ShahidulNews

The Face That Launched a Thousand Drones?

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

By Anne Holmes

The much talked about August 9 Time magazine cover, unabashed in its aim to shore up support for the war effort in Afghanistan, has left many still shaking their heads in disbelief at such brazen exploitation of a woman’s suffering. It’s not the first time the plight of Afghan women has been used to manipulate public opinion. It’s a narrative we have become so accustomed to since the 2001 invasion, that many of my most intelligent female friends did not recognize it for the subversive emotional blackmail that it is. More important, they said, was the attention it brought to women’s issues. Well, let us talk about those issues in earnest, then.

The picture, by South African photographer Jodi Bieber, shows an 18-year old woman by the name of Bibi Aisha. Her story is tragic, and all too common in places like Afghanistan. Married off at a young age, she was beaten regularly by her in-laws and forced to sleep in the stable among the animals. Aisha decided to flee, but women wandering around on their own don’t go unnoticed in Afghanistan, and before long, she ended up in a prison in Kandahar. While not officially a crime, running away is often treated as such and can receive hefty sentences; in this case three years. But her father found her, and took her back to her in-laws. Her punishment for disgracing the family was decreed: her husband, A Taliban according to some accounts, should cut off her nose and ears. She was left for dead in the mountains of Oruzgan. As a testament to her fighter spirit, she managed to drag herself to her father’s house, who took her to a US Army hospital where she was cared for until they turned her over to a shelter in Kabul. This was 2009.

After an article about her ordeal appeared in the Daily Beast in December of last year, the Grossman Burn Foundation in California offered to perform reconstructive surgery on her this past spring, long before her face appeared on Time’s cover. She arrived in the US to begin treatment last week, just as her portrait appeared on newsstands amid the media frenzy surrounding the recent release of some 76,900 classified Afghan war documents. Perfect timing.

Aisha’s story will have a happy ending. America will have done right by her. She will get her nose back and hopefully go on to live a perfectly normal life far away from her abusers. It’s a heart-warming story. But what about the remaining 15 million Afghan women, nearly 90% of whom it is estimated suffer from some form of domestic abuse, and moreover, what does this have to do with America’s war?

Most people will never read the accompanying article in Time magazine. They will only see the disturbing gaze of a mutilated woman and the message scrawled beneath it “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan,” question mark excluded. Most will never examine the mechanisms within them that bring about the deep emotional response. Subliminal advertisers know all too well that a powerful image can make a target audience ignore the caption, all the while absorbing it subconsciously, reducing them to zombie-like consumers ready to do whatever the ad tells them to: buy this car, try this diet, sell your house, dye your hair, get a new phone, support our war. Using emotional triggers like scantily clad women in ads that sell anything from watches to hair-loss treatment, have proven effective time and time again. A strong image can be a thousand times more powerful than the words that accompany it, but words can manipulate the message of an image in far more virulent ways. The photograph alone is subject to interpretation. But in this case, the two combined, we are being sent a clear message that tells us this is what will happen if we leave Afghanistan. Who among us wants this to happen to another Afghan woman? Guilt is the precise emotional response that makes us suddenly feel that being against the war is somehow a travesty.

Setting aside the obvious (that this is what is happening now, today, on our watch) how can Time editor Rick Stengel be so sure of the future? “I think we answer questions. I don’t think we ask them,” Mr. Stengel said in an interview with Katie Couric when she pointed out the missing question mark at the end of the headline. It’s one thing to draw conclusions about questions that can actually be answered, like is there undeniable evidence that Bernie Madoff cheated lots of people out of money? It is another to predict the future of a foreign country at war, something analysts, historians and military advisors have been unable to do since time immemorial.

Mr. Stengel explained his editorial choice in the first pages of the magazine as follows: “What you see in these pictures and our story is something that you cannot find in those 91,000 documents,” he said, referring to the recent release of leaked classified papers titledThe Afghan War Diaries by whistleblower website Wikileaks. The White House has been struggling desperately to convince the public that we can’t leave Afghanistan amid the fallout following the leak, a trove of documents that reveal the true horrors of the war campaign on the ground, and it seems Mr. Stengel decided to play steward to the Pentagon and help sway public opinion.

In his chosen message, two points of absurdity emerge: when in the history of mankind has a war ever been fought in the name of women’s rights, and how can one justify the murder and mutilation of thousands of innocents in the name of eradicating domestic abuse, never mind the fact that the Pentagon has no vested interest in the said cause. Countries don’t spend billions of dollars to mobilize troops to liberate women from the chains of institutionalized misogyny.

Why then, should we believe that saving the Aishas of Afghanistan is a just cause for war? It’s a narrative we have heard periodically for nine years, though never when it stood to benefit the women in question. In the lead up to the war, we were shown images of Afghan women being beaten and executed by the Taliban at Kabul’s infamous soccer stadium. Stories in the press abounded about the terrible living conditions of women under the Taliban, pulling on the heart strings of the typically more pacifist female demographic, and yet, nary a member of congress brought the matter to the floor prior to 2001. If it was really a just cause for mounting a full-scale invasion, it begs the most conspicuous question: why have we not done so in other parts of the world where our sisters are suffering too?

It’s the same ludicrous line we’ve been fed about wars in the name of democracy and freedom. We went in to Iraq to liberate the people from a terrible dictator. What we ended up doing is “liberating” well over 4 million people of life, limb, or home, ripping the country asunder, ushering in extremist factions that made some of the once secular nation’s women dress in the code of Hijab or wear a Burqa for the first time in their lives.

So why have we heard this line about the women every time proponents of the war seem to be dwindling? Because it works. Look no further for evidence than a recently leaked CIA document in March of this year, drawn up after the Dutch decided to pull out of the war. Amid fears that Germany and France, who supply the third and fourth largest contingents to Afghanistan, might follow suit, it suggests pushing stories about abused Afghan women to drum up support for the war:

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive scepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

But women in Afghanistan suffer abuse at the hands of Talibs and non-Talibs alike. It’s a social problem, not a Taliban problem. Of course, ousting the Taliban did women a favour in many regards. They regained suffrage, for one. Yes, today women nearly fill the 25% quota for parliamentary seats, and education is no longer officially forbidden. But how many women really benefit from the new constitution? What is written on paper is rarely applied in practice for the vast majority of women, particularly those living in rural areas, which represent about 77% of the population.

According to a recent survey by the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), “more than 87 percent of all women suffer from domestic abuse, making the country one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.” That is today. Are we to believe that 100% of women were being abused under the Taliban, or will be if they return to power? Is that meagre 13% of violence-free women really the result of the ISAF mission?

In 2007 I did a story on Afghan women who self-immolate. They are so desperate that, one day, something compels them to douse themselves with petrol and strike a match. I listened to their stories with unease. They were beaten, raped, used as prostitutes, molested and enslaved; all by husbands, fathers, cousins, uncles, brothers, or in-laws. Not one of them was from Taliban territory. Though it’s impossible to get a real sense of the numbers, most agree that the phenomenon is on the rise, and yet, we are meant to believe that the war effort is making progress on the front of women’s rights.

Oppression and brutality against women are not endemic to the Taliban alone in Afghanistan. Last year, President Karzai, in a bid to gain votes from the country’s Shia minority (roughly 19%) passed a controversial new law curtailing women’s rights. The Shiite Personal Status Law (SPSL), allows a man to deny his wife food if she does not submit to his sexual will, gives custody of children to fathers and grandfathers, and requires a woman to get permission from her family to work or to travel outside the home without a male escort. “It also, in effect, enables a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying ‘blood money’,” says Human Rights Watch.

