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Capital controls are back in fashion. In June 2010, South Korea and Indonesia announced several policy measures to regulate potentially destabilising capital flows, which could pose a threat to their economies and financial systems.

South Korea it announced a series of currency controls in June to protect its economy from external shocks. Indonesia quickly followed suit when its central bank deployed measures to control short-term capital inflows. In October 2009, Brazil announced a 2 per cent tax on foreign purchases of fixed income securities and stocks. Taiwan also restricted overseas investors from buying time deposits.

The policy measures introduced by South Korea’s central bank have three major components: restrictions on currency derivatives trades; enhanced restrictions on the use of bank loans in foreign currency; and, further tightening of the existing regulations on foreign currency liquidity ratio of domestic banks.

The new restrictions on currency derivatives trades include non-deliverable currency forwards, cross-currency swaps and forwards. New ceilings have been imposed on domestic banks and branches of foreign banks dealing with forex forwards and derivatives.

OBJECTIVES OF CONTROLS

The overarching aim of currency controls in South Korea is to limit the risks arising out of sharp reversals in capital flows. Despite its strong economic fundamentals, South Korea witnessed sudden and large capital outflows due to de-leveraging during the global financial crisis. It has been reported that almost $65 billion left the country in the five months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

Another objective of these policy measures is to curb the country’s rapidly growing short-term foreign debt. At $154 billion, its short-term external debt accounts for as much as 57 per cent of its foreign exchange reserves. A sudden shift in global market sentiment can trigger large reversals in short-term capital flows, thereby precipitating a financial crisis of one sort or another.

Bank Indonesia, the country’s central bank, announced a one-month minimum holding period on Sertifikat Bank Indonesia (SBIs). During the one-month period, ownership of SBIs cannot be transferred.

Issued by the central bank, the one-month SBIs are the favourite debt instruments among foreign and local investors because of their high yield (an interest rate of 6.5 per cent in early June 2010) and greater liquidity than other debt instruments.

The central bank will also increase the maturity range of its debt instruments to encourage investors to park their money for longer periods. These new curbs are in response to growing concerns over short-term capital inflows. Indonesia’s relatively better economic performance has attracted large capital inflows in the form of portfolio investments, since early 2009.

Consequently, Indonesia’s stock market index was up 85 per cent in 2009, the best performer in the entire Southeast Asian region. The rupiah rose 17 per cent against the dollar last year.

ASSET PRICE BUBBLE

However, the Indonesian authorities remain concerned that its economy might be destabilised if foreign investors decide to pull their money out quickly. Analysts believe that these new measures may deter hot money inflows into the country and monetary policy may become more effective. Despite recovering faster than developed countries, many emerging markets are finding it difficult to cope with large capital inflows. Apart from currency appreciation pressures, the fears of inflation and asset bubbles are very strong in many emerging markets.

The signs of asset price bubbles are more pronounced in Asia as the region’s economic growth will continue to outperform the rest of the world. As a result, the authorities are adopting a cautious approach towards hot money flows and considering a variety of policy measures (from taxing specific sectors to capital controls) to regulate such flows.

USE OF CAPITAL CONTROLS

Contrary to popular perception, capital controls have been extensively used by both the developed and developing countries in the past. Although mainstream theory suggests that controls are distortionary, rent-seeking and ineffective, several successful economies have used them in the past. China and India, two major Asian economies and “success stories” of economic globalisation, still use capital controls today.

Post-crisis, there is a renewed interest in capital controls. It is increasingly being accepted in international policy circles that due to the limited effectiveness of other measures, such as higher international reserves, capital controls could protect and insulate the domestic economy from volatile capital flows.

Even the IMF these days endorses the use of capital controls, albeit temporarily, and subject to exceptional circumstances. In the present uncertain times, imposition of capital controls becomes imperative since the regulatory mechanisms to deal with capital flows are national whereas the financial markets operate on a global scale.

Yet, it would be incorrect to view capital controls as a panacea to all the ills plaguing the present-day global financial system. The imposition of controls by South Korea and Indonesia assume greater significance because both countries are members of G-20. It remains to be seen how the G-20 responds to the use of capital controls. Will it take a collective stand on the issue?

(The author is Director, Public Interest Research Centre, New Delhi (www.madhyam.org.in).

This article was originally published in The Hindu Business Line on September 18, 2010 and is published here with the author’s kind permission.

URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/18/stories/2010091850010800.htm

By Kavaljit Singh

There has been considerable concern expressed in the media over the date August 21st.  It was the day when Russian technicians were to insert the fuel rods to begin the activation of the Iranian nuclear reactor at Bushehr. No less a voice out of the past than John Bolton, UN Ambassador under George W. Bush, called for an immediate attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities before the reactor became operational.  Bolton and his neoconservative friends reasoned that no attack against Iran would be “complete” if Bushehr were not taken out as it is part of the broader Iranian nuclear program.  In their view, its destruction would have the same impact as the bombing of the Iraqi Osirak reactor by Israel in 1981, which was intended to derail Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions.

Well, the 21st has come and gone and neither Israel nor the United States took the initiative to destroy Bushehr.  Indeed, the entire argument about attacking it has something of a surreal quality.  Bushehr is not a reactor that can be used to concentrate its fuel, meaning that it can generate electricity but cannot itself produce weapons grade uranium or plutonium.  The entire argument about attacking it seems to center on its symbolic value as Iran’s only soon-to-be operating reactor combined with the notion that its fuel could be removed and enriched somewhere else.  The reactor is located in a relatively heavily populated coastal area and the demand to hit it before it became operational was based on the possible consequences of having to do so after it is up and running.  Destroying an operating reactor would produce considerable radioactive contamination that would devastate a wide area both within Iran and in neighboring countries and would kill many civilians.  Comparisons with Chernobyl and Three Mile Island spring to mind.  Whoever would bomb and destroy such a target would be vilified by most of the international community, and rightly so.  While Israel and the United States both regularly ignore such criticism, the deaths of thousands in a deliberate bombing directed against a country that poses no immediate threat would be a bit hard to explain, even in the New York Times and Washington Post.

To be completely and cold bloodedly serious about the respective positions being staked out by Iran and its chief antagonists in Washington and Tel Aviv, one must first of all remember that Tehran does not currently have a nuclear weapon and there is no real evidence that it even has a program to produce one.  It has been basically compliant with the UN inspection regime mandated by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory.  Nor is there any evidence that the Mullahs are suicidal, suggesting that they would not want to develop a weapon in a secret program at great cost to hand off to terrorists and thereby guarantee the annihilation of their nation and millions of their people.  And they have good reason to be just a bit paranoid about their own security.  The repeated threats coming out of Israel and the United States that “all options are on the table” with Iran is a not exactly subtle suggestion that many policymakers in both countries consider it perfectly acceptable to begin bombing, all in spite of the fact that it would be an attack on a country based on what might happen without any evidence that there is an actual intention to develop and use a weapon of mass destruction.  Bombing a country under those circumstances would be a war crime, one more crime among many.

The real problem is that the public utterances of the policy makers in Washington and Tel Aviv have backed them into a corner, reducing their options and committing them to a policy that has no real attainable objective and makes absolutely no sense.  If Iran is a threat at all, which can be disputed, it can be easily contained by either Israel or the United States, both of which have large nuclear and conventional arsenals. Iran is a military midget compared to either country, though admittedly it has the capability to strike back hard in asymmetrical ways if it is attacked.

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu both appreciate very clearly that Iran does not pose a serious threat and both know that the often cited claim that Tehran has called for wiping Israel off the map is bogus. Such knowledge is widespread even among hawks in Israel, though apparently less so among American neocons.  In September 2009 former Israeli Prime Minister and current Minister of Defense Ehud Barak was quoted as saying that “I am not among those who believe Iran is an existential issue for Israel.”  A few years earlier, Foreign Minister Livni argued against the idea that a nuclear Iran would be an existential threat. This summer, ex-Mossad chief Ephraim Halevi made the same point and added that speaking of Iran as an existential threat exaggerates Iran’s power and suggests instead the false and dangerous narrative that Israel might be vulnerable.

