By David McNeill in Tokyo
Friday, 13 May 2011
The Independent Asia
Uranium fuel in at least one of the six reactors at Fukushima has melted, the operator of the crippled nuclear plant has said. The admission effectively torpedoes a plan to flood the overheating fuel with water and bring a quick end to the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said water levels have fallen at least one metre below fuel rods inside Reactor 1 and that melted fuel has dropped to the bottom of the reactor's containment vessel. Engineers are working inside the reactor building for the first time since the crisis began when a hydrogen explosion blew off its roof following the huge quake and tsunami on 11 March.
Tepco general manager Junichi Matsumoto told reporters in Tokyo that the discovery means its timetable to entomb the containment reactor vessel in water may have to be scrapped. "We can't deny the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to leak," Mr Matsumoto said.
Observers fear that Reactor 3, which contains MOX plutonium fuel, may have also suffered a meltdown, and the situation inside Reactor 2 is still shrouded in mystery.
"The situation is clearly far more serious than previously reported, and could escalate rapidly if the lava melts through the reactor vessel," warned Jan Beránek of Greenpeace.
Fukushima - One Step Forward and Four Steps Back as Each Unit Challenged by New Problems from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
China: The New Bin Laden
By Paul Craig Roberts
May 11, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- George Orwell, the pen name by which Eric Blair is known, had the gift of prophecy, or else blind luck. In 1949 in his novel, 1984, he described the Amerika of today and, I fear, also his native Great Britain, which is no longer great and follows Washington, licking the jackboot and submitting to Washington’s hegemony over England and Europe and exhausting itself financially and morally in order to support Amerikan hegemony over the rest of the world.
In Orwell’s prophecy, Big Brother’s government rules over unquestioning people, incapable of independent thought, who are constantly spied upon. In 1949 there was no Internet, Facebook, twitter, GPS, etc. Big Brother’s spying was done through cameras and microphones in public areas, as in England today, and through television equipped with surveillance devices in homes. As everyone thought what the government intended for them to think, it was easy to identify the few who had suspicions.
Fear and war were used to keep everyone in line, but not even Orwell anticipated Homeland Security feeling up the genitals of air travelers and shopping center customers. Every day in people’s lives, there came over the TV the Two Minutes of Hate. An image of Emmanuel Goldstein, a propaganda creation of the Ministry of Truth, who is designated as Oceania’s Number One Enemy, appeared on the screen. Goldstein was the non-existent “enemy of the state” whose non-existent organization, “The Brotherhood,” was Oceania’s terrorist enemy. The Goldstein Threat justified the “Homeland Security” that violated all known Rights of Englishmen and kept Oceania’s subjects “safe.”
Since 9/11, with some diversions into Sheik Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, the two rivals to bin Laden as the “Mastermind of 9/11,” Osama bin Laden has played the 21st century roll of Emmanuel Goldstein. Now that the Obama Regime has announced the murder of the modern-day Goldstein, a new demon must be constructed before Oceania’s wars run out of justifications.
Hillary Clinton, the low-grade moron who is US Secretary of State, is busy at work making China the new enemy of Oceania. China is Amerika’s largest creditor, but this did not inhibit the idiot Hilary from, this week in front of high Chinese officials, denouncing China for “human rights violations” and for the absence of democracy.
While Hilary was enjoying her rant and displaying unspeakable Amerkan hypocrisy, Homeland Security thugs had organized local police and sheriffs in a small town that is the home of Western Illinois University and set upon peaceful students who were enjoying their annual street party. There was no rioting, no property damage, but the riot police or Homeland Security SWAT teams showed up with sound cannons, gassed the students and beat them.
Indeed, if anyone pays any attention to what is happening in Amerika today, a militarized police and Homeland Security are destroying constitutional rights of peaceful assembly, protest, and free speech.
For practical purposes, the U.S. Constitution no longer exists. The police can beat, taser, abuse, and falsely arrest American citizens and experience no adverse consequences.
The executive branch of the federal government, to whom we used to look to protect us from abuses at the state and local level, acquired the right under the Bush regime to ignore both US and international law, along with the US Constitution and the constitutional powers of Congress and the judiciary. As long as there is a “state of war,” such as the open-ended “war on terror,” the executive branch is higher than the law and is unaccountable to law. Amerika is not a democracy, but a country ruled by an executive branch Caesar.
Hillary, of course, like the rest of the U.S. Government, is scared by the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that China will be the most powerful economy in five years.
Just as the military/security complex pressured President John F. Kennedy to start a war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis while the US still had the nuclear advantage, Hillary is now moving China into the role of Emmanuel Goldstein. Hate has to be mobilized, before Washington can move the ignorant patriotic masses to war.
How can Oceania continue if the declared enemy, Osama bin Laden, is dead. Big Brother must immediately invent another “enemy of the people.”
But Hillary, being a total idiot, has chosen a country that has other than military weapons. While the Amerikans support “dissidents” in China, who are sufficiently stupid to believe that democracy exists in Amerika, the insulted Chinese government sits on $2 trillion in US dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped, thus destroying the US dollar’s exchange value and the dollar as reserve currency, the main source of US power.
Hillary, in an unprecedented act of hypocrisy, denounced China for “human rights violations.” This from a country that has violated the human rights of millions of victims in our own time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons dotted all over the planet, in US courts of law, and in the arrests and seizure of documents of American war protestors. There is no worst violator of human rights on the planet than the US government, and the world knows it.
The hubris and arrogance of US policymakers, and the lies that they inculcate in the American public, have exposed Washington to war with the most populous country on earth, a country that has a military alliance with Russia, which has sufficient nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on earth. The scared idiots in Washington are desperate to set up China as the new Osama bin Laden, the figure of two minutes of hate every news hour, so that the World’s Only Superpower can take out the Chinese before they surpass the US as the Number One Power.
No country on earth has a less responsible government and a less accountable government than the Americans. However, Americans will defend their own oppression, and that of the world, to the bitter end.
______________________________________________
Americans Are Living In 1984
By Paul Craig Roberts
May 09, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?
So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.
Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.
For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.
Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We--the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats--were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.
No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.
No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.
If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?
The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many.
Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.
Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.
Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”
Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.
Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.
If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong. The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?
The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”
I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire--as did a number of historians.
The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.
This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living in George Orwell’s 1984.
For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”
A people as gullible as Americans have no future.
May 11, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- George Orwell, the pen name by which Eric Blair is known, had the gift of prophecy, or else blind luck. In 1949 in his novel, 1984, he described the Amerika of today and, I fear, also his native Great Britain, which is no longer great and follows Washington, licking the jackboot and submitting to Washington’s hegemony over England and Europe and exhausting itself financially and morally in order to support Amerikan hegemony over the rest of the world.
In Orwell’s prophecy, Big Brother’s government rules over unquestioning people, incapable of independent thought, who are constantly spied upon. In 1949 there was no Internet, Facebook, twitter, GPS, etc. Big Brother’s spying was done through cameras and microphones in public areas, as in England today, and through television equipped with surveillance devices in homes. As everyone thought what the government intended for them to think, it was easy to identify the few who had suspicions.
Fear and war were used to keep everyone in line, but not even Orwell anticipated Homeland Security feeling up the genitals of air travelers and shopping center customers. Every day in people’s lives, there came over the TV the Two Minutes of Hate. An image of Emmanuel Goldstein, a propaganda creation of the Ministry of Truth, who is designated as Oceania’s Number One Enemy, appeared on the screen. Goldstein was the non-existent “enemy of the state” whose non-existent organization, “The Brotherhood,” was Oceania’s terrorist enemy. The Goldstein Threat justified the “Homeland Security” that violated all known Rights of Englishmen and kept Oceania’s subjects “safe.”
Since 9/11, with some diversions into Sheik Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, the two rivals to bin Laden as the “Mastermind of 9/11,” Osama bin Laden has played the 21st century roll of Emmanuel Goldstein. Now that the Obama Regime has announced the murder of the modern-day Goldstein, a new demon must be constructed before Oceania’s wars run out of justifications.
Hillary Clinton, the low-grade moron who is US Secretary of State, is busy at work making China the new enemy of Oceania. China is Amerika’s largest creditor, but this did not inhibit the idiot Hilary from, this week in front of high Chinese officials, denouncing China for “human rights violations” and for the absence of democracy.
While Hilary was enjoying her rant and displaying unspeakable Amerkan hypocrisy, Homeland Security thugs had organized local police and sheriffs in a small town that is the home of Western Illinois University and set upon peaceful students who were enjoying their annual street party. There was no rioting, no property damage, but the riot police or Homeland Security SWAT teams showed up with sound cannons, gassed the students and beat them.
Indeed, if anyone pays any attention to what is happening in Amerika today, a militarized police and Homeland Security are destroying constitutional rights of peaceful assembly, protest, and free speech.
For practical purposes, the U.S. Constitution no longer exists. The police can beat, taser, abuse, and falsely arrest American citizens and experience no adverse consequences.
The executive branch of the federal government, to whom we used to look to protect us from abuses at the state and local level, acquired the right under the Bush regime to ignore both US and international law, along with the US Constitution and the constitutional powers of Congress and the judiciary. As long as there is a “state of war,” such as the open-ended “war on terror,” the executive branch is higher than the law and is unaccountable to law. Amerika is not a democracy, but a country ruled by an executive branch Caesar.
Hillary, of course, like the rest of the U.S. Government, is scared by the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that China will be the most powerful economy in five years.
Just as the military/security complex pressured President John F. Kennedy to start a war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis while the US still had the nuclear advantage, Hillary is now moving China into the role of Emmanuel Goldstein. Hate has to be mobilized, before Washington can move the ignorant patriotic masses to war.
How can Oceania continue if the declared enemy, Osama bin Laden, is dead. Big Brother must immediately invent another “enemy of the people.”
But Hillary, being a total idiot, has chosen a country that has other than military weapons. While the Amerikans support “dissidents” in China, who are sufficiently stupid to believe that democracy exists in Amerika, the insulted Chinese government sits on $2 trillion in US dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped, thus destroying the US dollar’s exchange value and the dollar as reserve currency, the main source of US power.
Hillary, in an unprecedented act of hypocrisy, denounced China for “human rights violations.” This from a country that has violated the human rights of millions of victims in our own time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons dotted all over the planet, in US courts of law, and in the arrests and seizure of documents of American war protestors. There is no worst violator of human rights on the planet than the US government, and the world knows it.
The hubris and arrogance of US policymakers, and the lies that they inculcate in the American public, have exposed Washington to war with the most populous country on earth, a country that has a military alliance with Russia, which has sufficient nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on earth. The scared idiots in Washington are desperate to set up China as the new Osama bin Laden, the figure of two minutes of hate every news hour, so that the World’s Only Superpower can take out the Chinese before they surpass the US as the Number One Power.
No country on earth has a less responsible government and a less accountable government than the Americans. However, Americans will defend their own oppression, and that of the world, to the bitter end.
______________________________________________
Americans Are Living In 1984
By Paul Craig Roberts
May 09, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?
So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.
Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.
For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.
Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We--the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats--were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.
No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.
No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.
If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?
The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many.
Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.
Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.
Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”
Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.
Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.
If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong. The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?
The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”
I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire--as did a number of historians.
The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.
This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living in George Orwell’s 1984.
For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”
A people as gullible as Americans have no future.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Osama Bin Laden, 1957 – 2001
By: Nicholas Kollerstrom
James Fetzer blog
Friday, May 6, 2011
In Orwell’s novel 1984, there is a figure called Emmanuel Goldstein who functions as an all-purpose enemy, even though we gather that he may actually have died some time ago. Osama Bin Laden has been used in a similar manner by the Powers that Be, by a process of identity theft during the last days of his life. In reality there have been no sightings or reports of him since 2001. I here argue that he died on or around December 16th, 2001, in consequence of the intensive bombing of his then-residence the Tora Bora caves of eastern Afghanistan; and that he had no involvement in the events of 9/11. Read it all...
