One Good Thing Leads To Another

One of the best but most time-consuming aspects of the net is the way one good thing can lead to another, and another, and so on, until ... what was I talking about?

Oh yes! Last weekend, Robert Fisk and his 9/11 column inspired quite a few bloggers including my frozen self, and I tried to read as many of them as I could find. I quite enjoyed a post from RedPill8, a site I hadn't seen before, so I checked in via the comments and checked out the archives and in a matter of just a few minutes I found I had spent several hours there, reading and reading and reading... I've since added a link to the site on my sidebar, so it will be easy to get back to! (Hint, hint!)

The discussion in the comments thread has been interesting and I've been following it (and throwing in my two cents, of course). The highlight of the thread so far, not likely to be topped -- or even approached -- is a link to damien's hilarious and factual blog, OsamaBinBolt. Here's the background:

Andrew Bolt is a columnist at the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne, Australia. He works mostly in domestic social commentary and occasionally confronts international issues. He is right wing and hostile to left wing influences such as unions and the Australian television outlets SBS and the publicly funded ABC whose standards are high but whose staff are philosophically left wing. Bolt's general style is dismissive of those who don't agree with him
...

Normally this would be of no consequence. But recently Bolt has published an article denigrating 9/11 critics - those persons we normally call 'conspiracy' theorists. Laced with his denigration is a systematic program of misrepresentation of what these people say and a refusal to even consider the ideas they present.

We need to be clear: Bolt can hold whatever views he likes on 9/11, but he rejects the views of others in dishonest ways and he claims a higher moral ground. This invites unmasking.

Andrew Bolt regards himself as an authority on all things 9/11 and uncritically mouths the official version.

So damien gave him a series of short tests, all of which Bolt failed:

I wrote to him under my own name last year following his hatchet job on Fisk. The response was abusive. So I then wrote as --

Stephen Hadley - Pres. Bush's National Security Advisor (asking for Bolt's thoughts on Iraq)

Michael Ledeen - neocon (warning Bolt not to take Hadley's letter too seriously)

Col. Thomas Pappus - found guilty of offenses at Abu Ghraib (agreeing with Bolt that the torture was isolated)

Sibel Edmonds - an FBI translator and leading 9/11 conspiracy theorist (bemoaning 9/11 conspiracies)

Mike Feghali - Sibel's boss (sympathizing with correspondent Sibel Edmonds)

Douglas and Can Dickerson - Turkish spies identified by Sibel Edmonds (on holidaying in Turkey)

Sahtam Al Suqamis -- 9/11 hijacker who's passport was found in the street (it's hard for Muslims to get passports)

Amanda Keller -- Mohammed Atta's girlfriend (terrorists need girlfriends)

Wally Hilliard - owner of Huffman Aviation, home of the 9/11 terrorists

Bolt recognized none of these names. Absolutely NONE. Having styled himself as a 9/11 expert he was unable to recognize any of these historical persons from the events of 9/11. Bolt knows nothing. He is a fraud.

I'm sure Bolt is not the only fraud, but his unmasking is stunningly effective. You'll laugh -- or cry -- or both! -- as Andrew Bolt responds to the concerns of "Sibel Edmonds", "Michael Ledeen", "David Hicks", "Thomas Pappas", and the others, without ever giving any hint of any knowledge of any kind.

It's perfect: it reminded me of Don Novello as Lazlo Toth sending fan mail to Richard Nixon!

... speaking of which, and speaking of time-consuming, and speaking of one thing leading to another ...

At LV's blog the other day I clicked a link to an essay on 9/11 by an author using the pen name "Lazlo Toth", and once again only a few minutes elapsed while I spent hours reading "Wired for Terror: On the Trail of the “Men” Who Brought Down the Towers"

It's an excellent piece. Hint, hint. And speaking of one good thing leading to another, this is the first of a planned four-part series -- it's only the introduction! When the new parts are ready, I'm sure it won't take but another few minutes to spend a few hours soaking in them, too! Wow!

And all this is happening at Lazlo Toth's blog and that's at WTC Demolition dot com. Hint, hint!

These links are not all on my sidebar yet, but they will be soon.

Great stuff, guys! Why didn't you find me earlier??

Oh well, better late than never.

Many thanks all around, and tips of the frozen cap to Sean O'Neil as LV and Lazlo Toth and (Don Novello too) and damien and RedPill8.

Please check out some of these pages, and if you get the urge leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Where Fisk Goes Wrong About 9/11

Controversial journalist Robert Fisk, despised everywhere good books are sold, wrote a column for yesterday's issue of The Independent in which he says he is

increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11.

Judging from the reaction in some parts of the blogosphere, he's gone quite mad!

Here's the column in full:

Robert Fisk: Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11

Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".

His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.

Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.

Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.

But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.

I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".

Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.

But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.

Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.

Now for the reactions:

USS Neverdock has this to say:

Fisk is free to spout out far left wing conspiracy theories and the Independent is free to print them, but given Fisk's previous lies, one has to wonder why the Independent continues to embarass themselves. Oh, that's right, they're not embarassed. Silly me.

