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By Tony Cartalucci

Corroborating claims by French security agencies, a bizarre interview conducted just before the death of terror suspect Chérif Kouachi reveals that he had been in Yemen and in direct contact with none other than Anwar Al Awlaki – the notorious Al Qaeda leader allegedly killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The UK Mirror in an article titled, “Paris shootings: Listen to terrorist Amedy Coulibaly’s bizarre conversation with hostage during supermarket siege,” quoted Kouachi as saying:
We are just telling you we are the defenders of the prophet and that I Chérif Kouachi have been sent by Al Qaida of Yemen and that I went over there and that Anwar Al Awaki financed me.

Not only was Anwar Al Awlaki a senior leader in Al Qaeda, he also infamously spent dinner with top brass at the Pentagon shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in Washington, New York, and over Pennsylvania.

CBS News would report in their article, “Qaeda-Linked Imam Dined at Pentagon after 9/11,” that:
Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical spiritual leader linked to several 9/11 attackers, the Fort Hood shooting, and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airliner – was a guest at the Pentagon in the months after 9/11, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News.
Awlaki was invited as “…part of an informal outreach program” in which officials sought contact “…with leading members of the Muslim community,” the official said. At that time, Awlaki was widely viewed as a “moderate” imam at a mosque in Northern Virginia.
At the same time, the FBI was also interviewing Awlaki about his contacts with three of the 9/11 attackers – Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al Midhar and Hani Hanjour – who were all part of the crew of five that hijacked the American Airlines jet that hit the Pentagon.

Indeed, Anwar Al Awlaki would admit to having met Hazmi – in yet another incident the general public is supposed to believe is simply an astonishing coincidence.

The list of “coincidences” and “accidents” is so far impressive and include the following:

1. French authorities arrested and imprisoned Chérif Kouachi in 2005 for terrorism. He would be released in 2008 after sentencing was suspended for “time served,” this despite evidence suggesting Kouachi may have even gone as far with his plot as travel to Yemen. Slate Magazine would report in their article, “The Details of Paris Suspect Cherif Kouachi’s 2008 Terrorism Conviction,” that:
Kouachi was arrested in January 2005, accused of planning to join jihadists in Iraq. He was said to have fallen under the sway of Farid Benyettou, a young “self-taught preacher” who advocated violence, but had not actually yet traveled to Iraq or committed any acts of terror. Lawyers at the time said he had not received weapons training and “had begun having second thoughts,” going so far as to express “relief” that he’d been apprehended.

2. Kouachi and brother Said would be implicated in another terrorist plot again in 2010 but were not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. The BBC in their report titled, “Charlie Hebdo attack: Suspects’ profiles,” would state:
In 2010 Cherif Kouachi was named in connection with a plot to spring another Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, from jail – a plot hatched by Beghal, according to French anti-terror police.
Belkacem used to be in the outlawed Algerian Islamic Armed Group (GIA) and was jailed for life in 2002 for a Paris metro station bombing in 1995 which injured 30 people.
Said Kouachi, 34, was also named in the Belkacem plot, but the brothers were not prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

3. With French intelligence agencies’ knowledge, the Kouachi brothers would then travel to Yemen in 2011, receiving weapons training directly from Al Qaeda. CNN’s report titled, “France tells U.S. Paris suspect trained with al Qaeda in Yemen,” would report:
A U.S. official says the United States was given information from the French intelligence agency that Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen as late as 2011 on behalf of the al Qaeda affiliate there. Once in Yemen, the older brother of the two received a variety of weapons training from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — the affiliate in Yemen — the official said, including on how to fire weapons. It is also possible Said was trained in bomb making, a common jihadist training in Yemen. Two other U.S. officials confirmed that information about the Yemeni travel was passed to the U.S. from French intelligence agencies.
In addition, French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview broadcast on CNN International that one of the brothers traveled to Yemen in 2005. Taubira would not say which brother.
Admissions that one of the brothers had traveled to Yemen in 2005, suggests the possibility he may indeed have received weapons training from Al Qaeda before his arrest and imprisonment later that same year.

4. It was reported that the brothers then fought in Syria before returning last summer, approximately 6 months ago. USA Today would report in an article titled, “Manhunt continues for two French terror suspects,” that:
The brothers were born in Paris of Algerian descent. Cherif was sentenced to three years in prison on terrorism charges in May 2008. Both brothers returned from Syria this summer.

5. Also about 6 months ago, French intelligence decided the suspects’ serial offenses along with their direct contact with Al Qaeda – including the receiving of terrorist training and battlefield experience fighting along side them in Syria – were “low risk” cases and therefore not worthy of their attention.

Astoundingly, UK’s Daily Mail would report in their article, “Revealed: Police stopped watching Paris killers six months ago after terror cell of kosher deli attacker and his crossbow jihadi wife – who has fled to Syria – were deemed ‘low-risk’,” that:
The world’s most wanted female terrorist has fled to Syria, it was revealed last night – as police admitted they stopped surveillance on her deadly Parisian cell six months ago because they were deemed ‘low-risk’.
The Daily Mail would go on to report on other cell members including Amedy Coulibaly, also killed by police during the recent shootings and attacks in Paris – also a notorious serial offender, known terrorist, and also previously arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison for terrorism.
Who decided this cell was “low risk” six months ago? That is probably where the French people should begin searching for justice – if justice is in fact what they seek.

Six months, coincidentally, is also about the typical length (6-10 months) of security and intelligence “sting operations” targeting terrorists. It provides an appropriate time frame within which an event like the recent attacks could have been planned, funded, and eventually carried out. The public is expected to believe this obvious terror cell who had been in and out of prison for terrorism over the course of a decade and in direct contact with Al Qaeda, was suddenly dropped from the attention of French intelligence just in time for them to carry out their most spectacular crime to date?

Who decided this cell was “low risk” six months ago? That is probably where the French people should begin searching for justice – if justice is in fact what they seek.

Europe Has Been Here Before

Unfortunately, these “coincidences” and “accidents” are not coincidences and accidents at all. They fit an obvious pattern of staged provocations within the context of an intentionally engineered “strategy of tension,” identical but scaled up from what NATO was exposed to have committed during the Cold War as part of its “stay behind networks,” more commonly known as “Operation Gladio.”

Indeed, if NATO could carry out attacks during the Cold War, targeting Western Europeans in deadly brutality designed to appear as the work of NATO’s enemies, why would NATO now be suddenly excused from the investigation as a prime suspect? With the “coincidences” and “accidents” described above, those occupying the highest of France’s political, military, and intelligence offices, should be removed, tried, and imprisoned for criminal negligence at the very least.

As the puzzle pieces continue to fit together, the picture that appears is one of brazen, intentional provocation either to divide society at home, or wage war abroad, or both. And as this picture comes into focus, the rhetoric designed to distract the public from seeing it will reach a fever pitch.

11 January 2015

By Olivier Roy

FLORENCE — The attack against the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has re-launched an ongoing debate in France about the compatibility between Islam and the West. The issue is more fraught in Western Europe than in the United States because of the huge number of Muslims who are not only settled there, but who also have citizenship.

By a strange coincidence, on the same day of the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, we saw the long awaited release of the most recent novel by the bestselling French author Michel Houellebecq, titled “Submission.” The book imagines the victory of a moderate Muslim party in the 2022 French presidential and parliamentary elections.

The issue of the compatibility between Islam and French or Western political culture is no longer confined to the usual suspects: the populist right, conservative Christians or staunch secularists from the left. The issue has become emotional and now pervades the entire political spectrum. The Muslim population — which does not identify with the terrorists — now fears an anti-Muslim backlash.

Roughly speaking, two narratives are conflicting: the dominant one claims that Islam is the main issue, because it puts loyalty toward the faith community before loyalty to the nation, it does not accept criticism, does not compromise on norms and values and condones specific forms of violence like jihad. For the adherents of this narrative, the only solution is a theological reformation that would generate a “good” Islam that is a liberal, feminist and gay-friendly religion. Journalists and politicians are always tracking the “good Muslims” and summoning them to show their credentials as “moderate.”

On the other side, many Muslims, secular or believers, supported by a multiculturalist left, claim that radicalization does not come from Islam but from disenfranchised youth who are victims of racism and exclusion, and that the real issue is Islamophobia. They condemn terrorism while denouncing the backlash that could in turn radicalize more Muslim youth.

The problem is that both narratives presuppose the existence of a French “Muslim community” of which the terrorists are a sort of “vanguard.”

“Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be.”

The juxtaposition of these two narratives has created a deadlock. To overcome this, it is necessary to first take into account a number of inescapable facts — facts which we do not want to acknowledge because they show us that the radicalized young people are in no way the vanguard or the spokesmen of the Muslim population, and in particular, that there is no “Muslim community” in France.

Radicalized young people, who rely heavily on an imagined Muslim politics (the Ummah of earlier times) are deliberately at odds with the Islam of their parents, as well as Muslim culture overall.

They invent an Islam which opposes itself to the West. They come from the periphery of the Muslim word. They are moved to action by the displays of violence in the media of Western culture. They embody a generational rupture (parents now call the police when their children leave for Syria), and they are not involved with the local religious community and the neighborhood mosques.

These young people practice self-radicalization on the Internet, searching for a global jihad. They are not interested in the tangible concerns of the Muslim world, such as Palestine. In short, they are not seeking the Islamization of the society in which they live but the realization of their sick fantasy of heroism (“We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” claimed some of the killers at Charlie Hebdo).

The great majority of the converted amongst radicals clearly shows that radicalization is taking place among a marginal fringe of the youth, and not at the heart of the Muslim population.

BEYOND CLICHES

Conversely, one might say, the facts show that French Muslims are more integrated than commonly thought. Each “Islamist” attack has involved at least one Muslim victim amongst the police force — for example Imad Ibn Ziaten, a French soldier killed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse in 2012, or the officer Ahmed Merabet, killed when he tried to stop the killers at the Charlie Hebdo offices.

Instead of being cited as examples, they are considered counter-examples. The “real” Muslim is said to be the terrorist and the others are the exceptions. But statistically, this is false: in France, there are more Muslims in the army, the police, and the gendarmes than in the Al Qaeda network, not to mention in government administration, the hospitals, law practices or the educational system.

Another cliché is that Muslims do not condemn terrorism. But the Internet is overflowing with condemnations and anti-terrorist fatwas (Just one example).

If the facts contradict the thesis of the radicalization of the Muslim population, then why are they not recognized? Because one attributes to the Muslim population a far-reaching community for which they are, at the same time, criticized for not exhibiting.

Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be.

“In France, there is not a Muslim community, but a Muslim population.”

If, at the local level, in the neighborhoods, there are certain forms of community, such a thing does not exist at the national level. The Muslims of France have never had the desire to put in place representative institutions or even, at the very least, a Muslim lobby. There are no signs pointing toward the beginning of the establishment of a Muslim political party. The candidates of the political sphere who are of Muslim origin are spread out across the French political spectrum (and include the extreme right). There is no “Muslim vote.”

There is no network of denominational Muslim schools (less than 10 in France), no mobilization in the street (no demonstrations around a Muslim cause has attracted more than a few thousand people) and almost no grand mosques (which are almost always financed from outside funding). There are only a handful of small local mosques.

If there is an effort at community, it comes from above, from the state, not the citizens. The purported organized representation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith at the Grand Mosque of Paris is held at arm’s length by the French government and by foreign governments alike. And it has no local legitimacy. In short, the Muslim “community” suffers from a very Gallic individualism and remains recalcitrant. That is the good news.

Yet, both the left and the right do not cease to speak of that famous Muslim community, either to denounce its refusal to integrate, or to paint it as the victim of Islamophobia. The two opposing narratives are based on the same fantasy of an imaginary Muslim community.

In France, there is not a Muslim community, but a Muslim population. To admit this simple truth would already be a good antidote against the current hysteria, and the hysteria to come.

