is already heavily involved in Homeland Security’s locally based “fusion centres,” which collect personal data for intelligence databases that synchronise national intelligence collection with local police.
ADL and SPLC have a record of illegally spying on American citizens and providing false information to law enforcement officials.
A fusion centre in Missouri recently distributed an “intelligence” document on “hate groups” to local police, which was written by the ADL and the SPLC. It instructed the police to look for Americans who were concerned about unemployment, taxes, illegal immigration, gangs, border security, abortion, high costs of living, gun restrictions, FEMA, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve, as well as supporters of third party presidential candidates! Mainstream Christian organisations that espouse a traditional orthodox view of homosexuality were lumped into a list filled with violent neo-Nazis and skinheads while Roman Catholic institutions were singled out as “encouraging anti-Semitism and ethnic and religious chauvinism.” The report also predictably vilified religiously observant Muslims and anti-war activists.
“There is no level of hate crime that is acceptable—period,” says Dan Stein, President of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “However, the SPLC’s calculated abuse of the term ‘hate group’ and manipulation of hate crime data for self-serving political interests is an affront to hate crime victims and those who advocate on their behalf.”
The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission declared, “If we were to apply the same twisted logic of the SPLC to the SPLC, it would have to label itself as a hate group because they are intolerant of conservative Christians.” Similarly, Hussein Ibish, a secular Arab-American lobbyist, could be charged with inciting hate crimes targeting Muslims and political activists, his compilation of anti-Arab hate crimes statistics for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) aside.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) expressed concern about how the fusion system has been “monitoring the legal activities of American Muslims exercising their constitutional privileges” and the “use of McCarthy-era tactics, most notably dissemination of Islamophobic analysis by federally-funded ‘fusion centres’ to local law enforcement agencies.”
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a citizens group in Missouri, issued a national advisory to all local, state and Federal law enforcement agencies and officers, including all DHS fusion centres, “warning against any reliance upon faulty and politicised research issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL)” that “cast suspicion on millions of Americans.”
Governor Peter Kinder took the advisory seriously and is now engaging in damage control.
He issued a public apology to Presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin, and placed Missouri Public Safety Director John Britt on administrative leave pending an investigation of the absurd report.
America’s problems with intolerance do not result from the absence of hate crime laws but originate in structural problems associated with bigotries of government officials, and often involve conspiracies against rights.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women
Despite lingering concerns about threats to Constitutional protections such as freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the Federal Hate Crimes bill, HR 1913, passed recently in the House of Representatives.
If passed by the Senate, the legislation will expand the federal definition of such crimes to include those motivated by gender identity and permit increased federal power to investigate and prosecute crimes as “hate crimes.” The meat of the hate crimes bill is a $10 million grant for the establishment of a federally funded surveillance centre.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R, NC) argued HR 1913 would move America “down a slippery slope” to loss of freedom as has happened in Canada and Europe, where imprisonment for “thought crimes” has become a regular occurrence.
Susan Fani of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights warns: “The problem in general with hate crimes legislation is that it invites the government to probe way beyond motive. And in instances like this, it trespasses on free speech and religious liberty.”
Although the bill “declares that nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit the exercise of Constitutionally-protected free speech,” it sets a dangerous precedent of punishing motivations rather than actions because the actions — stalking, assault, etc. — are already illegal.
Anisa Abd el Fattah, President of National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) points out: “Before our Congress passes such a law there are many questions to be answered, the most important of which is ‘who’ will decide that a given act is a ‘hate crime’?” The Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) originally wrote this bill. Arab, Latino and African-American organisations support it because they hope that prosecuting “hate” will decrease racist attacks on their communities. Serious fears exist, however, about the government surveillance centre, given the highly politicised nature of hate crimes labeling.
The ADL, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is already heavily involved in Homeland Security’s locally based “fusion centres,” which collect personal data for intelligence databases that synchronise national intelligence collection with local police.
ADL and SPLC have a record of illegally spying on American citizens and providing false information to law enforcement officials.
A fusion centre in Missouri recently distributed an “intelligence” document on “hate groups” to local police, which was written by the ADL and the SPLC. It instructed the police to look for Americans who were concerned about unemployment, taxes, illegal immigration, gangs, border security, abortion, high costs of living, gun restrictions, FEMA, the IRS, and the Federal Reserve, as well as supporters of third party presidential candidates! Mainstream Christian organisations that espouse a traditional orthodox view of homosexuality were lumped into a list filled with violent neo-Nazis and skinheads while Roman Catholic institutions were singled out as “encouraging anti-Semitism and ethnic and religious chauvinism.” The report also predictably vilified religiously observant Muslims and anti-war activists.