At Screw Loose Change, Pat Curley, semi-official protector of the official semi-truth, wrote:

Robert Fisk Goes Nutter

Of course, he denies being a crackpot while recycling all of the crackpot questions.

Unfortunately, Curley doesn't make any attempt to explain what's "crackpot" about the questions Fisk asks, or why asking these questions makes him a "crackpot".

The folks at Daily Kos read this:

Robert Fisk is perhaps one the best known foreign correspondents covering the Middle East. He has covered everything from the Iranian Revolution to Lebanon to the current war in Iraq and has won multiple awards and honorary degrees for his coverage. He has even interviewed the head-lopping islamo-fascist devil Osama bin Laden on multiple occasions. He has apparently lost his marbles in his latest ravings questioning the official story on 9/11. Descend with me below the fold into the madness.
...
[quote snipped]
...
What a stark-raving lunatic! Madness! Madness! Madness!
...
I am glad that we in the reality-based community do not associate ourselves with fringe journamalists like Robert Fisk. All those people who gave him degrees and awards must be feeling pretty foolish now.

Ad hominem, ad hominem, ad nauseam. But again, no attempt to answer any of the questions.

Does Allahpundit at Hot Air give us any answers?

Nope. Just a big quote, as if Fisk's words disproved themselves!

Proof at Say Anything weighs in with this:

Robert Fisk - Moonbat At Large!

No, seriously! This moonbat is at large! Wandering around, bumping into things, drooling on his keyboard and possibly crapping his nappies!
...
[quote snipped]
Lunatic?? Islamic terrorists kill three thousand of our citizens in an unproved attack on us for who we are, and Robert Fisk thinks that it’s “lunatic” to defend ourselves or strike back against those who attacked us and would gladly attack us again. Two guesses who the “lunatic” is in this scenario!
...
[another quote snipped]
He says, I am not a conspiracy theorist, then regurgitates the same old conspiratorial crap the rest of the moonbats do.

Proof hits the jackpot here for Freudian Slip of the year so far, with the phrase "an unproved attack". Presumably he meant to type "unprovoked". But that's a side issue: the sad fact is that you could read all these blogs again and again and again but you would never know:

Where has Fisk gone wrong?

Aside from the fact that Fisk himself is a nutter, a moonbat, wandering around, bumping into things, drooling on his keyboard and possibly crapping his nappies, what has any of this taught us? Nothing.

Where did Fisk go wrong?

I could quibble over minor issues but instead I will focus on the three points that seem most significant to me.

1] Fisk says the towers "collapsed". But they didn't. The towers disintegrated. If they had collapsed we would have seen huge slabs of concrete and long twisted steel columns. Instead we saw a huge cloud of dust -- and the structural steel was all broken apart. The central columns weren't left standing, nor did they fall over. "Collapse" means to fall down, or fall apart. The towers didn't fall apart except in the molecular sense of the word. Knowing what happened to the towers may be the key to the entire mystery; the first step on the path to this knowledge is the realization that the towers didn't collapse at all.

2] His next basic mistake is the failure to contemplate the possibility that the American military might be capable of lying. Thus he writes:

Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11.

The absence of logic here is overwhelming: because the American military tells little lies, that means it's not capable of telling a big one!

Surely the ability to lie with a straight face is never a reliable indicator of innocence.

3] His third and far more disturbing mistake is the failure to contemplate the possibility that the Bush administration might be capable of lying:

My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?

Here Fisk shows a fundamental lack of understanding. He mistakes the difference between Bush administration's words and deeds as incompetence. Unfortunately for him -- unfortunately for all of us -- the Bush administration has been running two different agendas ever since it took office: there's a public agenda (they say they're trying to make America safer while bringing democracy and stability to the Middle East) and there's a private agenda (seeking to control key parts of the Middle East, build bases there and exploit the natural resources, while sacrificing America's safety in the process). This may be Fisk's final argument, but it's by no means a clincher.

The evidence of the difference between the two agendas is everywhere: it amazes me that so few people -- including seasoned journalists -- can see it. As I wrote just yesterday:

If the United States truly wanted to provide security to Iraq, they wouldn't be fomenting "sectarian violence" and arming all sides. This is what you do if you're trying to accelerate a civil war.

The realities on the ground in Iraq are entirely out of synch with all the alleged justifications for this war, and the war now stands exposed as exactly what its opponents have always said it was -- mass murder and grand theft, a premeditated war crime of unimaginable scope and ferocity.

There' s truth, and there's politics, and never the twain shall meet, as they say. In all American administrations there have been significant differences between what they've said and what they've done. The remarkable thing about this administration is that their public pronouncements are so completely at odds with their actions. Quite often what they say is not only different from the truth, it's the exact opposite!

But of course! Of course they have to lie about what they're doing: their agenda is so evil that if they spoke of it openly, nobody -- not even the fools I have quoted above -- would support them.

I don't expect Robert Fisk to understand any of this, because he despises the internet, which just happens to be the only place such a frank analysis can be found. On the other hand, many other journalists who use the internet quite well are several steps behind Fisk on this issue.