It’s worth noting that the Taliban are Sunni, not Shia, and that the US-backed president has enacted a law for the non-Taliban sector of society, rolling back rights for women that were written into the constitution. Before the elections, the Times Online reported that “the United States and Britain [were] opposed to any strong public protest [against the law] because they fear[ed] that speaking out could disrupt [the] election.”  The bill was pushed through parliament in February of 2009 and came into effect in July of last year. Afghan women fumed, while US and UK leaders stood by, and where was Time’s cover advocating for women’s rights then? Here are the covers they ran in February 2009.

Central to the debate about the message the Time cover sends, is the question are we really making progress for women – and if so, why should we believe that a good reason to continue fighting? While many people were moved by the cover, some things just don’t add up. After nine years of war, the public has grown wary of these kinds of media stunts. We are not so dumb anymore. The Bush years are over. Challenging our leaders is no longer tantamount to a capital offence. Not “supporting the troops” is no longer suggestive of treason, since so many of them are returning home to join the growing anti-war movement. Support for the war has plunged to an all-time low (36%). Too many US soldiers have committed suicide or come home suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). People are starting to feel uncomfortable about the number of Afghan civilian casualties, which sadly should have been an issue long ago, but what the Wikileaks documents show us is that the army has been cooking the numbers. All those deaths of “enemy combatants” were in reality far too often civilians. Such facts Americans are not happy to learn. The truth is coming out, though the editors of Time, like the Pentagon, obviously want to deflect our attention from it by shoving our faces in another gruesome reality that somehow makes even the staunchest pacifist wonder if maybe we should soldier on.

In my discussions with friends about the cover, I was amazed how many educated, sharp women couldn’t see how they were being manipulated. Many felt it was much more important to shed light on the plight of women, and missed the absurdity of the message attached to it. Some of them were Iranian expats, for whom the subject of women’s rights is all too close to home. But then I asked, what if Time magazine were to run a cover like this one?

See full article:

————-

Related link

China Calls Our Bluff

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

America’s biggest creditor – China – has called our bluff.

As the Financial Times notes, the head of China’s biggest credit rating agency has said America is insolvent and that U.S. credit ratings are a joke:

The head of China’s largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing the global financial crisis and said that as the world’s largest creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated.

“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview.

***

He specifically criticised the practice of “rating shopping” by companies who offer their business to the agency that provides the most favourable rating.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis “rating shopping” has been one of the key complaints from western regulators , who have heavily criticised the big three agencies for handing top ratings to mortgage-linked securities that turned toxic when the US housing market collapsed in 2007.

“The financial crisis was caused because rating agencies didn’t properly disclose risk and this brought the entire US financial system to the verge of collapse, causing huge damage to the US and its strategic interests,” Mr Guan said.

Recently, the rating agencies have been criticised for being too slow to downgrade some of the heavily indebted peripheral eurozone economies, most notably Spain, which still holds triple A ratings from Moody’s.

There is also a view among many investors that the agencies would shy away from withdrawing triple A ratings to countries such as the US and UK because of the political pressure that would bear down on them in the event of such actions.

Last week, privately-owned Dagong published its own sovereign credit ranking in what it said was a first for a non-western credit rating agency.

The results were very different from those published by Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, with China ranking higher than the United States, Britain, Japan, France and most other major economies, reflecting Dagong’s belief that China is more politically and economically stable than all of these countries.

Mr Guan said his company’s methodology has been developed over the last five years and reflects a more objective assessment of a government’s fiscal position, ability to govern, economic power, foreign reserves, debt burden and ability to create future wealth.

“The US is insolvent and faces bankruptcy as a pure debtor nation but the rating agencies still give it high rankings ,” Mr Guan said.

***

A wildly enthusiastic editorial published by Xinhua , China’s official state newswire, lauded Dagong’s report as a significant step toward breaking the monopoly of western rating agencies of which it said China has long been a “victim”.

“Compared with the US’ conquest of the world by means of force, Moody’s has controlled the world through its dominance in credit ratings,” the editorial said…

China is right. U.S. credit ratings have been less than worthless. And – in the real world – America should have been downgraded to junk. See this, this, this, this, this,this, this, this and this.

China is not shy about reminding the U.S. who’s got the biggest pockets. As the Financial Times quotes Mr. Guan:
“China is the biggest creditor nation in the world and with the rise and national rejuvenation of China we should have our say in how the credit risks of states are judged.”
Might Makes Right Economic Collapse

Indeed, Guan is even dissing America’s military prowess:
“Actually, the huge military expenditure of the US is not created by themselves but comes from borrowed money, which is not sustainable.”
As I’ve repeatedly shown, borrowing money to fund our huge military expenditures are – paradoxically – weakening our national security:

As I’ve previously pointed out, America’s military-industrial complex is ruining our economy.

And U.S. military and intelligence leaders say that the economic crisis is the biggest national security threat to the United States. See this, this and this.

[I]t is ironic that America’s huge military spending is what made us an empire … but our huge military is what is bankrupting us … thus destroying our status as an empire …

Indeed, as I pointed out in 2008:

So why hasn’t America’s credit rating been downgraded?

Well, a report by Moody’s in September states:

“In superficially similar circumstances, the ratings of Japan and some Scandinavian countries were downgraded in the 1990s.

***

For reasons that take their roots into the large size and wealth of the economy and, ultimately, the US military power, the US government faces very little liquidity risk — its debt remains a safe heaven. There is a large market for even a significant increase in debt issuance.”

So Japan and Scandinavia have wimpy militaries, so they got downgraded, but the U.S. has lots of bombs, so we don’t? In any event, American cannot remain a hyperpower if it is broke.

The fact that America spends more than the rest of the world combined on our military means that we can keep an artificially high credit rating. But ironically, all the money we’re spending on our military means that we become less and less credit-worthy … and that we’ll no longer be able to fund our military.

The Scary Part

I chatted with the head of a small investment brokerage about the China credit rating story.

Because he gives his clients very bullish, status quo advice, I assumed that he would say that China was wrong.

To my surprise, he simply responded:

They’re right. What’s scary is that China knows it.

In other words, everyone who pays any attention knows that we’re broke. What’s scary is that our biggest creditor knows it.

Tricks Up Their Sleeves?

China has been threatening for many months to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency (and see this). And China, Russia and other countries have made a lot of noises about replacing the dollar with the SDR. See this and this.

Gordon T. Long argues that the much talked about gold swaps are part and parcel of the plan to replace the dollar with the SDR. Time will tell if he’s right.

China, of course, is not without its own problems. See this and this.

In related news, Germany’s biggest companies are starting to shun Wall Street as too risky.

Land of the Free

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

The Russian, Eastern & Oriental Fine Art Fair, an annual summer event in London’s Mayfair, displays fine art spanning the last 1,000 years. This year, works from Iran, India, China, Korea and Vietnam will be on display for the first time.

Among the more striking contemporary works is a set of photographs by Dhaka-born Shumon Ahmed. Ironically entitled Land of the Free, it comprises seven images detailing the experience of Mubarak Hussain, the only Bangladeshi to have returned from Guantanamo Bay.

The fair takes place on June 9-12 at the Park Lane Hotel. All images copyright of Shumon Ahmed, courtesy of the fair.