Statement by the International Progress Organization on events in France and the future of multiculturalism in Europe

The International Progress Organization strongly and unequivocally condemns the use of violence for political or religious purposes. Everyone will agree in the condemnation of acts of terrorism such as this week’s attacks in Paris. However, one should also address the deeper divisions and contradictions in Europe’s multicultural societies. The freedom of the press is not absolute; it does not include the right to deride or ridicule religion and it must be based on respect of human dignity. As with the earlier cartoon crisis in Denmark: one must be aware that the deliberate use of media to provoke faith-based communities will poison the social climate and contribute to an atmosphere of distrust and mutual hatred. This, of course, does not excuse violent reactions such as those in Paris; but journalists, including those who use jokes and irony to express their point of view, should be aware of their social responsibility. There can be no peace without mutual respect, first and foremost among people with different worldviews, whether religious or secular.

One should also be aware that the jihadi violence did not come out of the blue. The Western powers in particular have (a) for a long time supported jihadi groups and used them for their geopolitical agenda, and (b), through their policy of “regime change,” they have created the political vacuum in which these groups are flourishing. One should not be surprised about the backlash in Europe.

The tragic events and the reaction to them are a bad omen for the future. The political systems in Europe will become more and more unstable if the governments and the dominant media refuse to acknowledge that these acts of violence are not isolated incidents, but happen in a framework of increasing alienation and confrontation between the religious and cultural communities. This development is further accelerated by the large-scale military engagement of Western powers in the Muslim world – because of (a) the destruction of the social fabric in these countries and (b) the creation of hatred among the affected populations. The situation in Europe is further aggravated because inter-religious tensions are increasingly being exploited for the sake of party politics. This may trigger a never-ending cycle of hatred and violence, and make the “clash of civilizations” a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focusing on the tragic events in Europe, one should not forget, however, that these past days Boko Haram slaughtered many hundreds of innocent people in Baga town and neighbouring villages in Nigeria.

This is indeed a challenging time for all who are committed to dialogue. Denial of reality will completely erode the basis of Europe’s official multicultural credo. What is most needed now are voices of reason that are able to cross the cultural divide – even in a situation where emotions obstruct rational thinking of political and civil society leaders on all sides.

Vienna, 9 January 2015.

 

By Eric Zuesse

On January 7th, Britain’s Guardian, which used to be a fine newspaper but isn’t now, started what will necessarily be a long road back to reality, after nearly a year of their intermittent inattention and Western propaganda on Ukraine — finally realistically reporting the war there as being what it is and always was: an attempt by the post-coup Ukrainian Government to destroy the area in Ukraine where the residents had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President who was overthrown in the February 2014 coup.

Oleg Orlov headlined “Ukraine’s Forgotten City Destroyed by War,” and he described a city in ruins from the intensive bombings during July and August.

Though most of his article avoided the key question as to which side was to blame for this, no one can deny that the invaders here were the Ukrainian Air Force and Army, and that the defenders were troops of irregular fighters who lived in the invaded region. So, anyone with an IQ above 50 would have no difficulty figuring out that the Ukrainian Air Force and Army were to blame for bombing this city — that the Government was bombing and trying to exterminate the residents there while claiming to be their rightful Government (and which Government still remains supported by the West in that war against the former Ukrainians who live, and have always lived, there).

Here is the way that Orlov reported it:

“Towards the end of July, Ukrainian troops approached Pervomaisk but ran into stiff resistance and could not take it. A massive artillery bombardment began that would continue into August. Most people fled.”

He described the damage he viewed:

“Some blocks of this city, situated 50 kilometres west of Luhansk, have been practically wiped off the face of the earth by Ukrainian artillery barrages. Hardly any houses have escaped unscathed. We had seen such complete devastation in eastern Ukraine only [once before], in the villages of Khryashchuvate and Novosvitlivka, a few kilometres southeast of Luhansk. On that occasion, though, it was LNR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and possibly Russian artillery that opened fire in August [in order to] dislodge Ukrainian troops from the villages.”

Ultimately, he acknowledged that the Government were the invaders:

“The ‘Commandant’ of Pervomaisk (the mayor, appointed by the armed men who control the city) has a grisly collection of photos on his computer that were taken at that time. The rebels, though, had set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre, goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk. But that in no way justifies strikes against populated areas by multiple launch rocket systems.”

However, again, only a fool would think otherwise. The situation is hard for propagandists such as the Obama Administration to even refer to.

It should also be pointed out that when Orlov asserted that, the rebels’ having “set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre” was “goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk,” he was saying that even merely defending the City constituted shared responsibility, along with the attackers, for the City’s having been destroyed. This is like saying that a woman’s attractiveness constitutes her shared responsibility for her having been raped by her attacker.

Orlov then goes on to say:

“In November, strikes on the city resumed, although they were less intense than in the summer. We talked to the staff of a maternity hospital that had been hit by a bomb on 15 November, with a further five bombs exploding next to the building. A baby girl born two months premature was in the hospital at the time: it was a miracle that she survived, the doctors say.”

Then:

“When, the following morning, a ‘repair brigade’ went to [clear away the rubble], a new barrage began and one worker was killed. They showed us some one-storey houses that were destroyed on 23 November by strikes from a Grad rocket launcher. People crowd tightly into the bomb shelters when they are under fire [but] there were no bombardments during our visit and the huddled figures were those of permanent residents who no longer have anywhere else to live.”

He describes the desperate condition of the people that the Ukrainian Govenment’s bombings (which are financed by the West) has produced:

“The worst thing is the acute shortage of food in Pervomaisk. Although there are several shops in town, many people have no money left to buy anything. The city authorities – the Commandant, mayor and Cossack, Yevgeny Ishchenko and his comrades-in-arms – are trying to keep people alive somehow.”

Perhaps because of the requirement in the West to blame Russia for these things, the article closes:

“When we were in Pervomaisk, an eighth humanitarian aid convoy crossed over from Russia into eastern Ukraine. On our way back to Moscow, we discovered that no [food or supplies] from this convoy found their way to Pervomaisk. We appealed to the Commissioner for Human Rights and the Presidential Human Rights Council. We hope that the Russian government will wield its influence and convince the LNR authorities to send some of the humanitarian aid they receive from Russia to those who need it most – the people of Pervomaisk.”

He ignores this reality: The Ukrainian Government was blocking aid convoys. The Government is trying to starve the residents there to death. To blame Russia for any of that failure of food to reach the starving is obscene. But at least this article by Orlov is a start. That’s more than one can yet say for such newspapers as The New York Times, and Washington Post — or any in America.

After all: It was Obama who installed the current Ukrainian Government. David Cameron did not. If the business of journalism is to cover-up for one’s own Government’s international crimes, then newspapers such as The New York Times, and Washington Post are authentic journalistic institutions, not mere propaganda-organs. But the Guardian is making a step away from that type of ‘journalism’ — at least to the extent that Britain is partly responsible for the February 2014 Ukrainian coup, which is a very small extent. Perhaps that’s why the ‘news’ media in Britain are a bit freer to report the truth of that war than ours are.

Only in America is the lying by media about Ukraine’s war so pervasive. That’s because it’s basically America’s war, even though the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to it. The American Government serves the American aristocracy — no longer the public.

Maybe the British aristocracy don’t hate Russians as much as America’s do; but, for whatever reason, they’re not so committed to the destruction of Russia as Obama and the American aristocracy he represents are. That American aristocracy control America’s ‘news’ media, but they fortunately do not also control Britain’s.

If one reads the American press about Ukraine now, after the coup, then one is reading lies, distortions, and propaganda: myths, not history.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

09 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Andre Vltchek

A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.

When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.

The same could be said about many other Muslim societies, including those of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Old photos speak for themselves. That is why it is so important to study old images again and again, carefully.

Islam is not only a religion; it is also an enormous culture, one of the greatest on Earth, which has enriched our humanity with some of the paramount scientific and architectural achievements, and with countless discoveries in the field of medicine. Muslims have written stunning poetry, and composed beautiful music. But above all, they developed some of the earliest social structures in the world, including enormous public hospitals and the first universities on earth, like The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco.

The idea of ‘social’ was natural to many Muslim politicians, and had the West not brutally interfered, by overthrowing left-wing governments and putting on the throne fascist allies of London, Washington and Paris; almost all Muslim countries, including Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, would now most likely be socialist, under a group of very moderate and mostly secular leaders.

***

In the past, countless Muslim leaders stood up against the Western control of the world, and enormous figures like the Indonesian President, Ahmet Sukarno, were close to Communist Parties and ideologies. Sukarno even forged a global anti-imperialist movement, the Non-Allied movement, which was clearly defined during the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, in 1955.

That was in striking contrast to the conservative, elites-oriented Christianity, which mostly felt at home with the fascist rulers and colonialists, with the kings, traders and big business oligarchs.

For the Empire, the existence and popularity of progressive, Marxist, Muslim rulers governing the Middle East or resource-rich Indonesia, was something clearly unacceptable. If they were to use the natural wealth to improve the lives of their people, what was to be left for the Empire and its corporations? It had to be stopped by all means. Islam had to be divided, and infiltrated with radicals and anti-Communist cadres, and by those who couldn’t care less about the welfare of their people.

***

Almost all radical movements in today’s Islam, anywhere in the world, are tied to Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative, reactionary sect of Islam, which is in control of the political life of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other staunch allies of the West in the Gulf.

To quote Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi:

“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…”

The West gave full support to the Wahhabis in the 1980s. They were employed, financed and armed, after the Soviet Union was dragged into Afghanistan and into a bitter war that lasted from 1979 to 1989. As a result of this war, the Soviet Union collapsed, exhausted both economically and psychologically.

The Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviets as well as the left-leaning government in Kabul, were encouraged and financed by the West and its allies. They came from all corners of the Muslim world, to fight a ‘Holy War’ against Communist infidels.

According to the US Department of State archives:

“Contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs and foreign fighters who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.”

Muslim radical groups created and injected into various Muslim countries by the West included al-Qaeda, but also, more recently, ISIS (also known as ISIL). ISIS is an extremist army that was born in the ‘refugee camps’ on the Syrian/Turkish and Syrian/Jordanian borders, and which was financed by NATO and the West to fight the Syrian (secular) government of Bashar al-Assad.

Such radical implants have been serving several purposes. The West uses them as proxies in the wars it is fighting against its enemies – the countries that are still standing in the way to the Empire’s complete domination of the world. Then, somewhere down the road, after these extremist armies ‘get totally out of control’ (and they always will), they could serve as scarecrows and as justification for the ‘The War On Terror’, or, like after ISIS took Mosul, as an excuse for the re-engagement of Western troops in Iraq.

Stories about the radical Muslim groups have constantly been paraded on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, or shown on television monitors, reminding readers ‘how dangerous the world really is’, ‘how important Western engagement in it is’, and consequently, how important surveillance is, how indispensable security measures are, as well as tremendous ‘defense’ budgets and wars against countless rogue states.

***

From a peaceful and creative civilization, that used to lean towards socialism, the Muslim nations and Islam itself, found itself to be suddenly derailed, tricked, outmaneuvered, infiltrated by foreign religious and ideological implants, and transformed by the Western ideologues and propagandists into one ‘tremendous threat’; into the pinnacle and symbol of terrorism and intolerance.

The situation has been thoroughly grotesque, but nobody is really laughing – too many people have died as a result; too much has been destroyed!

Indonesia is one of the most striking historical examples of how such mechanisms of the destruction of progressive Muslim values, really functions:

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US, Australia and the West in general, were increasingly ‘concerned’ about the progressive anti-imperialist and internationalist stand of President Sukarno, and about the increasing popularity of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). But they were even more anxious about the enlightened, socialist and moderate Indonesian brand of Islam, which was clearly allying itself with Communist ideals.

Christian anti-Communist ideologues and ‘planners’, including the notorious Jesuit Joop Beek, infiltrated Indonesia. They set up clandestine organizations there, from ideological to paramilitary ones, helping the West to plan the coup that in and after 1965 took between 1 and 3 million human lives.