“There is no level of hate crime that is acceptable—period,” says Dan Stein, President of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). “However, the SPLC’s calculated abuse of the term ‘hate group’ and manipulation of hate crime data for self-serving political interests is an affront to hate crime victims and those who advocate on their behalf.”
The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission declared, “If we were to apply the same twisted logic of the SPLC to the SPLC, it would have to label itself as a hate group because they are intolerant of conservative Christians.” Similarly, Hussein Ibish, a secular Arab-American lobbyist, could be charged with inciting hate crimes targeting Muslims and political activists, his compilation of anti-Arab hate crimes statistics for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) aside.
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) expressed concern about how the fusion system has been “monitoring the legal activities of American Muslims exercising their constitutional privileges” and the “use of McCarthy-era tactics, most notably dissemination of Islamophobic analysis by federally-funded ‘fusion centres’ to local law enforcement agencies.”
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a citizens group in Missouri, issued a national advisory to all local, state and Federal law enforcement agencies and officers, including all DHS fusion centres, “warning against any reliance upon faulty and politicised research issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL)” that “cast suspicion on millions of Americans.”
Governor Peter Kinder took the advisory seriously and is now engaging in damage control.
He issued a public apology to Presidential candidates Ron Paul, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin, and placed Missouri Public Safety Director John Britt on administrative leave pending an investigation of the absurd report.
America’s problems with intolerance do not result from the absence of hate crime laws but originate in structural problems associated with bigotries of government officials, and often involve conspiracies against rights.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
White, European and Endangered: Is the Caucasian Race Dying?
Khaleej Times
Demographic predictions of increasing de-Europeanisation are becoming realised in playgrounds throughout America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Some call this creeping multiculturalism “a Genocide against the White race.” While globalist strategy does appear to undermine local social cohesion first by encouraging immigration and then by whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria, such analysis ignores personal choice. White people have not been reproducing at replacement levels.
“Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, Europe represented 12.5 per cent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 per cent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 per cent of the world will be European,” states Russell Shorto in the New York Times.
“We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it,” notes Tom Sunic in the Occidental Observer, but the Pan-European identity is something quite new in history.
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanise us instead of our Anglifying them?” Benjamin Franklin complained in 1751.
“In the early 20th century, federal immigration officials classified the Irish, Italians, and Jews as separate races. Yet today all these groups are viewed collectively, and benignly, as ‘white,’” writes Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.
Yet White identity has largely been defined collectively as the opposite of benign because it comes with the historical baggage of Southern Slavery, Segregation, Apartheid, and Colonialism. Throughout the Western world and its former colonies legal systems had separate laws for Whites and non-Whites. Even when such discrimination has been eliminated from codes, complaints persist of unfair enforcement and unequal protection alongside continuing structural inequalities.
“Whiteness” has been used as a weapon against non-Whites by the bankers and proprietors of capital to prevent working class solidarity, while simultaneously White Christian middle and upper classes have been subjected to decades of what Prof. Kevin MacDonald calls the “culture of critique emanating from the most prestigious academic and media institutions.”
Blogger Christian Lander summarises: “As a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on earth.”
In college I actually told my American history professor, “I wish I could rip my skin off.”
Jews are always exempt from collective White Guilt as their involvement in Bolshevik massacres, the American slave trade, and the conquest of Palestine is never mentioned at any level of the US public educational system while the Holocaust is taught starting in Kindergarten.
Although White Christians have been demonised as the Oppressor class, poverty is not specific to race in the United States. Representative Cynthia McKinney in a Congressional report concerning Hurricane Katrina points out: “In the greater New Orleans area, 65,000 minority residents lived in poverty before Katrina, compared with 85,000 whites.”
Sinister plots to reduce non-white populations and sometimes white Muslim populations through promotion of birth control, instigating warfare, starvation and disease have however constituted a recurring feature of international politics.
In 1974, the US National Security Council under Henry Kissinger released a memorandum on the “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth” claiming that population growth in Lesser Developed Countries was a dangerous threat to US national security.
It has even become popular to view mass death as something positive. Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund said, “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels,” according to a 1995 American Policy Center report.