The story of Guantanamo Bay’s prison camp is as a horrifying one. In this place of torture, people became guinea pigs in a vast experiment of methods to crack the human soul. Mubarak Hussain Bin Abul Hashem is the only Bangladeshi to have returned from Guantanamo, after five years of imprisonment. © Shumon Ahmed

Whilst under US army custody, Mubarak was known as “Enemy Combatant Number 151”. © Shumon Ahmed

Mubarak still remembers how the US army brutalised him with the aid of an attack dog over and over again, while his hands were chained behind his back. : © Shumon Ahmed

Deeply traumatised from his experience in Guantanamo, Mubarak kept silent most of the time after returning home; to help him resettle into a normal life his family insisted he marry. He became the father of a baby girl in 2008. © Shumon Ahmed

There have been allegations of torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution committed by U.S. forces at Guantánamo Bay. Former Guantánamo detainee Mubarak Hussain was freed without charge on December 17, 2006, after five years internment. Mubarak has claimed that he was the victim of repeated torture while he was in Guantanamo Bay. © Shumon Ahmed

The abuse was “systematic”, with frequent beatings, choking, and sleep deprivation for days on end. Religious humiliation was also routine. © Shumon Ahmed

“On 17th of December, 2006, a special US Air Force plane flew Mubarak back to Bangladesh after failing to get any evidence of his alleged terror links. Bringing the story of his shattered past into life visually for the first time was an extremely difficult yet critical challenge for me. But it was crucial to vividly exhibit the human cost of the ‘Land of the Free’s’ ill-conceived and violently executed ‘War on Terror’. Which, like for so many others, changed the life of a Bangladeshi named Mubarak Hussain forever.” © Shumon Ahmed

Anti-semitism, and the 9/11, Israel-Mossad Connection Part IV

Subscribe to ShahidulNews

Rahnuma Ahmed

“History cannot be permanently falsified; the myth cannot stand up to the scrutiny of research; the sinister web will be brought into the light and torn to pieces, however artfully it has been spun.”

- Dr Jakob Ruchti (1915)

Why should people who are highly knowledgeable in western diplomacy, intelligence, counter-terrorism, false flag operations, defence and security matters—including some who occupied very high leadership positions in the west—risk making utter fools of themselves by claiming that 9/11 was an inside job? Unless it was. False flag. Covert operation, you name it.

Michael Meacher, Tony Blair’s environment minister, thought 9/11 was “bogus.” Drawing parallels with Pearl Harbour, he said 9/11 had the hallmarks of a “political myth” made to pave the way for America’s goal of world hegemony. Japanese lawmaker, Yukihisa Fujita alleges, the official claims just don’t fit the facts. Plane crashes always yield plane fragments which can be identified by the plane’s serial number. The US government produced passports and DNA samples of individuals killed but no identifiable plane parts. Strange, no?

General Albert Stubblebine, the commanding general of US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), now retired but with a 32 year army career says, I was in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. It was my job to measure pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. “I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. ‘The plane does not fit in that hole.’ “So what did hit the Pentagon? Where is it? What’s going on?” If a plane had hit the Pentagon, there’d have been wing marks on the walls of the Pentagon. Someone told me, you’ve got it all wrong. One wing tipped down, hit the ground. Broke off. Fine. But what about the other? “I haven’t met an airplane with only one wing.” He adds, We pride ourselves with the “free press.” I do not believe the “free press” is free anymore.

His observation seems equally valid for the “free press” in western Europe. Euro-parliamentarian Giulietto Chiesa, one of the team members which produced the 9/11 film Zero, organised its screening at EU Parliament on February 28, 2008. Despite having personally invited all 785 EU parliamentarians and nearly a thousand journalists, only 6 Europarliamentarians and 2 journalists turned up. When asked, Chiesa replied, “It shows that the US is controlling everything. They are all powerful. No politician in the European Parliament can ignore the power—or wrath!—of the US.” The Belgian media obliged by not publishing or broadcasting news of the screening and discussion that took place, either on that, or the following day. Suspecting Bush administration’s version of the 9/11 attacks, says Chiesa, is taboo. People just can’t handle 9/11 truth.

“The deathly precision,” “the magnitude of planning” behind September 11 attacks would require “years of planning,” says Eckehardt Werthebach, former president of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, Verfassungsschutz. An operation as sophisticated as this would require the “fixed frame” of a state intelligence organisation. Not something a “loose group” of terrorists, one led by a Mohd Atta studying in Hamburg, could pull off. Colonel Ronald Day, deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration and a highly-decorated Vietnam veteran expresses his incredulity at the Bush administration’s story:  “Half a trillion dollars a year and a bunch of guys over in a cave in Afghanistan were able to penetrate that half a trillion dollar network that’s supposed to provide Americans with national security.” Hah!

To Horst Ehmke, the televised images of 9/11 looked like a “Hollywood production.” Coordinator of the German secret services under prime minister Willy Brandt, Ehmke maintains, “Terrorists could not have carried out such an operation with 4 hijacked planes without the support of a secret service.”

“The planning of the attacks,” says Andreas von Bulow, “was technically and organizationally a master achievement. To hijack four huge airplanes within a few minutes, and within one hour to drive them into their targets with complicated flight maneuvers! This is unthinkable without years-long support from secret apparatuses of the state and industry.” A former minister, and Bundestag member who served on the parliamentary commission which oversaw the three branches of the German secret service, von Bulow insists, Mossad (Israeli intelligence service) was behind 9/11. The attacks were carried out to turn public opinion against the Arabs. To boost military and security spending. To justify building military bases in the Middle East for future confrontation with China. The story of 19 Muslims working with bin Laden’s al-Qaeda is an “invented” one. WTC Building 7 (the one that fell on its face without being being hit by a plane) was a command bunker, later demolished to destroy the crime scene. “The BND (German secret service) is steered by the CIA and the CIA is steered by Mossad.”

Former Italian president Francesco Cossiga, famous for his honesty and outspokenness, who had revealed the existence of, and his part in setting up the false flag operation, Gladio, also thinks that the 9/11 attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad. Operation Gladio was a rogue intelligence network under NATO auspices—overseen by US intelligence agencies—that carried out bombings across Europe in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra had stated in his sworn testimony,

“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force…the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

Cossiga says, it is common knowledge among global intelligence agencies that 911 was an inside job. The reason? To put the blame on the Arab countries. To induce western powers to take control of Iraq and Afghanistan.

September 11, writes David MacGregor (author, September 11 as ‘‘Machiavellian State Terror,’’ 2006), may be an example of “expedient destruction ordered from within the state, a macabre instance of a state protection racket.” Inspired by the sixteenth century Italian thinker Machiavelli, MacGregor writes, Machiavellian state terrorism, as distinct from those that are publicised, are often “initiated by persons or groups other than those suspected of the act.” Most importantly, they are secretly perpetrated by, or on behalf, of the violated state itself. Machiavellian state terror advances the ruling agenda while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the state’s fundamental principles. Convenient opportunities for maximum impact of terrorist events—and this includes pyrotechnic effects, spectacular deaths—may be best known by, and available to those in power.

Or, as Dr Alan Sabrosky (director of studies, US Army War College) had put it, it would have been impossible to stage 9/11 without the full resources of both the CIA and Mossad.

One must not underestimate the side actor roles played by the ISI (Pakistan), and the Saudi intelligence agency, I hasten to add. Most crucial.