Shaped in the West, the extremely effective anti-Communist and anti-intellectual propaganda spread by Joop Beek and his cohorts also helped to brainwash many members of large Muslim organizations, propelling them into joining the killing of Leftists, immediately after the coup. Little did they know that Islam, not only Communism, was chosen as the main target of the pro-Western, Christian ‘fifth column’ inside Indonesia, or more precisely, the target was the left-leaning, liberal Islam.

After the 1965 coup, the Western-sponsored fascist dictator, General Suharto, used Joop Beek as his main advisor. He also relied on Beek’s ‘students’, ideologically. Economically, the regime related itself with mainly Christian business tycoons, including Liem Bian Kie.

In the most populous Muslim nation on earth, Indonesia, Muslims were sidelined, their ‘unreliable’ political parties banned during the dictatorship, and both the politics (covertly) and economy (overtly) fell under the strict control of Christian, pro-Western minority. To this day, this minority has its complex and venomous net of anti-Communist warriors, closely-knit business cartels and mafias, media and ‘educational outlets’ including private religious schools, as well as corrupt religious preachers (many played a role in the 1965 massacres), and other collaborators with both the local and global regime.

Indonesian Islam has been reduced to a silent majority, mostly poor and without any significant influence. It only makes international headlines when its frustrated white-robed militants go trashing bars, or when its extremists, many related to the Mujahedeen and the Soviet-Afghan War, go blowing up nightclubs, hotels or restaurants in Bali and Jakarta.

Or do they even do that, really?

Former President of Indonesia and progressive Muslim cleric, Abdurrahman Wahid (forced out of office by the elites), once told me: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was not an attack by the Islamists; it was done by the Indonesian secret services, in order to justify their existence and budget, and to please the West.”

***

“I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar.

And Mr. Sardar continued:

“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”

From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey is has been!

The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.

It is misunderstood by the outsiders, and often even by its own people who are frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world.

What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion.

Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests.

As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures.

What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality.

It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving.

Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed.

The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown.

For decades, Palestine has been denied freedom, as well as its basic human rights. Both Israel and the Empire spit at its right to self-determination. Palestinian people are locked in a ghetto, humiliated, and murdered. Religion is all that some of them have left.

The ‘Arab Spring’ was derailed and terminated almost everywhere, from Egypt to Bahrain, and the old regimes and military are back in power.

Like African people, Muslims are paying terrible price for being born in countries rich in natural resources. But they are also brutalized for having, together with China, the greatest civilization in history, one that outshone all the cultures of the West.

***

Christianity looted and brutalized the world. Islam, with its great Sultans such as Saladin, stood against invaders, defending the great cities of Aleppo and Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem. But overall, it was more interested in building a great civilization, than in pillaging and wars.

Now hardly anyone in the West knows about Saladin or about the great scientific, artistic or social achievements of the Muslim world. But everybody is ‘well informed’ about ISIS. Of course they know ISIS only as an ‘Islamic extremist group’, not as one of the main Western tools used to destabilize the Middle East.

As ‘France is mourning’ the deaths of the journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo (undeniably a terrible crime!), all over Europe it is again Islam which is being depicted as brutal and militant, not the West with its post-Crusade, Christian fundamentalist doctrines that keeps overthrowing and slaughtering all moderate, secular and progressive governments and systems in the Muslim world, leaving Muslim people at the mercy of deranged fanatics.

***

In the last five decades, around 10 million Muslims have been murdered because their countries did not serve the Empire, or did not serve it full-heartedly, or just were in the way. The victims were Indonesians, Iraqis, Algerians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and the citizens of Mali, Somalia, Bahrain and many other countries.

The West identified the most horrible monsters, threw billions of dollars at them, armed them, gave them advanced military training, and then let them loose.

The countries that are breeding terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are some of the closest allies of the West, and have never been punished for exporting horror all over the Muslim world.

Great social Muslim movements like Hezbollah, which is presently engaged in mortal combat against the ISIS, but which also used to galvanize Lebanon during its fight against the Israeli invasion, are on the “terrorist lists” compiled by the West. It explains a lot, if anybody is willing to pay attention.

Seen from the Middle East, it appears that the West, just as during the crusades, is aiming at the absolute destruction of Muslim countries and the Muslim culture.

As for the Muslim religion, the Empire only accepts the sheepish brands – those that accept extreme capitalism and the dominant global position of the West. The only other tolerable type of Islam is that which is manufactured by the West itself, and by its allies in the Gulf – designated to fight against progress and social justice; the one that is devouring its own people.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.
09 January, 2015
Counterpunch.org

 

The full transcript appears below of the January 7, 2015 press conference on Capitol Hill featuring former Senator Bob Graham, Representative Walter Jones, Representative Stephen Lynch, and members of the 9/11 families including Terry Strada, national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism.

The press conference, which was live streamed on the LaRouchePAC website (see the video: https://larouchepac.com/20150108/press-conference-28-pages-sen-bob-graham ), was convened to announce the filing of H. Res. 14 to declassify the excised 28 page chapter of the 9/11 Joint Inquiry Report which details foreign state sponsorship and financial support of the 9/11 hijackers, and was very well attended by leading national press services, including CNN, Fox News, US News and World Report, Newsweek, Daily Beast, the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, National Review, and numerous others, in addition to numerous independent websites and blogs related to citizen activism on declassification such as www.28pages.org.

SEE “Declassify the 28 Pages”

Press Conference to Declassify the 28 Pages of 9/11 Joint Inquiry Report

Former Sen. Bob Graham, Rep. Walter Jones, Rep. Stephen Lynch, 9/11 Families representatives Terry Strada, Sylvia Carver, and Abraham Scott
Wednesday, January 7, 2015

REP. WALTER JONES: If I could get your attention, I would like to tell you that we are very grateful that you would attend this press conference today. We’ve got the gentleman that has been leading this battle for twelve years, Senator Bob Graham, will be speaking as well.

Let me tell you the order of the talk today: I’ll make brief comments after I welcome you, which I’m doing now. Then I will introduce Stephen Lynch from Massachusetts, who joined me last year in a House Resolution that we put in, to call on the White House to declassify these 28 pages. He and I dropped the same resolution yesterday, but we don’t have a bill number yet, because so many bills were introduced. [The number of the resolution is H. Res. 14 — ed.]

Then we have from the families, who have suffered so much pain, Terry Strada, Sylvia Carver, and Abraham Scott. And then after they speak, we will then take questions from the press. At that time, please identify who you are and who you are with.

First, my brief comments will be that just like the tragedy in France today, no nation can defend itself unless the nation knows the truth, and especially when there’s been an attack like 9/11. [The satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was attacked by three gunmen who killed 12 people and wounded 5 in Paris—ed.] The families and their pain is something none of us can experience, unless we’re one of the 9/11 families. So with that, I want to introduce Stephen Lynch, and then will come back and introduce Sen. Bob Graham, and then the family members will speak, and then you’ll have your chance to ask questions.

Stephen Lynch and I bonded as friends long before this issue of the 28 pages. I am a conservative Republican from North Carolina; he is more —

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH: Moderate.

JONES: Moderate, from Massachusetts, and a Democrat. And we became friends just because I think God intended that we would be friends, quite frankly. So with that, again, Stephen and Thomas Massie, who cannot be with us today, is also on this House Resolution calling on the Administration to declassify the 28 pages. So I will let Stephen speak now, and then I will come back and introduce Sen. Bob Graham.

Stephen, come ahead and tell the people why we need to declassify the 28 pages.

REP. LYNCH: Thank you very much, Walter, for that very generous and kind introduction. First of all, I want to thank the 9/11 families for being with us this morning. They are really the reason we are here. And we’re introducing our measure, resolution, from last year, to require the declassification of the 28-page section of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into intelligence activities before and after the terrorist attacks of September of 2001. Congressman Jones and I jointly introduced this resolution back in December of 2013, and we are pleased to do so again.

I’d like to begin by thanking my colleague Walter Jones for his leadership on this issue. He has been relentless, which I think is what it’s going to take to get these pages declassified. And he’s really provided, I think, a dignified and well-thought-out approach for the reasons behind our request. I’d also like to acknowledge Sen. Bob Graham, again, who was a catalyst for this effort, and really, I think, before anyone, recognized the rightness of disclosing these 28 pages when the Joint Report first came out, and making these public.

There are three basic reasons for our request here: First is that transparency is a good aspect of democracy and that, as Walter indicated, having an informed public, from the beginning of our government has always been a major priority and an asset of democracy; and we believe that transparency in this case will not only be the right thing to do, but secondly, it will provide justice for a lot of the families—for all of the families who are affected directly. We all suffered a deep and personal, profound loss, but these families, who will speak later on at this conference, will speak to the true pain that they feel each and every day. And they are deserving of the truth, just as the American people are. And thirdly, I think, after reading the 28 pages — and the pages speak for themselves — I think that members of the Congress and American citizens everywhere, will be better informed, in terms of our national security posture and the threats that are out there, I think they will be better informed, more thoughtful, more comprehensive, and we will understand more fully, the nature of the threat that’s out there. And I think that, again, is one more reason to make sure that these reports are made public.

So, with that, I just want to say, again, we are deeply grateful that Senator Graham was able to join us today. He has provided much impetus for this investigation here, it’s kept us going. As I said before, he was the first one to recognize the wrongfulness in terms of concealing this from the American public.

And, it’s one important point I want to emphasize, is that we frequently see reports—I’m in the process of reading a 6,700-page report on the CIA enhanced interrogation process—and it is typical to see a redaction where a couple lines or a name, name of a country, name of a CIA agent might be deleted for the purpose of protecting that individual. But in this case, this report, this Joint Report, 28 pages were excised, a whole section of it! That’s extraordinary. And it points to the need for disclosing that information, in order to make sure that that report is fully understood. I think Walter and I, and the Senator, agree that this is very important information to have out there, and that we jointly feel, as well as Representative Massie, that this presents no risks to sources, or individuals in terms of disclosing this, for our intelligence apparatus; we feel, on the other hand, this will make us stronger, make our country stronger, and better prepared and better informed, if we disclose this information, as we rightly should.

So with that, I’m going to turn this back over to Walter Jones, so that he can introduce the esteemed Senator. Thank you.

REP. JONES: I want to, after I make my comments about Senator Graham, I’d like for Terry Strada to come first, Sylvia Carver to come second, and then Abraham Scott, third. And then if you would stand here, or if you need to sit, sit, so that when we get to the questions—.

I want to remind you, that after this report came out it was the Bush Administration that determined that these 28 pages should be classified; and as Stephen said, we’ve read the report, and there’s nothing about national security. I’m going to let Senator Graham speak in detail about his concern about why this has not been released, then remind you that Sen. Bob Graham spent 18 years in the Senate: He’s a man that has the nation’s respect, for the type of person that he is. He and Senator [richard] Shelby released the Joint Inquiry Report into 9/11 in December of 2002. Again, the report goes to the White House for final review, the White House, at that time under George Bush, decided that the 28 pages should be classified.

The families have suffered long enough. The American people have been denied the truth long enough. It is time for the truth to come out. As Stephen said, I want to thank Sen. Bob Graham. He has a daughter who was sworn in to the United States House of Representatives yesterday, and congratulations on that Senator. With that, a man who has driven this issue, since 2002, I’m not even going to begin to tell you what he has done! From court action, to other types of action, because he knows that the truth will set America free!

So with that, I introduce the esteemed, Senator from Florida, Bob Graham. Thank you. [applause]

SEN. BOB GRAHAM: Walter, thank you very much.

Thank you, very much. And I, too, want to thank Walter and Steve—Congressmen Jones and Lynch—for their leadership in bringing this matter to the attention of the Congress. I want to thank the family members, who have been without question the most influential force in all of the changes that have occurred as a result of 9/11, and will be the most significant force in terms of convincing the President that it is time to give the American people the truth.

Needless to say, my remarks that I will espouse this morning, are considerably different than they would have been, but for events in Paris this morning, which in my judgment bring this matter into its proper focus.