In any case, if he can ever bring himself to think clearly about these three crucial points, Robert Fisk might someday begin to understand what happened on 9/11. And that would be a very good thing, because at the moment he sounds like a nutter.

[related reading]

Truth By Inversion

9/11 Op/Eds: One Great Big Stupid Lie After Another

Still In Denial: Bob Woodward's Modified Limited Hangout

Bush Hates America: US Troops Face 'A Circular Firing Squad' In Iraq

Bush Hates America: Iraqi Weapons Caches Are Still Open!

Guns and Ammo, Shalom and Hateful Lies: All Good For Business

Meet Bill Maniaci, Owner of Maccabee Arms Ltd:

Shalom from Maccabee Arms

Maccabee Arms specializes in the "Made In Israel" line of fine weapons produced by Israel Weapons Industries (IWI) (formerly Israel Military Industries, IMI) and in use by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). These include the world renown Desert Eagle, Jericho (Baby Eagle) and the Barak (SP-21).

We also sell firearms made by the other top manufacturers in the industry. In addition to new pistols, rifles, and shotguns, we carry a selection of pre-owned firearms that meet our highest standards. If the firearm that you want is available, we will find it and offer it to you at the best possible price.
...

Maccabee Arms Ltd. is a stocking firearms business and internet firearms dealer who strives to sell quality, name brand firearms at reasonable and affordable prices.

If the firearm that you want is out there, we will find it for you. If it is not in stock, we will locate it, new or used and make it available to you as long as it is lawful for you to purchase and possess it in your City, State, or Community. (It is the buyers’ responsibility to know what he or she may or may not purchase.)

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:

CAIR-MI Annual Fund-raising Banquet a Remarkable Success

MORE THAN 1,200 people -- Muslims and non-Muslims alike -- flocked to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Dearborn, MI for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) of Michigan’s annual fund-raising banquet, dubbed “One Nation Under God.” This year’s event featured critically acclaimed British author and journalist Robert Fisk as a keynote speaker, and Bill Gallagher, an Emmy Award-winning news reporter with Fox 2 Detroit News.
...

Fisk, a resident of Beirut, Lebanon for nearly 30 years and the Middle East correspondent for the UK’s The Independent, delivered a powerful and sometimes humorous address on the Middle East crisis, the injustices committed daily, and media bias. After discussing Iraq, Iran, and the divisions between Muslims, he turned to the U.S. and British administrations, Western interference and conspiracies in the Middle East.

“I tried to calculate for an article just how many Western soldiers were in the Islamic world today compared to the 12th century Crusades,” said Fisk. “There are 22 times more Western soldiers in the Islamic world today than Crusaders had in 1187,” he noted.

“I have said this equation before in Detroit: ‘the Americans must leave Iraq and the Americans will leave Iraq, and the Americans can’t leave Iraq.’ That is the equation that turns sand into blood,” Fisk warned.

As he recounted numerous astounding reports by such journalists as Thomas Friedman, Daniel Pipes and David Brooks, the crowd tried to stifle their laughter and gasps.

Fisk lampooned USA Today writer Ralph Peters, a retired U.S. Army officer, who wrote about why he supported the invasion: “I supported the removal of Saddam Hussain. I believed that Arabs deserved a chance to build a rule-of-law democracy in the Middle East. Based upon firsthand experience, I was convinced that the Middle East was so politically, socially, morally and intellectually stagnant that we had to risk intervention—or face generations of terrorism and tumult. I still believe that our removal of Hussain was a noble act.

“I only wish the administration had done it competently.”

“You see?” Fisk asked. “You see the white man’s burden that we are going to rescue all these guys…forget about regime change, weapons of mass destruction, or al-Qaeda.”

Fisk continued skewering Peters by quoting the writer, who first declared ”Only a military coup—which might come in the next few years—could hold the artificial country together.” Peters went on to say, “Yet, for all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab societies can’t support democracy as we know it. And people get the government they deserve.”

Shaking his head, Fisk said, “Yes, Yes...we are witnessing the collapse of a civilization, but it’s OK folks…we can frighten some more people with our failures in Iraq. Do you see what is happening?”

In his compelling conclusion, to thundering applause and a standing ovation, Fisk stated: “Ladies and gentlemen, you know, I was struck when I listened to Barack Obama (D-IL) when he told his supporters that America’s primary concern in the Middle East is the security of Israel. He was wrong!” exclaimed Fisk. “America’s primary concern in the Middle East must be the security of all who live there, including the Israelis; Muslims, and Christians, as well as Jews, Arabs as well as Israelis.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Fisk concluded, “democracy cannot be built on the sand of the desert. It can be built only if it is built upon justice; justice for all people of the Middle East.”