James Fetzer blog
Friday, May 6, 2011
In Orwell’s novel 1984, there is a figure called Emmanuel Goldstein who functions as an all-purpose enemy, even though we gather that he may actually have died some time ago. Osama Bin Laden has been used in a similar manner by the Powers that Be, by a process of identity theft during the last days of his life. In reality there have been no sightings or reports of him since 2001. I here argue that he died on or around December 16th, 2001, in consequence of the intensive bombing of his then-residence the Tora Bora caves of eastern Afghanistan; and that he had no involvement in the events of 9/11. Read it all...
Jesse Ventura Questions Obama’s Narrative Of Bin Laden Raid
“Maybe they had some guy there that looked like Bin Laden and did him in,” former Governor tells Alex Jones Show
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Former Navy SEAL and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has questioned Barack Obama’s official narrative regarding the raid on Osama Bin Laden, telling the Alex Jones Show of his suspicions that Osama died years ago, and expressing disbelief that the man seen flicking between TV channels in the video released by the White House Saturday was actually Bin Laden.
“I’ve been lied to so much I question everything the government tells me,” Ventura said, adding that the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman cover-ups made him suspect the official version of last Sunday’s events.
“I don’t know what to believe, that’s the disturbing thing about being a United States citizen,” said Ventura, noting how the media has for the most part simply regurgitated everything the White House claimed about the raid.
Ventura echoed the sentiments of a number of intelligence professionals and heads of state who publicly expressed their contention that Bin Laden had been dead for many years before Obama’s announcement of his death in a live speech on national television.
“This guy was supposedly on a dialysis machine way back 10 years ago, how does he survive that long if he was on a dialysis machine?” asked Ventura.
Referring to the footage released Saturday by the White House which claims to show Bin Laden flicking through television channels, Ventura said that he laughed when he saw the clip as there was no way of knowing if it actually was Osama. Residents of Abbottabad share Ventura’s doubts, with one telling a BBC reporter this week that the man in the video was actually his neighbor and the owner of the compound, a man called Akhbar Han.
Indeed, President Obama himself told 60 Minutes on Sunday that before the raid the White House was only 55/45 sure that the man inside the compound was Osama Bin Laden, fearing he could just have been a “prince from Dubai” instead.
“What they really did was shoot an old man sitting in his bed,” Ventura speculated, although being a former Navy SEAL himself, Ventura was keen to emphasize that the SEALS involved in the operation would have been told that the man they killed was Bin Laden and were not in on any kind of scam.
The former Governor also questioned why Bin Laden was not captured and interrogated even after it emerged that he had been unarmed.
Noting how Bin Laden would have been a treasure trove of information regarding Al-Qaeda, Ventura stated, “I certainly would capture him, why wouldn’t you attempt to capture this guy….it seems stupid to just have executed him without trying to capture him.”
Ventura also questioned the manner in which Bin Laden’s body was hastily dumped into the sea, noting that this was not in accordance with Islamic burial practices as the White House had claimed.
As we have documented, there are a myriad of inconsistencies surrounding the alleged raid on the Bin Laden compound, and the Obama administration’s constant flip-flopping of the official narrative has only increased suspicion surrounding the political motivations behind the whole episode.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Former Navy SEAL and Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura has questioned Barack Obama’s official narrative regarding the raid on Osama Bin Laden, telling the Alex Jones Show of his suspicions that Osama died years ago, and expressing disbelief that the man seen flicking between TV channels in the video released by the White House Saturday was actually Bin Laden.
“I’ve been lied to so much I question everything the government tells me,” Ventura said, adding that the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman cover-ups made him suspect the official version of last Sunday’s events.
“I don’t know what to believe, that’s the disturbing thing about being a United States citizen,” said Ventura, noting how the media has for the most part simply regurgitated everything the White House claimed about the raid.
Ventura echoed the sentiments of a number of intelligence professionals and heads of state who publicly expressed their contention that Bin Laden had been dead for many years before Obama’s announcement of his death in a live speech on national television.
“This guy was supposedly on a dialysis machine way back 10 years ago, how does he survive that long if he was on a dialysis machine?” asked Ventura.
Referring to the footage released Saturday by the White House which claims to show Bin Laden flicking through television channels, Ventura said that he laughed when he saw the clip as there was no way of knowing if it actually was Osama. Residents of Abbottabad share Ventura’s doubts, with one telling a BBC reporter this week that the man in the video was actually his neighbor and the owner of the compound, a man called Akhbar Han.
Indeed, President Obama himself told 60 Minutes on Sunday that before the raid the White House was only 55/45 sure that the man inside the compound was Osama Bin Laden, fearing he could just have been a “prince from Dubai” instead.
“What they really did was shoot an old man sitting in his bed,” Ventura speculated, although being a former Navy SEAL himself, Ventura was keen to emphasize that the SEALS involved in the operation would have been told that the man they killed was Bin Laden and were not in on any kind of scam.
The former Governor also questioned why Bin Laden was not captured and interrogated even after it emerged that he had been unarmed.
Noting how Bin Laden would have been a treasure trove of information regarding Al-Qaeda, Ventura stated, “I certainly would capture him, why wouldn’t you attempt to capture this guy….it seems stupid to just have executed him without trying to capture him.”
Ventura also questioned the manner in which Bin Laden’s body was hastily dumped into the sea, noting that this was not in accordance with Islamic burial practices as the White House had claimed.
As we have documented, there are a myriad of inconsistencies surrounding the alleged raid on the Bin Laden compound, and the Obama administration’s constant flip-flopping of the official narrative has only increased suspicion surrounding the political motivations behind the whole episode.
Problems for recent bin Laden Death (Given his Medical History)
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
There are a number of seemingly inexplicable problems which need to be surmounted if it is to be credibly established that Osama bin Laden was only very recently killed. These arise after a careful consideration of his alleged medical history.
First, Bin Laden purportedly had renal failure in 2000-2001—he reportedly received medical treatment for a urological problem at the American Hospital in Dubai in July of 2001. His physician at the American Hospital in July 2001 was, reportedly, Dr Terry Callaway. The CIA station chief who met bin Laden in the hospital in July 2001 was, reportedly, Larry Mitchell. According to a CBS report by Dan Rather and Barry Petersen, 28 Jan 2002, Osama bin Laden was in a Pakistani Military hospital in Rawalpindi on 10th September 2001, the day before the Attacks on America. While none of these reports prove that bin Laden had dialysis dependent renal failure in 2001, the report in Le figaro that "according to authorized sources, bin Laden had mobile dialysis equipment shipped to his hideout in Kandahar in the first part of 2000" are strongly suggestive of it. It would be much better of course, if more precise medical record information could be obtained.
In any case, the important thing to remember is that patients with dialysis dependent chronic renal failure have an extremely high 10 year mortality rate if they do not obtain a kidney transplant. There is no evidence that bin Laden ever had a kidney transplant. Based on that alone, if bin Laden was dialysis dependent or was suffering from severe kidney failure, he would be extremely unlikely to have survived till 2011 given his need to remain in hiding.
Second, according to Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations Steve R. Pieczenik MD, Bin Laden suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome. The mortality rate for a 40 year old man in whom a diagnosis of symptomatic Marfan’s Syndrome is made is 100% within 10 years of the initial diagnosis if not treated with aortic root replacement surgery. The mortality rate for asymptomatic individuals of that age group in whom a diagnosis of Marfan’s Syndrome is made is dependent on multiple factors including; the size of the aortic root at the time of diagnosis, presence or absence of significant aortic regurgitation, whether the patient is treated with beta and or calcium channel blocker medication from the time of diagnosis and the aggressiveness of medical follow-up delivered to name just a few. Ideally, it would be best if medical records could be located proving that a diagnosis of Marfan's Syndrome had actually been made. Perhaps Dr. Pieczenik has more information in that regard.
Third, Bin Laden allegedly had diabetes and a foot injury that might have been related to the development of a chronic diabetic foot ulcer secondary to diabetic induced arterial vascular insufficiency. Over an extended period of time, this could have required amputation particularly if he lacked access to aggressive medical treatment for same. If not, he could easily have died of gangrene and generalized sepsis if the necrotic extremity was not amputated in a timely manner, all of which would have been difficult for a “man on the run.” Currently however, I am not sure how solid the data is that a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus was made in Osama bin Laden.
Fourth, Bin Laden purportedly was injured during the battle of Tora Bora. Subsequent videos showed an alleged bin Laden who appeared to have a totally paralyzed left arm--it has always been assumed that this was the biological/original bin Laden. The anatomic pattern suggested a severe shrapnel injury of his left brachial plexus similar to the trauma that former Senator Bob Dole sustained in WWII. Dole never recovered useful function of the affected upper extremity. Moreover, it underwent atrophy and marked deformity over time. Bin Laden would likely have had a similar prognosis over the subsequent 10 year period, if he remained alive. The most recent alleged bin Laden videos show a man with normal upper extremities bilaterally.
In summary, if the admittedly abbreviated medical history of Osama bin Laden is correct that he suffered from renal failure, diabetes, Marfan's Syndrome and was seriously wounded in the battle of Tora Bora, it is very unlikely that he survived until recently in the absence of superb medical and surgical treatment. If he had access to state of the art health care (as might be the case if he had been protected by a nation-state), he would be more likely to have survived but still would have faced considerable mortality risk. When this is combined with all of the other evidence strongly suggesting that bin Laden died in December of 2001, any other outcome seems exceedingly improbable.
Relevant Medical References:
1) Baumgartner F, Omari B, Arnell T. Surgery of the aorta in Marfan’s Syndrome. Contemp Surg. 1998; 53:158–166.
2) Finkbohner R, Johnston D, Crawford ES, Coselli J, Milewicz M. Marfan syndrome: long-term survival and complications after aortic aneurysm repair. Circulation. 1995;91:728–733.
3) Gott VL, et al. The Marfan syndrome and the cardiovascular surgeon. Eur J Cardio-thoracic Surg. 1996; 10:149–158.
4) Gott VL, Greene PS, Alejo DE. Replacement of aortic root in patients with Marfan’s syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1999; 340:1307–1313.
5) Leggett ME, Unger TA, O’Sullivan CK. Aortic root complications in Marfan’s syndrome: identification of a lower risk group. Heart. 1996;75:389–395.
6) Shores J, Berger KR, Murphy EA, Peyritz RE. Progression of aortic dilatation and the benefit of long-term beta adrenergic blockade in Marfan’s syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1994;330:1335–1341.
7) Silverman DI, Burton KJ, Gray J. Life expectancy in the Marfan syndrome. Am J Cardiol. 1995;75: 157–160.
8) Murdoch JL, Walker BA, Halpern BL, Kuzma JW, McKusick VA. Life expectancy and causes of death in the Marfan syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1972; 286:
There are a number of seemingly inexplicable problems which need to be surmounted if it is to be credibly established that Osama bin Laden was only very recently killed. These arise after a careful consideration of his alleged medical history.
First, Bin Laden purportedly had renal failure in 2000-2001—he reportedly received medical treatment for a urological problem at the American Hospital in Dubai in July of 2001. His physician at the American Hospital in July 2001 was, reportedly, Dr Terry Callaway. The CIA station chief who met bin Laden in the hospital in July 2001 was, reportedly, Larry Mitchell. According to a CBS report by Dan Rather and Barry Petersen, 28 Jan 2002, Osama bin Laden was in a Pakistani Military hospital in Rawalpindi on 10th September 2001, the day before the Attacks on America. While none of these reports prove that bin Laden had dialysis dependent renal failure in 2001, the report in Le figaro that "according to authorized sources, bin Laden had mobile dialysis equipment shipped to his hideout in Kandahar in the first part of 2000" are strongly suggestive of it. It would be much better of course, if more precise medical record information could be obtained.