But first a little background: After 9/11, it was clear that the Congress was going to be called upon to conduct some form of an inquiry as to what happened. The decision by the leadership, was to combine the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate into a single body; for the first time in the history of the Congress that that had occurred, for purposes of carrying out this Inquiry. The Inquiry took the year of 2002. It included hundreds of witnesses, tens of thousands of pages of documentation, leading up to an over-800-page report which was submitted in December of 2002. Some six months later, the declassified version emerged, and we were shocked to see that an important chapter in the report had not been redacted, that is, as Congressman Lynch and Congressman Jones said, a word or a phrase here or there, but an entire chapter.

Since that chapter continues to be classified, none of us can talk about it in public, but I think it’s fair to say that it is a central chapter, in terms of understanding, who was the support network that allowed 9/11 to occur. When we saw that this chapter had been eliminated, there was an immediate outcry. Sen. Dick Shelby, Republican from Alabama, who had been the chair and was at that time was the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and I, issued a statement to the effect that we were intimately familiar with that chapter, we considered it to have no adverse effect on national security, that it was important to the overall understanding of 9/11 and it should be released.

We have subsequently been joined in that by others who were involved, including the chairman of the House Committee, Porter Goss, who wishes that he could have been here today to participate, as well, and subsequently, the citizen 9/11 Commission’s two co-chairs, Lee Hamilton and Tom Kean, have also advocated that these 28 pages be released.

Shortly after the declassification process ended, a letter was prepared, signed by almost half of the membership of the United States Senate, bipartisan, including, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and Senator [hillary] Clinton of New York, all calling upon President Bush to release the 28 pages.

What have been the consequences of this refusal to release the pages? And let me say, while the 28 pages are maybe the most important and the most prominent, they are by no means the only example of where information that is important to understanding the full extent of 9/11 have also been withheld from the American people. So the comments I’m going to make are specifically about the 28 pages, but more generally about a pattern of cover-up, that for 12 years, has kept the American people from a full understanding, of the most horrific attack against the United States in its history.

The consequences, in my judgment are three:

One, is a denial of the truth. A core question in 9/11 is, did these 19 people act alone, or did they have a network of support which facilitated their ability to carry out a very complex plot. No one who has looked closely at the facts, including the individuals that I just named, has come to a conclusion other than that it is highly improbable that the 19 people could have acted alone. Yet, the official position of the United States government has been that they did act alone, and that there is no necessity for further inquiry into the question of whether there was a support network.

We’re now in the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, and we’ve had a national history classroom over the past few years, as incidents that were consistent with a date in the current era coincided with a date during that war. One of the pieces of information that we have learned, at least I have learned, is that President Lincoln had a policy throughout the war, that every message that came into the government, specifically into the State Department, was a matter of public record, on a daily basis. His feeling was that if the support of the American people was going to be maintained, in a war which was increasingly bloody, many loss of lives and loss of treasure, that it took the confidence of the American people, that their government was conducting itself in an appropriate manner, and that the key to that confidence was disclosure.

I wish we applied the Lincolnesque standard to what happened in 9/11.

The second issue, is the issue of justice. Some 3,000 members of the families who were lost on 9/11 have been trying for years to get justice through our system for the losses that they have suffered. The position of the United States government has been to protect Saudi Arabia, at virtually every step of the judicial process. When the United States government was called upon to take a position, it has been a position adverse to the interests of the United States citizens seeking justice, and protective of the government which, in my judgment, was the most responsible for that network of support.

Again, an example from the Civil War: The British had signed a neutrality agreement with the United States that they would not be involved in the Civil War. It was found out, subsequently, that in fact, their shipyards had been building military vessels for the Confederacy. After the war ended, the United States didn’t forget; it did not walk away from the negative effects of Britain’s perfidy. Rather, it pursued it, and finally, secured a recognition of what the British had done, and some compensation for the consequences of their actions. What a difference between the way this country saw itself as a prideful defender of justice for its citizens, and what we are experiencing today.

The third consequence is the issue of national security, and frequently those who have defended nondisclosure, have said, this cannot be made available to the American people, because it would be adverse to our national security. It will affect methods and sources of information, or other information that is inappropriate to be made publicly known. As the two Congressmen have just said, they both read the report — not 12 years ago, as I participated in writing the report — but they have read it recently, and have both come to the same conclusion that we did, a dozen years ago, that there is no threat to national security in disclosure.

I’m going to make the case today, that there’s a threat to national security by non-disclosure, and we saw another chapter of that, today, in Paris.

Here are some facts:

The Saudis know what they did. They are not persons who are unaware of the consequences of their government’s actions. Second, the Saudis know that we know what they did! Somebody in the Federal government has read these 28 pages, someone in the Federal government has read all the other documents that have been covered up so far. And the Saudis know that.

What would you think the Saudis’ position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observed that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known? What would the Saudi government do in that circumstance, which is precisely where they have been, for more than a decade?

Well, one, they have continued, maybe accelerated their support for one of the most extreme forms of Islam, Wahhabism, throughout the world, particularly in the Middle East. And second, they have supported their religious fervor, with financial and other forms of support, of the institutions which were going to carry out those extreme forms of Islam. Those institutions have included mosques, madrassas, and military. Al-Qaeda was a creature of Saudi Arabia; the regional groups such as al-Shabaab have been largely creatures of Saudi Arabia; and now, ISIS is the latest creature!

Yes, I hope and I trust that the United States will crush ISIS, but if we think that is the definition of victory, we are being very naive! ISIS is a consequence, not a cause—it is a consequence of the spread of extremism, largely by Saudi Arabia, and if it is crushed, there will be another institution established, financed, supported, to carry on the cause.

So the consequences of our passivity to Saudi Arabia, have been that we have tolerated this succession of institutions, violent, extreme, extremely hurtful to the region of the Middle East, and a threat to the world, as we saw this morning in Paris.

So I conclude by saying, this is a very important issue. It may seem stale to some, but it is as current as the headlines that we will read today. It is an issue that goes to the core of the United States’ contract with its people, that the people would give the government the credibility and support to govern; the government would give the people the information upon which they can make good judgments, as to the appropriateness of governmental action. It’s as fundamental as justice to our people, who have suffered so, by this evil union of extremism and a very powerful nation-state. And it is the security of the people of the United States of America.

So, I again thank the Congressmen for their leadership. I hope that they will soon be joined by a rising tide of other members of Congress who recognize the importance of this issue. And then, finally, that the President of the United States will declare that he is going to adopt the Lincolnesque standard of full disclosure, and rely on the intelligence and judgment and patriotism of the American people to decide what the appropriate course of action should be.

Thank you. [applause]

TERRY STRADA: Hello, everyone. My name is Terry Strada. I am the national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism. I stand here today, united with members of the U.S. Congress and my fellow 9/11 family members and survivors, seeking truth, accountability, and justice for all those that we lost and loved.

We all know al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden attacked us on 9/11, but that is only half the truth. We believe the other half lies in the 28 redacted pages of the Joint Inquiry.

9/11 was an attack of unquantifiable loss, death, and destruction. Over 13 years ago, I never could have imagined my life, the lives of my three children, and the lives of my late husband Tom’s family, could be destroyed and torn apart by terrorists. I could not fathom that our country could be attacked by radical Islamists who have pledged, repeatedly, and remorselessly, to perpetuate heinous war crimes against innocent men, women, and children on American soil.

Incredibly, this is the world we live in. And private citizens, and Congress, must take action against those who are responsible for aiding and abetting the 19 hijackers that murdered nearly 3,000 innocent people on American soil, no matter who they may be, no matter what government they are, or no matter what country they come from.

Terrorism is pure evil, and so are its planners, ideologies, and their bankrollers. Money is the lifeblood of terrorism, and we must implore our government officials, the State Department, the Department of Justice, and our President, to get tough on terrorism financing. To hold accountable those who funded 9/11 and continue to fund al-Qaeda, ISIS, and countless other terrorist organizations, that remain dedicated to plotting future terrorist attacks against our nation.

When former President George W. Bush classified the 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry, he effectively protected the people who gave financial and logistical aid to at least some of the 19 hijackers, while they were here in this country. He effectively denied the 9/11 victims and survivors, and the American people, the truth about who was behind the worst attack on American soil. By hiding the truth about who financed 9/11, the guilty parties have gone unpunished, free to continue financing terrorist organizations, and, as a consequence, we have witnessed the creation of branches of al-Qaeda, like ISIS, grow at an alarming rate.

It has long been reported the subjects of the redacted 28 pages point the finger at Saudi Arabia, who have given billions of dollars to promote Wahhabi Islam, the very ideology that spawned those terrorist organizations and define the jihadists’ agendas. Tragically, when those countries have become imperilled by the very monsters they help to create, they have turned to the United States to protect them, as is the case now with ISIS. We are once again engaged in conflicts against an amoral enemy, because we did nothing to prevent the funding of these organizations 13 years ago.

This cycle must stop. We must recognize and expose that our true enemy includes the backroom bankrollers, who repeatedly enable the frontline terrorists, who kill themselves, and never act again. We must declassify the 28 pages, expose the bankrolling enablers, and take action against them, or we will continue to face future waves of willing, frontline terrorists.

Since my husband was murdered, all I have ever wanted is justice. The thousands of victims’ families and survivors I represent, also want justice for the murder of their loved ones, and the pain and suffering inflicted on us. When the Twin Towers imploded, our loved ones were literally torn to pieces, and flung from river to river, on the streets and on the rooftops of Lower Manhattan. Just as was done at the Pentagon and in the tragic, yet heroic crash in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They were returned to us in pieces spanning years, or, for families like mine, they never came home to a final resting place at all.

We want the truth, and to hold accountable those who supported the 19 hijackers and enabled al-Qaeda.

I’m going to repeat myself here. We want justice. We want accountability. We want the truth.

To achieve the truth, we must declassify the redacted 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry Report.

As you’ve heard here today, there is no threat to national security to release these 28 pages. So, therefore, there is no reason to keep them classified.

To achieve justice and accountability, we must pass the Justice Against the Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). This is a bill that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without objection on Sept. 11, 2014, and voted out of the Senate in December with unanimous consent. This legislation will clarify existing law, and enable the victims of terrorism to exercise their right to hold accountable those guilty of giving financial aid and logistical support to terrorists who carry out heinous acts of murder, death, and destruction here on American soil, and help us achieve the justice we deserve.

Where is the outrage? I want to know; that Saudi Arabia, a country, our supposed ally, not only bankrolled al-Qaeda, and the worst terrorist attack on American soil, but was also instrumental in implementing an intricate web of operatives in numerous places around the world, including right here in our own country, to carry out a complex plan of bringing the 19 hijackers here to America. To name a few places: Sarasota, Florida; San Diego, California; Herndon, Virginia; Paterson, New Jersey.

Where is the outrage, that they continue to fund terrorist organizations like ISIS, which is killing, raping, and beheading innocent people at a rapacious rate, while at the same time recruiting from here in the West for more new members? And where is the indignation, that 9/11 victims’ families and survivors have been denied the right to hold accountable in a United States court room, the people responsible for the incineration of nearly 3,000 people?

We need the 114th Congress to direct President Obama to release, declassify, the redacted 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry, and we also need the 114th Congress to act swiftly, and pass JASTA into law. Our national security depends on this.

Thank you. [applause]

SYLVIA CARVER: Good morning. My name is Sylvia Carver. I’m here to speak on behalf of my sister Sharon Ann Carver, who was murdered at the Pentagon on 9/ll, as well as the other family members. My statement will be brief.

I want to make a personal request to the President of the United States to please, please, declassify the 28 pages. The families have the right to know the full story. They have a right to seek justice for their loved ones. They have a right to closure, and we cannot have that closure without the full answer, the full story. The full 28 pages must be released, so my family can have closure as well as all the other 9/11 families.

Thank you very much.

ABRAHAM SCOTT: Good morning. My name is Abraham Scott. I’m a retired Army officer. I lost my wife, Janice Marie Scott, in the Pentagon, along with the Carver sister. They were in an office—there were over 40 members of that organization that were killed that day—and I stand before you in full support of the initiative of declassifying of the 28 pages, as well as passing JASTA. And thank you, and God bless.