Bill Maniaci, Owner of Maccabee Arms Ltd, replied:

PROVIDING COMFORT AND SUPPORT TO THE ENEMY...YES, YOU ROBERT FISK

Subject: PROVIDING COMFORT AND SUPPORT TO THE ENEMY...YES, YOU ROBERT FISK
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 04:26:01 +0200
From: Maccabee Arms Ltd.
Reply-To: MaccabeeArms@Charter.net
Organization: Maccabee Arms Ltd. Reno, Nevada, U.S.
To: mail@robert-fisk.com

Re: http://www.wrmea.com/archives/July_2007/0707046b.html

MR. FISK,

Debating the issues revolving around the Islamo-Nazi war against Western Civilization with you would be a waste of time. However, I want you to know this;

* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE TRAITOR THAT YOU ARE TO THE UNITED STATES
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE ANTI-SEMITISM THAT YOU SPEW AND THE ANTI-SEMITE YOU ARE
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE ARABIST AND PRO ISLAMO-NAZI SLANT TO YOUR WRITINGS
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE ANTI AMERICAN AND ANTI ISRAEL PROPAGANDA YOU REGURGITATE
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE UNABASHED COMFORT AND SUPPORT YOU LEND TO OUR ENEMIES
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... YOUR LIABLE AGAINST THE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN IN OUR MILITARY SERVICES
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... YOUR UNMITIGATED CHUTZPAH BY CALLING YOURSELF A JOURNALIST
* YOU HAVE BEEN DULY RECOGNIZED FOR... THE CHARLATAN, BUFFOON, VULGAR NONDESCRIPT CRETIN, COLLABORATIONIST, FIFTH-COLUMNIST, AND QUISLING YOU ARE. YOU ARE MOTIVATED ONLY BY SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT AND YELLOW JOURNALISM. CERTAINLY THE PHRASE "JOURNALISTIC ETHIC" IS BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION. CONCEIT, EGOTISM, AND SOCIOPATHY ARE YOUR ETHOS.

-- Maccabee Arms Ltd. http://www.maccabeearms.com Bill Maniaci, Owner

Shalom to you too, Bill. That means "Peace", right?

And by the way, there's a difference between "liable" and "libel" ... but it doesn't matter, really ... because we're not all buffoons, and your credibility would be shot even if you could spell.

So Shalom and good riddance to you, Bill Maniaci, Vietnam vet and Israeli weapons dealer ... oops! I almost forgot -- Peace is Bad for Business when you're an arms dealer, isn't it? Well then let's scratch the "Shalom" and stick with the "Good Riddance"!

Still, it's no wonder Robert Fisk says he despises the internet.

It's an ignorant and offensive thing to say, and it shows that he doesn't read the right stuff, but I can still understand why he would say it.

Could the connection between hateful lies and good business acumen be any clearer?

They just keep telling all these vicious. murderous lies ... because it's good for business!.

Get your guns and ammo here. Get some Shalom too.

It's good for business.

It's A 'Slam-Dunk': Tenet Wasn't Lying To Bush About Iraq's WMD -- Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk has shredded the parting lies of Tony Blair in a very clever piece for The Independent.

Your cold scribbler finds special interest in Fisk's comment about George Tenet and his "slam-dunk":

Take George Tenet, the CIA Ernest Borgnine lookalike who sat behind Colin Powell when the US Secretary of State was uttering all those lies about weapons of mass destruction in February of 2003. It now turns out that George is mightily upset with the White House. He didn't refer to evidence of WMD as a "slam dunk", he says - a basketball phrase which I don't need to explain. He was talking about the ability of the US government to persuade the American people to go to war based on these lies. In other words, he wasn't lying to the American president. He was only lying to the American people.