In any case, the important thing to remember is that patients with dialysis dependent chronic renal failure have an extremely high 10 year mortality rate if they do not obtain a kidney transplant. There is no evidence that bin Laden ever had a kidney transplant. Based on that alone, if bin Laden was dialysis dependent or was suffering from severe kidney failure, he would be extremely unlikely to have survived till 2011 given his need to remain in hiding.
Second, according to Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations Steve R. Pieczenik MD, Bin Laden suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome. The mortality rate for a 40 year old man in whom a diagnosis of symptomatic Marfan’s Syndrome is made is 100% within 10 years of the initial diagnosis if not treated with aortic root replacement surgery. The mortality rate for asymptomatic individuals of that age group in whom a diagnosis of Marfan’s Syndrome is made is dependent on multiple factors including; the size of the aortic root at the time of diagnosis, presence or absence of significant aortic regurgitation, whether the patient is treated with beta and or calcium channel blocker medication from the time of diagnosis and the aggressiveness of medical follow-up delivered to name just a few. Ideally, it would be best if medical records could be located proving that a diagnosis of Marfan's Syndrome had actually been made. Perhaps Dr. Pieczenik has more information in that regard.
Third, Bin Laden allegedly had diabetes and a foot injury that might have been related to the development of a chronic diabetic foot ulcer secondary to diabetic induced arterial vascular insufficiency. Over an extended period of time, this could have required amputation particularly if he lacked access to aggressive medical treatment for same. If not, he could easily have died of gangrene and generalized sepsis if the necrotic extremity was not amputated in a timely manner, all of which would have been difficult for a “man on the run.” Currently however, I am not sure how solid the data is that a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus was made in Osama bin Laden.
Fourth, Bin Laden purportedly was injured during the battle of Tora Bora. Subsequent videos showed an alleged bin Laden who appeared to have a totally paralyzed left arm--it has always been assumed that this was the biological/original bin Laden. The anatomic pattern suggested a severe shrapnel injury of his left brachial plexus similar to the trauma that former Senator Bob Dole sustained in WWII. Dole never recovered useful function of the affected upper extremity. Moreover, it underwent atrophy and marked deformity over time. Bin Laden would likely have had a similar prognosis over the subsequent 10 year period, if he remained alive. The most recent alleged bin Laden videos show a man with normal upper extremities bilaterally.
In summary, if the admittedly abbreviated medical history of Osama bin Laden is correct that he suffered from renal failure, diabetes, Marfan's Syndrome and was seriously wounded in the battle of Tora Bora, it is very unlikely that he survived until recently in the absence of superb medical and surgical treatment. If he had access to state of the art health care (as might be the case if he had been protected by a nation-state), he would be more likely to have survived but still would have faced considerable mortality risk. When this is combined with all of the other evidence strongly suggesting that bin Laden died in December of 2001, any other outcome seems exceedingly improbable.
Relevant Medical References:
1) Baumgartner F, Omari B, Arnell T. Surgery of the aorta in Marfan’s Syndrome. Contemp Surg. 1998; 53:158–166.
2) Finkbohner R, Johnston D, Crawford ES, Coselli J, Milewicz M. Marfan syndrome: long-term survival and complications after aortic aneurysm repair. Circulation. 1995;91:728–733.
3) Gott VL, et al. The Marfan syndrome and the cardiovascular surgeon. Eur J Cardio-thoracic Surg. 1996; 10:149–158.
4) Gott VL, Greene PS, Alejo DE. Replacement of aortic root in patients with Marfan’s syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1999; 340:1307–1313.
5) Leggett ME, Unger TA, O’Sullivan CK. Aortic root complications in Marfan’s syndrome: identification of a lower risk group. Heart. 1996;75:389–395.
6) Shores J, Berger KR, Murphy EA, Peyritz RE. Progression of aortic dilatation and the benefit of long-term beta adrenergic blockade in Marfan’s syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1994;330:1335–1341.
7) Silverman DI, Burton KJ, Gray J. Life expectancy in the Marfan syndrome. Am J Cardiol. 1995;75: 157–160.
8) Murdoch JL, Walker BA, Halpern BL, Kuzma JW, McKusick VA. Life expectancy and causes of death in the Marfan syndrome. N Engl J Med. 1972; 286:
Bin Laden Reality TV a Mass Brainwashing PsyOp
Seeking to Establish Fake Treasure Trove of Terabytes that will be Used to Target US Adversaries Worldwide; Growing Momentum Towards False Flag Attack to be Blamed on Pakistan via al Qaeda
Webster G. Tarpley
WBAI Evening News
May 8, 2011
Listen to Audiofile
Webster G. Tarpley
WBAI Evening News
May 8, 2011
Listen to Audiofile
Monday, May 9, 2011
10 Facts That Prove The Bin Laden Fable Is a Contrived Hoax
Every indication clearly points to last Sunday's raid being a manufactured ploy to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration
Paul Joseph Watson
Propaganda Matrix
Monday, May 9, 2011
Merely a week after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is literally a deluge of evidence that clearly indicates the whole episode has been manufactured for political gain and to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration so that they can be easily manipulated in the run up to the 2012 election. Here are ten facts that prove the Bin Laden fable is a contrived hoax....
1) Before last Sunday's raid, every intelligence analyst, geopolitical commentator or head of state worth their salt was on record as stating that Osama Bin Laden was already dead, and that he probably died many years ago, from veteran CIA officer Robert Baer, to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to former FBI head of counterterrorism Dale Watson. In addition, back in 2002 Alex Jones was told directly by two separate high level sources that Bin Laden was already dead and that his death would be announced at the most politically opportune moment. Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under five different Presidents, serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Nixon, Ford and Carter, told the Alex Jones Show last week that Bin Laden died of marfan syndrome shortly after he was visited by CIA physicians at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001.
2) The official narrative of how the raid unfolded completely collapsed within days of its announcement. First there had been a 40 minute shootout, then there was no shootout and just one man was armed, first Bin Laden was armed then he was not, first Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield and then he did not. First the compound was described as a "$1 million dollar mansion" then it turned out to be a rubbish-strewn dilapidated compound that was worth less than a quarter of that. Almost every single aspect of the official narrative has changed since Obama first described the raid last Sunday as the White House struggles to keep its story straight.
3) The alleged body of Bin Laden was hastily dumped in the sea to prevent any proper procedure of identification. The White House claimed this was in accordance with normal Islamic burial rituals, however numerous Muslim scholars all over the globe disputed this claim, pointing out that Muslims can only be buried at sea if they die at sea. While the White House claimed that Bin Laden's death on May 1st was proven by DNA and facial recognition evidence, such proof was never released for public scrutiny and the Obama administration refused to release photos of Bin Laden's dead body, suggesting a cover-up.
4) Despite the fact that the White House released "situation room" photos which purported to show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the rest of Obama's security staff watching the raid which killed Bin Laden live, it was later admitted by CIA director Leon Panetta that Obama could not have seen the raid because the live feed was cut off before the Navy SEALS entered the compound. The photos were described by many as having “historical significance,” forming a “captivating” record of Obama’s greatest success and being the “defining moment” of his Presidency. One image showed Hillary Clinton with her hand over her mouth as if witnessing an anxious or crucial moment in the raid. Media reports at the time claimed that the photos represented the moment when “The leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.” However, the photos were staged as a PR stunt for public consumption, nobody in the photos ever saw Bin Laden killed live, nor did they see the Navy SEALS even enter the compound.
5) As even mainstream journalists began to cast suspicion on the official narrative behind the raid, the media reported that Al-Qaeda itself had confirmed every detail of Obama's address to the nation. However, the conduit for such a claim was in fact an organization called SITE, which is a notorious Pentagon propaganda front run by the daughter of an Israeli spy that has been caught on numerous occasions releasing fake cartoonish "Al-Qaeda" videos at the most politically expedient times for both the Bush and Obama administrations. The SITE organization is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and yet the corporate media instantly swallowed and regurgitated the claim that "Al-Qaeda" had confirmed the official story after SITE directed them to an anonymous posting on an Islamic website.
6) Almost every single neighbor that lived near the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad that was interviewed by news reporters said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there. Since the town is a staging ground for the Pakistani military, which has a training facility situated virtually a stone's throw away from the alleged Bin Laden compound, residents were required to show ID when they moved into the area. Pakistani troops and anti-terror police in the town refused to confirm that Bin Laden had lived in the house. Barack Obama himself admitted to 60 Minutes that the White House was only 55/45 sure that Osama lived there before the raid and this uncertainty prompted concerns that the US Navy SEALS sent in could have targeted a "prince from Dubai" or some other individual that was not Bin Laden.
7) The videos released by the White House this past weekend which purport to show Osama Bin Laden making Al-Qaeda tapes in October-November 2010 are almost identical to footage first released by Pentagon front group SITE nearly four years ago. Remember, a May 2010 Washington Post story reported how the CIA had admitted to making fake Bin Laden videos. Despite the White House's insistence that the footage of Bin Laden is recent, he looks younger and healthier than tapes released almost a decade ago, having apparently dyed his beard black. A separate video that purports to show Bin Laden in his compound flicking through satellite TV channels depicts a much older looking man with a gray beard. Analysts have pointed out that the man has different shaped ears to real Osama pictures from back in 2001. A doctor has also pointed out the fact that the man in the tapes released Saturday has no problem moving his left arm, whereas video from 2001 clearly illustrates how Bin Laden was unable to move his left upper extremity because of a permanent injury probably related to damage to the peripheral nerves. Why the cameraman would film the back of Bin Laden's head as he watches television is also dubious. Residents in the town of Abbottabad claim the man in the "television" video is not Osama, with one individual claiming that the man labeled by the White House as being Bin Laden is actually his neighbor, a man named Akhbar Han.
8) Despite the fact that numerous neo-cons came out on the days after the alleged raid to erroneously assert that torturing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay led to the discovery of Bin Laden, Osama himself, the supposed world's most wanted terrorist and a treasure trove of terror information, despite the fact that he was unarmed, was not taken in for questioning, he was instantly shot in the head according to the official narrative.
9) The US government has been caught on several occasions within the past decade staging military operations for the purposes of generating contrived, pro-war sentiment amongst the American public. Both the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch and the death of Pat Tillman were complete fables, scripted and staged at complete odds with the truth and unleashed on Americans as part of a psychological warfare offensive to elicit support for the war on terror, almost identical to what we’re seeing now with the Bin Laden sideshow. Given the fact that the US government has been caught red-handed scripting tales of pure fiction in order to justify the war on terror, notably in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, why on earth should we believe them now?
10) Despite the fact that Obama announced last Sunday on live television that the world was now "safer" because Bin Laden was dead, his administration, with the aid of the fearmongering mass media, instantly seized upon the situation to terrify Americans into being afraid of imminent "reprisal" terror attacks inside the United States, later claiming that Bin Laden had formulated an "aspirational rather than operational" plan to derail US trains that travel over 500 mph, although no trains in the US can actually travel at such speeds. This led "terror experts" to salivate over how TSA agents were now needed in shopping malls to stick their hands down Americans' pants, while New York Senator Chuckie Schumer called for the no fly list to be expanded to trains and subways.
Obama hurried to ground zero for a photo op as he desperately tried to use the Bin Laden hoax to whip up phony patriotism as a means of boosting his flagging poll numbers. Others, like Democrat Bill Richardson, exploited the situation to try and push through policies that had no connection to Bin Laden or terrorism at all, like cap and trade. The haste with which the whole Bin Laden fable was exploited for political points scoring and as a psychological ploy to return Americans to a post-9/11 state of intellectual castration was painfully transparent, (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) clearly suggesting that the entire farce was planned well in advance to achieve precisely those goals in the run up to 2012.