REP. JONES: Let me make one quick comment, and then we’re going to take questions. You can ask anyone. I wanted the families who have suffered so badly, who just spoke, to be on one side, so you can see them, and take the picture. Any of you from the press, make sure you get this picture of pain. That’s all I ask you to do.

This resolution that we have put in to call on the President, to do what is right for the American people and the 9/11 families. Senator Graham being here is just absolutely, just absolutely what we need to get the Senate to join us with a companion resolution, in the Senate, and to hold a news conference, and let’s put the pressure on the President. I do not know why, after I read these 28 pages, why there’s anyone who is reluctant to release the 28 pages. Steven Lynch and I—and I have a copy of this letter if you want it before you leave today—wrote the President in April, asking him to declassify the information. He’s told the families on two separate occasions, I will declassify the 28 pages. That’s been in the press!

We wrote him a letter in April, asking him to please declassify the information. Today, we have not received a response. We have called the White House numerous times. They’ve been responsive to this point: “We’re working on a response. We’ve got to let different agencies look at the response.”

It is time that the Senate joined the House, and joined the wishes of the American people, and the wishes of the 9/11 families.

If you’d like to ask questions, please just say who you are, and which person you’d like to come up, and we’ll be glad to answer your questions.

I’ll go here; who’d you like to ask?

JEFF STEINBERG: Senator Graham. Jeff Steinberg, Executive Intelligence Review.

Senator, you mentioned that beyond the 28 pages, there are other materials that have been withheld. I know that there’s a situation right now before a Federal court in Florida, and I wonder if you’d say something about that, because I think it’s indicative of the idea that this was not something localized to only the issues raised in the 28 pages, involving San Diego, but this is a whole other dimension that really is suggestive of the magnitude of what needs to be told to the American people.

SEN. GRAHAM: Let me just briefly tell the story of Sarasota.

It was not until almost 10 years after 9/11 that we became aware that there was a prominent Saudi family, one member of whom had been an advisor to the Royal family, living in Sarasota. There were also three of the hijackers had done their flight training, at a small school near Sarasota. And during the period that those three were living there, they had extensive contacts with that Saudi family.

Less than two weeks before 9/11, under what law enforcement described as “urgent conditions,” the Saudi family left Sarasota, and returned to Saudi Arabia, raising the question, did someone tip them off that there was an event about to occur, and it would be better that they not be in the United States?

Through a press group in Florida, we’ve been trying to get released the FBI investigation that occurred, which probed the role of the family, and the hijackers.

The FBI initially said, they could not respond to our Freedom of Information request because there was nothing to respond with. There were no documents relative to the investigative.

Fortunately, there was a strong Federal judge, who would not accept that as truth. And he and the plaintiffs pursued, and today, 80,000 pages have been turned over by the FBI to that Federal judge, in the face of their original statement that there was no information, and that judge has, for the past several months, been reviewing the 80,000 pages, in order to make a judgment as to which of those warrant continued classification, and which can be released to the public.

I cite that as an example of the fact that this is not a narrow issue of withholding information at one place, in one time. This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11, by all of the agencies of the Federal government, which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.

Q: Fox News, Washington. I realize the importance of releasing these in terms of giving the families closure, and the more principled fact that the 28 page be released so that the American public will know, but I sense that your persistence about this suggests that maybe there’s more. Do you think that it would impact foreign policy, or changes in national security at all, what’s in the details of these 28 pages?

REP. JONES: I will respond. My answer would be “no.” I do not understand how you can have a strong foreign policy when you are trying to hide the truth from the American people. How can your policymakers make foreign policy? That, to me, Joe, is just not fair. Because as Senator Graham has said, through the history of America, going back to his point of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, that America’s strength is the truth. And No, I do not think this would have any negative effect, I mean, to our foreign policy at all! I think it would strengthen our ability to have a sound foreign policy, that would be good for the American people.

I don’t know if anyone — Stephen, or Senator Graham wants to speak to that.

Yes, sir.

Q: Patrick Terpstra with the Cox Media Group. I guess for Senator Graham: Since we have not seen the 28 pages and I know you can’t give us all that’s in there, of course because it’s classified, but can you give us as much information as precisely as you can, as to exactly what it says about the Saudi involves in 9/11?

SEN. GRAHAM: The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11 and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier. The two congressmen have read the report much more recently than I and if they have any further comments…

REP. LYNCH: I think we would be tiptoeing up to the line of — there’s a reason this is classified. I think the proper role for the government would be to have the President declassify the report. Let it speak for itself. I’ll just leave it at that.

Q: Just one quick followup. When you speak of Saudi Arabia, Senator, are you talking about the government of Saudi Arabia, or are you talking about private actors in Saudi Arabia?

SEN. GRAHAM: Given the nature of the Kingdom, I’m speaking of the Kingdom. In fact, in the litigation that these good people have been involved with, when any institution, whether it’s a financial institution, a charitable or religious institution is raised as a possible coconspirator in 9/11, the Kingdom throws the blanket of sovereign immunity over every entity. So it is a society in which it is difficult to make the kinds of distinctions between public, private, religious, that we would in the United States.

Q: Steven Nelson from U.S. News. A question to the sitting Congressmen. You have the ability to ability to release these pages with immunity. Have you considered doing that? Might you be able to do that some time in the near future, if the President doesn’t declassify?

REP. JONES: Walter Jones from North Carolina; I’ll speak first. When you have a President, Democrat or Republican, who has the authority to release the declassified information, or to determine that it should be the declassified — what we’re trying to do is to put pressure on the White House. We’re trying to say that the House of Representatives, I don’t think it will happen within the House of Representatives, no, no. This is too — the President has the authority to declassify this information and I think that what we’re trying to do, we hope, with this news conference today, that there will be a Senator, who will say, “by God, it’s time. Let’s declassify the information,” and put in the same type of resolution that Stephen Lynch and Thomas Massie and I put in on the House side, yesterday.

REP. LYNCH: I don’t think I can add to that, other than, you know, one of the other hats I wear is, I’m the ranking Democrat on the National Security Subcommittee on Oversight; and the proper way for this to become public information is for the President to declassify it. And that’s the way our government should work.

It’s interesting that we are not hearing strong arguments from the White House as to the reasons that they refuse to declassify. It’s silence, inertia. So, I just think we need to keep on pushing. We’ve got 50-some odd new Members of Congress that just came in; we’ll educate them, we will try to make government work the way it’s supposed to work. And I agree with the Senator and the Congressman, that this’ll make us stronger, this will definitely make us stronger.

The release of the report will influence our national security policy and to some degree our foreign policy as well.

REP. JONES: The lady from… you had a question.

Q: Eleanor Clift, Daily Beast, for Senator Graham. Have you had any interest from any Senators and are you actively trying to pursue cooperation on this? And secondly, many of the reports say that the pages aren’t being released because of embarrassment. Embarrassment by whom? Of whom? If you could shed some light on that.

SEN. GRAHAM: Well, it has been my experience over the ten years that I was on the Intelligence Committee, and chair in 2001 and 2002, that much of what passes for classification for national security reasons is really classified because it would disclose incompetence. And since the people who are classifying are also often the subject of the materials, they have an institutional interest in avoiding exposure of their incompetence. So I believe that it is important that all of the information about foreign involvement in 9/11 be disclosed.

In answer to your first question. No, in fact, Congressman Jones and Lynch and I have been huddling on this over the past couple of days, and I will be making contacts with Members of the Senate to encourage them to introduce companion legislation.

REP. JONES: Okay, let me take — these will be the last four questions. Start with this young man, then I’ll come to you in that corner and that’ll be it for the day.

Q: William Hicks from the Daily News Service. This for the two representatives. Is there any organized pushback in Congress about this resolution? I know it failed to move forward last year?

REP. JONES: The problem is, and I understand this: Most members in Congress, we have great respect for each other, forget the party affiliations, we trust each other; but when you’re asking someone to sign on a resolution that they have not read, it’s pretty tough, really. The names that we had last year, every one but two had read the pages. The two that did not read the pages, said that they trust us enough, and that was all — everyone, not just Stephen, and Thomas, and myself — that they would go ahead and go on the resolution, with the hopes of reading.

Now, let me explain: It’s not the easiest thing to read. It’s not like going to the Library of Congress. You have to write a letter to the chairman of the House Intell Committee, and make a request that you be given permission, to go to a classified room and to sit there; you take no notes, you just sit there with somebody watching you read. So it’s not the easiest thing to read the 28 pages, you’ve got to really want to push for it, and you’re going to demand that you get the right to read it.

But we think if Senator Graham and the families can get some other Senators to really put the pressure on, and you have members that will say, well, the issue is the kind that I would do this just for the families if nothing else; because the resolution is just very simple, it just says, “Mr. President, please do your job. You have the authority to do it.”

REP. LYNCH: Yeah, I agree with everything that Walter said. I would say, that, you know, this is 28 pages. Now, I think a lot of folks voted on the health care bill without reading it, but [laughter] that was 2400 pages, so they probably had a good excuse on that one!

But, I’m at a point where, I’m getting a little frustrated, and it is a cumbersome process: You’ve got to go, you’ve got to write the letter, you’ve got to get permission, you’ve got to sit down; you do have maybe a couple of Intelligence Committee staffers on the other side of the table, watching you while you read.

From my own experience, after I read the 28 pages, I told the two people that were observing me, I said, “I’m going to file legislation on this,” I told them, “you can go back to your bosses and tell ’em that after I read the 28 pages, I said, I’m going to file legislation to make this public.” So, I just wanted to be completely honest with them.

And I think that’s the response most Members will have, if they sit down and read this report. So we’ll keep pushing on it. But I’m going to try a different tack this time: I’m going to work the floor and just have Members take my word for it, “You need to sign this. We need to get this disclosed to the American people,” rather than asking them, you know — “you can read it after it’s made public, you know.” Kind of like the health care bill [laughter]…

But I think we’re beyond the point where we’ve been patient enough with folks, and we need a big push in the House, and then, with the Senator’s help a big push in the Senate as well.

REP. JONES: We have three more, and that’ll be it, we’re going to have to cut it off. You can meet with anyone when it’s over, and that will be it. Go ahead, with the tan coat on first.

Q: You know, our standard for the truth is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or else you are lying. Not to release the whole truth is to perpetuate a lie and a lie about the greatest terrorist attack on U.S. soil. And like any lie, this one grows like a cancer, and the consequences of what happens from not revealing this, perpetuate themselves with things like ISIS, and as was mentioned today the terrorist attack in France.

But also, we’re in a situation of economic warfare, and we see the Kingdom participating in a major way to lower the price of oil which may harm some of our enemies, but it maybe harm us and may take down our financial system.

It is urgent that this be released so that we have a public hearing of exactly the consequences of what these people are up to, because those consequences grow every day and threaten this nation more every day.

And I just want to end by saying this: That we really owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Congress people here, and to the families, because they are the patriots of this Republic that have stood for the truth, not only then, but now and in our future, that threaten us directly. [applause]

REP. JONES: Thank you very much.

Q: Les Jameson with hr428.org. We’re working to help the cause to generate as much energy as possible to get the congressmen to read the 28 pages, because after hearing your reactions and how it transformed your understanding of 9/11, then that alone I think will be a huge accomplishment to move forward. And we soon heard that Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida attempted to get access and was denied.

Could you speak to that please and say what you would suggest as a reaction from the public?

REP. LYNCH: I know some of us have responsibilities that require top secret clearance and that might be a situation — I know he was member, and then he was not a member, and then he got re-elected. It may be just a non-continuity of his status, but I think he can repair that. I think he’ll have an opportunity to read it at some point. His classification may not have been reestablished when he went in there to read. I’ve seen that amongst some staffers. I think each congressional office, including their staffers have two people I think that are entitled to top secret clearance, but they’ve got to go through that whole process. So that may be the situation with Mr. Grayson.