That's beautiful. Sharpen the blades! Impeachment is far too good for these monsters!!

~~~

Robert Fisk spoke with the excellent Radio Sweden about Arabic influence in Swedish life in a program broadcast today; here's the mp3.

Phony War On Terror Demands Casualties -- And Gets Them

Robert Fisk's most recent article concerns Taner Akcam [photo],

the distinguished Turkish scholar at the University of Minnesota who, with immense courage, proved the facts of the Armenian genocide - the deliberate mass murder of up to a million and a half Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish authorities in 1915 - from Turkish documents and archives. His book A Shameful Act was published to great critical acclaim in Britain and the United States.

He is now, needless to say, being threatened with legal action in Turkey under the infamous Law 301 - which makes a crime of insulting "Turkishness"

and in addition his freedom to travel has been compromised, apparently because of false allegations made against him on the Internet.

Akcam was travelling to lecture in Montreal and took the Northwest Airlines flight from Minneapolis on 16 February this year. The Canadian immigration officer, Akcam says, was "courteous" - but promptly detained him at Montreal's Trudeau airport. Even odder, the Canadian immigration officer asked him why he needed to be detained. Akcam tells me he gave the man a brief history of the genocide and of the campaign of hatred against him in the US by Turkish groups "controlled by ... Turkish diplomats" who "spread propaganda stating that I am a member of a terrorist organisation".

All this went on for four hours while the immigration officer took notes and made phone calls to his bosses. Akcam was given a one-week visa and the Canadian officer showed him - at Akcam's insistence - a piece of paper which was the obvious reason for his temporary detention.

"I recognised the page at once," Akcam says. "The photo was a still from a 2005 documentary on the Armenian genocide... The still photo and the text beneath it comprised my biography in the English language edition of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which anyone in the world can modify at any time. For the last year ... my Wikipedia biography has been persistently vandalised by anonymous 'contributors' intent on labelling me as a terrorist. The same allegations has been repeatedly scrawled, like gangland graffiti, as 'customer reviews' of my books at Amazon."

This wasn't the first time Akcam's freedom of movement has been restricted, and apparently for the same reason:

Prior to his Canadian visit, two Turkish-American websites had been hinting that Akcam's "terrorist activities" should be of interest to American immigration authorities. And sure enough, Akcam was detained yet again - for another hour - by US Homeland Security officers at Montreal airport before boarding his flight at Montreal for Minnesota two days later.

On this occasion, he says that the American officer - US Homeland Security operates at the Canadian airport - gave him a warning: "Mr Akcam, if you don't retain an attorney and correct this issue, every entry and exit from the country is going to be problematic. We recommend that you do not travel in the meantime and that you try to get this information removed from your customs dossier."

Fisk summarizes the incident:

So let's get this clear. US and Canadian officials now appear to be detaining the innocent on the grounds of hate postings on the internet. And it is the innocent - guilty until proved otherwise, I suppose - who must now pay lawyers to protect them from Homeland Security and the internet. But as Akcam says, there is nothing he can do.

Several bloggers have picked up this story, and one in particular has done a good job filling in some of the missing details. But they have all concentrated on the unreliability of Wikipedia and the general problem of how to tell whether something you find on the net is credible. And none -- not even Fisk himself -- has made the point that seems most obvious to me.

The so-called War on Terror is a fraud, a massive crime against all humanity "justified" by a web of carefully crafted and expensively disseminated lies. And like any web of lies, it cannot sustain itself without ever-increasing fiction. Thus we have phony terror plots leading to spectacularly hyped arrests (which may not even lead to charges, let alone a trial) and entrapment going on all over the place. But that still doesn't generate enough publicity to keep the illusion going under its own power.

Early in the phony war, the phony warriors needed suspects so urgently that they were buying them. But they can't keep doing that, so now they're using any other available pretext to try to meet their quotas.

And we have clearly reached a point where it doesn't even matter anymore whether somebody is a terrorist or not. If his name -- or some similar name -- is on the government's watch-list, that's good enough to justify ruining his trip -- or his life.

And meanwhile -- as if the utter phoniness of the bogus war needed any further emphasis -- an actual terrorist has been set free.

What does all this mean? It goes something like this:

Imagine if France arrested Osama bin Laden, and refused to extradite him to the United States on the grounds he would be tortured. Then imagine they refused to charge him with terrorism, but only with an immigration violation, and released him on bail. Now you'll have some idea of the situation with Luis Posada Carriles, with one exception - the United States does torture its prisoners, while Venezuela does not.

If you're not yet sick of the hypocrisy, you can read more about it here.

Birthday Tribute To A Dead Or Living Legend -- Osama bin Laden Turns Fifty

You know you've arrived when even your "enemies" celebrate your birthday. And the IHT has obliged with a 50th birthday celebration for Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden:

Osama bin Laden was born 50 years ago Saturday, and although he has not been heard from for months, his friends in the Taliban are certain that he is not dead.

"He is alive, I am 100 percent sure," a Taliban spokesman, Hayatullah Khan, said in an interview. He said senior leaders were in touch with bin Laden, reinforcing a widely held view that he is hiding near the rugged Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Khan said special prayers were offered by Taliban fighters in camps in Afghanistan to mark bin Laden's birth on March 10, 1957, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabian.

"We prayed that Allah may give him 200 years to live," Khan said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location. "When we woke up today, we offered collective and long prayers for him because he is a great mujahid."