Paul Joseph Watson
Propaganda Matrix
Monday, May 9, 2011
Merely a week after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is literally a deluge of evidence that clearly indicates the whole episode has been manufactured for political gain and to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration so that they can be easily manipulated in the run up to the 2012 election. Here are ten facts that prove the Bin Laden fable is a contrived hoax....
1) Before last Sunday's raid, every intelligence analyst, geopolitical commentator or head of state worth their salt was on record as stating that Osama Bin Laden was already dead, and that he probably died many years ago, from veteran CIA officer Robert Baer, to former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to former FBI head of counterterrorism Dale Watson. In addition, back in 2002 Alex Jones was told directly by two separate high level sources that Bin Laden was already dead and that his death would be announced at the most politically opportune moment. Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under five different Presidents, serving as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under the Nixon, Ford and Carter, told the Alex Jones Show last week that Bin Laden died of marfan syndrome shortly after he was visited by CIA physicians at the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001.
2) The official narrative of how the raid unfolded completely collapsed within days of its announcement. First there had been a 40 minute shootout, then there was no shootout and just one man was armed, first Bin Laden was armed then he was not, first Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield and then he did not. First the compound was described as a "$1 million dollar mansion" then it turned out to be a rubbish-strewn dilapidated compound that was worth less than a quarter of that. Almost every single aspect of the official narrative has changed since Obama first described the raid last Sunday as the White House struggles to keep its story straight.
3) The alleged body of Bin Laden was hastily dumped in the sea to prevent any proper procedure of identification. The White House claimed this was in accordance with normal Islamic burial rituals, however numerous Muslim scholars all over the globe disputed this claim, pointing out that Muslims can only be buried at sea if they die at sea. While the White House claimed that Bin Laden's death on May 1st was proven by DNA and facial recognition evidence, such proof was never released for public scrutiny and the Obama administration refused to release photos of Bin Laden's dead body, suggesting a cover-up.
4) Despite the fact that the White House released "situation room" photos which purported to show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the rest of Obama's security staff watching the raid which killed Bin Laden live, it was later admitted by CIA director Leon Panetta that Obama could not have seen the raid because the live feed was cut off before the Navy SEALS entered the compound. The photos were described by many as having “historical significance,” forming a “captivating” record of Obama’s greatest success and being the “defining moment” of his Presidency. One image showed Hillary Clinton with her hand over her mouth as if witnessing an anxious or crucial moment in the raid. Media reports at the time claimed that the photos represented the moment when “The leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.” However, the photos were staged as a PR stunt for public consumption, nobody in the photos ever saw Bin Laden killed live, nor did they see the Navy SEALS even enter the compound.
5) As even mainstream journalists began to cast suspicion on the official narrative behind the raid, the media reported that Al-Qaeda itself had confirmed every detail of Obama's address to the nation. However, the conduit for such a claim was in fact an organization called SITE, which is a notorious Pentagon propaganda front run by the daughter of an Israeli spy that has been caught on numerous occasions releasing fake cartoonish "Al-Qaeda" videos at the most politically expedient times for both the Bush and Obama administrations. The SITE organization is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and yet the corporate media instantly swallowed and regurgitated the claim that "Al-Qaeda" had confirmed the official story after SITE directed them to an anonymous posting on an Islamic website.
6) Almost every single neighbor that lived near the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad that was interviewed by news reporters said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there. Since the town is a staging ground for the Pakistani military, which has a training facility situated virtually a stone's throw away from the alleged Bin Laden compound, residents were required to show ID when they moved into the area. Pakistani troops and anti-terror police in the town refused to confirm that Bin Laden had lived in the house. Barack Obama himself admitted to 60 Minutes that the White House was only 55/45 sure that Osama lived there before the raid and this uncertainty prompted concerns that the US Navy SEALS sent in could have targeted a "prince from Dubai" or some other individual that was not Bin Laden.
7) The videos released by the White House this past weekend which purport to show Osama Bin Laden making Al-Qaeda tapes in October-November 2010 are almost identical to footage first released by Pentagon front group SITE nearly four years ago. Remember, a May 2010 Washington Post story reported how the CIA had admitted to making fake Bin Laden videos. Despite the White House's insistence that the footage of Bin Laden is recent, he looks younger and healthier than tapes released almost a decade ago, having apparently dyed his beard black. A separate video that purports to show Bin Laden in his compound flicking through satellite TV channels depicts a much older looking man with a gray beard. Analysts have pointed out that the man has different shaped ears to real Osama pictures from back in 2001. A doctor has also pointed out the fact that the man in the tapes released Saturday has no problem moving his left arm, whereas video from 2001 clearly illustrates how Bin Laden was unable to move his left upper extremity because of a permanent injury probably related to damage to the peripheral nerves. Why the cameraman would film the back of Bin Laden's head as he watches television is also dubious. Residents in the town of Abbottabad claim the man in the "television" video is not Osama, with one individual claiming that the man labeled by the White House as being Bin Laden is actually his neighbor, a man named Akhbar Han.
8) Despite the fact that numerous neo-cons came out on the days after the alleged raid to erroneously assert that torturing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay led to the discovery of Bin Laden, Osama himself, the supposed world's most wanted terrorist and a treasure trove of terror information, despite the fact that he was unarmed, was not taken in for questioning, he was instantly shot in the head according to the official narrative.
9) The US government has been caught on several occasions within the past decade staging military operations for the purposes of generating contrived, pro-war sentiment amongst the American public. Both the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch and the death of Pat Tillman were complete fables, scripted and staged at complete odds with the truth and unleashed on Americans as part of a psychological warfare offensive to elicit support for the war on terror, almost identical to what we’re seeing now with the Bin Laden sideshow. Given the fact that the US government has been caught red-handed scripting tales of pure fiction in order to justify the war on terror, notably in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, why on earth should we believe them now?
10) Despite the fact that Obama announced last Sunday on live television that the world was now "safer" because Bin Laden was dead, his administration, with the aid of the fearmongering mass media, instantly seized upon the situation to terrify Americans into being afraid of imminent "reprisal" terror attacks inside the United States, later claiming that Bin Laden had formulated an "aspirational rather than operational" plan to derail US trains that travel over 500 mph, although no trains in the US can actually travel at such speeds. This led "terror experts" to salivate over how TSA agents were now needed in shopping malls to stick their hands down Americans' pants, while New York Senator Chuckie Schumer called for the no fly list to be expanded to trains and subways.
Obama hurried to ground zero for a photo op as he desperately tried to use the Bin Laden hoax to whip up phony patriotism as a means of boosting his flagging poll numbers. Others, like Democrat Bill Richardson, exploited the situation to try and push through policies that had no connection to Bin Laden or terrorism at all, like cap and trade. The haste with which the whole Bin Laden fable was exploited for political points scoring and as a psychological ploy to return Americans to a post-9/11 state of intellectual castration was painfully transparent, (Editor's bold emphasis throughout) clearly suggesting that the entire farce was planned well in advance to achieve precisely those goals in the run up to 2012.
Alex Jones Addresses Fake bin Laden Tapes
Corbett: 'Osama Bin Laden a CIA asset'
See this as well.
Good Morning America learns that Bin Laden is CIA
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Anti-War Activist Cyndi Sheehan Doubts bin Laden Death Claim
Sheehan Responds to Obama Comments about to be Aired on 60 Minutes
Alleged New bin Laden Videos Fraught with Problems
Alleged New bin Laden Video, Surprisingly Shows Normal Left Arm
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
In the fall of 2001 a video appeared of Osama bin Laden that depicted a man who appeared unable to move his left upper extremity. At the time it was suggested that he had experienced a wound to his left shoulder, presumably injuring his left brachial plexus (multiple peripheral nerves which pass into the left upper extremity in very close proximity transiting the left shoulder region).
If this actually occurred, it was no doubt due to shrapnel (many small metallic pieces of ammunition which result from the breakup of a ballistic or frangible type bullet(s) as it disintegrates). Depending upon the precise nature of the injury to the peripheral nerves, the motor deficit of the entire left upper extremity would likely be permanent especially if the injury was severe and affected all "3" main peripheral nerves that control motor movement of the upper extremity.
Interestingly, a review of the alleged new bin Laden video in which he is depicted in a sitting position while watching television show him moving his left upper extremity in what appears to be a normal fashion. While not impossible medically, it would be unlikely that bin Laden would be able to move his left upper extremity in such a normal fashion not to mention that his documented severe degree of renal failure in 2000 and 2001 would strongly suggest that he died in December 2001.
Had the alleged bin Laden in the most recently released video demonstrated either a total paralysis or partial paresis of his left upper extremity, it would have been more believable.
____________________________________________
Bin Laden Home Videos Released ... Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001?
Washingtonsblog
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The Pentagon has released "home made videos" by Bin Laden, supposedly seized from the Pakistani compound in which he was killed:
In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago. Specifically, this is what Bin Laden looked like in December 2001.
Bin Laden was pretty ill by December 2001. As CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen - who met Bin Laden and studied him and his operation for several years - told CNN in 2002:
He's aged enormously between '97 and October of last year.
This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he's really, by December he's looking pretty terrible. But by December, of course, that tape that was aired then, he's barely moving the left side of his body. So he's clearly got diabetes. He has low blood pressure. He's got a wound in his foot. He's apparently got dialysis ... for kidney problems.
I mean, this is a man who has a number of health problems, apart from the fact that anybody running around the Afghan mountains is not going to be in great shape.
Indeed, the oldest - and second-largest - French newspaper claims that Bin Laden was in a hospital for kidney failure two months before 9/11. As the Guardian notes:
Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.
The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.
Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department.
Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years.
According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.
And CBS news reported that Bin Laden was ill on September 10th, being treated in a Pakistan hospital with kidney dialysis:
In addition, it is rumored that Bin Laden had Marfans Syndrome - a disorder of the connective tissue, which usually shortens the life span (Abraham Lincoln had Marfans).
As Salon noted in November 2001:
Judging by photos and the FBI's physical records, Osama bin Laden could be a candidate for the diagnosis. He is said to be between 6 foot 4 inches and 6 foot 6, which is apparently unusual for his family. He is thin, bony and has little muscle; he weighs only 160 pounds. And he uses a cane -- possibly the result of connective tissue or back problems. Other information about the leader of al-Qaida suggests he may have a heart condition. His facial structure also resembles that of people with Marfans.
"He is Marfanoid," says Dr. Richard Devereux, a clinician who treats patients with the illness at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. "He seems to have long fingers and long arms. His head appears to be elongated and his face narrow ... It's certainly conceivable that he has the Marfans syndrome and could be evaluated for it."
Though people have long speculated about bin Laden having Marfans, federal officials won't answer questions about his health. "We don't discuss the medical conditions of our enemy commanders," says Maj. Jay Steuck, a Defense Department spokesman. And a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman says, "We don't do unclassified medical summaries."
Yossef Bodansky, staff director of the House Task Force on Terrorism, told the New York Post: "We are getting a lot of reports and rumors. By all accounts, bin Laden is not a healthy man and is under a lot of stress."
David K. Schenker, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees that bin Laden's size is atypical for his surroundings. "I lived in the Middle East, and I never ran into anyone that tall," he says.
Should bin Laden have Marfans syndrome, the stress of cave-hopping and trying to outrun Allied cruise missiles could prove deadly. "People with the disease are told not to engage in heavy exercise," says Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy at Tulane University. "If Osama bin Laden has Marfans, he is in danger of sudden rupture of the aorta and sudden death."
The guy in the newly-released videos looks healthier than Bin Laden actually looked 9 1/2 years ago, even though he sustained injury in Tora Bora, was on the run for a while, and then was holed up inside a house for years.