Meacher had said, 9/11 had the hallmarks of a political myth. From Shlomo Sand’s When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (2008) it seems that the idea of a Jewish nation too, is a political myth. Alongwith the idea that the Jews were exiled from the Holy Land. So also, the idea that most of today’s Jews have a historical connection to the land called Israel.

Dr Sand, a courageous Israeli historian, draws on extensive archaeological and historical research to argue that the idea of a Jewish nation is an early 20th century idea, one created by Zionist Jews to justify the founding of the state of Israel. “Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in.” He writes, like all other Israelis I had taken it for granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea, that they were exiled by the Romans in 70 AD. But historical evidence says that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were legends. That the Romans didn’t exile people. “In fact, Jews in Palestine were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their lands.”

But if most Jews never left the Holy Land, what became of them? Answering his own question, Sand says, “It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel's first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area’s original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam.”

Both myths—America was attacked because they hate our freedom, Jews existed as a people separate from their religion—have been artfully spun. Both are unable to withstand scrutiny.





Three of the 5 Israelis detained for 10 weeks, later deported to Israel after FBI cleared them of any involvement in 9-11 (on Israeli TV talkshow, Nov 2001). They told the Israeli audience that their purpose was to document the event. But who were they documenting the event for? And how did they know the attack was going to be that particular morning?

Israelis were caught with a van on September 11 which had a mural painted on the side literally depicting the 9/11 attacks.

Published in New Age, May 31, 2008

Anti-semitism, and the 9/11, Israel-Mossad Connection Part III

Rahnuma Ahmed

“Investigators within the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration], INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service], and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying…  is considered career suicide.” Carl Cameron, investigative reporter, Fox News

Cameron made this remark in `Israeli Spying in the US,’ a 4 part Fox News channel series, aired in mid December 2001. The programme contended that Israeli intelligence had advanced information about the September 11 attacks.

It didn’t assert (of course not) that Mossad had `done’ 9/11. As did Dr Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies of the US Army War College, recently.

But that was bad enough. The programme was pulled down from the Fox News website. So was it’s transcript. All references were deleted. No explanation was ever given by Fox.

Career suicide? Hmm, reminds me of how the BBC conveniently lost the original footage, the one where Jane Standley, news correspondent, reports the collapse of Building 7. Wouldn’t have been a problem except for the fact that the building was still standing. The BBC’s news editor dismisses the footage loss casually. No `conspiracy.’ (No destruction of evidence). Just a `cock-up.’

But Israelis have spied on the US. And to top it all, they traded US state secrets with the USSR. Its sworn enemy. Jonathan Pollard, an American of Jewish descent, an intelligence analyst in the US Navy, stole and sold to Israel more than a million pages of classified material. Israel secretly passed on to the USSR those which did America the greatest damage—relating to the US Nuclear Deterrent relative to the USSR. In exchange, emigration quotas for Soviet Jews to Israel were increased. Information about American agents operating within the USSR also found their way to USSR via Israel. After 13 long years of denial, Israel finally acknowledged, in 1998, that yes, Pollard was an Israeli spy. He was a LAKAM (Israeli Scientific Liaison Bureau) agent.

The Pollard affair still rankles among US ruling circles. The US government has declined to release him from life imprisonment—interestingly, he was tried for espionage, not treason—despite repeated public relations campaigns and requests by Jewish Americans. By Israelis. By prime minister Netanyahu himself. “[It is] difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by… Pollard’s treasonous behavior,” said Caspar Weinberger, Reagan’s secretary of defense.

The greatest harm to US national security done by its “closest” ally? By the nation which has,  according to three-fourths of the US Senate, and most  of Congress members, an “unbreakable bond” with the US—words used to describe the relationship in a recent letter addressed to Hillary Clinton, one that has been interpreted as implicitly rebuking president Obama for his confrontational stance towards Israel.

Known as the AIPAC-backed, pro-Israel letter (April 13, 2010), it has created waves of consternation among America’s informed circles: what comes first for our lawmakers? Surely it is the US? Surely it is not Israel?

I myself, as I read and reflect on the unfolding events, am reminded of General Leonid Ivashov’s (former joint chief of staff of Russian Armed Forces) comment: the 9/11 attack was the result of “a clash of interests among US leaders.”

Is the clash finally coming to a head? According to close observers, what is taking place at present is unprecedented. Tony Judt did issue a warning several years ago, “something is changing in the United States”. There has been a sea change, he had said.



Handcuffed human-chain rally protesting against Jonathan Pollard's "20th-year of disproportionate captivity in American prison." Jerusalem, 2004.

AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) rules America. Some of America's rulers at AIPAC including George Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice, Nancy Pelosi

But how did it get to be this way? How did the American-Israeli lobby—in former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s words, “We the Jewish people control America”  (`Jewish’ here is not anti-Semitic, no? Oh good, what a relief)—get to own America? History tells us, it all began with Harry Truman. He had succeeded to the presidency but in the 1948 campaign, he trailed behind. In the polls, in fundraising. His prospects brightened however, after he recognised Israel. A network of Jewish Zionists funded his campaign, gave him $400,000 in cash ($3 million in 2009 dollars) . It was crucial to his victory.

For those readers who are new to these issues, who have by now become thoroughly confused over the entanglement of religion, race and ethnicity (Jewish), nation, nation-state (USA, Israel), national sovereignty (American), have been wondering whether AIPAC is a national lobby or a foreign lobby, why Sharon had said “we Jewish” and not “we Israelis” control America, which Jewish people he had meant, whether Israeli Jewish or American Jewish, whether by saying “we Jewish” he had implied that the loyalties of both American Jewish and Israeli Jewish people were owed to Israel, not to the US etc., etc., I will just mention another instance from history. In my opinion, a highly significant one.

President John F. Kennedy had insisted that the American Zionist Council (AIPAC’s predecessor, American Israel Public Affairs Committee) should register as a foreign agent under the provisos of FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) . His assassination (1963), and later, that of his brother Robert F Kennedy (1968), the attorney general, and also a presidential candidate—somehow led to the order that the AZC should get registered as a foreign lobby, getting buried too. Five years later, the late Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was heard telling Americans on CBS’s Face the Nation programme: the Jewish influence completely dominates the scene. To the extent that it makes it “almost impossible to get Congress to do anything they [the Jewish] don’t approve of” (1973).

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s publication of The Israel Lobby (albeit from London) is part of the sea-change that Judt spoke of. Ten years ago, he wrote, that’d possibly not have happened. In their book, Mearsheimer and Walt, who are political scientists at Chicago and Harvard university respectively say—after having surveyed a wide coalition of pro-Israel groups and individuals (American Jewish organizations and political donors, Christian fundamentalists, neo-con officials in the executive branch, AIPAC, media pundits ready to accuse anyone critical of Israel of being an anti-Semite)—the pro-Israeli lobby has an `almost unchallenged hold on Congress.’ The authors are not loath to point out that their’s is a serious study. It’s not a conspiracy theory.

Mearsheimer and Walt’s work is undoubtedly, politically-speaking, highly significant. Even though they have been severely ostracised (as is only to be expected, after all, the AIPAC’s annual budget is reportedly $15 million), for conservative American academics to come out and declare that Israel is a “liability” for the US, is, well, as Judt suggested, a sea-change. But I myself, have found two other academic studies to be more insightful theoretically-speaking. One is the highly-acclaimed study by Peter Dale Scott, a professor of English. It predates 9/11—interestingly enough, it was inspired by the Kennedy assassination, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993)—but the events of 9/11 have reinforced its significance in helping us to examine and analyse American politics.