Oh yeah, man, he's still alive, even though nobody has seen him in a long time, man! Oh yeah, man, he's still alive and he's gonna live to be 200. Oh yeah, man, I heard it on my sattelite phone! Oh yeah, man. Because you'll believe anything!

It's not just the International Herald Tribune. Even Democracy Now! did a big hairy deal on Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden, in which Amy Goodman interviewed the famously-unknown so-good-as-to-be-unpublishable truth-telling journalist Robert Fisk in honor of Emmanuel Goldstein's Osama bin Laden's 50th birthday. Fisk, the intrepid truth-teller, said he hadn't seen Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden since 1997. Oh yeah, man!

But

The United States fears that Al Qaeda, terrorism network he founded is rebuilding its base in Pakistani tribal lands and has forged ties with affiliates in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The key words of that sentence come right at the beginning. The United States fears! And it doesn't really matter whether Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden is alive or dead; and it doesn't really matter whether Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden founded al-Q'aeda or whether it was the CIA who did that, and it doesn't really matter whether its true what they say, that al-Q'aeda doesn't exist; and in fact it doesn't really matter whether any of the things we fear are real or not, because the basic reality now -- in the so-called "post-9/11 world" -- the world supposedly brought upon us by Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden -- is that reality doesn't matter anymore -- at all! And fear is everything.

We waste hundreds of billions of dollars that we don't even have and we waste thousands of young lives that should have been put to better purposes -- and we do it in order to kill hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people (whom we can now call terrorists, if we like) -- and to consign their nation's most precious natural resource to foreigners of our choosing!

And it's all because we're afraid. And we're afraid because we were attacked by Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden! Oh yeah, man!

Bin Laden is revered by some, reviled by others, as the symbolic leader of a global jihad against the United States, an effort that had its seeds in the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Um ... unless it has its seeds in the arming and financing of Muslim guerrilas by a succession of American administrations beginning with Jimmy Carter, who was taking advice from Zbignew Brezhinsky. They recognized a chance to help an enemy of an enemy and they did so. Take that, Soviets! The enemies of our enemy were armed to the hilt by Ronald Reagan and betrayed by George Herbert Walker Bush. Oops! All of a sudden we had a bit of a problem!

Or did we? Nafeez Ahmed, who has been doing serious research on the topic for years, has come to the conclusion that al-Q'aeda is a covert operations instrument of western intelligence agencies.

And other credible evidence suggests that al-Q'aeda doesn't even exist. So it could be -- especially when it comes to North American operations -- that al-Q'aeda is more often a scapegoat than a villian.

In other words, perhaps Emmanuel Goldstein's Osama bin Laden's "terrorism network" is not quite the problem it's sometimes made out to be:

It resulted in the attacks on the United States of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.

That's the official story, but unless somebody can convince me that Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden scheduled all the war games and put the explosives in the towers, I'm not very likely to believe much that appears in the mainstream media about Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden and his so-called Holy War against America.

Should I?

The Taliban were ousted from power by U.S. forces in late 2001 after their leaders refused to surrender bin Laden. At first, President George W. Bush sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan, scouring the deserts and mountains for bin Laden, offered a $25 million reward and said he should be captured "dead or alive."

But after the effort failed and Bush turned his sights on Iraq, he said capturing bin Laden was "not important," and eventually the CIA even disbanded its unit that tried to find him.

Which speaks for itself, I think.

And so, without further ado ... [drum roll, please!] ...

On behalf of all our friends and protectors, who keep us safe from the scary scary fears they just happen to provide, a rousing Happy 50th Birthday to Emmanuel Goldstein Osama bin Laden, wherever you may be buried.

Love and Kisses,
The M-I-C

Nafeez Ahmed Speaks on The Secret History of International Terrorism

Radio 4 All presents a very interesting lecture from Nafeez Ahmed:

It's called "INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM: THE SECRET HISTORY" and it's described this way:

Nafeez Ahmed presents an erudite summary of US/UK and western-backed terrorist intrigue in the service of Empire, from WWII to the present. Recorded by London Sound Posse at the Islamic Centre of England, Maida Vale, London on Sunday 12 November 2006. (MP3 here)

A deep and thought-provoking lecture from the author of:

• "The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry"
• "Behind the War on Terror"
• "The War on Truth"
• "The War on Freedom"

(h/t: IndyMediaUK | link here)

A few key quotes from Nafeez, as far as I understand his presentation:

If you take my work together, I've looked at al-Q'aeda in Azerbijan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Algeria, Libya, the Phillipines, and Chechnya. If you look at that regionally, you're looking at Central Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, North Africa, the Asia-Pacific and the Caucasus. So we're talking about the bulk of the world's major strategic regions.

At every major strategic point in the world, Western power is symbiotically conjoined to al-Q'aeda, either financially, or militarily, or through intelligence connections. And it's not a conspiracy theory; it's absolutely hugely well-documented. I don't know what you might think of conspiracy theory, but my interest is in understanding facts, and how they work and interpreting them...

One example, just to give you an idea of the salience of this kind of research: is anyone aware of David Shayler? Are you familiar with his whole story with Libya? How many people are familiar with the Libya story? ...

Just to give you a brief lowdown, David Shayler worked for MI5 ... the thrust of what he said was that MI6 had a deep undercover operative in an al-Q'aeda cell in Libya and ... they had paid this cell a hundred thousand pounds to carry out this operation to assassinate Colonel Qadaffi, and the whole thing just went completely wrong. They actually ended up blowing up a civilian car and killing civilians ...