In 2010, the FBI released an "age progressed" graphic interpretation of what Bin laden would look like today.
That Bin Laden looks better in the new video than in the age progressed image in 2010 ... and much better than he actually looked in 2001.
Am I saying that it's not Bin Laden?
Not necessarily, although the CIA has previously admitted that it made fake Bin Laden videos.
But if it's Bin Laden, it's from a long, long time ago.
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
In the fall of 2001 a video appeared of Osama bin Laden that depicted a man who appeared unable to move his left upper extremity. At the time it was suggested that he had experienced a wound to his left shoulder, presumably injuring his left brachial plexus (multiple peripheral nerves which pass into the left upper extremity in very close proximity transiting the left shoulder region).
If this actually occurred, it was no doubt due to shrapnel (many small metallic pieces of ammunition which result from the breakup of a ballistic or frangible type bullet(s) as it disintegrates). Depending upon the precise nature of the injury to the peripheral nerves, the motor deficit of the entire left upper extremity would likely be permanent especially if the injury was severe and affected all "3" main peripheral nerves that control motor movement of the upper extremity.
Interestingly, a review of the alleged new bin Laden video in which he is depicted in a sitting position while watching television show him moving his left upper extremity in what appears to be a normal fashion. While not impossible medically, it would be unlikely that bin Laden would be able to move his left upper extremity in such a normal fashion not to mention that his documented severe degree of renal failure in 2000 and 2001 would strongly suggest that he died in December 2001.
Had the alleged bin Laden in the most recently released video demonstrated either a total paralysis or partial paresis of his left upper extremity, it would have been more believable.
____________________________________________
Bin Laden Home Videos Released ... Why Does the Terrorist Kingpin Look Better Than He Did in 2001?
Washingtonsblog
Saturday, May 7, 2011
The Pentagon has released "home made videos" by Bin Laden, supposedly seized from the Pakistani compound in which he was killed:
In the newly-release videos, Bin Laden looks better than he did years ago. Specifically, this is what Bin Laden looked like in December 2001.
Bin Laden was pretty ill by December 2001. As CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen - who met Bin Laden and studied him and his operation for several years - told CNN in 2002:
He's aged enormously between '97 and October of last year.
This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he's really, by December he's looking pretty terrible. But by December, of course, that tape that was aired then, he's barely moving the left side of his body. So he's clearly got diabetes. He has low blood pressure. He's got a wound in his foot. He's apparently got dialysis ... for kidney problems.
I mean, this is a man who has a number of health problems, apart from the fact that anybody running around the Afghan mountains is not going to be in great shape.
Indeed, the oldest - and second-largest - French newspaper claims that Bin Laden was in a hospital for kidney failure two months before 9/11. As the Guardian notes:
Two months before September 11 Osama bin Laden flew to Dubai for 10 days for treatment at the American hospital, where he was visited by the local CIA agent, according to the French newspaper Le Figaro.
The disclosures are known to come from French intelligence which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.
Bin Laden is reported to have arrived in Dubai on July 4 from Quetta in Pakistan with his own personal doctor, nurse and four bodyguards, to be treated in the urology department.
Bin Laden has often been reported to be in poor health. Some accounts claim that he is suffering from Hepatitis C, and can expect to live for only two more years.
According to Le Figaro, last year he ordered a mobile dialysis machine to be delivered to his base at Kandahar in Afghanistan.
And CBS news reported that Bin Laden was ill on September 10th, being treated in a Pakistan hospital with kidney dialysis:
In addition, it is rumored that Bin Laden had Marfans Syndrome - a disorder of the connective tissue, which usually shortens the life span (Abraham Lincoln had Marfans).
As Salon noted in November 2001:
Judging by photos and the FBI's physical records, Osama bin Laden could be a candidate for the diagnosis. He is said to be between 6 foot 4 inches and 6 foot 6, which is apparently unusual for his family. He is thin, bony and has little muscle; he weighs only 160 pounds. And he uses a cane -- possibly the result of connective tissue or back problems. Other information about the leader of al-Qaida suggests he may have a heart condition. His facial structure also resembles that of people with Marfans.
"He is Marfanoid," says Dr. Richard Devereux, a clinician who treats patients with the illness at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. "He seems to have long fingers and long arms. His head appears to be elongated and his face narrow ... It's certainly conceivable that he has the Marfans syndrome and could be evaluated for it."
Though people have long speculated about bin Laden having Marfans, federal officials won't answer questions about his health. "We don't discuss the medical conditions of our enemy commanders," says Maj. Jay Steuck, a Defense Department spokesman. And a Central Intelligence Agency spokesman says, "We don't do unclassified medical summaries."
Yossef Bodansky, staff director of the House Task Force on Terrorism, told the New York Post: "We are getting a lot of reports and rumors. By all accounts, bin Laden is not a healthy man and is under a lot of stress."
David K. Schenker, a research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agrees that bin Laden's size is atypical for his surroundings. "I lived in the Middle East, and I never ran into anyone that tall," he says.
Should bin Laden have Marfans syndrome, the stress of cave-hopping and trying to outrun Allied cruise missiles could prove deadly. "People with the disease are told not to engage in heavy exercise," says Dr. Darwin Prockop, director of the Center for Gene Therapy at Tulane University. "If Osama bin Laden has Marfans, he is in danger of sudden rupture of the aorta and sudden death."
The guy in the newly-released videos looks healthier than Bin Laden actually looked 9 1/2 years ago, even though he sustained injury in Tora Bora, was on the run for a while, and then was holed up inside a house for years.
In 2010, the FBI released an "age progressed" graphic interpretation of what Bin laden would look like today.
That Bin Laden looks better in the new video than in the age progressed image in 2010 ... and much better than he actually looked in 2001.
Am I saying that it's not Bin Laden?
Not necessarily, although the CIA has previously admitted that it made fake Bin Laden videos.
But if it's Bin Laden, it's from a long, long time ago.
Former Pakistani ISI Head Says bin Laden Died Years Ago
False Flags: An American Tradition
By: Stephen Lendman
May 07, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Wikipedia defines false or black flags as "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities."
They're "big lies," defined by Merriam-Webster as "deliberate gross distortion(s) of the truth used especially as a propaganda tactic."
America's decade from September 11, 2001 to May 1, 2011 was punctuated by the (big) lie of our time and (big) lie of the moment.
Put another way, the official stories are falsified, myths, widely believed fantasies contrary to reality.
In his exhaustive research and writings, David Ray Griffin provided convincing evidence that 9/11 was an inside job and that bin Laden died of natural causes in mid-December 2001.
The former spawned a decade of overt and covert "war on terror" lawlessness at home and abroad. Policies and events following the second have yet to unfold, but expect little at best to be positive.
Past US false flags provided pretexts for militarism, wars, occupations, domestic repression, and national security state extremism, antithetical to democratically free and open societies. Allegedly removing America's "Enemy Number One," in fact, may intensify, not diminish, Washington's scheme for unchallengeable global dominance. More on him below.
With or without bin Laden, bogymen threats are plentiful. Since WW II alone, America's had numerous ones, including communists, Al Qaeda, WMDs, the Taliban, Gaddafi, and a host others yet unnamed, as well as numerous "foiled" domestic ones.
Among others, they include:
-- a fake shoe bomber;
-- fake underwear bomber;
-- fake Times Square bomber;
-- an earlier one there;
-- fake shampoo bombers;
-- fake Al Qaeda woman planning fake mass casualty attacks on New York landmarks;
-- fake Oregon bomber;
-- fake armed forces recruiting station bomber;
-- fake synagogue bombers;
-- fake Chicago Sears Tower bombers;
-- fake FBI and other building bombers;
-- fake National Guard, Fort Dix and Quantico marine base attackers;
-- fake 9/11 bombers; and
-- others to enlist public support for the fake war on terror and very real ones it spawned.
America, Pakistan, Bin Laden, Official Lies, and Misreporting
On May 5, New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller headlined, "Pentagon Breaks Silence on Pakistani Role," saying:
A "top Pentagon official said....Pakistan would have to work hard to rebuild relations with the United States Congress," including a commitment "to fighting terrorism...."
It suggests what some analysts suspect: namely, planned destabilization, confrontation, and balkanization for greater Eurasian control, as well as future terrorist false flags.
On May 5, Times writers Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane headlined, "Data Show Bin Laden Plots; CIA Hid Near Raided House," saying:
Alleged "computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed," reveal "considered attacks on American railroads, (but) there was no evidence of a specific plot."
Perhaps no files and documents either. For sure, no bin Laden.
Nonetheless, "(s)ince Sunday night, counterterrorism officials have been alert to (possible) new attacks from Al Qaeda to avenge its leader's death," especially at airports, rail facilities, and other strategic locations. "American officials and terrorism experts have warned that this is not the end of Al Qaeda," not, of course, if they're blamed for planned false flags to intensify US imperial wars.
Another May 5 Bumiller Times report ran cover for shifting official accounts about what really happened on May 1 headlined, "Raid Account, Hastily Told, Proves Fluid," saying:
"(I)t was a classic collision of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security triumph - and feed a ravenous media - while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world. At the same time, White House officials worked hard to use the facts of the raid to diminish Bin Laden's legacy."
She continued, quoting an unnamed Pentagon official claiming no "intent to deceive or dramatize," adding that "Everything we put out we really believed to be true at the time." She also quoted Victoria Clarke, Bush Pentagon spokeswoman, saying, "First reports are always wrong. It's a fundamental truth in military affairs."
In other words, it was OK first to claim a fierce firefight in which no US forces were killed or hurt, then 24 hours later call the battle one-sided, Navy Seals quickly dispatching bin Laden's guards and "Enemy Number One," shooting him unarmed in the head.
Notably, however, there's no body, no photos, no video, no evidence, and no truth, just the media regurgitated big lie.
In fact, more lies compounded it, including about:
- Pakistan's alleged knowledge of his presence;
-- claimed evidence confirming it and assault specifics; and
-- fabricated bad theater, explained in a slapdash, keystone cops manner.
High Level Skepticism
Appearing on CNN May 5, former Pakistani intelligence chief, Hamid Gul, told "In the Arena's" host Eliot Spitzer that bin Laden died years earlier, saying:
"Yes, I think he died - he perished some years ago, and I think this was a story which was created (because) nobody would want to believe this version....I (don't believe) the story which was given out by the American media and by the American administration."
Whoever was killed May 1 "was probably somebody else....(American authorities) must have known that he died some years ago....were keeping this story on the ice and they were looking for an appropriate moment" to announce it.
"(P)eople simply not in Pakistan alone but around the world....don't believe the stories that have been put out."
In other words, the entire account was fabricated, the event staged, Western media, including The New York Times, running cover for the big lie. Gul politely called it "a huge intelligence failure."
Notable American and Other False Flags
Discussed in earlier writing, numerous ones stand out, including:
-- In 1898, Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed.
-- On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat was accused of torpedoing the RMS Lusitania, killing 128 US citizens. It helped precipitate America's April 4, 1917 WW I entry, a war Woodrow Wilson wanted and got through a propaganda campaign, turning pacifist Americans into German haters. It was later learned that on board munitions, not a torpedo, exploded, sinking the ship.
-- In 1933 Germany, a week before general elections, the strategically timed Reichstag fire (home of the German parliament) was blamed on communists. President Paul von Hindenburg's emergency decree followed. Civil liberties were suspended. Weimar Republic democracy ended, and Hitler assumed fascist powers after enough Nazis were elected to assure it.
-- On August 31, 1939, Nazis impersonating Polish terrorists attacked the Gleiwitz radio station on the border between the two countries, starting WW II.