But in spite of their certain knowledge of the fragility of the Iranian threat, both Obama and Netanyahu have unfortunately let themselves wallow in rhetoric that hypes the danger.  If it sounds and smells exactly like the lead up to Iraq, it should. And, like the case of Iraq, the fearmongering does not end with the intemperate comments made by the two leaders.  The US Congress with its proposed House Resolution 1553 is engaged in giving the green light for an Israeli attack on Iran, indicating in advance its support for such an action.  HR 1553 comes on top of harsh sanctions approved in early July, measures that could lead to US Navy vessels attempting to board Iranian flagged merchant ships. Even tougher sanctions, steps that would almost certainly lead to war are endorsed by many legislators, particularly those who are regarded as close to Israel. Congressman Brad Sherman of California explains “Critics [of the sanctions] argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”  At least Congress shows consistency when it is knee jerking spasmodically to demonstrate support for Israel.  Sherman’s view of Iranians is somewhat similar to his punishing the Gazans for voting for Hamas or pillorying the Turks for trying to send aid to the Palestinians.  Or, not so long ago, sending the 500,000 Iraqi children to their deaths à la Madeleine Albright.

And the White House rhetoric blends harmoniously with the congressional ire.  President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have all repeatedly stated that Israel is completely free to make its own decisions relating to its security.  That assertion presumably plays well in certain quarters, but as an Israeli attack will have to be enabled by the United States they also know that bombing courtesy of Tel Aviv would mean Iranian retaliation directed against American troops in the Middle East.  In other words, America’s leaders have abdicated all responsibility for maintaining a rational policy in an unstable part of the world and have instead granted the authority to make key decisions to Israel.  How many Americans will die as a result?

Both the Israeli and American people have been prepared for war by all of the truculent noises coming out of Washington and the propaganda appearing in the media.  The conversation on Iran, such as it is, has been expressly designed to bring about a war rather than avoid it.  The mainstream media disinformation campaign orchestrated by AIPAC has worked just fine.  Most Americans already believe incorrectly that Iran has a nuclear weapon and most also support attacking it, a product of the steady diet of hokum that they have been fed.  The moral turpitude of America and Israel’s leaders combined with the popular consensus that they have willy-nilly allowed to develop grants the concept of war with Iran a certain inevitability.  Former CIA Director Michael Hayden has described the process as “inexorable.”

So we have dodged the bullet on the war that might have begun on August 21st because our leaders really do know that Iran is not a threat and when it came to gut check time were ultimately unwilling to start World War III.  But the bomb is still ticking because those selfsame politicians, lacking any sense of true leadership, have set the forces in play that will almost inevitably produce a war.  It is somewhat reminiscent of Iraq surely, but it also recalls the 1914 European security environment in which an entangling web of alliances and arrangements virtually guaranteed that a war would take place.  The only way to stop the rot is for President Obama to consider for a moment what is good for the United States rather than for his political party’s hold on power.  He should act like a true statesman instead of a used car salesman.  If he is uncertain how to do that there are a number of good nineteenth century political biographies that he can read up on to learn the ropes.  He must stand up before the American people and state simply and unequivocally that Washington opposes any new military action in the Middle East and that the United States is not threatened by Iran and will take no part in any military action directed against it.  He might add that the US will further consider anyone staging such an attack as an aggressor nation and will immediately break off relations before demanding a UN Security Council vote to condemn the action.  Will that happen?  Fat chance.

Posted By Philip Giraldi On August 25, 2010

Read more by Philip Giraldi

• Tales from the Northwest Frontier – August 18th, 2010
• Hillary’s Enemies List – August 11th, 2010
• A Cakewalk Against Iran – August 4th, 2010
• Who Owns General Petraeus? – July 28th, 2010
• The National Security Product – July 21st, 2010

Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com

URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/08/25/boxed-into-a-corner-on-iran/

The ASI’s role in marshalling dubious evidence in support of the existence of a Ram temple at Ayodhya is the right occasion to assess its activities as a handmaiden of Hindutva, says Omar Khalidi

As India reinvents itself through archaeology and tourism, official organisations such as the ASI, state archaeology departments and tourism bureaus lend themselves as the handmaidens of Hindutva, points out Omar Khalidi

Justice DV Sharma’s judgment in the Babri masjid case given on Thursday claimed that ‘the disputed structure was constructed on the site of the old structure after demolition of the same. And that the Archaeological Survey of India has proved that the structure was a massive Hindu religious structure’.

What Justice Sharma was referring to was the ASI’s report of 2003 of dubious value on Ayodhya. What the ASI claimed were the base of pillars which held up the temple, were in fact not pillar bases at all. The Siva shrine at a lower level adds no strength to the claim of a Ram temple. The terracotta from different levels has been so jumbled that it can be linked to no particular stratum and period. Moreover, the presence of animal bones and glazed earthenware found at the site makes it difficult to claim that a Ram temple existed on this site between the 12th and 16th centuries.

The ASI’s role in marshalling dubious evidence in support of the existence of a Ram temple at Ayodhya is the right occasion to assess its activities as a handmaiden of Hindutva.

Four traits that mark archaeology

Four characteristics mark Indian archaeology since colonial times: it is a monument-specific archaeology based on geographical surveys, literary traditions and Orientalist scholarship. These characteristics combine to form a traditionalist, location-driven excavation agenda that privileged some sites to the Hindus without regard to the historical provenance of any site or monument.

Taken together, the four characteristics privilege ancient references to monuments, whether in legend or literature, as authentic, while all medieval and modern ones are perceived as tales of depredations.

The ASI’s colonial origins are transparent in its philosophy and operation. Mortimer Wheeler, director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India between 1944 and 1948, advised Indian archaeologists that ‘Partition has robbed us of the Indus Valley… We now have therefore no excuse for deferring any longer the overdue exploration of the Ganges Valley. After all if the Indus gave India a name, it may almost be said that the Ganges gave India a faith.”

His student BB Lal (ASI director, 1968 to 1972) took his advice. He excavated the Gangetic sites in search of evidence for the mythical periods described in the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana identifying two kinds of pottery — painted greyware as an indicator of the former and northern black polishedware of the latter. He then attempted to match archaeological sites with places named in the epics.

The ASI used this “evidence” to propagate the myth that underneath the 16th century Purana Qila built by Sher Shah Suri lay the site of Indraprastha, city of the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. This theory of Muslim rulers building over Hindu structures has certainly gained ground. By the 1990s, most publications about India’s capital describe Indraprastha as the first of the ‘seven cities of Delhi’

Lal used similar ‘evidence’ at Ayodhya to support his claim of the identification of Lord Rama’s birthplace, which was used as justification for the demolition of the Babri masjid in 1992. The story of Ayodhya then became the prototype for Hindutva claims on innumerable mosques, mausoleums, dargahs, and idgahs, all of which were to be reclaimed as former Hindu sites or temples.

In ASI terminology, the term Hindu is a catch-all, homogenised category for all schools of Sanatan Dharma — Buddhism, Jainism, Saivism, Vaishnavism and the cult of Shakti. The ASI deploys such a convenient term to efface the long and bloody Hindu sectarian wars or Saivite appropriation of Buddhist sites. The ASI’s methods serve to perpetuate the Hindutva groups’ myth of Muslim depredation of Indian heritage.

Hindu temples under monuments

The ASI has been looking for Hindu temples under every medieval monument. The unearthing of Jain idols in the vicinity of Fatehpur Sikri in the 1990s was the occasion to blame Emperor Akbar for destroying temples. When the annual meeting of the World Archaeological Congress in New Delhi coincided with the second anniversary of the Babri masjid demolition in December 1994, its two Indian organisers barred discussion of the event, since they were closely associated with the Ayodhya movement.

Numerous examples of the ASI’s role in transforming medieval heritage can be seen across India.

In 2007, the ASI cooked up history at Chittorgarh, a fort near Udaipur, Rajasthan , by signposting an underground passage as the location of Padmini’s jauhar or self-immolation, based on the myth of Emperor Alauddin Khilji’s alleged atrocities. Numerous modern temples abound in the medieval fort.

In 2003, the ASI virtually converted the 15th century Kamal Maula mosque in Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, into a temple by allowing Hindu worship in it.

Since 1977, the ASI has allowed the construction of three new Hindu temples in the precincts of Sher Shah Suri’s mausoleum in Sasaram, Bihar. These bathroom-tiled temples with their calendar-art frescos mar the magnificent mausoleum’s vistas.

In 1970, the ASI allowed a kumkum sprinkled stone on the southeast corner of Charminar in Hyderabad to be converted into a full-fledged Bhagya Laxmi temple. A modern temple is protruding out of a major medieval monument in defiance of the ASI’s own rules.