Neoconservative commentator Mark Steyn writes in America Alone, “If you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em.”
Likewise, abortion has been promoted as a way of reducing the population of the poor. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and member of the Eugenics Society wrote in 1922: “Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly… Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilisation are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”
Despite disproportionate use by African Americans of abortion services, their birth rate remains higher than replacement level while European Americans' population continues to decline.
Similar disparities exist in Europe. In 2005, 64,000 children were born in Norway of two foreign-born parents in comparison with only 13,800 children born to native Norwegian parents. Immigration in combination with higher non-European birth rates has resulted in projected transformation of majorities into minorities.
Journalist Eric Walberg blames the downfall of Europe on neoliberalism while author Michael Hoffman blames moral degeneracy. “The non-reproducing (i.e. self-exterminating) Whites of Europe and America live for luxury.”
Yet, Europeans have always been a global minority. Even pre-Christian Romans often recommended later marriage as a display of patience and chastity while in other cultures women typically produced their first baby at 14 or 15. In the 17th century, advances in medicine and hygiene resulted in increasing European populations. Other nations are now catching up.
Those who are panicked about disappearing European Christian culture should strive to address the socio-economic and emotional factors that discourage those of European ancestry from having children.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based political analyst. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women
Demographic predictions of increasing de-Europeanisation are becoming realised in playgrounds throughout America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Some call this creeping multiculturalism “a Genocide against the White race.” While globalist strategy does appear to undermine local social cohesion first by encouraging immigration and then by whipping up anti-immigrant hysteria, such analysis ignores personal choice. White people have not been reproducing at replacement levels.
“Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, Europe represented 12.5 per cent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 per cent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 per cent of the world will be European,” states Russell Shorto in the New York Times.
“We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it,” notes Tom Sunic in the Occidental Observer, but the Pan-European identity is something quite new in history.
“Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanise us instead of our Anglifying them?” Benjamin Franklin complained in 1751.
“In the early 20th century, federal immigration officials classified the Irish, Italians, and Jews as separate races. Yet today all these groups are viewed collectively, and benignly, as ‘white,’” writes Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe.
Yet White identity has largely been defined collectively as the opposite of benign because it comes with the historical baggage of Southern Slavery, Segregation, Apartheid, and Colonialism. Throughout the Western world and its former colonies legal systems had separate laws for Whites and non-Whites. Even when such discrimination has been eliminated from codes, complaints persist of unfair enforcement and unequal protection alongside continuing structural inequalities.
“Whiteness” has been used as a weapon against non-Whites by the bankers and proprietors of capital to prevent working class solidarity, while simultaneously White Christian middle and upper classes have been subjected to decades of what Prof. Kevin MacDonald calls the “culture of critique emanating from the most prestigious academic and media institutions.”
Blogger Christian Lander summarises: “As a straight white male, I’m the worst thing on earth.”
In college I actually told my American history professor, “I wish I could rip my skin off.”
Jews are always exempt from collective White Guilt as their involvement in Bolshevik massacres, the American slave trade, and the conquest of Palestine is never mentioned at any level of the US public educational system while the Holocaust is taught starting in Kindergarten.
Although White Christians have been demonised as the Oppressor class, poverty is not specific to race in the United States. Representative Cynthia McKinney in a Congressional report concerning Hurricane Katrina points out: “In the greater New Orleans area, 65,000 minority residents lived in poverty before Katrina, compared with 85,000 whites.”
Sinister plots to reduce non-white populations and sometimes white Muslim populations through promotion of birth control, instigating warfare, starvation and disease have however constituted a recurring feature of international politics.
In 1974, the US National Security Council under Henry Kissinger released a memorandum on the “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth” claiming that population growth in Lesser Developed Countries was a dangerous threat to US national security.
It has even become popular to view mass death as something positive. Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund said, “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels,” according to a 1995 American Policy Center report.
Neoconservative commentator Mark Steyn writes in America Alone, “If you can’t outbreed the enemy, cull ‘em.”
Likewise, abortion has been promoted as a way of reducing the population of the poor. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and member of the Eugenics Society wrote in 1922: “Those least fit to carry on the race are increasing most rapidly… Funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilisation are diverted to maintenance of those who should never have been born.”
Despite disproportionate use by African Americans of abortion services, their birth rate remains higher than replacement level while European Americans' population continues to decline.