Q: Karl Golovin, jfkvigil.com. I’m a retired U.S. Customs agent and in the Fall of 2001, myself and many other agents were assigned to Fresh Kills landfill, where the rubble of World Trade Center 7 was brought, and we were tasked with sifting through WTC7, the 47-story third tower that collapsed that day, and combing out computer components that other agencies didn’t want left in the landfill. And I can just testify from my perspective as an investigator that those three towers were not brought down solely by two airplanes and their jet fuel. That there is abundant evidence of controlled demolition of those three towers.

My question is whether these 28 pages will point at all towards that reality and the potential of true false-flag terrorism in this event.

REP. JONES: Senator, why don’t you answer that? I’ve got an answer, too.

SEN. GRAHAM: My answer is no.

REP. JONES: That’s it. The 28 pages does not deal with that issue at all.

John and you will be the last.

Q: Jack Larson, iamthefaceoftruth.com. My question is, I’ve heard before that there is multiple foreign governments that could be actually implicated in the pages? Is it just totally Saudi Arabia, or is there other active governments that could be involved?

REP. LYNCH: I personally think that the report speaks for itself. And there’s one thing that needs to be said here: Once these 28 pages are released, the press will do their job. We’ve got some smart folks out there on the part of the press. They will investigate this and I think there will be a collective debate and discussion about the implications of these 28 pages, and your question and others will be answered. And that’s the whole process here. We’ll do a deep dive on this collectively, with the full focus of transparency that it deserves. And I think there will be — you know, I’ll learn from the debate. Even though I’ve read the 28 pages, I’m sure there’ll other sets of eyes that will look at that same 28 pages and come up with things that I did not immediate recognize.

So I think all of this is an important understanding process and that transparency from all of these different angles will really enlighten our understanding of this whole terrible and tragic event.

REP. JONES: Terry, do y’all want to say anything before we close?

STRADA: No, I think we’re fine. No, actually, there’s also another organization, 28pages.org that the American people can access and go on there and learn how to reach out to their Congress people, and their Senators and make their phone calls, and move this movement along. That’s another very important element.

REP. JONES: I want to thank Senator Graham and the families for being here today; my dear friend and good friend Stephen Lynch. Thank you, the press, because the only way we’re going to get this done, quite frankly, is your help. You’ve got to help us continue to beat the drum! We’re going to do everything within the House and Senate that we can do with our friends, many of them here today. But when it really comes down to it, it’s your interest that will help us get this done.

Thank you so much for being here, today. Thank you. [applause]

 

By Ismail Salami

In their abortive effort to assassinate another Iranian nuclear scientist, Israeli officials only sustained desperation and disgrace in their dastardly elimination campaign against Iran which was apparently in sync with ISIL inhumane brutalities inside Iraq and Syria.

More alert than ever, security forces are diligently tasked with protecting the lives of the Iranian scientists wherever they are.

A top Iranian military official said on Saturday that in the last two years, “the Zionist entity has been making clandestine efforts to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, but the timely presence of the IRGC security forces thwarted the terrorist operation.”

It is now common knowledge that Tel Aviv has been carrying out covert ops inside the Iranian soil for a couple of years, assassinating Iranian nuclear officials and scientists although Israel has constantly declined to admit to its unjustified iniquity against the Iranian nation.

Translating suspicion into conviction, a report carried by CBS News in March 2014 revealed that Obama has pressured Israeli espionage apparatuses to put an end to their assassinations inside Iran against the country’s nuclear scientists.

The terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization AKA MKO or MEK seems to be a ubiquitous agent any time there is an assassination in Iran. A shadowy cult with myriad of financial, military and intelligence connections to Tel Aviv and Washington, the MKO works in league with Kidon, the assassination unit within the Mossad. There are solid reports which indicate that the MKO members have received military and intelligence training both from the US forces as well as from the Mossad.

In 2012, Seymour M. Hersh revealed that at a secret site in Nevada, the US Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, “a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K.” According to the report, the training ended sometime before President Obama took office. A retired four-star general says, “They got the standard training, in commo, crypto [cryptography], small-unit tactics, and weaponry—that went on for six months…. They were kept in little pods.”

Within the US government, the cult enjoys a rather immense support for their sabotage activities against the Islamic Republic. Among their shills are former top Bush officials and other Republicans (Michael Mukasey, Fran Townsend, Andy Card, Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani) as well as prominent Democrats (Howard Dean, Ed Rendell, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark).

A revealing report by NBC News report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem cites two anonymous senior US officials with two interesting claims: 1) that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and 2) the terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.” So the report testifies to the veracity of what Iranian officials have asserted about the involvement of MEK and Israel in murdering nuclear scientists on the Iranian soil.

Interestingly, a few weeks ago, I received a threatening email from Ali Safavi, the notorious MKO spokesman (through a western publisher of mine) in which he had pontificated about the virtues of the MKO terrorists and the so-called ‘vices’ of the Islamic Republic, accusing me of serving as a mouthpiece for the Islamic Republic. I strongly believe that revealing the murky realities of a terrorist group responsible for the deaths of 17000 innocent Iranians is only my ethical obligation. Besides, Ali Safavi and the likes of him should come to their senses and realize that their efforts to whitewash their crimes will eventually prove pointless and that there is no way at all for them to lend a cloak of legitimacy to their unnamable crimes against the Iranian nation.

During the Iraq-Iran war, the MKO joined hands with Saddam Hussein, the tyrannical ruler of Iraq in attacking and killing Iranian combatants. However, a bloodier chapter in the history of the cult can be traced in their collusion with Saddam in crushing the popular uprisings in 1991. No doubt, their tanks took an inconceivable reprisal on thousands of innocent civilians. The callous command of Maryam Rajavi is still gnawing and tearing at the hearts and minds of the Iraqis: “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

Unfortunately, the MKO, long considered a terrorist organization, was delisted thanks to the unflagging endeavors of former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 2011, Mohamed Ali Lobnani, a Lebanese national, who was arrested on charges of spying for Mossad confessed that he had spied for Israel under the cover of a Shiite cleric in Lebanon.

In a court hearing session, Lobnani said he had phone contacts with Mohammad Alizadeh, an MKO ringleader, claiming that had no idea that the number was a Mossad contact number.

Asked about the link between MKO and Mossad, he noted, “As far as I know, the group (MKO) has been collaborating with Israel for several years and has massive interactions with Mossad.”

The MKO is the artifact of a corrupt ideology which is in many respects comparable to that of the ISIL cult. No wonder they are fighting shoulder to shoulder with the ISIL terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

The fact that these two curious cults are thriving rigorously, that the West caters – either publicly or secretly – to their cravings, that they are being bigheartedly financed by the puppet regional regimes and that they receive sophisticated military and intelligence training from Mossad and CIA evinces a believable bond between the two.

That the MKO and the ISIL cults are pursing the selfsame path of perversion is no coincidence at all. The reason is simple: they are cut from the same cloth. And that Mossad is dispatching assassins into Iran to liquidate Iranian scientists is only meant to strike fear and beyond that, to secretly make up for what the ISIL and MKO terrorists feel emasculated to do in Iran.

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer.

08 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Michael T. Klare

How Big Oil Is Responding to the Anti-Carbon Moment

Around the world, carbon-based fuels are under attack. Increasingly grim economic pressures, growing popular resistance, and the efforts of government regulators have all shocked the energy industry. Oil prices arefalling, colleges and universities are divesting from their carbon stocks, voters are instituting curbs on hydro-fracking, and delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Peru have agreed to impose substantial restrictions on global carbon emissions at a conference in Paris later in the year. All this has been accompanied by what might be viewed as a moral assault on the very act of extracting carbon-based fuels from the earth, in which the major oil, gas, and coal companies find themselves portrayed as the enemies of humankind.

Under such pressures, you might assume that Big Energy would react defensively, perhaps apologizing for its role in spurring climate change while assuming a leadership position in planning for the transition to a post-carbon economy. But you would be wrong: instead of retreating, the major companies have gone on the offensive, extolling their contributions to human progress and minimizing the potential for renewables to replace fossil fuels in just about any imaginable future.

That the big carbon outfits would seek to perpetuate their privileged market position in the global economy is, of course, hardly surprising. After all, oil is the the most valuable commodity in international commerce and major producing firms like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Shell regularly top lists of the world’s most profitable enterprises. Still, these companies are not just employing conventional legal and corporate tactics to protect their position, they’re mounting a moral assault of their own, claiming that fossil fuels are an essential factor in eradicating poverty and achieving a decent life on this planet.

Improbable as such claims may seem, they are being echoed by powerful officials around the world — typically, the leaders of carbon-producing nations like Russia and Saudi Arabia or the representatives of American energy-producing states like Texas and Kentucky. Count on one thing: this crew of fossil fuel enthusiasts is intent on ensuring that any path to a carbon-free future will, at best, be long and arduous. While you’re at it, add top Congressional leaders to this crew, since many of the Republican victors in the 2014 midterm election are from oil and coal-producing states and regularly laud carbon production for its contribution to local prosperity, whilepocketing contributions by Big Oil and other energy firms.

Unless directly challenged, this pro-carbon offensive — backed by copious Big Energy advertising — is likely to attract at least as much favor as the claims of anti-carbon activists. At this point, of course, the moral arguments against carbon consumption are — or at least should be — well known. The oil, gas, and coal companies, it is claimed, are selfishly pursuing mega-profits at the expense of the climate, the environment, our children and grandchildren, and even possibly a future of any reasonable sort for humanity as a whole. “Basically [the big energy companies have] said, we’re going to wreck the planet, we don’t care what you say, we think we can, and we dare you to stop us,” observed climate activist and 350.org cofounder Bill McKibben in a recent interview. This outlook was reflected in many of the signs carried by the estimated 400,000 demonstrators who participated in the People’s Climate March in New York City last September.

The fossil fuel industry is often also portrayed as the nucleus of a global system of wealth and power that drags down democracy and perpetuates grotesque planetary inequalities. “Fossil fuels really do create a hyper-stratified economy,” explained Naomi Klein, author of the bestselling bookThis Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. “It’s the nature of the resources that they are concentrated, and you need a huge amount of infrastructure to get them out and to transport them. And that lends itself to huge profits and they’re big enough that you can buy off politicians.”

Views like these animate the struggles against “fracking” in the United States, against the transport of tar-sands oil via the Keystone XL pipeline, and against the shipment of coal to ports in the Pacific Northwest. They also undergird the drive to rid college and university endowments and other institutions of their fossil fuel stocks, which gained momentum in recent months, thanks to the decisions of both the Stanford University board of trustees to divest from coal company stocks and of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to eventually rid itself of its fossil fuel stocks and invest in alternative energy.

Once upon a time, the giant carbon companies like Exxon sought to deflect these attacks by denying the very existence of climate change or the role of humans in causing it — or at least by raising the banner of “uncertainty” about the science behind it. They also financed the efforts of rogue scientists to throw doubt on global warming. While denialism still figures in the propaganda of some carbon companies, they have now largely chosen to embrace another strategy: extolling the benefits of fossil fuels and highlighting their contributions to human wellbeing and progress.

At the moment, this carbon counterattack is most clearly and fully articulated in the speeches of top industry officials and in various corporate publications. Of these, the most recent and authoritative, ExxonMobil’s The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040­, was released in December. Described as a planning guide for future corporate investment and decision-making, the Outlook combines an analysis of global energy trends with a summary of the company’s pro-carbon ethos –and so offers us a vivid look at where Big Energy is heading in its counterattack on the climate movement.

If a climate movement is going to challenge the energy powers of this planet effectively, it’s crucial to grasp the vision into which Big Energy is undoubtedly planning to sink incredible resources and which, across much of the planet, will become a living, breathing argument for ignoring the catastrophic warming of the planet. They present it, of course, as a glowing dreamscape of a glorious future — though a nightmare is what should come to mind.

Here, then, in a nutshell is the argument that Big Energy is going to seed into the planet for the foreseeable future. Prepare yourself.

No Growth Without Us

The cornerstone of the Exxon report is its claims that ever-increasing supplies of energy are needed to sustain economic growth and ensure human betterment, and that fossil fuels alone exist in sufficient quantity (and at affordable enough prices) to satisfy rising international demand. “Forecasting long-term energy trends begins with a simple fact: people need energy,” the report asserts. “Over the next few decades, population and income growth — and an unprecedented expansion of the global middle class — are expected to create new demands for energy.”