To understand Deep Politics, says Scott, one must understand the difference between traditional conspiracy theory, and deep political analysis. Those who are schooled in the first approach, will look for conscious secret collaborations toward shared ends. But if one adopts the deep politics approach, then instead of looking for conspiracies, for that which is `consciously secretive,’ we will re-conceptualise, we will think of the deep political process or system as one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures, both outside, as well as inside, those publicly sanctioned by law and society. What makes these supplementary procedures “deep” is the fact that they are covert or suppressed. They are outside general awareness, outside acknowledged political processes. Some secrets are open. But some, says Scott, are more closely held.

The other is by an article by David MacGregor, September 11 as “Machiavellian State Terror” (The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, published 2006). Machiavellian state terror, writes MacGregor, advances the ruling agenda, while disguising itself as the work of individuals or groups opposed to the state’s fundamental principles.

To be vitally active in the political universe, says the author, one must theorise “oppositionally.” One must question the government. One must look for connections between events.

I’d like to add, one must think oppositionally, even if it be suicidal for one’s career. Better that, than be controlled, by others.

More next week

Published in New Age 24 May 2010

Anti-semitism, and the 9/11, Israel-Mossad Connection Part II

By Rahnuma Ahmed

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,”
an unnamed Bush official told reporter Ron Suskind,
quoted by Eric Alterman, Bush’s War on the Press, The Nation (2005)

Even when the US hadn’t been the only empire around, powerful members of the American administration had collectively attempted to create their “own reality.” One such plan, Operation Northwoods, consisted of staging terror attacks. To justify the launching of a war against Cuba. To (of course) defend America.

The secret plan was drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962, signed by its Chairman, and sent to Robert McNamara, secretary of defense. Declassified in 1997 by a federal agency overseeing records relating to president John F Kennedy’s assassination, the plan proposed real or simulated actions against various US military and civilian targets: landing `friendly’ Cubans to attack US base (Guantanamo). Sinking a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida. Building a Soviet MIG aircraft to be flown by an American pilot, which would attack and destroy a US military drone aircraft. Launching a wave of violent terrorism (bombings, hijackings) in Washington D.C. In Miami. Elsewhere, too. The desired result? To convince Americans and the larger western public that the Cuban government was not only “rash and irresponsible” but a threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere. That America had no option but to `retaliate.’

Operation Northwoods was not implemented because, as the story goes, Kennedy had rejected it. But other false flag operations designed to create America’s own reality—to deceive the public, to manufacture support—have been successfully conducted. Of course, America is not the only culprit, as history attests. The Japanese blew up a section of the railway to annex Manchuria in 1931; kidnapped one of their own soldiers to invade China proper, 1937. The Soviets shelled their own village near the Finnish border, 1939. The Israelis secretly sponsored bombings of US/British interests in Cairo to sour relations between Egypt and the West, 1954.

Central to America’s “our own reality” story are two myths: it is America’s enemies who are `sneaky.’ The government goes to war only to `save the lives’ of US soldiers. Historical research proves otherwise: president Roosevelt let the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (1941). Nearly three thousand American service men including civilians were killed which by fuelling public outrage at Japan’s so-called sneak attack, enabled FDR to overcome massive opposition to war.

According to America’s ideologues, if Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been bombed—still described in official history as the “least abhorrent choice”—the lives of 500,000 American soldiers would have been at risk. But in reality, as people connected to history know, Japan was ready to surrender.

Dissenting opinion did exist, and in powerful circles, too: Japan was already defeated, dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary (Dwight Eisenhower). The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare are frightening (Admiral Leahy, chief of staff to presidents Roosevelt and Truman). The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul. (Herbert Hoover, 31st US president). There was no military justification. I was not consulted (General Douglas MacArthur).

More than 103,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There were unrecorded deaths. There were slower deaths, caused by radiation.

But surely, just because previous US administrations have committed false flag operations, it doesn’t mean that 9/11 too, is an inside job? Granted. True. Except that when one looks at the mass of evidence, including oral testimonies, diligently gathered by physicists, pilots, architects, structural engineers and a host of other professionals (firefighters, whistle-blowers) over these last couple of years, also by grassroots people, under the rubric of what has come to be known as the 9/11 truth movement, even the blind are bound to be convinced.

What persuaded me most was the strange response of the Bush administration. Why was the government reluctant, why should family members of 9/11 victims have to insist that a commission be established to investigate the failures that made 9/11 possible? Why did Bush want someone as disreputable as Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state (who should be tried for war crimes in Bangladesh and Cambodia for starters), to head the Commission? Why should Bush and vice-president Cheney agree to testify before the Commission on the condition that they should not have to take the oath, that their testimony should not be electronically recorded nor transcribed, nor made public? Why did the Commission co-chairmen allege later that the CIA had not cooperated with the Commission? Why did NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) officials provide inaccurate information in their testimony to the Commission, and in media appearances? Why should the Commission have to use subpoenas and force NORAD and FAA to release evidence? Why did the Commission chairmen say that the Commission was “set up” to fail? Why did the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) not hold enquiries into any of the 4 plane crashes, which is required by law?

Another thing that I find odd, like many others, were the words blurted out by Bob Kerrey, a 9/11 Commission member. Several months ago he was pressed by a member of We Are Change who said, according to the constitution, a cover-up of an act of war is treasonous, the Pentagon continually changed its story, the country needs to get to the bottom of 9/11 etc., etc.,

Bob Kerrey: It’s a.. the problem is that it’s a 30 year old conspiracy.
Jeremy Rothe-Kushel: No, I’m talking about 9/11.
Bob Kerrey: That’s what I’m talking about too. Well anyway, I gotta go.

Listening to Kerrey reminded me of what the Bush official, who I quote at the head of the column, had gone on to tell Suskind, “And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

General Leonid Ivashov, former joint chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces did just that. Having found the free-fall collapse of the towers disturbing, he instructed his staff to search for answers. Three days later he came to the conclusion that the 9/11 attack was the result of “a clash of interests among US leaders.”

While more recently, a Vietnam war veteran, former director of studies of the US Army War College, Dr Alan Sabrosky, has come out with the bold statement that 9/11 was not only `an inside job,’ but more specifically, a CIA-Mossad job. Nine-eleven would have been impossible to stage without the full resources of the CIA and the Mossad. Its Building 7, he says. It was not hit by a plane but still went down. “If one of the buildings was wired for demolition, all of them were wired for demolition.”

And it was my column on Sabrosky that yielded me accusations of being anti-Semitic. I wonder whether part of the problem lies in the strong western belief, an indissoluble one, that `the government loves them.’ Despite the history of false flag operations.

May be the Bush official, utterly contemptuous and disdainful as he was, knew what he was talking about. We create our own reality. And our people fall for it.

First published in New Age

The Story of May Day

Engraving of the scene at Haymarket Square in 1886

The `Mad Dog’ in the Middle East

By Rahnuma Ahmed

What Dr Alan Sabrosky has done is bell the cat. Except that it’s a dog, and not a cat.One that’s utterly mad. Insane.

In the words of late General Moshe Dayan, who went on to become Israel’s defense minister, and later foreign minister, Israel’s security depended on its being viewed by others as a mad dog.