Similar disparities exist in Europe. In 2005, 64,000 children were born in Norway of two foreign-born parents in comparison with only 13,800 children born to native Norwegian parents. Immigration in combination with higher non-European birth rates has resulted in projected transformation of majorities into minorities.
Journalist Eric Walberg blames the downfall of Europe on neoliberalism while author Michael Hoffman blames moral degeneracy. “The non-reproducing (i.e. self-exterminating) Whites of Europe and America live for luxury.”
Yet, Europeans have always been a global minority. Even pre-Christian Romans often recommended later marriage as a display of patience and chastity while in other cultures women typically produced their first baby at 14 or 15. In the 17th century, advances in medicine and hygiene resulted in increasing European populations. Other nations are now catching up.
Those who are panicked about disappearing European Christian culture should strive to address the socio-economic and emotional factors that discourage those of European ancestry from having children.
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based political analyst. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Bin Laden Hype Misled Public
Khaleej Times
A National Public Radio rehashing of the 1999 Egypt Air crash made me uneasy. It seemed like an effort to indoctrinate listeners to believe that Muslims would commit suicide by deliberately crashing passenger jets. I wondered what was coming.
The sky was blue and deceptively cheerful in New Jersey a few weeks later on September 11, 2001, when I heard about the attack on the World Trade Center. My husband called and told me to turn on the television. As soon as I saw the flames and explosions, I recognised a professional made-for-TV event.
As I watched the endless repetition of dramatic camera shots, I perceived an attempt to hypnotise the public with a list of suspects that had emerged before any serious investigation could possibly have begun. One ridiculous news story claimed that Mohammed Atta had left behind a handwritten note at the airport that began, “In the Name of Allah, my family, and myself!” No Muslim would ever use such a construction. Grandiose spectacles like 9/11 have not typically characterised Islamic militants. The Taleban used to kill a handful of Russian occupation soldiers a day. In the years since the WTC fell, there has never been any repeat attack on American soil.
Reuters reported on September 13, 2001, that Osama bin Laden told Taleban officials he had no role in the terror attacks in the United States. Bin Laden may be a lot of things, but he is not known to be a liar. “We asked from him, (and) he told (us) we don’t have any hand in this action,” stated Taleban ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. Rather than provide evidence against bin Laden, the US imprisoned Zaeef in Guantanamo. He now lives under house arrest in Kabul.
On September 18, 2001, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli officials had warned Washington beforehand that “large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent,” and specifically linked the plot to bin Laden.
Problems in the official version soon developed. Some of the TV photographs were faked, at least 7 of the alleged hijackers were alive, and one had died before 2001. Bin Laden videotapes aired on TV were proven fraudulent and mistranslated.
On June 5, 2006 Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI told Muckraker Report that bin Laden “has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” Robert Dreyfuss reported that former CIA officials claimed Department of Defense officials were “producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war.” Political analyst Eric Margolis notes, “Such ‘experts’ echoed the White House party line and all were dead wrong. Yet amazingly, many are still on air, continuing to misinform the public.”
A man whose nine children were killed when the US bombed his home told Yvonne Ridley, “There has been a lot of fighting around here between the Taleban and the Americans. They are searching for Osama bin Laden but everyone knows he is not here.”
The Pentagon has used the bin Laden hype for years to justify stationing warships and submarines off the Pakistani coast; kidnapping and torturing prisoners such as Abu Zubaydah and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammad based on hearsay by anonymous sources; and testing new hi-tech weapons like Predator unmanned drones and air-sucking thermo-baric bombs on a defenseless population. The US government arrested thousands of Muslims and deported hundreds. Not a single one of them has ever been convicted on terrorism charges.
In February 2009, 9/11 widow Beverly Eckert died in a plane crash days after she voiced her concerns to President Obama about the 9/11 investigation. Eckert was suing the Federal government to force testimony about what went wrong that day. She formed a Family Steering Committee to address the 9/11 Commission with questions like why on September 9th the president already had a war plan on his desk to go into Afghanistan; how the passports of two alleged hijackers survived the inferno; why Mayor Rudy Giuliani had the metal from the collapsed towers sold as scrap for recycling overseas.
“That metal was evidence which could have helped explain the collapse,” Eckert believed. She asked why high-ranking Pentagon officials cancelled travel plans for the morning of September 11 “apparently because of security concerns?” What are the names of the individuals and the financial institutions that bought “puts” on American Airlines and United Airlines during the three weeks prior to 9/11? Who profited? Why didn’t F-16s intercept the hijacked airliners? Why was protocol not followed on 9/11? Why did Dick Cheney hinder CIA and FBI investigations?