Some of this added energy, Exxon acknowledges, will come from nuclear and renewable energy. Most, however, will have to come from fossil fuels. All told, the Outlook estimates, the world will need 35% more energy in 2040 than it does today. That would mean adding an additional 191 quadrillion British thermal units (BTUs) to global supplies over and above the 526 quadrillion BTUs consumed in 2010. A small percentage of those added BTUs, about 12%, will come from renewables, but the vast majority — estimated by Exxon at 67% — will be provided by fossil fuels.

Without fossil fuels, this argument holds, there can be no economic growth. Here’s how Exxon CEO and Chairman Rex Tillerson puts it: “Energy is fundamental to economic growth, and oil is fundamental because to this point in time, we have not found, through technology or other means, another fuel that can substitute for the role that oil plays in transportation, not just passenger, individual transportation, but commercial transportation, jet fuel, marine, all the ways in which we use oil as a fuel to move people and things about this planet.”

Natural gas is equally essential, Tillerson argues, because it is the world’s fastest-growing source of energy and a key ingredient in electric power generation. Nor will coal be left out of the mix. It, too, will play an important role in promoting economic growth, largely by facilitating a rapid increase in global electricity supplies. Despite all the concern over coal’s contributions to both urban pollution and climate change, Exxon predicts that it will remain“the No. 1 fuel for power generation” in 2040.

Yes, other sources of energy will play a role in helping to satisfying global needs, but without carbon-based fuels, Exxon insists, economic growth will screech to a halt and the world’s poor and disadvantaged will stay immersed in poverty.

Propelling the New Global Middle Class

If there is one overarching theme to the new Exxon ethos, it is that we are witnessing the emergence of a new global middle class with glittering possibilities and that this expanding multitude, constituting perhaps one-half of the world’s population by 2040, will require ever greater quantities of oil, coal, and natural gas if it is to have any hope of achieving its true potential.

Citing data from the Brookings Institution, the company notes that the number of people who earn enough to be considered members of that global middle class will jump from approximately 1.9 billion in 2010 to 4.7 billion in 2030 — representing what it calls “the largest collective increase in living standards in history.” China and India will be the two countries adding most substantially to the global middle class, with each acquiring hundreds of millions of newly affluent citizens, but substantial gains will also be achieved by such “key growth” countries as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The emergence of a middle-class bulge on a planetary scale, representing a kind of consumerism gone wild, is something to be celebrated the company insists in its new report, echoing the words of the U.N. Development Programme: “When dozens of countries and billions of people move up the development ladder, as they are doing today, it has a direct impact on wealth creation and broader human progress in all countries and regions of the world.”

For all this to occur, however, that rising middle class will need staggering amounts of added energy — of course, we’re talking about new supplies of the same old carbon-based energy forms here — to build and power all the cars, homes, businesses, appliances, and resorts that such consumers would undoubtedly crave and demand. More income, Exxon explains, “means new demand for food, for travel, for electricity, for housing, schools, and hospitals” — and all of these benefits “depend on energy.”

By itself, an increase in world energy supplies could indeed be widely beneficial, if supplied largely by climate-friendly fuels. But such genuinely “alternative” sources of energy (into which, by the way, the giant energy companies have invested next to none of their profits) generally cost more than fossil fuels to produce, at least initially, and that, says Exxon, creates a problem once you consider where demand will be coming from in 2040.

According to the Outlook, virtually none of the expected increase in global energy demand will come from the older industrialized countries, which can afford more costly alternatives; rather, its source will be developing countries, which generally seek cheap energy quickly — that is, coal and natural gas for electricity generation and oil for transportation. Of the 201 quadrillion BTUs in added energy required by the developing world between now and 2040, predicts Exxon, 148 quadrillion, or 74%, will be provided by fossil fuels — a statistic that, if accurate, should chill us to the bone in climate change terms.

The role of fossil fuels in satisfying the aspirations of the world’s growing middle class is especially evident in the field of transportation. “Rising prosperity will drive increased demand for transportation,” the Outlooknotes. “An expanding global middle class means millions of people will buy a car for the first time.” Between 2010 and 2040, the human population is expected to grow by 29%, from approximately seven billion to nine billion people; the global population of cars, SUVs, and other light-duty vehicles, however, is projected to grow by more than 100%, from 825 million to 1.7 billion. And while an increasing number of these vehicles will be powered by gas-electric hybrid engines, the majority will still be fueled by petroleum, pushing up the demand for petroleum and pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

A rising middle class seeking more consumer products, urban amenities, and travel opportunities will also require a commensurate fleet of trucks, buses, trains, ships, and planes. Reliance on trucks and container ships for moving goods around the world will, in turn, generate a huge demand for diesel and heavy oil, while all those low-cost air carriers (like ill-fated Air Asia) will only up the requirement for aviation fuel.

Finally, the new global middle class will want more computers, flat-screen TVs, air-conditioners, and other appliances, stoking a soaring demand for electricity. Among the advanced nations that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a growing share of the energy used in generating electricity will indeed come from renewables and natural gas, while coal use will decline sharply. In non-OECD countries, however, the drive for electrification will be accompanied by a significantincrease in the consumption of coal — from 54 quadrillion BTUs in 2010 to 82 quadrillion in 2040. This means that the non-OECD’s contribution to global warming will continue to soar, although that’s not a point that Exxon is likely to emphasize.

Carbon Humanitarianism

Nor does the Exxon blueprint neglect the needs of the world’s poorer citizens. “The progress enabled by modern energy has not reached everyone,” the Outlook notes. “One out of every five people in the world still has no access to electricity. Even more lack modern cooking fuels.”

This is the basis for what can only be termed “carbon humanitarianism” — the claim that cheap carbon-based fuels are the best possible response to the energy-poor of the planet (despite everything we know about the devastation climate change will cause, above all in the lives of the poor). This vision of Big Energy as the Good Samaritan of our world was articulated by Rex Tillerson in a June 2013 address to the Asia Society Global Forum. “Approximately 1.3 billion people on our planet,” he said, “still do not have access to electricity for basic needs like clean water, cooking, sanitation, light, or for the safe storage of food and medicine… [which means that] the need to expand energy supplies has a humanitarian dimension that should inform and should guide our energy policy.”

Asked whether climate change didn’t pose a greater challenge to the world’s poor, Tillerson chose to demur. “I think here are much more pressing priorities that we… need to deal with,” he told the Council on Foreign Relations in June 2012. “There are still hundreds of millions, billions of people living in abject poverty around the world. They need electricity… They need fuel to cook their food on that’s not animal dung… They’d love to burn fossil fuels because their quality of life would rise immeasurably, and their quality of health and the health of their children and their future would rise immeasurably. You’d save millions upon millions of lives by making fossil fuels more available to a lot of the part of the world that doesn’t have it.”

In fact, Exxon predicts that reliance on fossil fuels will grow fastest in the poorest parts of the world — precisely the areas that are expected to suffer the most from climate change. Africa, for example, is expected to witness a 103% increase in net energy consumption between now and 2040, with 83% of that increase supplied by fossil fuels.

We Can Do It Better

The final part of the industry’s counterattack is the claim that, for all their purported benefits, renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power are just not up to the task of providing the necessary extra energy needed to sustain economic growth and propel billions of people into the middle class.

The problem, Exxon claims, is that wind and solar are more costly than the fossil fuel alternatives and so are not growing fast enough to meet rising world demand. Even though the energy provided by these renewables will expand by 315% between now and 2040, it still represents such a small shareof the total global energy mix that, by the end of this period, it will only reach the 4% mark in its share of total world energy consumption (compared to 77% for carbon fuels). Renewables are also said to be problematic as they provide only intermittent sources of energy — failing at night and on windless days — and must be bolstered by other fuels to ensure uninterrupted energy output.

Facing the Challenge

Put together, this represents a dazzling vision of a future in which growing numbers of people enjoy the benefits of abundant energy and unlimited growth. You can already imagine the heartwarming TV commercials that will be generated on a massive scale to propagate such a message: pictures of hard-working individuals of all genders and hues enjoying the American Dream globally thanks to Exxon and its cohorts. Needless to say, in such imagery there will be nothing to mar the promise of unbridled prosperity for all — no horrific droughts, colossal superstorms, or mass migrations of desperate people seeking to flee devastated areas.

But this vision, like so much contemporary advertising, is based on a lie: in this case, on the increasingly bizarre idea that, in the twenty-first century, humanity can burn its way through significant parts of the planet’s reserves of fossil fuels to achieve a world in which everything is essentially the same — there’s just more of it for everyone. In the world portrayed by Exxon, it’s possible for a reassuring version of business-as-usual to proceed without environmental consequences. In that world, the unimpeded and accelerated release of carbon into the atmosphere has no significant impact on people’s lives. This is, of course, a modern fairy tale that, if believed, will have the most disastrous of results.

Someday, it will also be seen as one of the more striking lies on whatever’s left of the historical record. In fact, follow this vision to 2040, burning through whatever fossil fuels the energy companies and energy states can pull out of the earth and the ballooning carbon emissions produced will ensure planetary warming far beyond the two degrees Celsius deemed by scientiststo be the maximum that the planet can safely absorb without catastrophic climate effects.

In fact, those dreamy landscapes in the new pro-carbon version of the planetary future will, in reality, be replaced by burning forests, flooded coastlines, and ever-expanding deserts. Forget the global rise of the middle class, forget all those cars and trucks and planes and resorts, forget the good life entirely. As climate conditions deteriorate, croplands will wither, coastal cities and farmlands will be eradicated, infrastructure will be devastated, the existing middle class will shrink, and the poor will face ever-increasing deprivation.

Preventing these catastrophes will involve sustained and dedicated effort by all those who truly care about the future of humanity. This will certainly require better educating people about the risks of climate change and the role played by fossil fuel combustion in producing it. But it will also require deconstructing and exposing the futuristic fantasies deployed by the fossil fuel companies to perpetuate their dominance. However fraudulent their arguments may be, they have the potential to blunt significant progress on climate change and so must be vigorously repudiated. Unless we do so, the apostles of carbon will continue to dominate the debate and bring us ever closer to a planetary inferno. This is the only way to thwart and discredit those who seek to perpetuate the Reign of Carbon.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left.

08 January, 2015
TomDispatch.com

 

By Mahboob A. Khawaja

Today’s cold blooded massacre of French journalists of satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” in Paris underlines the imperative of critical thought towards understanding the global affairs. Emerging crises are not being understood rationally and consequently large segments of humanity are in chains. Leaders around the world are quick to condemn the cruelty of the few against many innocents caught in the firing. But the same leaders fail to take initiatives to use dialogue and peaceful resolution of current one-sided aggressive wars. No matter where on planet, the daily killings of the innocents in France, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, The US or elsewhere, it demands fair and objective-oriented analysis to come to grip with the prevalent facts of human affairs. The global humanity longs for peace, not for terrorism. But many egoistic leaders deliberately override the facts to pursue strategic agendas to run down the mankind under false pretexts of Islamic terrorism. Those who take up arms in the Arab Middle East continuing war theater are often doing it as a reactionary challenge to the imposed tyranny of more than decade-old bogus war on terrorism. Despite having advanced knowledge and technology, wide range of systematic human surveillance and curtailment of freedom and violations of human rights, crises are not managed by informed leaders and national security apparatus across the globe. The ordinary citizens are targeted and victimized beside the whims of leadership presence in staged news media appearances. There is gulf between knowing from the problematic media screen and understanding the pivotal issues deserving rational rethinking and policy changes. Undoubtedly “Je Suis- Charlie.” There is pain and feelings of anti killings across the globe. The human unity of ultimate aim must assume top priority.