At the turn of the 21st century, almost all the grand gates in historic Golconda fort and Hyderabad are riddled with Hindu temples, signs and icons flying in the face of the ASI’s preservation mission.

In 1948, the ASI converted the Jama Masjid in the Daulatabad fort near Aurangabad into a Bharata Mata Mandir (Mother India temple). The very name is so candidly, crassly contemporary as to make a mockery of a medieval site.

ASI’s impact on heritage tourism

The ASI’s representation of India’s archaeological legacy in Hindu terms has had a direct impact on heritage tourism. Unlike ecotourism, medical tourism and such like, heritage tourism has had vast appeal to the increasingly rich, upwardly mobile, tech-savvy upper caste Hindus at home and abroad.

The ASI’s representation of Indian archaeological sites as essentially Hindu is revealed by a close scrutiny of the web sites and printed tourist guides and promotional literature. In the Indian tourism ministry and state tourism department web sites and literature, India’s past is invariably described as the ‘Hindu golden age’ and all subsequent eras until the colonial era as the age of Muslim tyranny. Such representations of India as Hindu is most blatant and obvious in the Incredible India promotion directed toward the diaspora in North America, Europe and wherever it is the rich live.

When tourists come to the sites and monuments, they learn who they are and where they come from. If they come through the promotions by the tourism ministry and state tourism departments, they learn that they are Hindus and the Muslims caused all the depredations. To anyone who has been a tourist in India, the various self-appointed touts and guides at the sites are ubiquitous. They provide a spicy supplement to the official narrative of Muslim vandalism.

The wide appeal of Hindutva among the Indian diaspora can be partly explained by their experiences at tourism sites. The ASI and the official tourism bureaus’ characterisation of Indian archaeological sites as the focus of Muslim vandalism reinforces what was learnt through biased textbooks. The growing Islamophobia in the West further adds to the mental images of Muslims as violent bigots.

As India reinvents itself through archaeology and tourism, official organisations such as the ASI, state archaeology departments and tourism bureaus lend themselves as the handmaidens of Hindutva.

By OMAR KHALIDI

October 01, 2010 14:26 IST

REDIFF

http://news.rediff.com/column/2010/oct/01/column-asi-is-the-handmaiden-of-hindutva-writes-omar-khalidi.htm

Omar Khalidi, independent scholar and staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also the author of Khaki and Ethnic Violence in India and Muslims in Indian Economy

When does media content become truly universal? When it resonates with people everywhere, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, religion or culture, class or gender.  The World Cup, which begins next month, is an example of a media event that is universal in terms of its appeal.

Massive natural calamities such as earthquakes and cyclones and the colossal human suffering that accompany them, are yet other examples of happenings, publicized by the media, that elicit sympathy across borders and boundaries.

Even a man-made catastrophe, like an imminent war, can provoke a huge response from people in different countries and continents. We witnessed that in the weeks before the US helmed invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003. The media — especially the alternative media— played a very significant role in the mass mobilization of men, women and children against the war. Though the citizens of the world failed to stop the war, they succeeded nonetheless to de-legitimize it.

In the eighties, sections of the print and electronic media played a role in spreading awareness about the evil of apartheid and the imperative need to eliminate the apartheid regime in Pretoria. The anti-apartheid movement became a global movement and campaigns to shun multinational corporations that did business with the apartheid regime gathered momentum leading eventually to the demise of the regime in the nineties.

The South African and Iraqi episodes show that the media can play a role in universalizing or globalizing struggles for justice and human dignity. Enhancing knowledge of, and disseminating information on, struggles for justice and human dignity should be one of the primary goals of the media in the 21^st century. The multiple crises facing humanity today —- from the environmental crisis to the economic crisis—- which threatens the very survival of the human race, compels the media to re-evaluate its role. The media can no longer just report and analyze.  It has to be proactive. It has to take a stand.

Can the media help to universalize the struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination? Can the print and electronic media make people in the East and the West aware of the terrible injustice done to the Palestinians and why recognizing their legitimate right to nationhood is vital for world peace?  If some of the most important media channels in the world dare not speak up for the Palestinians, is it because of the inordinate power and influence exercised by Zionist elements over the media?

Can the media make more people in the Global North and the Global South aware of other noble causes as well— causes such as the prohibition of nuclear weapons and the abolition of the veto in the United Nations Security Council, to name but two?  It is significant that many important media outlets have not championed these causes. Is it because of powerful vested interests that they are beholden to?

What about some other concerns that the mainstream print and electronic media could have focused upon such as the eradication of poverty, the elimination of illiteracy, and the expansion of primary health care facilities to those at the bottom of the heap— concerns which are akin to some of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG)? If raising mass consciousness in relation to these concerns has not been the top priority of the mainstream media at national and global level, is it because of the media’s own failing, or is it because the media, especially in the case of state-run entities, is reluctant to evaluate the state’s performance vis-à-vis these goals, or is it because of global capitalism itself which subordinates anti-poverty measures, and pro- primary education and pro-basic health care programs to profits and markets?

Whatever the explanation, it is only too obvious that any endeavor to universalize justice through the media is bound to face formidable obstacles. It is not quite the same as universalizing a sport or a song. Universalizing charity in the wake of some natural calamity, as we have seen, is also not an onerous task.  Because universalizing justice means challenging dominant power structures and vested interests that impact upon the media, it is destined to be a long and arduous struggle.

Be that as it may, committed, courageous individuals and groups within and without the media cannot afford to surrender.  To surrender is to abandon humanity at its most perilous hour.

Remarks by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, Professor of Global Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia, and President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

Not unexpectedly, the 86 years jail sentence against Dr. Afia Siddiqui, the Pakistani neuroscientist once dubbed by the US media as Al-Qaeda Lady, triggered outrage across the country with protesters taking to the streets in many places. It was 10 p.m. Thursday (Sept. 23) in Pakistan when US District Court in Manhattan by Judge Richard M. Berman announced the judgment but protesters were up in arms in several cities of the country. There were demonstrations, mainly from students in Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar burning US flags and effigies of US leaders. They chanted anti-American slogans. In Lahore, a young demonstrator was shown on a Pakistani TV network saying that “we will burn the US consulate.”

In Karachi, a large number of people gathered at the residence of Dr. Afia’s sister Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui. She said “This decision proves that the system of justice that the US believes is its pride is no longer effective.”

Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of the Punjab Province with largest population, described it a verdict against humanity. Mufti Munibur Rehman, a prominent religious leader said that the verdict will foment extremism in Pakistan.

Maulana Fazalur Rehman, Chairman of parliament’s Kashmir Committee, announced that he will cancel his forthcoming visit to the US in protest against the US verdict.

Tellingly, Dr. Afia was quoted by Associated Press as telling the court Thursday: ”I am not sad. I am not distressed. … They are not torturing me.” ”This is a myth and lie and it’s being spread among the Muslims.” Commenting on this statement, Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui said that she was perplexed with this statement that has been given under duress.

It may be recalled that in July 2009, Dr. Afia told the court that she was being tortured. The BBC reported on July 7, 2009: “While denying charges against her, she also told the court about her mistreatment in prison and desecration of the Holy Quran. She said that the Holy Quran was put in her feet. At one time she turned toward the court room packed with journalists and her well wishers and said they should tell the world that she is innocent, she is being tortured and there is a conspiracy against her.

Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui also accused the Pakistani government of collaborating with the US government in Dr. Afia’s plight. “The conviction clearly shows how enslaved our government is. The previous government (President Pervez Musharraf’s) had sold Aafia once, but the present government has sold her time and again,” she said.

The Justice for Aafia Coalition (JFAC), an umbrella body for a number of organizations, groups, and activists created in February 2010 to campaign for the opening of a full investigation into the circumstances of her detention, expressed shock at the harsh sentence passed on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. The JFAC’s statement, released soon after Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to 86 years imprisonment, said: “We are deeply saddened by the harsh sentence passed on Dr. Aafia Siddiqui by Judge Richard Berman today. “It has now been over seven and a half years since Dr. Siddiqui was abducted with her three young children by Pakistani and American agencies. She has since been separated from her children and family, detained in a series of secret prisons and physically and psychologically abused by her captors. Following a blatantly prejudiced and unfair trial in which little conclusive evidence of her guilt was presented, she was found guilty…. While we are disappointed by Judge Berman’s decision, we condemn in the strongest terms the stance of the Pakistani government towards this beloved daughter of the nation. While we must never look to the wolf for protection, we expect the shepherd to care for his flock. The Pakistani government has from the outset been complicit in Aafia’s disappearance and detention, and has displayed nothing but contempt for its people and dignity through its cowardly stance in requesting her repatriation….”