-- On December 7, 1941, Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, giving him the war he wanted from the early 1930s, but had to convince a pacifist public of the threat. The fleet was also tracked across the Pacific, but Admiral HE Kimmel wasn't warned or given known intelligence to assure enough mass casualties for congressional and public support.
-- Complicit with Washington, numerous 1949/1950 South Korean incursions north precipitated Pyongyang's retaliation in June 1950, giving Truman the war he wanted.
-- In 1962, a US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed false flag never happened because Kennedy rejected it. Called Operation Northwoods (a part of Operation Mongoose), it included sinking US ships, shooting down US commercial airliners, blowing up buildings in US cities, attacking America's Guantanamo base, other incidents, and blaming it on Cuba as a reason for war.
-- The fake August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident initiated full-scale retaliation against North Vietnam after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing war without declaring it.
-- In October 1983, after ousting Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, US forces invaded Grenada, allegedly to rescue American medical students threatened by nonbelligerent Cubans building infrastructure.
-- In December 1989, manufactured incidents precipitated America's Panama invasion, deposing Manuel Noriega, one-time ally turned enemy because he forgot who's boss.
-- in August 1990, Washington colluded with the al- Sabah monarchy, entrapping Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. In January 1991, it launched the Gulf War, followed by over two decades of sanctions, more war occupation, and destruction of the "cradle of civilization."
-- The September 11, 2001 false flag operation launched a decade of imperial wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine allied with Israel, perhaps others to come, as well as proxy wars in Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain, Central Africa, Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working Americas.
On February 16, 2010, a Washington's blog web site article titled, "Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror" listed examples, including:
-- The CIA admitted its 1950s role in toppling Iran's democratically elected government in 1953.
-- Israel acknowledged a 1954 attack in Egypt, including planting bombs in US diplomatic facilities, leaving "evidence" of Arab involvement.
-- Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, said the nation's police or military most likely were involved in the 2002 Bali bombing, killing over 200 people.
-- A former Italian prime minister, judge, and military counterintelligence head, General Gianadelio Maletti, said America's CIA instigated and abetted right wing terrorist groups in the 1970s and earlier, including bombing a Milan bank in 1969 to rally popular anti-communist support in Italy and other European countries.
-- Many others, including former Carter administration National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, telling a Senate committee that a false flag terror attack on US soil might occur to blame Iran and justify war.
In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, he said:
"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat," the kind 9/11 created - predicted, planned, orchestrated, and carried out to further new world order global dominance.
Other False Flag Examples
-- The March 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred three days before Spain's general elections. With no supportive evidence, they were blamed on Al Qaeda, yet they stoked public fear of threats against other Western cities, including American ones.
-- The July 7, 2005 London underground bombings (called 7/7) were a series of attacks on the city's public transport system during the morning rush hour for maximum disruption and casualties. At precisely the same time, an anti-terror drill occurred, simulating real attacks. It was no coincidence, others in America and Britain came on the same day.
-- On 9/11 morning, the CIA ran a "pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building." Held at the Agency's Chantilly, Virginia Reconnaissance Office, AP reported (on August 22, 2002) that it simulated "a small corporate jet (hitting) one of the four towers....after experiencing a mechanical failure."
Unmentioned at the time was a later revealed (but unreported) Homeland Security conference announcement a year later to commemorate the 9/11 event. Held under the auspices of the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, one of its speakers was John Fulton, CIA Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance office in charge of the operation. Another coincidence, or was something more sinister afoot?
In October 2000, the Pentagon simulated a commercial plane striking the Pentagon, coordinated by its Command Emergency Response Team and the Defense Protective Services Police. (Editor: yet Condoleeza Rice testified that she had no idea planes might be used to attack US skyscrapers) This and the 9/11 exercises are more than coincidental, given what's now known and the fallout.
-- On June 30, 2007, a Jeep Cherokee with propane canisters crashed into Glasgow International Airport's glass doors, the BBC reporting that it "was in the middle of the doorway burning....The car didn't actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably was the petrol."
The usual suspects were falsely blamed, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists.
In Miami, on January 11, 2010 (one day before Haiti's earthquake), the Pentagon's US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) simulated a hurricane striking the island in preparation for subsequent measures to be implemented. A carefully prepared military operation, they included occupying, controlling, and plundering the island.
Also, Deputy SOUTHCOM head, General PK Keen, was in Haiti when the quake struck, ready to assume command when it did and use a communication tool called the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC), linking other nations and NGOs with the Pentagon and US government to facilitate measures to be implemented. None were to help Haitians.
A Final Comment
Exposed as bad theater, New York Times writer Elizabeth Harris further discredited the broadsheet, headlining:
"Al Qaeda Confirms Bin Laden's Death," citing an unconfirmed statement, warning of new attacks to come. It also said an audio recording days before his death will soon be released. In fact, past video and audio ones were exposed as fakes.
Listen to this video of Stephen Lendman appearing on PressTV:
By: Stephen Lendman
May 07, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Wikipedia defines false or black flags as "covert operations designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities."
They're "big lies," defined by Merriam-Webster as "deliberate gross distortion(s) of the truth used especially as a propaganda tactic."
America's decade from September 11, 2001 to May 1, 2011 was punctuated by the (big) lie of our time and (big) lie of the moment.
Put another way, the official stories are falsified, myths, widely believed fantasies contrary to reality.
In his exhaustive research and writings, David Ray Griffin provided convincing evidence that 9/11 was an inside job and that bin Laden died of natural causes in mid-December 2001.
The former spawned a decade of overt and covert "war on terror" lawlessness at home and abroad. Policies and events following the second have yet to unfold, but expect little at best to be positive.
Past US false flags provided pretexts for militarism, wars, occupations, domestic repression, and national security state extremism, antithetical to democratically free and open societies. Allegedly removing America's "Enemy Number One," in fact, may intensify, not diminish, Washington's scheme for unchallengeable global dominance. More on him below.
With or without bin Laden, bogymen threats are plentiful. Since WW II alone, America's had numerous ones, including communists, Al Qaeda, WMDs, the Taliban, Gaddafi, and a host others yet unnamed, as well as numerous "foiled" domestic ones.
Among others, they include:
-- a fake shoe bomber;
-- fake underwear bomber;
-- fake Times Square bomber;
-- an earlier one there;
-- fake shampoo bombers;
-- fake Al Qaeda woman planning fake mass casualty attacks on New York landmarks;
-- fake Oregon bomber;
-- fake armed forces recruiting station bomber;
-- fake synagogue bombers;
-- fake Chicago Sears Tower bombers;
-- fake FBI and other building bombers;
-- fake National Guard, Fort Dix and Quantico marine base attackers;
-- fake 9/11 bombers; and
-- others to enlist public support for the fake war on terror and very real ones it spawned.
America, Pakistan, Bin Laden, Official Lies, and Misreporting
On May 5, New York Times writer Elisabeth Bumiller headlined, "Pentagon Breaks Silence on Pakistani Role," saying:
A "top Pentagon official said....Pakistan would have to work hard to rebuild relations with the United States Congress," including a commitment "to fighting terrorism...."
It suggests what some analysts suspect: namely, planned destabilization, confrontation, and balkanization for greater Eurasian control, as well as future terrorist false flags.
On May 5, Times writers Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane headlined, "Data Show Bin Laden Plots; CIA Hid Near Raided House," saying:
Alleged "computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed," reveal "considered attacks on American railroads, (but) there was no evidence of a specific plot."
Perhaps no files and documents either. For sure, no bin Laden.
Nonetheless, "(s)ince Sunday night, counterterrorism officials have been alert to (possible) new attacks from Al Qaeda to avenge its leader's death," especially at airports, rail facilities, and other strategic locations. "American officials and terrorism experts have warned that this is not the end of Al Qaeda," not, of course, if they're blamed for planned false flags to intensify US imperial wars.
Another May 5 Bumiller Times report ran cover for shifting official accounts about what really happened on May 1 headlined, "Raid Account, Hastily Told, Proves Fluid," saying:
"(I)t was a classic collision of a White House desire to promote a stunning national security triumph - and feed a ravenous media - while collecting facts from a chaotic military operation on the other side of the world. At the same time, White House officials worked hard to use the facts of the raid to diminish Bin Laden's legacy."
She continued, quoting an unnamed Pentagon official claiming no "intent to deceive or dramatize," adding that "Everything we put out we really believed to be true at the time." She also quoted Victoria Clarke, Bush Pentagon spokeswoman, saying, "First reports are always wrong. It's a fundamental truth in military affairs."
In other words, it was OK first to claim a fierce firefight in which no US forces were killed or hurt, then 24 hours later call the battle one-sided, Navy Seals quickly dispatching bin Laden's guards and "Enemy Number One," shooting him unarmed in the head.
Notably, however, there's no body, no photos, no video, no evidence, and no truth, just the media regurgitated big lie.
In fact, more lies compounded it, including about:
- Pakistan's alleged knowledge of his presence;
-- claimed evidence confirming it and assault specifics; and
-- fabricated bad theater, explained in a slapdash, keystone cops manner.
High Level Skepticism
Appearing on CNN May 5, former Pakistani intelligence chief, Hamid Gul, told "In the Arena's" host Eliot Spitzer that bin Laden died years earlier, saying:
"Yes, I think he died - he perished some years ago, and I think this was a story which was created (because) nobody would want to believe this version....I (don't believe) the story which was given out by the American media and by the American administration."
Whoever was killed May 1 "was probably somebody else....(American authorities) must have known that he died some years ago....were keeping this story on the ice and they were looking for an appropriate moment" to announce it.
"(P)eople simply not in Pakistan alone but around the world....don't believe the stories that have been put out."
In other words, the entire account was fabricated, the event staged, Western media, including The New York Times, running cover for the big lie. Gul politely called it "a huge intelligence failure."
Notable American and Other False Flags
Discussed in earlier writing, numerous ones stand out, including:
-- In 1898, Spain was falsely accused of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba harbor. The Spanish-American war followed.
-- On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat was accused of torpedoing the RMS Lusitania, killing 128 US citizens. It helped precipitate America's April 4, 1917 WW I entry, a war Woodrow Wilson wanted and got through a propaganda campaign, turning pacifist Americans into German haters. It was later learned that on board munitions, not a torpedo, exploded, sinking the ship.
-- In 1933 Germany, a week before general elections, the strategically timed Reichstag fire (home of the German parliament) was blamed on communists. President Paul von Hindenburg's emergency decree followed. Civil liberties were suspended. Weimar Republic democracy ended, and Hitler assumed fascist powers after enough Nazis were elected to assure it.
-- On August 31, 1939, Nazis impersonating Polish terrorists attacked the Gleiwitz radio station on the border between the two countries, starting WW II.
-- On December 7, 1941, Roosevelt manipulated Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, giving him the war he wanted from the early 1930s, but had to convince a pacifist public of the threat. The fleet was also tracked across the Pacific, but Admiral HE Kimmel wasn't warned or given known intelligence to assure enough mass casualties for congressional and public support.
-- Complicit with Washington, numerous 1949/1950 South Korean incursions north precipitated Pyongyang's retaliation in June 1950, giving Truman the war he wanted.
-- In 1962, a US Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed false flag never happened because Kennedy rejected it. Called Operation Northwoods (a part of Operation Mongoose), it included sinking US ships, shooting down US commercial airliners, blowing up buildings in US cities, attacking America's Guantanamo base, other incidents, and blaming it on Cuba as a reason for war.
-- The fake August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident initiated full-scale retaliation against North Vietnam after Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing war without declaring it.
-- In October 1983, after ousting Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, US forces invaded Grenada, allegedly to rescue American medical students threatened by nonbelligerent Cubans building infrastructure.
-- In December 1989, manufactured incidents precipitated America's Panama invasion, deposing Manuel Noriega, one-time ally turned enemy because he forgot who's boss.