Dr Sabrosky, who has been calling for a new investigation on 9/11 for some time, said in a recent radio interview (March 19), it would have been impossible to stage 9/11 without the full resources of both the CIA and Mossad. Nine-eleven, he said, served the interests of both the agencies. “They did 9/11. They did it.”

“..it is 100% certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period.” (Full transcript). Now if Dr Sabrosky had been let’s say, a Pakistani, or worse still, an Iranian, one could have pooh-poohed. A loony, like all mollahs are. If he’d been Muslim, one could have labelled him an anti-Semite. After all, the Iranian president denied the holocaust. That’s what the western media said and they’d never lie, would they? Crazy dictator with nuclear weapons. Will deny being from his mother’s womb next. Pathetic.

But unfortunately Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, university of Michigan) is a ten year US Marine Corps veteran. A Vietnam war vet. An American of Jewish ancestry. He’s not only a graduate of the US Army War College, he was director of studies there. For five and a half years. Now if he says he’s convinced the Israelis did it… it’s to say the least, pretty difficult to ignore. Although the mainstream western media, the beacons of the free world, are doing their darndest best. Do a google search on Dr Sabrosky plus any of these beacons New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian… BBC, CNN websites, your search will come to nought. It’s only in the alternative press. A few blogs. Pravda online. Less than a handful of 9-11 truth websites (no, not all, interesting, eh?). It’s only in these places that you’ll come across links to his interview. And his recent article, `The dark face of Jewish nationalism’ (March 12, 2010).

Jewish nationalism is unique, he writes. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had said at a Likud gathering “Israel is not like other countries.” For once, he was speaking the truth. What makes its nationalism distinct to that of other countries—all the rest have both positive and negative aspects, both unifying and extremist features—Jewish nationalism is extremist per se. Among both secular and practising Jews. It is a real witches brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism, a mixture that cannot be contained within a `mere’ nationalist context. Its `others’ have to be pushed out. Either into camps, or out of the country. Second, Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries. Loyalty to Israel supersedes the loyalty to the country to which one belongs. Whether US or UK, or any other. For instance, Rahm Emanuel. He’s the White House chief of staff. The second most powerful person in the US. He served in the Israeli army but not in the US armed forces. Once independence is achieved, and this is the third feature of Jewish nationalism, it’s not unusual to have normal relations with the former occupying power. But no, not in the case of Israel. It has a long list of enemies. They have become America’s enemies too. Lastly, nationalist movements usually don’t displace the indigenous population wholesale, instead, they incorporate. They accommodate. The Americans are an exception, look what they did to the Indians/native Americans. Maybe that’s why most of them don’t care about what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.

In his radio interview with Mark Glenn and Phil Tourney (USS Liberty survivor), Sabrosky explains, most Americans don’t care much about what happened to the USS Liberty. For those who don’t know, I add, Israel attacked the US Naval ship USS Liberty in 1967 during the Six Day war. It was a false flag operation (like 9-11), the plan was to blame the attack on Egypt, to drag the US into the war. President Johnson seems to have known about it in advance; 34 Americans were murdered, 173 were wounded. Sabrosky says, That’s history. But 9-11 isn’t.

It has led directly to 60,000 Americans dead and wounded. In other countries, “hundreds of thousands of people.” Killed, wounded, made homeless. Tourney is sore about the Liberty, while Sabrosky himself is sore about Vietnam. But Americans are sore about 9-11 which is an “open wound.” He says, If Americans ever know that Israel did this, they’re gonna scrub them off the Earth, and they’re not gonna give a rat’s ass—forgive my language—what the cost is. They are not going to care. They will do it. And they should.

When Glenn asks Dr Sabrosky what is the reaction in US army circles (his work is being read by people in the Headquarters Marine Corps and at the Army War College) to his conviction that 9-11 was a Mossad operation, he answers, at first, astonishment. Disbelief. He does not get into arguments, he says. Who was flying what, who was where, whether there was nano-thermite (high-tech energetic materials prepared under military contracts in the USA, part of secret military research) or not, “those things are true, but they’re incidental.” What is necessary is to tell people that three buildings went down, the third was not hit by a plane. He then shows them an interview with a Danish demolitions expert, Danny Jowenko. It shows WTC7 going down. I tell them, “Now you understand that if one of the buildings was wired for demolition, all of them were wired for demolition.” And that, says Sabrosky, is the tipping point. At that point, people get angry. Really angry. And they say, “They did it, didn’t they.” He replies, “Yep—they did it.

” While asking Dr Sabrosky what he thinks is going to happen, Glenn says he himself thinks that Israel is going to pull off another 9-11, “sooner than any of us realize or would like to envision.” That powerful people think so too, such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen who cut short a trip to Europe several years ago (July 2008), quickly flew to Israel, to warn them that there should not be “another USS Liberty part two.” That a part two would already have occurred if increasing numbers of people had not been talking about 9-11. He adds, “I think that Israel has been watching all of this and has been saying, “We need to kind of let things cool a little bit for now—if we try to pull another one off right now then that’s it: we’re going to blow our cover.”

Sabrosky butts in saying, If Americans ever truly understand that they’ve been had, Israel will be history. “It’ll be a bloody, brutal war.” Israeli leverage, he explains, is confined to political appointments—to the Congress, to the White House. And to the media (“the mainstream media have paid more attention to Sarah Palin’s wardrobe than they have to dissecting blatant falsehoods”). But “the military has not been bought.” It is loyal. If it ever really, really deeply understands this, that they did 9-11, that the US government could in any way be involved in high crimes and treason against the people of the United States, “Israel’s going to disappear. Israel will flat-ass disappear from this Earth.”

And what does he think is going to happen soon? “We’re going to have a war with Iran.” The Arab street is going to explode. There are American forces, American units, like the 5th fleet headquarters in Bahrain, there’s going to be a long casualty list. If the Iraqi resistance had not been so strong, the attack on Iran, which was the “big prize” all along, would have happened in the second Bush administration. The pattern, he’s convinced, was: Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq 2003, Iran 2005, Syria 2007. The time frame now is a bit different, and although he’s not sure as to how it’s playing out, they are trying to “create an excuse for a war.”

I myself find it interesting that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently wrote a letter to Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General (April 13, 2010) urging him to appoint an independent fact-finding team, a trustworthy one, to launch a comprehensive investigation into the “main culprits” behind the September 11 attacks since that is the “principal excuse” for attacking the Middle East. For NATO’s military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. For making policies and launching military actions on the “pretext of fighting terrorism.

” Israel is a “monster,” Dr Sabrosky has written elsewhere (`I Express My Jewish Identity in Cuisine, Not in Foreign Policy’ July 9, 2009). And although more and more American Jews are speaking out, it might be too little too late. “Excising this ultra-Zionist/neo-con cancer is not going to be easy.” Maybe what needs to be done, an option that general Dayan had neglected to note, is to “kill that mad dog before it can decide to go berserk and bite.”

Extreme nationalism begging extreme solutions.

Published in New Age, April 26, 2010

`Owning’ the weather? PART V Katrina and Haiti

By Rahnuma Ahmed

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present—and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, US President (1953-61), and five-star general in US army

Jerry E Smith thinks there is a “scientific-technological elite” in the US. Precisely the kind of elite which Eisenhower had spoken of in his farewell address to the nation, nearly half a century ago (17 January 1961). One to which, not only American public policies, but global ones too, have become captive.