Dr Aafia says an appeal would be a waste of time

In New York, hundreds of supporters of Dr Siddiqui had gathered Thursday on the court grounds and adjoining areas protesting against her trial and conviction. “It is my judgment that Dr Siddiqui is sentenced to a period of incarceration of 86 years,” said Judge Richard Berman. Dr Aafia Siddiqui denounced the trial and said an appeal would be “a waste of time. I appeal to God.” When her lawyer Dawn Cardi said in the court that they would appeal the sentence, Dr Siddiqui shouted “they are not my lawyers”.

On February 3, 2010, a jury in New York found Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, guilty of attempted murder charges on all seven counts listed in the complaint against her. She was tried on charges of trying to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan on July 28, 2008. According to the prosecution, Dr. Siddiqui grabbed a US warrant officer’s rifle while she was detained for questioning in July 2008 at a police station in Ghazni and fired at FBI agents and military personnel as she was pushed down to the ground. None of the US soldiers or FBI agents was injured, but US-educated Dr.Siddiqui was shot. She was charged with attempted murder and assault and other crimes.

To borrow Stephen Lendman, “her trial was a travesty of justice based on the preposterous charge that in the presence of two FBI agents, two Army interpreters, and three US Army officers, she (110 pounds and frail) assaulted three of them, seized one of their rifles, opened fire at close range, hit no one, yet she was severely wounded. No credible evidence was presented. Some was kept secret. The proceedings were carefully orchestrated. Witnesses were either enlisted, pressured, coerced, and/or bought off to cooperate, then jurors were intimidated to convict her.”

According to prosecution Siddiqui was arrested by the Afghan police in the town of Ghazni with notes indicating plans to attack the Statue of Liberty and other New York landmarks. However, she was not charged with terrorism but charged only with attempted murder.

During the trial, the prosecution admitted that there were no fingerprints on the gun she was supposed to have wrested from one of the soldiers. No bullets were recovered from the cell.

Early in the case Siddiqui’s defense team suggested she was a victim of the “dark side,” picked up by Pakistani or U.S. intelligence, but prosecutors insisted they found no evidence she’d ever been illegally detained. By the time of the trial, no mention was made of Siddiqui’s whereabouts during her five missing years.

No explanation was given as to why a would-be terrorist would wander around openly with a slew of almost theatrically incriminating materials in her possession.

No questions were raised about the whereabouts of her two missing children, one of whom is a U.S. citizen. (Her daughter Maryam and son Ahmed later recovered from Afghanistan and handed over to Dr. Fowzia Siddiqui.)

By keeping the focus on Ghazni, the prosecution avoided the main issue in Dr. Aafia’s case: Where was she from March 2003 to July 2008 when she suddenly appeared in US custody in Afghanistan.

Four allegations

Perhaps, there were four allegations, not one, that required deliberation:

1. The first allegation against Dr. Aafia: In 2003, US authorities alleged that she had links with Al-Qaeda. Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Aafia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. At a news conference in May 2004, US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that the FBI was looking for seven people with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. MIT graduate and former Boston resident Aafia Siddiqui was the only woman on the list.

2. The second allegation: The US authorities claimed on July 17, 2008, that Dr. Aafia was found to be in possession of some objectionable and dangerous material. According to US officials, Afghani police, acting on an anonymous tip that a foreign woman was planning terrorist activities, arrested Aafia Siddiqui outside the governor’s compound in Ghazni, and discovered in her purse bottles of liquids, bomb making instructions, and a map of New York City landmarks.

3. The third allegation: International human rights group, prior to July 17, 2008, alleged that Dr. Aafia was being held in a secret prison. She was unlawfully abducted and sexually tortured. This needed to be addressed before moving on. This allegation was against the US and Pakistani authorities.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Islamabad, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Aafia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of Mirryam, 4 (daughter) and two sons Ahmad, 6 and Sulyman, six months.

A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Aafia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. A Monthly English magazine of Karachi in a special coverage on Dr. Aafia reported that one week after her disappearance, a plain clothed intelligence went to her mother’s house and warned her, “We know that you are connected to higher-ups but do not make an issue out of your daughter’s disappearance.” According to the report the mother was threatened her with ‘dire consequences’ if she made a fuss.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, for about 10 years and did her PhD in genetics, returned to Pakistan in 2002. Having failed to get a suitable job, she again visited the US on a valid visa in February 2003 to search for a job and to submit an application to the US immigration authorities. She moved there freely and came back to Karachi by the end of February 2003 after renting a post office box in her name in Maryland for the receipt of her mail. It has been claimed by the FBI (Newsweek International, June 23, 2003, issue) that the box was hired for one Mr Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda residing in Baltimore.

Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Aafia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. On learning of the FBI campaign against her she went underground in Karachi and remained so till her kidnapping. The June 23, 2003, issue of Newsweek International was exclusively devoted to Al Qaeda. The core of the issue was an article “Al Qaeda’s Network in America”. The article has three photographs of so-called Al Qaeda members – Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Dr. Afia Siddiqui and Ali S. Al Marri of Qatar who has studied in the US like Dr. Siddiqui and had long since returned to his homeland. In this article, which has been authored by eight journalists who had access to FBI records, the only charge leveled against Dr. Aafia is that “she rented a post-office box to help a former resident of Baltimore named Majid Khan (alleged Al Qaeda suspect) to help establish his US identity. Dr. Aafia faded into limbo for more than a year, until summer 2004 when the Attorney General and the Director of the FBI announced that she was one of seven terrorists who were planning to disrupt the American presidential elections.

Dr. Aafia’s plight was highlighted by a British journalist and peace activist, Yvonne Ridley, who flew to Pakistan to address a press conference in Islamabad on July 7, 2008. “Today I am crying out for help, not for myself but for a Pakistani woman neither you nor I have ever met. She has been held in isolation by the Americans in Afghanistan and she needs help,” Ridley told a crowded press conference.

Ridley first learnt about the woman while reading a book by Guantanamo ex-detainee Moazzam Begg. One of the four Arabs who escaped from the infamous Bagram cell in July 2005 also told a television channel that he had heard a woman’s cries and screams in the prison but never saw her.

Ridley called her the Grey Lady of Bagram because she was almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continue to haunt those who heard her. The woman is registered as Prisoner number 650 and the US officials can’t deny the fact, Ridley said. “I demand that the US military free the Grey Lady immediately. We don’t know her identity, we don’t know her state of mind and we don’t know the extent of the abuse or torture she has been subjected to.”

On 24th July, 2008 the Asian Human Rights Commission issued an Urgent Appeal in the case of the disappearance of a lady doctor. Amid public protests in Pakistan, on August 1, an FBI official visited the house of Dr. Aafia’s brother in Houston to deliver the news that she is alive and in custody.

One week later she was produced in a New York court where even the Judge expressed surprise at the quick extradition of Dr. Aafia from Afghanistan to New York noting that in such a short period one could not extradite a person from Bronx (a New York Borough) to Manhattan.

4. The fourth allegation: The US authorities alleged that she fired at some US soldiers, etc. while she was being interrogated, after her alleged arrest. This is the only allegation on which Aafia has been tried. In the pre-trial hearing on January 18 the prosecution admitted: Dr Aafia is not a member of al-Qaida. She has no links to any terrorist organization.

The question is why the FBI chose to charge her only with firing at the US soldiers and agents? Why she is not charged with links to Al Qaed? Why she is not charged with planning attacks on targets in New York? Remember, a map of New York land marks was found on her when she was taken into custody in Ghazni, according to prosecution. We may find answers to these questions in the post-9/11 trials of Muslims in the US. A number of Muslims were arrested on terror suspicion but never charged with terrorism or acquitted in terrorism charges. They were put on trial with flimsy charges of immigration violation, tax evasion or some other charges which have nothing to do with terrorism. Just two examples may suffice to prove my point:

Anwar Mahmood, a Pakistani immigrant, was picked up in October 2001 for taking photographs of an upstate New York reservoir. No terror-related charges were ever filed against him but investigators found him in minor violation of immigration law. After spending three years in jail, he was deported to Pakistan in August 2004 for violating immigration law.