“If what the government has told us about 9/11 is a lie,” said William Rodriguez, a WTC janitor who survived the attack, “somebody has to take action to reveal the truth.”
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle East affairs and US politics
A National Public Radio rehashing of the 1999 Egypt Air crash made me uneasy. It seemed like an effort to indoctrinate listeners to believe that Muslims would commit suicide by deliberately crashing passenger jets. I wondered what was coming.
The sky was blue and deceptively cheerful in New Jersey a few weeks later on September 11, 2001, when I heard about the attack on the World Trade Center. My husband called and told me to turn on the television. As soon as I saw the flames and explosions, I recognised a professional made-for-TV event.
As I watched the endless repetition of dramatic camera shots, I perceived an attempt to hypnotise the public with a list of suspects that had emerged before any serious investigation could possibly have begun. One ridiculous news story claimed that Mohammed Atta had left behind a handwritten note at the airport that began, “In the Name of Allah, my family, and myself!” No Muslim would ever use such a construction. Grandiose spectacles like 9/11 have not typically characterised Islamic militants. The Taleban used to kill a handful of Russian occupation soldiers a day. In the years since the WTC fell, there has never been any repeat attack on American soil.
Reuters reported on September 13, 2001, that Osama bin Laden told Taleban officials he had no role in the terror attacks in the United States. Bin Laden may be a lot of things, but he is not known to be a liar. “We asked from him, (and) he told (us) we don’t have any hand in this action,” stated Taleban ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. Rather than provide evidence against bin Laden, the US imprisoned Zaeef in Guantanamo. He now lives under house arrest in Kabul.
On September 18, 2001, the Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli officials had warned Washington beforehand that “large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland were imminent,” and specifically linked the plot to bin Laden.
Problems in the official version soon developed. Some of the TV photographs were faked, at least 7 of the alleged hijackers were alive, and one had died before 2001. Bin Laden videotapes aired on TV were proven fraudulent and mistranslated.
On June 5, 2006 Rex Tomb, Chief of Investigative Publicity for the FBI told Muckraker Report that bin Laden “has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11.” Robert Dreyfuss reported that former CIA officials claimed Department of Defense officials were “producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war.” Political analyst Eric Margolis notes, “Such ‘experts’ echoed the White House party line and all were dead wrong. Yet amazingly, many are still on air, continuing to misinform the public.”
A man whose nine children were killed when the US bombed his home told Yvonne Ridley, “There has been a lot of fighting around here between the Taleban and the Americans. They are searching for Osama bin Laden but everyone knows he is not here.”
The Pentagon has used the bin Laden hype for years to justify stationing warships and submarines off the Pakistani coast; kidnapping and torturing prisoners such as Abu Zubaydah and his uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammad based on hearsay by anonymous sources; and testing new hi-tech weapons like Predator unmanned drones and air-sucking thermo-baric bombs on a defenseless population. The US government arrested thousands of Muslims and deported hundreds. Not a single one of them has ever been convicted on terrorism charges.
In February 2009, 9/11 widow Beverly Eckert died in a plane crash days after she voiced her concerns to President Obama about the 9/11 investigation. Eckert was suing the Federal government to force testimony about what went wrong that day. She formed a Family Steering Committee to address the 9/11 Commission with questions like why on September 9th the president already had a war plan on his desk to go into Afghanistan; how the passports of two alleged hijackers survived the inferno; why Mayor Rudy Giuliani had the metal from the collapsed towers sold as scrap for recycling overseas.
“That metal was evidence which could have helped explain the collapse,” Eckert believed. She asked why high-ranking Pentagon officials cancelled travel plans for the morning of September 11 “apparently because of security concerns?” What are the names of the individuals and the financial institutions that bought “puts” on American Airlines and United Airlines during the three weeks prior to 9/11? Who profited? Why didn’t F-16s intercept the hijacked airliners? Why was protocol not followed on 9/11? Why did Dick Cheney hinder CIA and FBI investigations?
“If what the government has told us about 9/11 is a lie,” said William Rodriguez, a WTC janitor who survived the attack, “somebody has to take action to reveal the truth.”
Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on the Middle East affairs and US politics
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