Chris Hedges (“A Society Of Captives” Truthdig: 12/07/2014) is a reputable international scholar and journalist previously spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent and reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times. He explains the disorientation approach of the security apparatus:

Police and national intelligence and security agencies, which carry out wholesale surveillance against the population and serve as the corporate elite’s brutal enforcers, are omnipotent by intention. They are designed to impart fear, even terror, to keep the population under control. And until the courts and the legislative bodies give us back our rights—which they have no intention of doing—things will only get worse for the poor and the rest of us. We live in a post-constitutional era…. Hannah Arendt warned that once any segment of the population is denied rights, the rule of law is destroyed. When laws do not apply equally to all they are treated as “rights and privileges.” …Elites who feel increasingly threatened by the wider population do not “resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police,” Arendt writes. This is what is taking place now. The corporate state and its organs of internal security are illegitimate. We are a society of captives.

Towards Understanding the Critical Issues facing the Mankind:

According to the media reports, the President of the Muslim Organization of France has condemned the killings of the journalists and others in Paris. So do many religious leaders in Paris and elsewhere in Western Europe. The killings were not part of any Islamic issues supported by any religious decree. If the killers shouted ‘God is Great- Allah-O-Akbar’, it does not prove that attackers were Muslims unless the investigation provides the evidence. Such phrases have been imitated before by non-Muslims too. Why do some media analysts jump to conclusion and blame game when essential facts of a crisis are unknown? When unusual crises whether state sponsored terrorism or individual terrorism make its presence, the situation requires careful thought and intellectual comprehension to avoid hasty reaction. The global warriors – some of the leading Western leaders do not seem to learn the lessons from the contemporary history. Consequently, the War on Islam and Muslims – the bogus war on terrorism continues with multiple belligerent reactions. There is an overwhelming Western media obsession to link the blame of some of the crises to Islam and Muslims around the world. Irrational as it seems when another person commits a crime, the identity would not include religious or ethnic cliché. Should rational people make irrational assumptions and undermine the societal harmony and co-existence because an individual is at the center of some ugly or false accusations? Are we not supposed to know the facts before we could draw extreme conclusion about some faith, ethnicity or group of minority living in a society? Truth-telling and critical rational analysis of the prevalent political imperatives of global political affairs must penetrate to open-up the thinking of the closed global leadership mindset. Across the Arab Middle East the only known conflict was between Israel and Palestine and to search for a peaceful settlement of the existence of State of Israel and establishment of an independent State of Palestine. But the US-led war on terrorism is a gateway to many emerging conflicts in the Arab Middle East and elsewhere in the world. The voices of reason and human conscience must speak out loud and clear. With unstoppable cycle of political killings, sectarian massacres and daily bloodbaths happening across the Arab world – Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon and Yemen, and spill-over impacts to other oil producing Arab nations – and reactionary militancy against the authoritarian rule and dismantling of the socio-economic infrastructures. Could the global affairs change if the leaders imagine political change and pursue it for peaceful co-existence?

John Horgan (“Countering Students’ Fatalism Toward War” The Chronicle Review, V. 55, Issue 31: 4/10/2009) is a science journalist and director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Horgan points out the issues involved in man and human nature and optimism that societal change is real in the course of history:

History offers many other examples of warlike societies that rapidly became peaceful. Vikings were the scourge of Europe during the Middle Ages, but their Scandinavian descendants are among the most peaceful people on earth. Similarly, Germany and Japan, which just 70 years ago were the world’s most militaristic, aggressive nations, have embraced pacifism, albeit after catastrophic defeats.

The current wave of fatalism is all too understandable, given September 11 and its bloody sequelae, not to mention conflicts roiling the Middle East, Central Africa, and other troubled regions. ….. My overarching goal in “War and Human Nature” is to persuade my scientifically oriented students to see war not as a permanent part of the human condition, stemming from our genes or original sin, but as a potentially solvable scientific problem. To be sure, war is a dauntingly complex phenomenon, with political, economic, and social ramifications……. Peace is a challenge at least as worthy of pursuit as cheap, clean, renewable sources of energy or cures for AIDS or cancer.

To Face Up Realism and Work for Global Peace and Not Terror

Leaders create leaders. Likewise warmongers indulge in violence and threats of bombing other weak nations to undermine the very existence of human existence as was the case during the Two World Wars and the current unending bogus War on Terrorism. Everywhere mankind is being oppressed, exploited by the few and systematically victimized under various slogans of freedom, rule of law, democracy and human rights. Ironically, how much more bloodshed is needed to gather momentum for priority in resolving the man-made conflicts and ushering a new era of peaceful co-existence? One must resist the temptation to become indoctrinated by grim prophesies of spearheading freedom, rule of law, democracy and protection of human rights by egoistic leaders waiting to launch next election campaigns. West Europeans have critical issues of social, economic and human emancipation. The EU is a framework but often of competing national interests overlapping the collective interests and resolve of the purpose ingrained in the EU mission and role. The pride and prejudice of European nationalism and sketchy borders fought for many generations and engulfed the good part of mankind with similar institutions and unending trends of military invasions, terrorism against the poor and weak Asian-African and Muslim nations. They need to uplift their thinking capacity from superficial imagination to realism corresponding to the 21st century knowledge-based age and its imperatives. Do they still long for historical flaws to view them as politically superior and ethnically top notch people and races of the world? Time is critical for self-reflection and finding out ways and means to critical thinking and be able to have unity of purpose and proactive leadership to deal with complex political crises and consequential catastrophic humanitarian problems. Reason reveals itself in the unity of the heart and mind. Wickedness and righteousness cannot be combined in one leadership characteristics. The unwarranted madness witnessed today in the heart of Paris and brutal killings of the Charlie Hebdo journalists and security personnel need not be defined in political motivation and images. Change in global affairs is possible and attainable if people of reason long for peace and not for terrorism. The crusades against Muslims and unwanted military interventions in the Arab Middle East must be stopped. Every beginning has its end. The global humanity longs for peace and co-existence and war is not its agenda item. It is possible through transformational leadership if educated and intelligent people of the new generation come to assume the power and leadership role. Falsehood and truth are not the same. With certain imperatives of cultural- religious norms, Western journalists need not to carve sensitive cartoons of others to invest in hatred and animosity. More so, of religious beliefs and personalities. Perhaps the Charlie Hbedo did that in the past. But a rational person would not react to known falsification of some religious entities. There should be rapprochement to respect and understand the religious differences without agreeing or disagreeing.

Why should few West European leaders and President Obama have free hand in launching bombing campaigns and killing the innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria? What rights do these figures enjoin to engage in military invasions and commit massacres in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria day in and day out? When would this planned and continuing cruelty come to an end? Is there a sense of superiority and indifference to the interests of the global mankind? In its 2014 Global Thinkers statistics, Foreign Policy (“A World Disrupted: The global Thinkers of 2014”) pinpoints that “something big requires a team rather than an individual….” To enhance global peace and to undo the war on terrorism, there is an urgent need for teamwork by all concerned not just the few self- addicted warmongers who have consciously undermined the vital interests of the mankind. The teamwork if undertaken with unbiased mind and without pre-conceived notions could usher sustainable change and a new beginning between those who claim to be at peace and somewhat superior than the ordinary folks and those who are fighting reactionary wars of freedom against insanity and catastrophic devastation of the human habitats. Under ‘Advocates’, the Foreign Policy notes:

“The global thinkers herald causes often wrongly considered inconsequential or verboten. They support forgotten victims of sexual violence, protect civilian targeted in internecine violence, count casualties in the fog of war, and demand legal protection for world’s most vulnerable migrants. Often these men and women, scholars, activists and religious leader among them- do this work on their own peril and pay the price landing in court or in prison in some of the world’s most repressive countries. For all of them, however, the risk is worth the possible rewards.”

Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations.

08 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

Colleagues pay tribute to Muslim officer who was shot at point blank range during raid on Paris magazine

By Anne Penketh

It was a Muslim policeman from a local police station who was “slaughtered like a dog” after heroically trying to stop two heavily armed killers from fleeing the Charlie Hebdo offices following the massacre.

Tributes to Ahmed Merabet poured in on Thursday after images of his murder at point blank range by a Kalashnikov-wielding masked terrorist circulated around the world.

Related: Charlie Hebdo attack: Dammartin-en-Goele sealed off in major police operation – live updates

Merabet, who according to officials was 40, was called to the scene while on patrol with a female colleague in the neighbourhood, just in time to see the black Citroën used by the two killers heading towards the boulevard from Charlie Hebdo.

“He was on foot, and came nose to nose with the terrorists. He pulled out his weapon. It was his job, it was his duty,” said Rocco Contento, a colleague who was a union representative at the central police station for Paris’s 11th arrondissement.

Video footage, which has now been pulled from the internet, showed the two gunmen get out of the car before one shot the policeman in the groin. As he falls to the pavement groaning in pain and holding up an arm as though to protect himself, the second gunman moves forward and asks the policeman: “Do you want to kill us?” Merabet replies: “Non, ç’est bon, chef” (“No, it’s OK mate”). The terrorist then shoots him in the head.

After the rise in online support for the satirical magazine, with the catchphrase “Je Suis Charlie,” many decided to honour Merabet, tweeting “Je Suis Ahmed”. One, @Aboujahjah, posted: “I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so.”

Another policeman, 48-year-old Franck Brinsolaro, was killed moments earlier in the assault on Charlie Hebdo where he was responsible for the protection of its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier, one of the 11 killed in the building. A colleague said he “never had time” to pull his weapon.

Brinsolaro’s twin brother, Philippe – a senior police officer in the Marseille region – said on Thursday that all French people should unite to condemn the massacre. “The whole of France must mobilise against the horror that struck our country yesterday. You can’t attack freedom of expression, attack the authority of the state in this way,” he was quoted as telling reporters.

“Sometimes you get the feeling that the police are misunderstood by [French] people but it must not be forgotten that yesterday’s gesture shows that a policeman is ready to intervene at any time when he has to protect the nation.”

Franck Brinsolaro, also from Marseille, had recently married a journalist, Ingrid, who ran a weekly newspaper in Normandy. Her newspaper chain issued a statement saying that editors “will never yield to threats and intimidation of the untouchable principles of freedom of expression”.

But it was the image of Merabet’s killing on a Paris pavement that most shocked French police and the wider public.

French police unions, which carried the now-universal message of solidarity in support of Charlie Hebdo #jesuischarlie, posted on their websites and on Twitter black banners proclaiming #jesuispolicier in memory of their two dead colleagues.

Nicolas Comte, the deputy secretary general of Merabet’s union, Unité SGP Police, said colleagues had been “deeply affected by the video” and the assassination of the policeman “who was slaughtered like a dog”.

Flowers and messages of condolence were piled outside Merabet’s police station, in a side street which was blocked off by metal barriers on Thursday morning. Armed police stood guard on the street and there were further barricades outside the police station entrance.

Its telephone line played sombre music all day – an official day of mourning in France – and a policewoman said that Merabet’s colleagues were “very sad” at his passing.

Merabet had been a policeman for eight years and had just qualified to become a detective. Rocco Contento, who as Paris regional secretary of the union knew Merabet personally, spent time with him at a course at the end of the year. He described him as quiet and conscientious. His family came originally from Tunisia, he said.

Officials at the Bobigny business registry office said a person with the same name and age as Merabet ran a cleaning company between 2003 and 2006 in Livry-Gargan, a north-east Paris suburb where he went to school.

The headteacher at the local lycée, Marie-Pierre Pillet, confirmed he had been a pupil from 1989 to 1995, but nobody remembered him because of the 20-year time lapse.

Merabet was officially described as single, although he had a girlfriend, according to Contento.

“Now we’re on a war footing,” said the head of the union France Police, Michel Thooris. “They’re out there with AK47s, the weapons of war.”

On Thursday, a 25-year-old police officer, Clarissa Jean-Philippe, was killed in an attack in the south Paris suburb of Montrouge. The tragedy was not linked by her colleagues to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity. Thooris said that once the dust had settled and those responsible for both armed attacks were brought to justice, the police would be demanding action from the government.

“Now isn’t the time to criticise, but for decades there have been no-go zones in the council estates where there are arms caches and drug running,” he said. “We must terrorise the terrorists.”

8 January 2015