In February 2007, a jury acquitted Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, a Palestinian-American former professor at Washington’s HowardUniversity, of terror-related charges. Tellingly, in November 2007 he was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for refusing to testify in 2003 before a grand jury investigating the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Dr. Ashqar was convicted of criminal contempt and obstruction of justice.

By Abdus Sattar Ghazali

24 September, 2010

Countercurrents.org

As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches, there are competing views about the meaning of these tragic events.

On this 9/11 weekend, we invite all persons and communities of faith, spirit and goodwill everywhere to lift up their prayers, voices and thoughts to spark a new attitude and sense of urgency, and to enkindle a different flame:

• a spark that will ignite in us again the impetus to bring comfort to those who lost loved ones on that terror-filled day, and in the violent conflicts and wars that followed from it;
• a spark that will ignite in us again to stand calmly and firmly against the forces of violence, distrust, hostility and cruelty;a spark that will ignite in us again to stand with those who find themselves on the margins of our society – the homeless and those losing their homes, the documented and undocumented immigrant, the unemployed and financially insecure;

• a spark that will ignite in us again the commitment to seek healing and reconciliation at home and abroad, in the cause of justice and peace.

Ever since 9/11, readers keep asking me my views on these attacks. I have been barraged with emails until my head spins with engineering studies about melting steel, controlled explosions, claims about nefarious plots, and wreckage analysis.

One of the most colorful theories comes from Gen. Hamid Gul, former director of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI. He insists that 9/11 was staged by Israel’s Mossad and a cabal of rightwing US Air Force generals.

I inspected the ruins of the New York’s Twin Towers, atop which I often dined, right after the attack. Downtown Manhattan was enveloped by a hideous, stinking miasma from the attack. I have never smelled anything so awful. It took me days to scrub the foul odor off my body. As a native New Yorker, I was shaken to the core by 9/11 – but hardly surprised, as I had predicted a major attack on the US nine days earlier.

In 1993, I was hijacked over Germany on a Lufthansa flight bound for Cairo. The Ethiopian hijacker took us all the way back to New York City. The hijacker was threatening to crash our A310 jumbo jet into Wall Street.

Our flight was shadowed by US F-15 fighters that had orders to shoot, if necessary. Where, then, was US air defense on 11 Sept. 2001?

A day after 9/11, I was asked on CNN if Osama bin Laden was behind the attack. ‘We have yet to see the evidence,’ I replied. I maintain this position today.

Bin Laden denied he or al-Qaida was behind 9/11 and the death’s of nearly 3,000 people. The plot was hatched in Hamburg, Germany and Madrid, Spain, not in Afghanistan. A Pakistani, Khaled Sheik Mohammed, claimed he was the mastermind – after being tortured by near-drowning 183 times by the CIA.

While denying involvement, Osama bin Laden did say he believed the attack on New York was in part motivated by Israel’s destruction of downtown Beirut during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon that inflicted some 18,000 civilian deaths.

Tapes that appeared to confirm bin Laden’s guilt were clumsy fakes. They were supposedly “found” in Afghanistan by the anti-Taliban Afghan Northern Alliance, which was created and funded by Russian intelligence.

I had met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told CNN viewers that he was not the man in the tapes.

After 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell promised Americans the State Department would issue a White Paper detailing bin Laden’s guilt. Afghanistan’s Taliban government asked for this document before it would extradite bin Laden, as the US was demanding. The White Paper was never produced, and the US ignored proper legal procedure and invaded Afghanistan. We still wait for evidence.

I remain uncertain that Osama bin Laden was really behind the attacks. Much circumstantial evidence points to him and al-Qaida, but conclusive proof still lacks. One thing is certain: the attacks were planned and mounted from Germany, not Afghanistan. Of the 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudis, two from the United Arab Emirates, one an Egyptian and a Lebanese.

By the way, I’ve said ever since 9/11 that the danger and size of al-Qaida has been vastly exaggerated – as an explosive report this week by the London’s esteemed International Institute for Strategic Studies has just confirmed. Al-Qaida, dedicated to fighting the Afghan Communists, never had more than 300 members at its peak.

Today, according to CIA chief Leon Panetta, there are no more than 50 al-Qaida men in Afghanistan. Yet President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 120,000 because of what to calls the al-Qaida threat. What is going on?

Many people abroad believe al-Qaida is an American invention used to justify foreign military operations. I do not share this view. Osama bin Laden was never a US agent, though his group indirectly received funds from CIA to fight the Communists.

Back to 9/11. I still cannot understand how amateur pilots could manage to maneuver in low to hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a Pakistani intelligence agent told me, “if they were really amateur Arab pilots, they would have crashed into one another, not the World Trade Center!”

The arrest of Israeli “movers” filming the attack and dancing with joy, and the subsequent arrest of groups of Israeli “students” supposedly tracking the would-be hijackers remains a deep mystery. So does the immobilization of US air defenses.

The US 9/11 Commission was a whitewash, as are all such government commissions. They are designed to obscure, not reveal, the truth.

A 2006, a Scripps Howard/Washington Post poll found that 36% of the 1,000 Americans sampled believed the US government was behind 9/11. Many Americans still do not believe the official version of 9/11.

Neither do many Europeans. The entire Muslim world believes 9/11 was the work of Israel and far right American neocons, led by Dick Cheney.

If the official story about 9/11 is true, the attacks caught the Bush administration asleep on guard duty. Bush’s incompetent national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice, brushed off serious warnings of the impending attack and actually cut spending on anti-terrorism just before 9/11.

The White House and media were quick to blame Muslims who hated America’s lifestyle and values, launching the concept of “Islamic terrorism” – i.e. that the Muslim faith, not political issues, prompted the attacks.

This dangerous canard has infected America, leading to a rising tide of Islamophobia. This week’s continued uproar over a Muslim community center in downtown New York, and a Florida preacher’s threat to burn Korans, are the latest doleful example of cultivated religious hatred.

The suicide team that attacked New York and Washington made clear its aim was: a. to punish the US for backing Israel’s repression of Palestinians; and b. what they called US “occupation” of Saudi Arabia. Though they were all Muslims, religion was not the motivating factor.

As the CIA’s former bin Laden expert Michael Scheuer rightly observed, the Muslim world was furious at the US for what it was doing in their region, not because of America’s values, liberties or religion.

These motives for the 9/11 attack have been largely obscured by the whipping up hysteria over “Islamic terrorism.” The planting of anthrax in New York, Florida and Washington soon after 9/11 was clearly designed to promote further anti-Muslim furor. The perpetrators of this red herring remain unknown. But the anthrax attack hastened passage of the semi-totalitarian Patriot Act that sharply limited the personal freedoms of Americans and imposed draconian new laws.

Faked bin Laden videos and audio tapes. Planted anthrax. An intact Koran implausibly found at ground zero. Evidence in a hijacker’s bag that had somehow failed to make his ill-fated flight. Immediate claims that al-Qaida was behind the attacks. Those amateur kamikaze pilots and collapsing towers.

Perhaps most damning, tapes taken in London of meetings between President George Bush and PM Tony Blair revealed a sinister proposal by the US president to provoke war with Iraq by painting US aircraft in UN colors, then buzzing Iraqi air defenses until they fired on them, thus providing a “casus belli.” Bush also reportedly told Blair that after Iraq, he would “go on” to attack Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan.

In 1939, Nazi Germany dressed up soldiers in Polish uniforms to provoke a border fire-fight to justify Berlin’s ensuing invasion of Poland. Bush’s plan was of the same ilk. A president who would contemplate such a criminal operation might go a lot further to achieve his imperial dreams.

As a veteran journalist, to me, all this smells to high heaven. There are just too many unanswered questions, too many suspicions, and that old Roman legal question, “cui bono” – “to whose benefit?”

On 28 February, 1933, fire, set by a Dutch Jew, ravaged the Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag. While the Reichstag’s ruins were still smoking, Adolf Hitler’s government declared a war against “terrorism.” A “Decree for the Protection of People and State” was promulgated suspending all legal protections of speech, assembly, property, and personal liberties. The Reichstag fire allowed the government to round up “terrorism” suspects without due process of law and made police powers near absolute.

Sound familiar? Here’s another startling coincidence. Two years before 9/11, a series of mysterious apartment building bombings in Russia killed over 200 people. “Islamic terrorists” from Chechnya were blamed.