Smith, a writer, editor and activist for over three decades, is the author of Weather Warfare: The Military’s Plan to Draft Mother Nature (2006), and HAARP. The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy (1998).

In a conference organised by Adventures Unlimited titled, `HAARP and the ultimate weapon of the conspiracy,’ Smith speaks of war and how changing weaponries through human history have impacted on the way war is fought: “Whenever you change the way fundamentally that war is fought, it’s called Revolution in Military Affairs, an RMA, and I believe we are in the 7th or 8th one in recorded history. The invention of gunpowder or the realisation that gunpowder could be used in warfare, created an RMA. The development of bows and arrows created an RMA and so forth. We stand now on a new RMA, in fact right after the fall of the Soviet Union, RMA was the hot topic in military intelligentsia circles. The war college circles and so forth were cranking out a large number of papers on this subject. One of the aspects of this that I find most disturbing, we went from weapons that could target individuals, swords, bows, guns, to weapons that could target groups of individuals, Greek fire, artillery. [We then went] to weapons that could target whole battlefields, i.e., the chemical weapons. And then we went on to those that could target whole cultures, whole ethnicities, i.e., the biological weapons; the atomic weapons are somewhat in-between. Now we are at the point where with the electromagnetic weapons we can target the whole planet. We can target whole continents, whole hemispheres.

“The guys at the Strategic Studies Institute who wrote this paper, titled:

Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Electromagnetic Weapons.

The Revolution in Military Affairs and Conflicts Short of War

came up with a very interesting realisation… that the kinds of technologies we were developing, the kinds of weapons they were working on, were contrary to American morals and beliefs. And so, what was their contention, what did they say? [Did they say] Oh my gosh, this is immoral, we can’t do this? No. [Instead] they said, how do we change America, so that America will be willing to accept us playing with these toys. This is the tail wagging the dog. And this is that aspect [which I find most disturbing], we are being fed a world of disinformation on a continuing basis, because the military planners are re-designing our thinking to let them go forward in playing with these toys.”

As I watch and transcribe Smith’s lecture on You Tube, I think, so, is the `war on terror’ part of this re-design? Listening to Smith talking of `disinformation’ leads me to musing about why a scientist as brilliant as Nikola Tesla, is so unknown. Tesla, after all, had not only invented fluorescent lighting, the Tesla induction motor, the `Tesla’ coil (still used in radio, TV sets, other electronic equipment), the alternating current (AC) electrical supply system, 3-phase electricity, but also the modern radio (no, not Marconi). Further, he is said to have invented a particle beam weapon, which some call a “peace ray,” while others, a “death ray” . In theory, it was capable of generating an intense, targeted beam of energy and sending it across great distances to demolish warplanes, foreign armies. He is also said to have invented a doomsday device which could disrupt all communication systems on Earth, an idea long kept secret by the US government.

Most probably, I think, it was because of his invention of `free energy.’ If this line of research had been pursued, writes Ken Adachi on the basis of Dr Peter Lindemann’s meticulous research, “Unlimited electricity could be made available anywhere and at any time, by merely pushing a rod into the ground and turning on the electrical appliance.” (The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity, lecture, 2000).

Free energy, derived from nature. For all. But surely initiating that kind of a revolution wouldn’t have appealed to the scientific-technological elite, would it?

Climate and weather are two different things, says Smith. Climate is what one expects, while weather is what one gets. Mainstream science recognises that human beings have the ability to alter the weather intentionally, only on a limited scale, and unintentionally, on a vastly larger scale. But the fact is, says Smith, “what can be done intentionally is far greater than what the mainstream is willing to or able to admit.”  And there are, as Smith points out, a lot of intentional players around: academic, commercial and military. Who have a lot of intended objectives: financial, militaristic and political. To be acheived irrespective of the human costs involved. But no, actually, from the perspective of the scientific-technological elite, it is this wondrous humanity that is the problem. After all, as former American secretary of state Henry Kissinger had put it, the world’s population needs to be decreased by 50 percent. Population increases, he had asserted, harm US national security interests.  (He too had received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1973).

In Weather Warfare, Smith provides instances of “earthquakes on demand”: (a) the development of a “tsunami bomb” during World War II (revealed in documents recently declassified by the New Zealand government) (b) Project Faultless, which had caused a massive earthquake in the Nevada desert after a high yield atom bomb was intentionally detonated on a fault line. Smith also provides evidence of human initiation of several major quakes, and the 2004 Christmas tsunami, with “scalar” or other electromagnetic waves.

“There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath,” writes James Ridgeway (Mother Jones, 28 August 2009). Four years later, “confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways,” it increasingly becomes clear that what had taken place in this devastated American city was “no less than a war” where the victims were treated as enemies of the state. Their only crime was being black. Being poor.

“Every 30 or 40 minutes someone was dying,” recollects Marc Creswell, an Acadian medic. The company sent in outside doctors and nurses. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) rejected the help. “When the doctors asked why they couldn’t help these critically ill people lying there unattended, the FEMA people kept saying, ‘You’re not federalized.’ ” I scan through headlines reporting FEMA failures, in the major media:

FEMA refuses hundreds of personnel, dozens of vehicles – Chicago Tribune, 9/2/05
FEMA won’t let Red Cross deliver food – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/3/05
FEMA fails to utilize Navy ship with 600-bed hospital on board – Chicago Tribune, 9/4/05
FEMA turns away state-of-the-art mobile hospital from Univ. of North Carolina – CNN, 9/5/05

A US Army soldier speaks on a radio on the top of a military vehicle in downtown Port-au-Prince, Tuesday. Thousands of US troops arrived to the country after the Jan. 12 earthquake to treat the wounded, distribute relief supplies, clear roads and direct air traffic. ©Ramon Espinosa/AP

FEMA won’t accept Amtrak’s help in evacuations – Financial Times, 9/5/05

FEMA turns back Wal-Mart supply trucks – New York Times, 9/6/05

FEMA prevents Coast Guard from delivering diesel fuel – New York Times, 9/6/05
FEMA blocks 500-boat citizen flotilla from delivering aid – News Sentinel, 9/8/05

FEMA asks media not to take pictures of dead – Washington Post, 9/8/05
FEMA turns back German government plane loaded with 15 tons of food – Spiegel, 9/12/05
While civilian aid for victims was made scarce, private security forces already had boots on the ground. As Jeremy Scahill reported in The Nation, Blackwater (re-named Xe) had set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Members of this private militia company were armed, and operated, as in Iraq: automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, pockets overflowing with ammo, driving around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates. When asked one of them replied: We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.

And the US government’s response to the earthquake in Haiti, on Jan 12 this year? A massive deployment of military hardware and personnel. Nine to ten thousand troops, including 2000 marines. Overall humanitarian operation led by the Pentagon. Dominant decision making role entrusted to US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM). The US, as the French cooperation minister remarked before being quickly shushed-up, seemed to be `occupying’ rather than helping Haiti. But why on earth would the US want to occupy a poor, impoverished nation like Haiti?