-- in August 1990, Washington colluded with the al- Sabah monarchy, entrapping Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait. In January 1991, it launched the Gulf War, followed by over two decades of sanctions, more war occupation, and destruction of the "cradle of civilization."
-- The September 11, 2001 false flag operation launched a decade of imperial wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Palestine allied with Israel, perhaps others to come, as well as proxy wars in Somalia, Yemen, Bahrain, Central Africa, Haiti, Honduras, Colombia, and at home against Muslims, Latino immigrants, and working Americas.
On February 16, 2010, a Washington's blog web site article titled, "Governments ADMIT That They Carry Out False Flag Terror" listed examples, including:
-- The CIA admitted its 1950s role in toppling Iran's democratically elected government in 1953.
-- Israel acknowledged a 1954 attack in Egypt, including planting bombs in US diplomatic facilities, leaving "evidence" of Arab involvement.
-- Indonesia's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid, said the nation's police or military most likely were involved in the 2002 Bali bombing, killing over 200 people.
-- A former Italian prime minister, judge, and military counterintelligence head, General Gianadelio Maletti, said America's CIA instigated and abetted right wing terrorist groups in the 1970s and earlier, including bombing a Milan bank in 1969 to rally popular anti-communist support in Italy and other European countries.
-- Many others, including former Carter administration National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, telling a Senate committee that a false flag terror attack on US soil might occur to blame Iran and justify war.
In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, he said:
"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat," the kind 9/11 created - predicted, planned, orchestrated, and carried out to further new world order global dominance.
Other False Flag Examples
-- The March 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred three days before Spain's general elections. With no supportive evidence, they were blamed on Al Qaeda, yet they stoked public fear of threats against other Western cities, including American ones.
-- The July 7, 2005 London underground bombings (called 7/7) were a series of attacks on the city's public transport system during the morning rush hour for maximum disruption and casualties. At precisely the same time, an anti-terror drill occurred, simulating real attacks. It was no coincidence, others in America and Britain came on the same day.
-- On 9/11 morning, the CIA ran a "pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building." Held at the Agency's Chantilly, Virginia Reconnaissance Office, AP reported (on August 22, 2002) that it simulated "a small corporate jet (hitting) one of the four towers....after experiencing a mechanical failure."
Unmentioned at the time was a later revealed (but unreported) Homeland Security conference announcement a year later to commemorate the 9/11 event. Held under the auspices of the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, one of its speakers was John Fulton, CIA Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance office in charge of the operation. Another coincidence, or was something more sinister afoot?
In October 2000, the Pentagon simulated a commercial plane striking the Pentagon, coordinated by its Command Emergency Response Team and the Defense Protective Services Police. (Editor: yet Condoleeza Rice testified that she had no idea planes might be used to attack US skyscrapers) This and the 9/11 exercises are more than coincidental, given what's now known and the fallout.
-- On June 30, 2007, a Jeep Cherokee with propane canisters crashed into Glasgow International Airport's glass doors, the BBC reporting that it "was in the middle of the doorway burning....The car didn't actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably was the petrol."
The usual suspects were falsely blamed, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists.
In Miami, on January 11, 2010 (one day before Haiti's earthquake), the Pentagon's US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) simulated a hurricane striking the island in preparation for subsequent measures to be implemented. A carefully prepared military operation, they included occupying, controlling, and plundering the island.
Also, Deputy SOUTHCOM head, General PK Keen, was in Haiti when the quake struck, ready to assume command when it did and use a communication tool called the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC), linking other nations and NGOs with the Pentagon and US government to facilitate measures to be implemented. None were to help Haitians.
A Final Comment
Exposed as bad theater, New York Times writer Elizabeth Harris further discredited the broadsheet, headlining:
"Al Qaeda Confirms Bin Laden's Death," citing an unconfirmed statement, warning of new attacks to come. It also said an audio recording days before his death will soon be released. In fact, past video and audio ones were exposed as fakes.
Listen to this video of Stephen Lendman appearing on PressTV:
Hoax: White House Claims 4-Year-Old Bin Laden Video Is New Footage
Dubious Bin Laden “Home Movies” Identical To Tapes Released 4 Years Ago By Pentagon Front Group
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, May 7, 2011
In a desperate effort to bolster its crumbling official narrative, the White House today released a set of dubious Bin Laden “home movies” purportedly seized from his compound during the raid on Sunday night that it claims show Bin Laden on camera in 2010, but the tapes are almost identical to footage released almost four years ago by a notorious Pentagon front group that acts as a conduit for US intelligence by regularly releasing fake Al-Qaeda videos.
Before we even look at the new tapes, recall that the Washington Post reported last year on how CIA officials recruited “darker-skinned employees” to create fake Bin Laden tapes. The fact that the CIA created fake Bin Laden tapes is an admitted fact, not a conspiracy theory.
“Extraordinary home videos taken from Osama bin Laden’s hideout show the terrorist leader watching news coverage of himself on television,” reports the Daily Mail.
“The videos were seized by Navy SEALs after Bin Laden was killed. They were shown to reporters this afternoon by intelligence officials.”
One of the videos purports to show Bin Laden watching television news reports about himself. The footage is filmed from almost behind his head and only shows a small portion of his face. The TV shows footage of Bin Laden as well as still images and footage of Barack Obama. Interestingly, the only moment in which the cameraman zooms in on the TV so that you can clearly see the picture is when it either shows Bin Laden, Obama, or both of them in a still shot together.
Contrary to the footage of Bin Laden allegedly flicking through television channels, in which his beard is gray, in the other tapes, which the White House claims were recorded between October and November 2010, Bin Laden appears with his beard dyed black. The man watching TV appears to be much older than the Bin Laden seen in the other tapes.
MSNBC ran the video under the headline New Video Shows Bin Laden In Gold Robe. However, these tapes are almost identical to footage first released by the Pentagon front group SITE in September 2007. In that footage, Bin Laden also appears with a dyed beard and is wearing exactly the same clothes. The only thing that differs is the color of the background, but in other tapes the background is the same brown color as the 2007 tape. As computer expert Neal Krawetz’s analysis revealed, fake backgrounds are often used on purported “Al-Qaeda” tapes, where a blue screen is used to superimpose the figure of the speaker over a pre-selected backdrop.
The footage in these tapes purports to show Bin Laden making recordings in late 2010, and yet he looks identical to how he appeared in tapes first released in 2007.
The establishment media has completely failed to even mention the fact that much of the footage, which the White House claims was filmed in 2010, is almost identical to that first released in 2007 by the Pentagon front group SITE. Why would Bin Laden make a video in October 2010 and not release it? Unless this is merely outtakes from the footage already released four years ago.
It would not be the first time that tapes of Bin Laden have been passed off as new material when in fact they are years old.
In July 2007, the mainstream media heralded the arrival of a tape of Bin Laden giving a speech as new footage. In fact it was almost six years old, having been filmed in October 2001 and later released by IntelCenter, SITE’s sister organization, in October 2003. At the time we did an image comparison proving that the footage dubbed “new” in 2007 was in fact filmed in 2001 and released first by the Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency in 2002.
As we documented yesterday, the organization that released the original 2007 tape which is virtually identical to the tapes released by the White House today is nothing more than a conduit for Pentagon propaganda run the daughter of a former Israeli spy.
The SITE organization is virtually a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and has been caught releasing fake Al-Qaeda tapes on numerous occasions. SITE’s website domain is hosted by servers located in Washington DC, which are stationed between the Department of Homeland Security and the Israeli Embassy.
As in the 2007 tape, the As-Sahab logo appears in the “new” tapes released by the White House. A 2007 investigation by Neal Krawetz featured in Wired Magazine found that the As-Sahab logo was added at the same as the IntelCenter logo, another US military-industrial complex front, meaning the so-called “Al-Qaeda” tapes were in fact coming straight out of US intelligence circles. Although Krawetz asserted that this was the case in a taped interview, after the story began to receive attention he mysteriously backed away from the claim despite Wired’s Kim Zetter receiving approval from Krawetz that all the information contained in the original report was valid.
These “new” tapes which are actually identical to footage first released in 2007 will do little to firm up the White House’s crumbling Bin Laden narrative, which has been under suspicion after it was reported that Osama’s body was hastily dumped into the sea and President Obama refused to release an image of the dead Bin Laden.
The narrative of last Sunday’s raid has flip-flopped constantly and even mainstream journalists are starting to become wary, particularly after it emerged that Obama and Hillary could not have watched the raid unfold live as they had claimed because the live feed was cut before the Navy SEALS entered the compound, meaning that the “situation room” photos that purported to show Obama and Hillary watching Bin Laden’s assassination live were in fact completely staged.
A longer clip of the video that claims to show Bin Laden watching TV appears below.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Saturday, May 7, 2011
In a desperate effort to bolster its crumbling official narrative, the White House today released a set of dubious Bin Laden “home movies” purportedly seized from his compound during the raid on Sunday night that it claims show Bin Laden on camera in 2010, but the tapes are almost identical to footage released almost four years ago by a notorious Pentagon front group that acts as a conduit for US intelligence by regularly releasing fake Al-Qaeda videos.
Before we even look at the new tapes, recall that the Washington Post reported last year on how CIA officials recruited “darker-skinned employees” to create fake Bin Laden tapes. The fact that the CIA created fake Bin Laden tapes is an admitted fact, not a conspiracy theory.
“Extraordinary home videos taken from Osama bin Laden’s hideout show the terrorist leader watching news coverage of himself on television,” reports the Daily Mail.
“The videos were seized by Navy SEALs after Bin Laden was killed. They were shown to reporters this afternoon by intelligence officials.”
One of the videos purports to show Bin Laden watching television news reports about himself. The footage is filmed from almost behind his head and only shows a small portion of his face. The TV shows footage of Bin Laden as well as still images and footage of Barack Obama. Interestingly, the only moment in which the cameraman zooms in on the TV so that you can clearly see the picture is when it either shows Bin Laden, Obama, or both of them in a still shot together.
Contrary to the footage of Bin Laden allegedly flicking through television channels, in which his beard is gray, in the other tapes, which the White House claims were recorded between October and November 2010, Bin Laden appears with his beard dyed black. The man watching TV appears to be much older than the Bin Laden seen in the other tapes.
MSNBC ran the video under the headline New Video Shows Bin Laden In Gold Robe. However, these tapes are almost identical to footage first released by the Pentagon front group SITE in September 2007. In that footage, Bin Laden also appears with a dyed beard and is wearing exactly the same clothes. The only thing that differs is the color of the background, but in other tapes the background is the same brown color as the 2007 tape. As computer expert Neal Krawetz’s analysis revealed, fake backgrounds are often used on purported “Al-Qaeda” tapes, where a blue screen is used to superimpose the figure of the speaker over a pre-selected backdrop.
The footage in these tapes purports to show Bin Laden making recordings in late 2010, and yet he looks identical to how he appeared in tapes first released in 2007.
The establishment media has completely failed to even mention the fact that much of the footage, which the White House claims was filmed in 2010, is almost identical to that first released in 2007 by the Pentagon front group SITE. Why would Bin Laden make a video in October 2010 and not release it? Unless this is merely outtakes from the footage already released four years ago.
It would not be the first time that tapes of Bin Laden have been passed off as new material when in fact they are years old.
In July 2007, the mainstream media heralded the arrival of a tape of Bin Laden giving a speech as new footage. In fact it was almost six years old, having been filmed in October 2001 and later released by IntelCenter, SITE’s sister organization, in October 2003. At the time we did an image comparison proving that the footage dubbed “new” in 2007 was in fact filmed in 2001 and released first by the Al-Ansaar Islamic news agency in 2002.
As we documented yesterday, the organization that released the original 2007 tape which is virtually identical to the tapes released by the White House today is nothing more than a conduit for Pentagon propaganda run the daughter of a former Israeli spy.