Panic swept Russia and boosted former KGB agent Vladimir Putin into full power. Russian security agents of FSB were caught red-handed planting explosives in another building, but the story was hushed up. A former FSB agent, Alexander Litvinenko, who tried to reveal this story, was murdered in London by radioactive polonium.

Similarly, the Bush administration’s neocons shamelessly used 9/11 to promote the invasion of Iraq. Just before the attack, polls showed 80% of Americans erroneously believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. Dr. Goebbels would have been proud.

So what, in the end, can we conclude? 1. We still do not know the real story about 9/11. 2. The official version is not credible. 3. 9/11 was used to justify invading strategic Afghanistan and oil-rich Iraq. 4. The attacks plunged America into wars against the Muslim world and enriched the US arms industry. 5. 9/11 boosted pro-Israel neoconservatives, formerly a fringe group, into power, and with them America’s totalitarian far right. 6. Bush’s unprovoked war against Iraq destroyed one of Israel’s two main enemies. 7. 9/11 put America in what may turn out to be a permanent state of war with the Muslim world – a key goal of the neoconservatives.

But I’ve seen no hard evidence to date that 9/11 was a plot by America’s far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up. Just, perhaps, the Mother of All Coincidences. In the end, it may just have been 19 angry Arabs and a bumbling Bush administration looking for someone else to blame.

By Eric Margolis

Eric Margolis [send him mail] is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website

The US-dominated World Mainstream media are legitimately remembering  the 3,000 dead in the 9-11 atrocity for which some top scientific and intelligence experts hold the US responsible. However, in marked contrast, World Mainstream media ignore the 8 million dead (mostly Asian women and children) in the post-9-11 US War on Terror (a war for Oil and Hegemony) driven politically by racist Zionist and neocon American terror hysteria, anti-Arab anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The world is marking the 9th anniversary of the 9-11 atrocity in which, (1) according to some top scientific and intelligence experts,  the US Government, with likely Israeli state terrorist support, killed 3,000 Americans on 9-11 to launch  the War on Terror for oil, US hegemony and US-Israeli domination of the Middle East  or (2) religious fundamentalists in Central Asian caves without state intelligence, armed forces, or military-industrial infrastructure achieved a devastating  attack on Metropolitan  United States that the Axis Powers failed to do in World War 2 and, furthermore, did so for no obvious cost-benefit reasons.

Two Swiss scholars, Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [“the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ). Professor Ganser: “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version. It is conceivable that the Bush government was responsible. Bush has lied so much already! And we already know that the US government planned an operation in 1962 that was approved by the Pentagon that would have sacrificed innocent US citizens for the government’s own interests …We only ask questions” (see “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version” :   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ).

Professors Ganser and Stahel presented 3 sensible hypotheses for 9-11: “There are three theories, which we should treat equally:

1. “Surprise theory” – Bin Laden and Al Qaeda implemented the attacks.

2. “Let it happen on purpose” – The US Government knew the Al Qaeda plans and did not react in order to legitimize a series of wars.

3. “Made it happen on purpose” – The attacks were actually planned and orchestrated by the Pentagon and/or US secret services.”

How do these 3 hypotheses about the 9/11 atrocity stack up when one considers Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM)?

1. “Surprise theory” than “men in caves” did 9-11.

Unlike the US and Apartheid Israel, the “men in caves” (all former US-backed Muslim-origin terrorists) had no vast army, navy, air force, military-industrial complex, or state intelligence apparatus (no Means), did not have the ability to countermand massive anti-hijacking and other emplaced security systems (no Opportunity)  and had no rational reason to embark on a terrorist atrocity that would lead to the global decimation of their associates and the US Alliance killing of 7 million Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan alone (no Motive). In World War 2 the Axis Powers with their massive military, industrial and intelligence resources only managed to kill 6 Americans in Mainland United States (a clergyman saw his wife and 5 church children killed by a Japanese balloon bomb device in Oregon on 5 May 1945; see “Japanese balloon bomb deaths story”, Balloon Bombs: ”: http://www.japaneseballoonbombs.com/articles/balloonbombdeaths.html ).

2. US let 9-11 happen on purpose.

A particularly authoritative account of this hypothesis has been presented by Michael Meacher MP (UK environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003): “Massive attention has now been given – and rightly so – to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq . But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier. We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush’s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC). The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power… The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the “global war on terrorism” has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda – the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course. (Michael Meacher, “This war on terrorism is bogus”, The Guardian, 6 September 2003: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq ).

A petition signed by 100 prominent Americans and 40 9/11 family members demanded  a full, independent investigation of what really happened on 9-11. The statement’s list of signatories includes Presidential candidates Ralph Nader and Green Party candidate David Cobb, Catherine Austin Fitts, a member of the first Bush administration, Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signatories include former US Ambassador to Iraq Edward L. Peck and  environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins  (see “9/11 statement signed by 100 prominent Americans”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/911statement ). The statement said in part: “ On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and “consciously failed” to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attornney General. In connection with this news, we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war. ”

And of course the US had the Means (US military, intelligence and security domination of the US ), Opportunity (ditto) and Motive (to launch the War on Terror for US occupation of the Middle East and Central Asia for oil, gas and US and Israeli   hegemony).

3. The US made 9-11 happen “on purpose”.

A number of key scientific, military and intelligence experts have advanced this most compelling of the 3 hypotheses. As stated in item #2 above, the US had Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM). There is compelling scientific evidence that a huge jet plane flown by experts could not have landed on a dime at the door of the Pentagon as asserted by the “official Bush version “ of 9-11 and that the 3 World Trade Center buildings were brought down by explosive demolition (proven by the discovery  by Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues of the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen, that unexploded nano-thermite high explosive was present in all WTC dust samples examined). Some of these expert opinions  are presented below.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth has set out expert evidence that the US was involved in 9-11 (see: http://911scholars.org/ ).

Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice has set out a detailed series of links to the expert views of many other rational, eminent and technically expert people who reject the “official conspiracy theory” and who believe that the US was variously involved in the 9-11 atrocity (see: http://stj911.org/ ).

Many respected senior members of the US military, intelligence services, and government have expressed significant criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report. Some even allege government complicity in the terrible acts of 9/11 (see “9/11 Commission Report questioned by senior  military, intelligence and government officials”, WantToKnow.info: http://www.wanttoknow.info/officialsquestion911commissionreport ).

Swiss Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel of the University of Zurich, reported in the largest Swiss newspaper, “Blick”, have seriously questioned the “official Bush version” of what happened on 9/11 (see “Je mehr wir forschen, desto mehr zweifeln wir” [the more we research the more we doubt”], Blick, 15 September 2006: http://www.blick.ch/news/ausland/9-11/artikel45057 ; and  “US responsible for 9-11? Swiss scholars Professors Daniele Ganser and Albert A. Stahel doubt official Bush version”:   https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-responsible ): “3,000 humans were sacrificed for strategic interests. The more we explore, the more we doubt the Bush version….We only ask questions.”

Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues (Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen , Copenhagen , Denmark ) : “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples we have studied of the dust produced by the destruction of the World Trade Center . Examination of four of these samples, collected from separate sites, is reported in this paper. These red/gray chips show marked similarities in all four samples…Based on these observations, we conclude that the red layer of the red/gray chips we have discovered din the WTC dust is active, unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology, and is a highly energetic pyrotechnic or explosive material” (see Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, The Open Chemical Physics Journals, vol.2, pp.7-31 (25): http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM ).

Jim Hoffmann (a top US software engineer who has extensively analyzed the 3 WTC building demolitions : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hoffman ) : “The implications of the discovery of unspent aluminothermic explosives and matching residues in World Trade Center dust are staggering. There is no conceivable reason for there to have been tons of high explosives in the Towers except to demolish them, and demolition is blatantly incompatible with the official 9/11 narrative that the skyscrapers collapsed as a result of the jetliner impacts and fires. The discovery of active thermitic materials adds to a vast body of evidence that the total destruction of the Towers were controlled demolitions, and to the subset of that evidence indicating the use of aluminothermic materials to implement those demolitions” (see Jim Hoffmann, “Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust. Scientists Discover Both Residues And Unignited Fragments Of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics In Debris From the Twin Towers”, 9-11 Research, 9 December 2010: http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html ) .