Haiti, according to recent revelations, has oil reserves which in comparison to Venezuela’s are like an Olympic swimming pool is to a glass of water. The US, according to Haitian scholar Dr. Georges Michel, has known of Haiti’s oil and natural gas reserves since 1908. After completing their explorations in the 1950s, they locked up what had been discovered, as “strategic reserves for the US.” To be tapped only when Middle Eastern oil becomes less available. Other Haitian scholars add, not only oil, but also Haiti’s strategic position, cheap labor, deep water ports, mineral resources (iridium, gold, copper, uranium, diamond, gas reserves, zyconium deposits), lands, waterfronts, offshore resources for privatization or the exclusive use of the world’s wealthy oligarchs and US big oil monopolies.

As I come across news reports, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez says the US was playing God by testing weapon that caused Haiti quake (Russia TV), I cannot help but trace parallels in the US government’s response to the disasters in Katrina and Haiti. The former seems to have been a dress rehearsal for the latter. Re-designing our thinking. The project of domination, as Eisenhower had put it.

Published in New Age 1 March 2010

`Owning’ the weather? PART IV: More on HAARP

By Rahnuma Ahmed

It all began with the Haiti earthquake.

I must write about it, I thought. Soon after I began researching, I came across HAARP. And then, across a 1996 report for the US Air Force which looked forward to the idea of `owning the weather’ by 2025. Through capitalising on emerging technologies and focusing development of those technologies to war-fighting applications.., so it read.

Readers know the rest. I have already written three instalments, with several more to follow. The more I read, the more I uncover connections. More stories need to be told, I tell myself.

When I began writing this series—one which promises to be longer than the one on Pakistan, `The Unfolding Crisis in Pakistan,’ 4 parts, New Age, 11-19 May 2009—I had not been able to foresee the number of pieces I’d be writing. Now, midway through the series, I’ve become worried about the absence of sub-titles as it might make it difficult for readers to trace what lies in individual pieces. Hence I backtrack, I want to give Part I a sub-title, `Laying the Groundwork,’ to Part II, `Weather Warfare,’ and to Part III, `HAARP and weaponising the ionosphere.’ The sub-title of today’s instalment, Part IV, is `More on HAARP.’

Earthquakes, as Jason Jeffrey points out in a piece in New Dawn, a journal of alternative news and information, are not only natural, i.e., those caused by the movement of tectonic plates over the Earth’s mantle, but can also be the result of human effort.

Officially-speaking, earthquakes can be induced by:

(a) fluid injection into the Earth. For instance, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical weapons manufacturing centre operated by the US Army in Colorado where a deep injection well had been constructed for testing purposes; the periods and amounts of injected waste coincided with the frequency and magnitude of quakes in the Denver area, 1962-65

(b) fluid extraction from the Earth e.g., at certain geothermal power plants

(c) mining or quarrying for e.g., removal of natural gas from subsurface deposits, such as, in northern Netherlands where 10 quakes have occurred since gas drilling began in 1986

(d) nuclear testing e.g., the detonation of a 50 megaton bomb code-named Ivan in the Soviet Union in 1961; it produced a seismic shock so powerful that it was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth, and

(e) the construction of dams and reservoirs for e.g., the 128 meter high Kariba dam in Zambia; since its construction the Kariba reservoir, which is located in a tectonically active area, has caused numerous earthquakes, 20 of them larger than 5 on the Richter scale.

Earthquakes can also be induced, as part of weather warfare. According to critics of HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program), the physics of HAARP and the political agenda behind the programme suggest that weather and earthquake manipulation is “both possible and likely.”

But its defenders, disagree. The amount of energy at the project’s disposal is “miniscule compared to the colossal energies dumped into the atmosphere by solar radiation and thunderstorms.” Ionospheric heating cannot be performed while the sun illuminates the ionosphere. There is “no serious scientific evidence” to support the accusation (or, others equally “exotic”) that the 2003 North America blackout had been caused by HAARP. Supporters further say, aeronomers and space-physicists, who have “a solid understanding of the accusations levelled against HAARP” reject the criticisms as “utter nonsense.” As they do Dr Nick Begich Jr.’s book, Angels Don’t Play HAARP (1995), which, I read in a website, is distributed and privately “ridiculed”. HAARP enthusiasts add, the scientific community does not feel called upon to defend the programme since those who do so lack a “sufficient understanding of science to criticize HAARP competently.”

As I crawl through various websites, I muse to myself, if teacher, author, activist, executive director of the Lay Institute of Technology Inc., Dr Nick Begich Jr.,  who has a doctorate in traditional medicine (also, is the son of a US Congressman) can be subjected to “ridicule” for daring to criticise HAARP, how can I, and others like me, venture to discuss high tech weapons of weather warfare, we, who are not scientists?

But, I think, surely a social science background provides one with the intellectual resources to raise questions from the other end, to seek answers which will aid in gaining a more total understanding of things: such as, who are these HAARP supporters—these scientists with a solid understanding—in a social sense? What economic backgrounds do they come from, what networks of power are they embedded in? I may not understand science, but surely, I understand politics? At least, sufficiently, to know that when questions such as those that are being raised about HAARP and weather warfare are dismissed straightaway and labelled “exotic” by solid scientists—without taking the politics, both past and present, of the military-industrial complex (or, military-industrial-media-entertainment complex, as recent analysts say) that the US has become—it is, by the standards of solid social science, strange. It is suspect. Like others who are close observers of contemporary politics, I know that it is important to delve not only into history but also into the philosophy of science, into issues of epistemology and ethics, into the culture of science (a rapidly-burgeoning field within anthropology). And of course, being interested in the culture of science would also mean being interested in issues to do with hierarchies within the scientific profession. The ideologies of scientific practice. The politics of research funding. And in matters such as these, as international relations theorist Steve Smith reminds us, the stakes are “high.” Those who swim outside “safe waters” risk more than simply the judgment that their theories are wrong. Their entire ethical or moral stance may be ridiculed. Or, seen as dangerous. (Interestingly enough, Dr Nick Begich Jr’s Wikipedia Biography has been deleted).

Nikola Tesla, it is said, is one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists. But Tesla had never gained the recognition that he deserved, not even to this day, because his scientific breakthroughs were considered to be too sensitive by corporate and government forces. Fascinated with the power of resonance, Tesla had built mechanical vibrators to test their powers. Once, in his Manhattan lab, he attached a powerful little vibrator driven by compressed air to a steel pillar, and went out on some work. “A violent quaking built up, shaking down plaster, bursting plumbing, cracking windows, and breaking heavy machinery off its anchorages.” It seems that Tesla had set off a small earthquake, and soon, his building started to quake. When the police broke into his lab they found him  smashing his own device with a sledge hammer. It was the only way he could promptly stop it.

Tesla’s “experiments in transmitting mechanical vibrations through the Earth… were roughly described by the scientists as a sort of controlled earthquake” (‘Tesla’s Controlled Earthquakes,’ New York American , July 11, 1935). An article published in Specula magazine described an incredibly profound phenomenon that could be produced within the Earth, as the ‘Tesla Effect’ (January 1978). Tesla himself, it is said, expressed grave concerns about the effects of this technology. Once it begins vibrating within the Earth, it is the type of thing which could easily get out of control. His worry was that it could actually cause the Earth to vibrate to pieces.

The key technology behind HAARP is the brainchild of American physicist Bernard J Eastlund (1938-2007); the major inspiration for Eastlund’s ionospheric heater was Tesla as is stated in his patent, “Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth’s Atmosphere, Ionosphere; and/or Magnetosphere” (U.S. Patent # 4,686,605), which was sealed for a year under a government Secrecy Order.

Published in New Age, 23 February 2010

(more, next week)