What were they doing, plying al-Q'aeda with money to carry out a covert operation, if al-Q'aeda was, in fact, an enemy? ... I think the question of al-Q'aeda's relationship to the establishment is one that needs further research and further clarification, but that, to me, is just a very interesting example of how the official narrative doesn't quite make sense of the actual facts.

And it gets worse -- I mean, the examples that I've discussed, if you look for example at Algeria, where you have a state which is fighting a civil war against a bunch of Islamic terrorists called ... the GIA ... and ... GSPC ... in 1991 there were democratic elections, which the Islamic party won, and the military moved in, really with tacit support from France, from the United States, from Britain, cancelled the elections, and since then the whole country has plunged into civil war. And then you had the emergence of these terrorist groups which are described as al-Q'aeda affiliates, there's supposed to be interpenetration of mujahadeen and weapons, and funds, so on and so forth.

... The Algerian government is saying that it's fighting this war against these terrorists and they're saying that these terrorists are killing civilians, hundreds and thousands of them, and carrying out terrorist attacks in Algeria ... also ... in France, the 1995 Paris Metro bombings ...

Now the problem with this story is: there's a spate of very interesting reports in here, and also in France, in 1997 and 98, Robert Fisk in The Independent, John Sweeney in The Observer, in particular come to mind. But they actually got information from ... former Algerian officers, from the Algerian security services, who basically said that they had been working as part of a very clandestine operation which had penetrated these apparent Islamic terrorist groups and would actually carry out terrorist attacks using these groups, in order to justify the militarization of state policy -- essentially to justify cracking down on political resistance.

So this was a very, very different picture. And in fact this picture has been corroborated more and more, especially in French. There's not a huge amount of literature in English, but in French, there's a burgeoning literature...
...
You cannot any longer look on al-Q'aeda as being merely an enemy. On the contrary, al-Q'aeda has two particular roles, it seems to me...

Its existence, however it does exist -- it's a questionable issue -- legitimizes the wholesale militarization of Western society, and is also subject when possible to Western control and manipulation in order to secure very specific strategic and economic interests...

Throughout the post-Cold War period, al-Q'aeda has actually functioned as a vehicle of Western covert operations, in the service of what I would argue are powerful corporate interests, particularly related to the monopolization of global energy resources.

There's more but I'm not going to type it all. Click here and listen to Nafeez tell it.

VIDEO : Robert Fisk: The conquest of the Middle East

Yes, I know we're not supposed to say "conquest" ... we're not even supposed to think it! We're supposed to think we're doing something good for the people of the Middle East ... We're supposed to think we're doing something good, and pure, and noble, not just for the Middle East but for the entire world.

There's just one problem with this thing that we're supposed to think, of course.

It's not true.

Not even close.

Part 1

Part 2

Expect Less ...

... and you won't be disappointed!

The busiest part of my year starts now. It runs for the next 10 days or so. I will blog as often as I can, but that may not amount to very much.

I have done some serious work on the sidebar lately. Please explore it if you have time to do so. There's plenty of good reading there, from the likes of Manuel Valenzuela, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk, Robert Koehler, and of course Ernest Partridge and his friends at The Crisis Papers.

You may feel compelled to wish me luck and/or to point me at stories that are too good to miss; if you wish to do any of these things, please leave a comment for me on this thread. Lowly and nearly frozen indeed...

Expect normal service to resume around the middle of May.

Is Lebanon Doomed?

In a previous post I asked "Is Syria Doomed?". I still don't know the answer; I think we may all have to wait and see. But now there may be reason to ask the same question about Lebanon.

Robert Fisk asks it in different words in an article published Monday, called "Is Lebanon walking into another nightmare?". Here's a short excerpt:

LEBANON CONFRONTS a nightmare today. As the Syrian army begins its withdrawal from the country this morning, after mounting pressure from President George Bush - whose anger at the Syrians has been provoked by the insurgency against American troops in Iraq - there are growing signs that the Syrian retreat is reopening the sectarian divisions of the 1975-1990 Lebanese civil war.

The first Syrian units are expected to cross the Lebanese-Syrian border at Masnaa before midday and their military redeployment should be completed by Wednesday.

To the outside world, this may seem a victory devoutly to be wished: just two weeks after the murder of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri - a prominent opponent of the Syrian presence in Lebanon - the army of Damascus is pulling out of the country it has dominated for 29 long years. At last, free elections might be held in Lebanon, further proof that - thanks to Mr Bush - democracy is breaking out across the Arab world. Iraq held elections, Saudi Arabia held local elections, President Hosni Mubarak promises a contended election for the presidency of Egypt. So why shouldn't Lebanon be happy?

Have we forgotten 150,000 dead? Have we forgotten the Western hostages? Have we forgotten the 241 Americans who died in the suicide bombing of 23 October 1983? This democracy, if it comes, will be drenched with blood - but the blood will be that of the Lebanese who live here, not that of the foreigners who wish to bestow freedom upon them.

Unfortunately, I believe, we have forgotten many of these things. But the Lebanese people have a much longer memory. Here's Robert Fisk again:

Alas, this is a dark corner of the former Ottoman empire - whose First World War defeat allowed the French to create Lebanon out of part of Syria - which rests precariously upon an understanding between its Christian, Sunni, Shia and Druze inhabitants. All factions came together to mourn Hariri. But now, at night, most - though by no means all - the demonstrators in Martyrs' Square who have demanded a Syrian withdrawal are Christian Maronites. And yesterday, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the chairman of the Hizbollah Shia guerrilla movement, a loyal if somewhat unwilling Syrian ally which drove the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2000, called for a massive demonstration close to Martyrs' Square on Tuesday - to support the "unity and independence" of Lebanon, but also to thank the Syrians for their "protection" of Lebanon in bygone years. Nasrallah invited Christians and every other religious group to join their demonstration. But most of those present are bound to be Shias - who, like their co-religionists in Iraq - are the largest community in the country.

And what was the result of this call for a demonstration? Whoa! It's been massive!

On Tuesday, as reported in this article,

Hundreds of thousands of pro-Syrian demonstrators have gathered in Beirut to denounce what they see as Western interference in Lebanon.

The gathering, called by the Shia Muslim group Hizb Allah and its allies, highlights deep divisions over Damascus's role in the country.

The demonstrators chanted pro-Syria solgans a mere 300m from where opposition protesters held daily rallies to demand a complete Syrian withdrawal form Lebanon.

And now, just one day later, Umar Karami, who resigned as prime minister just nine days ago, has been called back to his former post by the Lebanese parliament. According to this piece from Aljazeera,

A majority of Lebanon's parliamentarians have nominated anew Umar Karami to form a new government, political sources said.

A total of 69 deputies from the 128-member chamber on Wednesday chose Karami, a favourite of Syria, in consultations with President Emile Lahud, the sources said in Beirut.

The president, also close to Damascus, was now bound to appoint Karami, who resigned last week under popular and opposition pressure, as prime minister-designate.

This turn of events is so surprising, so momentous, that even CNN is reporting it. Of course, in order to get to their coverage, you have to scroll down past enormous headlines about the Michael Jackson trial.

But it's better than nothing. Even though CNN is seemingly spellbound by the world-shaking testimony at the trial of the one-time pop singer, we are still getting some World News at CNN, including this:

[D]emonstrations shifted Wednesday to the Syrian capital, Damascus, in support of President Bashar Assad, whose government is coming under international pressure to stop interfering in Lebanon's affairs.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of the city, singing national songs and proclaiming their loyalty to Assad, The Associated Press reported.

"Nobody can get Syria out from Lebanon's heart and mind," a banner read. "No for antagonist pressures against Syria," read another.

The protest follows Tuesday's mass pro-Syrian rally in Beirut, organized by the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah.

All of a sudden things in the Middle East are not quite as simple as they seemed last week, when Syrian troops were set to leave Lebanon and "democracy" was "on the march". But what becomes of the power vacuum that will be left in their wake? And has anyone really thought about this other than the Lebanese themselves?

Apparently the foreign policy wonks in Washington have given scant thought to it. At least it seems that way from where I sit. Robert Parry's recent piece, "Neocon Amorality", which we discussed in this recent post, called the neocons for selecting tidbits of information from the chaotic barrage which forms the daily news of the world, using these for their own political advantage and ignoring everything else, including the well-being of the people over whose bodies this "democracy" is allegedly "marching".

To a seasoned veteran such as Robert Fisk, though, none of this may be surprising. As he wrote Monday,

[Y]et again, Lebanon risks becoming a battlefield for the wars of non- Lebanese.

For 30 years, America has tolerated - even supported - Syria's military presence in Lebanon. In 1976, both the Israelis and the Americans wanted Syrian troops in Lebanon - because they would be able to "control" the 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon - but now Mr Bush's real concern is Syria's supposed support for the insurgency in Iraq.

The irony is extraordinary: 140,000 American troops occupy Iraq - we shall leave the Israeli occupation forces in Palestinian lands out of this equation - while their President demands the withdrawal of 14,000 Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Democracy indeed!

As your lowly and nearly frozen Winter Patriot has mentioned once or twice lately, I don't have a crystal ball or inside sources. My point here is not to make predictions or even to attempt to explain things. I just want to point you to a few interesting sources which seem fairly reliable, and allow you to read and think and make up your own minds.

As for today's song, I'm afraid I can't resist. This one was written by "The Corporation", but of course it was made famous by a one-time pop singer and his brothers.

The Love You Save

Stop you'd better save me
Stop, stop, stop you'd better save me

When we played tag in grade school, you wanted to be it
But chasin' boys was just a fad, you crossed your heart you'd quit
When we grew up you traded, your promise for my ring
Now just like back in grade school, you're doing that same old thing

Better stop the love you save may be your own
Darlin' look both ways before you cross me
You're headin' for a danger zone

I'm the one who loves you, I'm the one you need
Those other guys will put you down as soon as they succeed
They'll ruin your reputation, they'll label you a flirt
The way they talk about you, they'll turn your name to dirt.

Isaac said he kissed you beneath the apple tree
When Benjie held your hand he felt electricity
When Alexander called you he said he rang your chimes
Christopher discovered you're way ahead of your time

Hold on, hold on, hold on
"S" is for "Save It"
"T" is for "Take It Slow"
"O" is for "Oh no"
"P" is for "Please, please don't go"
The love you save may be your own
Someday you may be all alone
Stop it baby oo, you'd better

Stop the love you save may be your own
Darlin' take it slow or someday you'll be all alone
I'm the one who loves you, I'm the one you need
Those other guys will put you down as soon as they succeed
They'll ruin your reputation, they'll label you a flirt
The way they talk about you, they'll turn your name to dirt.

Better stop the love you save may be your own
Darlin' look both ways before you cross me
You're headin' for a danger zone.

Better stop the love you save may be your own
Darlin' look both ways before you cross me
You're headin' for a danger zone.


Headin' for a danger zone indeed. Or so it appears. Stay tuned.