Major General Albert N. Stubblebine (graduate of the U.S. Military Academy West Point, class of 52, distinguished 32 year career in the U.S. Army and retired as the Commanding General of the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command , INSCOM): “You look at the buildings falling, they didn”t fall down because of an airplane hit them, they fell down because explosives went off inside. Demolition. Look at Building 7 for God sakes … I do not believe the free press is free anymore… The press is saying what they have been told to say about this. Now do I have proof about this? No. But I believe that all the stories that were told about 9/11 were false” (see “ Major General Albert Stubblebine Towers fell down because of explosives”, World for 9-11 Truth”, 29 June 2009: http://world911truth.org/major-general-albert-stubblebine-towers-fell-down-because-of-explosives/ ).

Professor Francesco Cossiga (63rd prime minister and 8th president of Italy, professor of law at the University of Sassari, and intelligence intimate) in an interview with leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera (2007): “As I’ve been told, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow [interview appeared on 30 November 2007] the most important chain of newspapers of our country should give the proof, with an exceptional scoop, that the video (which in reality is an audio tape, NdR) in which appears Osama, leader of “the great and powerful movement of islamic revenge Al Quaeda” – God bless him! – and in which are formulated threats to our ex president Berlusconi, is nothing more than a fake realized inside Mediaset studios [the huge television group owned by Berlusconi] in Milan and sent to arabic television station Al Jazeera. The trap was organized to create solidarity for Berlusconi, who is having lot of problems related to the tangle between RAI and Mediaset. From circles around Palazzo Chigi, nerve centre of direction of Italian intelligence, it is noted that the non-authenticity of the video is testified from the fact that Osama bin Laden in it ‘confessed’ that Al Qaeda was the author of the attack of the 11 September on the Twin Towers in New York, while all of the democratic circles of America and of Europe, in the front lines being those of the Italian centre-left, now know well that the disastrous attack was planned and realized by the American CIA and Mossad with the help of the Zionist world to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and to persuade the Western powers to intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan” (see “ Francesco Cossiga ” Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Cossiga ).

General Leonid Ivashov (vice-president of the Russian Academy on geopolitical affairs. He was the chief of the department for General affairs in the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense, secretary of the Council of defense ministers of the Community of independent states (CIS), chief of the Military cooperation department at the Russian federation’s Ministry of defense and Joint chief of staff of the Russian armies) (2006): “Terrorism is the weapon used in a new type of war. At the same time, international terrorism, in complicity with the media, becomes the manager of global processes. It is precisely the symbiosis between media and terror, which allows modifying international politics and the exiting reality. In this context, if we analyze what happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States , we can arrive at the following conclusions: 1. The organizers of those attacks were the political and business circles interested in destabilizing the world order and who had the means necessary to finance the operation. The political conception of this action matured there where tensions emerged in the administration of financial and other types of resources. We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction. Unlike traditional wars, whose conception is determined by generals and politicians, the oligarchs and politicians submitted to the former were the ones who did it this time. 2. Only secret services and their current chiefs – or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations – have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude. Generally, secret services create, finance and control extremist organizations. Without the support of secret services, these organizations cannot exist – let alone carry out operations of such magnitude inside countries so well protected. Planning and carrying out an operation on this scale is extremely complex. 3. Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda” cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders. Thus, a team of professionals had to be created and the Arab kamikazes are just extras to mask the operation. The September 11 operation modified the course of events in the world in the direction chosen by transnational mafias and international oligarchs; that is, those who hope to control the planet’s natural resources, the world information network and the financial flows. This operation also favored the US economic and political elite that also seeks world dominance” (see General Leonid Ivashov, “International terrorism does not exist: September 11 attacks were the result of a set-up”, Global Research, 23 January 2006: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1789 ) .

Andreas von Bülow (state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence (1976-1980) and German Minister for Research and Technology , 1980-1982): “Planning the attacks was a master deed, in technical and organizational terms. To hijack four big airliners within a few minutes and fly them into targets within a single hour and doing so on complicated flight routes! That is unthinkable, without backing from the secret apparatuses of state and industry” and “If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars…They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence – that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden’s al-Qa’eda – in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation” (see “Andreas von B ü low”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_von_B%C3%BClow )..

25 US military officers have spoken out against the Bush Administration lies about the 9/11 atrocity . The views of these men are particularly noteworthy because of their unquestionable patriotism, their military service and their technical expertise. What these American military heroes are saying is actually unexceptional in the sense that it has all been said by themselves and others before. Thus not just military men and scientists recognize the “impossibility” of the “official Bush version” e.g. an aviation gas fire cannot melt or even soften steel; it is hard enough to crash a light aircraft at ground level into a tree-surrounded building like the Pentagon, let alone a huge airliner; the absence of passenger effects from the various sites; the minimal-resistance collapse of the Twin Towers mimicking “perfect” demolitions; the collapse of the WTC7 building that had not been hit by a plane and which had suffered only minor fires etc etc (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 )..

US Navy Commander Kolstad about the “official Bush version” account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon: “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described. I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom on what happened on 9/11 and why it happened : “The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11. The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government’s myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government. In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two pre-emptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people. It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years” (see Gideon Polya “US did 9/11? US Military Officers Challenge “official Bush version” of 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanistangenocideessays/us-did-9-11 ).

Alan Hart , eminent UK Middle East expert and journalist, ) has reported that according to “consultants who work for leading engineering and construction firms” the 3 buildings destroyed in the World Trade Center were brought down by explosive demolition and quite likely involving the Israelis: “The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes….My guess is that at an early point they [Mossad] said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it” (see “Alan Hart breaks silence about 9/11 on Kevin Barrett Show”, 9/11 Truth Norcal, 26 May 2010: http://norcaltruth.org/2010/05/26/alan-hart-breaks-silence-about-911-on-kevin-barrett-show/ ).

Dr Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan, ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College) : “Several things are very clear to me from a careful assessment of both official and critical evaluations of the 9/11 attacks. First, the striking aircraft alone simply could not have brought down either of the two buildings in the manner in which they fell, much less a third building which was not hit by a plane (I expect the one intended to do that as a “cover” had ended up in that Pennsylvania field), given the available physical evidence and a wealth of expert testimony. This means the attackers had assistance on the ground, and it had to have been active before the attacks occurred: preparing buildings for controlled demolition is not something done haphazardly in the midst of chaos. Second, only two intelligence agencies had the expertise, assets, access and political protection to execute 9/11 in the air and on the ground: our CIA and Israel ‘s Mossad. Only one had the incentive, using the “who benefits” principle: Mossad. And that incentive dovetailed perfectly with the neo-con’s agenda and explicitly expressed need for a catalytic event to mobilize the American public for their wars, using American military power to destroy Israel ‘s enemies. Only the unexpected strength of the Iraqi resistance kept Syria and Iran from being attacked in the second Bush Administration. Thus, the evidential trail for 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq run from PNAC, AIPAC and their cohorts; through the mostly Jewish neo-cons in the Bush Administration; and back to the Israeli government. None of the denials and political machinations can alter that essential reality. Terms such as treason, betrayal and deceit do not overstate the case against them.” (see Dr Alan Sabrowsky, “Treason, Betrayal and deceit: 9’11 and beyond”, Information Clearing House”, 10 September 2009: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23460.htm ).

Underscoring this is the appalling, sustained, over 2 century record of pathological deceit by the US in the interests of war, expansion, theft and hegemony. The Bush Administration alone was found to have told 935 untruths about Iraq in the run-up to the illegal invasion of that country (see “Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war”, CNN, 23 January 2008: http://articles.cnn.com/2008-01-23/politics/bush.iraq_1_intelligence-flaws-iraq-and-al-qaeda-study?_s=PM:POLITICS ).

Conclusion.

Means, Opportunity and Motive (MOM) analysis makes a compelling case that the US did 9-11, most likely with the involvement of the genocidal racist Zionists running Apartheid Israeli state terrorism.

The American and Israeli perpetrators are well protected by layers of Mainstream media and politicians lying by commission and lying of omission. The biggest of the Big Lies  of the Mainstream media and politicians in the Western Murdochracies is a huge lie of omission over post-9-11 deaths associated with the War on Terror.  While we are endlessly (and quite properly) told of the 3,000 Americans who died on 9-11 and the US Alliance military deaths in Occupied Iraq (4,736 as of today) and in Occupied Afghanistan (2,071 as of today) (see: http://icasualties.org/ ), Mainstream media and politicians resolutely refuse to report the horrendous post-invasion deaths of the Indigenous inhabitants of Iraq and Afghanistan that now total about 7 million – over 2,300 innocent people murdered by the US Alliance for every person killed on 9-11, an event that even according to the “official US version of 9-11” involved no Iraqis nor any Afghans.

UNICEF data indicate that every 3 days more Occupied Afghans die avoidably under US, NATO and Australian occupation (3,700) than the number of those who were killed on 9-11 (3,000), an atrocity that did not involve any Afghans according to the “official US version of 9-11”- indeed, according to some top scientific and intelligence experts the US did 9-11, some saying with likely Israeli terrorist complicity (see: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19999 ).

Bring on war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide (3.5 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, possibly 1.0 million post-invasion violent deaths, 2.4 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 3-4 million refugees plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by the US in NW Pakistan: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).

Bring on the war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC)  for all those involved in the US Alliance-imposed, ongoing Iraq Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (1.1 million post-invasion non-violent deaths from deprivation, 1.4 million post-invasion violent deaths, 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 year old infant deaths, 5-6 million refugees plus 0.2 million violent deaths in the Gulf War, 1.7 million non-violent deaths from deprivation under Sanctions and 1.2 million under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ).

September 11 should primarily remembered for the anniversary of the launching of Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha Movement for peaceful resistance in Johannesburg, South Africa  in 1906 (see “Sept. 11: creating history of a different kind”, The Hindu: http://www.hinduonnet.com/mag/2002/10/06/stories/2002100600290500.htm ).

9-11 must be made a day to remember  (1) the launching of Gandhi’s ultimately successful for peaceful opposition to racist violence; (2) to remember  the US (and most likely Israeli) destruction of 3,000 Americans on 9-11; and (3) to remember the 8 million people murdered, so far, by genocidal US and Zionist violence since 9-11 (2.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Iraq; 4.5 million violent deaths and non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation in Afghanistan; and 0.8 million opiate drug-related deaths – 50,000 in the US and 3,000 in Australia – due to US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry from 6% of world share in 2001 to over 90% today).

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. Decent folk who believe that “all men are created equal” and that one should “love thy neighbour as thyself” are obliged to (a) tell  everyone you know and (b) urge sanctions and Boycotts against all those citizens, corporations, countries, people, pundits and politicians involved in the racist Zionist- and neocon-backed US Alliance War on Terror that is in horrible actuality a War for Oil and Hegemony, a War on Women and Children and, more specifically,  a cowardly, racist and genocidal War on Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Asian and Non-European Women and Children.

By Dr Gideon Polya

Better late than never, a very senior Palestinian official in Ramallah, Yasser Abed Rabbo, found the right way to challenge Israel and the U.S. As reported by AFP on 13 October, he said, “We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognise.”

That’s a completely logical and totally reasonable demand.

If Israel was interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, the map provided would show Israel with borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war. An accompanying note would say that, subject to agreement in final negotiations, Israel seeks minor border adjustments here and there. The note would also propose that Jerusalem should be an open, undivided city and the capital of two states.

If such a map with the note as above was presented, it would open the door to peace.

But the implementation of such land-for-peace deal would require the IDF to confront and forcibly remove illegal Jewish settlers who refused to leave; and that would open the door to a Jewish civil war – the price Israel’s Jews would have to pay for 62 years of contempt for and defiance of international law.

Of course it won’t happen. As I reveal in my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, why not was explained to me as far back as I980 by Shimon Peres. At the time he was the leader of the Labour Party, the main opposition to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition. Peres was hoping to win Israel’s next election and deny Begin a second term in office. (President Carter was hoping and possibly praying for such an outcome). My purpose in talking with Peres in private was to establish whether or not he was interested in me acting as the linkman in a secret, exploratory dialogue between himself and PLO Chairman Arafat. Peres was interested but before I went off to Beirut to seek Arafat’s agreement to participate in a little conspiracy for peace, he said to me, “I fear it’s already too late“.

I asked Peres what he meant and this was his answer:

“Every day that passes sees new bricks on new settlements. Begin knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s stuffing the West Bank with settlers to create the conditions for a Jewish civil war. He knows that no Israeli prime minister is going down in history as the one who gave the order to the Jewish army to shoot Jews out of the West Bank“. Pause. “I’m not.”

When Peres spoke those words to me there were 70,000 illegal Jewish settlers on the occupied West Bank. If it was “too late” then, in 1980, how much more too late is it today when the number of illegal Jewish settlers is in excess of 500,000 and rising on a daily basis?

Some weeks after that conversation with Peres, I had reason to talk in private with Ezer Weizman, then serving as Defense Minister in Begin’s first-term government. He gave me extraordinary and frightening insight into why any future Israeli prime minister would not and possibly could not order the IDF to remove settlers from the West Bank by whatever force was necessary. At a point in our conversation he said the following, very slowly and with quiet emphasis:

“This lunchtime Sharon convened a secret meeting of some of our generals and other top military and security people. They signed in blood an oath which commits them to join with the settlers and fight to the death to prevent any government of Israel withdrawing from the West Bank.” Pause. “I know that’s what happened at the meeting because I’ve checked it out and that’s why I was late for this appointment with you.” (I tell the full story of this conversation with Weizman in The Blood Oath, Chapter 12 of Volume Three of the American edition of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews).

So no, there won’t be a Jewish civil war because no Israeli prime minister is ever going to risk provoking it.

So there will be no map. (I mean not one that could come even close to satisfying the Palestinian demand and need). Yasser Abed Rabbo knew that when he put the demand into words.

So what was the point of his challenge?

I presume he was hoping that Israel’s refusal to come up with a map based on more or less pre-June 1967 borders will help to convince more and more people, Americans especially, that Israel simply is not interested in peace on terms virtually all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept, and for which there is universal support (minus only the opposition of the Zionists and the mad, fundamentalist Christians who support them right or wrong, an opposition which in numbers of people is only a tiny, almost invisible fraction of the global whole).

If it does that, the challenge will not have been made in vain.

Footnote

The day after Yasser Abed Rabbo issued the challenge, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman had the gall (chutzpah) to say that Israel “has already made many gestures to the Palestinian Authority to facilitate restarting direct negotiations,” and now “the other side must show goodwill”. In one sense Liberman was right. Israel has made many gestures to the Palestinians. But all of them have been of the “Go to hell” type.

By Alan Hart

19 October, 2010

Alanhart.net

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks claims that it has had its funding blocked and that it is the victim of financial warfare by the US government.

Moneybookers, a British-registered internet payment company that collects WikiLeaks donations, emailed the organisation to say it had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist.

The apparent blacklisting came a few days after the Pentagon publicly expressed its anger at WikiLeaks and its founder, Australian citizen Julian Assange, for obtaining thousands of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan, in one of the US army’s biggest leaks of information. The documents caused a sensation when they were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and German magazine Der Spiegel, revealing hitherto unreported civilian casualties.

WikiLeaks defied Pentagon calls to return the war logs and destroy all copies. Instead, it has been reported that it intends to release an even larger cache of military documents, disclosing other abuses in Iraq.

Moneybookers moved against WikiLeaks on 13 August, according to the correspondence, less than a week after the Pentagon made public threats of reprisals against the organisation. Moneybookers wrote to Assange: “Following an audit of your account by our security department, we must advise that your account has been closed … to comply with money laundering or other investigations conducted by government authorities.”

When Assange emailed to ask what the problem was, he says he was told in response by Daniel Stromberg, the Moneybookers e-commerce manager for the Nordic region: “When I did my regular overview of my customers, I noticed that something was wrong with your account and I emailed our risk and legal department to solve this issue.

“Below I have copied the answer I received from them: ‘Hi Daniel, you can inform him that initially his account was suspended due to being accessed from a blacklisted IP address. However, following recent publicity and the subsequently addition of the WikiLeaks entity to blacklists in Australia and watchlists in the USA, we have terminated the business relationship.'”

Assange said: “This is likely to cause a huge backlash against Moneybookers. Craven behaviour in relation to the US government is unlikely to be seen sympathetically.”

Moneybookers, which is registered in the UK but controlled by the Bahrain-based group Investcorp, would not make anyone available to explain the decision. Its public relations firm, 77PR, said: “We have never had any request, inquiry or correspondence from any authority regarding this former customer.” Asked how this could be reconciled with the references in the correspondence to a blacklist, it said: “We stick with our original statement.”

Written by David Leigh & Rob Evans

Posted: 19 October 2010 10:52

15 October, 2010

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