The SITE organization is virtually a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and has been caught releasing fake Al-Qaeda tapes on numerous occasions. SITE’s website domain is hosted by servers located in Washington DC, which are stationed between the Department of Homeland Security and the Israeli Embassy.
As in the 2007 tape, the As-Sahab logo appears in the “new” tapes released by the White House. A 2007 investigation by Neal Krawetz featured in Wired Magazine found that the As-Sahab logo was added at the same as the IntelCenter logo, another US military-industrial complex front, meaning the so-called “Al-Qaeda” tapes were in fact coming straight out of US intelligence circles. Although Krawetz asserted that this was the case in a taped interview, after the story began to receive attention he mysteriously backed away from the claim despite Wired’s Kim Zetter receiving approval from Krawetz that all the information contained in the original report was valid.
These “new” tapes which are actually identical to footage first released in 2007 will do little to firm up the White House’s crumbling Bin Laden narrative, which has been under suspicion after it was reported that Osama’s body was hastily dumped into the sea and President Obama refused to release an image of the dead Bin Laden.
The narrative of last Sunday’s raid has flip-flopped constantly and even mainstream journalists are starting to become wary, particularly after it emerged that Obama and Hillary could not have watched the raid unfold live as they had claimed because the live feed was cut before the Navy SEALS entered the compound, meaning that the “situation room” photos that purported to show Obama and Hillary watching Bin Laden’s assassination live were in fact completely staged.
A longer clip of the video that claims to show Bin Laden watching TV appears below.
Why All the Changing bin Laden Stories?
By: Dr. J. P. Hubert
For almost a decade there have been disturbingly contradictory stories circulated about Osama bin Laden which suggest that to a high degree of probability he died in late 2001. For example:
1) The Clinton administration turned down the Sudanese government’s offer to turn bin Laden over to the United States claiming they didn’t have enough evidence against him. Why when he was the most notorious terrorist in the world?
2) Why was the bin Laden family flown out of the USA after the 911 attacks when all our planes were grounded? One plane was actually chartered by bin Laden himself. Why? Who made that decision and why?
3) Why did the US refuse the Taliban offer to turn over OBL to an Arab state just after 911?
4) Sibel Edmonds the famous whistleblower muzzled by the US government, says bin Laden was working with the CIA right up to and after 911. Why? CIA agents visited OBL in the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001. Why?
5) Why was bin Laden never indicted for the crime of 911? Why did his FBI “rap sheet” not include the crime of 911 if he planned and had it executed?
6) Why kill bin Laden when he might have had valuable Intel, secrets etc. especially when he was allegedly unarmed?
7) Why lie about a live feed for President Obama so he could watch the killing when there was no live feed of the execution?
8) Why say bin Laden was armed when he wasn’t?
9) Why say bin Laden hid behind a woman when he didn’t?
10) Why stage the photo’s of Obama Sunday night and in the situation room?
11) Why say that Seal Team 6 encountered a huge fire-fight when then didn’t?
12) Why didn’t the people in bin Laden’s compound hear the helicopter’s and shoot at them? Didn’t bin Laden the most dangerous terrorist in the world have any security forces?
13) Why say that bin Laden was buried at sea so quickly, claiming it was in-keeping with Muslim tradition and practice when it wasn’t?
14) Why say no country would accept OBL’s body when this is false? Many have subsequently said they would have accepted it.
15) The United States is now working with al Qaeda in Libya. The so-called “rebels” from the Benghazi area are al Qaeda operatives who have a working relationship with the CIA. Why then are we supporting them?
16) If bin Laden was just killed by Seal Team 6, why did American officials say that he died years ago including Madeleine Albright former Secretary of State, Bob Barr of the CIA, Dr. Steve Pieczenik and former Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts and others. In addition, Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan said bin Laden had been killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh just several weeks before she was assassinated. Years ago even General Pervez Musharraf said he thought bin Laden was dead. Moreover, David Ray Griffin perhaps the most prolific writer alleging that 911 was a false flag event, wrote an entire book about how Osama bin Laden had died in late 2001.
Note the following newspaper article from 2001 posted at littlecountrylost in Januarny 2008:
An Egyptian newspaper called al-Wafd published the following article (Volume 15 No 4633) on December 26th, 2001:
"A prominent official in the Afghan Taliban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that bin Laden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa'da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taliban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden."
If the funeral took place 10 days before this article was published in al-Wafd and The Observer of Pakistan, this would put the death of Osama bin-Laden around the 16th or 17th of (December) 2001. Israeli intelligence officials also told reporters in October 2002 that they and United States officials believe that Osama bin-Laden had been killed in December 2001.
If you look at a timeline of events involving Osama bin-Laden, ignoring the questionable videotapes, there is a noticeable shift in the type of communication Osama bin-Laden has with the world and the rhetoric used by Bush Administration and Pakistani officials in regards to the threat Osama bin-Laden poses starting in the middle of December 2001. Some highlights:
September 15, 2001 – President Bush says of bin-Laden, “If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.”
September 17, 2001 – President Bush says, “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’”
November 7, 2001 - Pakistani reporter Hamid Mir interviews Osama bin-Laden in person.
November 16, 2001 - Battle of Tora Bora begins.
November 25, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden gives his last known public speech to his followers in Milawa, Afghanistan, a village located on the route from Tora Bora to the Pakistani border.
November 28, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden reportedly escapes Tora Bora.
December 15, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden's voice is reportedly intercepted for the last time communicating with his fighters in Tora Bora via his shortwave radio.
December 17, 2001 - US Intelligence and Pentagon officials admit they have lost Osama bin-Laden.
December 17, 2001 - United States declares victory at Tora Bora.
December 26, 2001 - Article about Osama bin-Laden's funeral is published in Pakistan and Egypt. The funeral allegedly takes place about 10 days earlier. The article is also discussed by Fox News.
December 28, 2001 – President Bush says, “Our objective is more than bin-Laden.”
January 18, 2002 – Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf tells CNN that he believes Osama bin-Laden to be dead.
January 27, 2002 - Vice President Dick Cheney says that Osama bin-Laden "isn't that big of a threat. Bin Laden connected to this worldwide organization of terror is a threat."
January 27, 2002 – White House Chief of Staff Andy Card tells CNN, “"I do not know for a fact that he's alive. I happen to believe he's probably alive… Our overall objective is to defeat terrorism, wherever it is around the world. And so, our objective is not to get Osama bin Laden."
January 29, 2002 – President Bush delivers his first State of the Union address since 9/11. While he labels Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the “axis of evil”, he fails to mention Osama bin-Laden at all.
March 13, 2002 – President Bush says, “Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all… He’s a person who’s now been marginalized.… I just don’t spend that much time on him.… I truly am not that concerned about him.”
April 4, 2002 - Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers says, "The goal has never been to get bin-Laden."
October 14, 2002 – President Bush says, “I don’t know whether bin-Laden is alive or dead.”
October 16, 2002 – Middle East Newsline reports that Israeli Intelligence officials confirmed that Israel and the United States believe Osama bin-Laden was killed in mid-December 2001 during the Tora Bora bombing campaign.
This timeline, with Osama bin-Laden's death allegedly occurring in the middle of December 2001, makes it possible that Omar Sheikh could have committed the murder. From October 2001 through January 19, 2002, Omar Sheikh was living openly in his home in Lahore, Pakistan. His positions as leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (a Taliban and Osama bin-Laden partner) and ISI agent (the source of funds for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) would also have given him means for access to Osama bin-Laden.
While it is disturbing that Benazir Bhutto may have revealed that our government has been (and continues to be) lying to us about Osama The Big Bad Wolf, the revelation that his supposed killer was Omar Sheikh raises even more questions than the obvious 'Who the hell is making and releasing all those Osama bin-Laden videos and for what purpose?'
Here are some interesting facts:
• Daniel Pearl was investigating, among other things, connections between the Pakistani ISI and terrorist groups when he was kidnapped and killed.
• On February 5, 2002, before Daniel Pearl's body was found, Omar Sheikh turned himself in to ISI officials. ISI kept Omar Sheikh (one of their agents) in custody for a week before turning him over to Pakistani police. What happened during that week is unknown as Omar Sheikh wouldn't discuss the details fearing his family will be killed.
• The trial of Omar Sheikh in Pakistan, the result of which was a death sentence, was held entirely in secret and with questionable evidence. According to The Guardian, both US officials and Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) have concluded that Omar Sheikh is not guilty.
• Before Omar Sheikh's trial had concluded, Pervez Musharraf publicly declared that he wanted the trial to result in a death sentence, leading many to believe he effectively ordered the courts to render that verdict.
• As of today, Omar Sheikh has not been executed. He has been held by the Pakistanis for years awaiting his appeal which has been delayed 32 times.
• Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales told Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad confessed to the murder of Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl's family and former CIA investigators doubt that the confession, received only after Mohammad was tortured, is true.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is the so-called "9/11 mastermind" whose identity was supposedly provided by the interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes of these interrogations were the ones famously destroyed by the CIA in 2005.
• On October 7, 2001 General Mahmood Ahmad was replaced as the head of the ISI at the request of the United States due to numerous reports that he had ordered Omar Sheikh to transfer $100,000 to Mohammad Atta before 9/11.
• ISI director General Mahmood Ahmad was in the United States during 9/11. In the days preceding the attacks, he met with CIA director George Tenet and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Mark Grossman. During the attacks, we was meeting with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss (who will take over as CIA director after George Tenet leaves). After the attacks, Graham and Goss will co-head the House-Senate investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
• The previous time the director of the ISI, Ziauddin Butt, came to the United States was a few days before Pervez Musharraf took over control of Pakistan in a 1999 military coup.
• General Mahmood Ahmad received his position as the director of the ISI after helping dictator Pervez Musharraf claim power.
• Benazir Bhutto said that a "key figure in security" (ISI?) would be on the list of people who would want her dead.
• The ISI has been in existence since the 1980's due to the financing of the CIA and according to The Guardian "it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA."
I don't really know what to make of these facts and don't even know if all of them are relevant. But I do have some questions:
• Is it possible that Daniel Pearl had found out that Osama bin-Laden had been killed during the course of his investigation, leading him to be kidnapped one month after the alleged murder?
• If Omar Sheikh did kill Osama bin-Laden, could that explain why he was falsely accused and convicted of the murder of Daniel Pearl? To shut him up? Is he still alive, as believed, because of his ties to Pakistan's ISI?
• (The uncomfortable question) How much do CIA and Bush Administration officials know about the murder of Daniel Pearl? Did they have an interest in the silence of both Daniel Pearl and Omar Sheikh? Why hasn't the Bush Administration demanded that Pervez Musharraf allow the United States to question Omar Sheikh, since he is still alive and in their custody?
• How deep and how sinister is the alliance of the Bush government and the Musharraf government? How interconnected are the ISI and CIA and could the ISI assist Osama bin-Laden, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and the Taliban without the knowledge of the CIA?
• Why does the Bush Administration want us to think Osama bin-Laden is still alive? How do they personally benefit from this deception more than they would benefit by publicly taking credit for catching Osama bin-Laden?
I understand that Benazir Bhutto's statement is uncorroborated and could very well not be true. However, she was the Prime Minister of Pakistan twice and is no doubt privy to more information than any reporter, especially reporters working for the American press. Also, it's her word against those of the Bush Administration, the CIA, Pervez Musharraf's government, and the American and British mainstream press. Who is more deserving of our trust?
Note this report from 2002:
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
"TEL AVIV Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have
decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United
States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said.
Al Qaida terrorists have launched a new campaign of economic warfare and are targeting shipping in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin
Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in
December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are
probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.
But Bin Laden's heir has been chosen and his colleagues have decided to
resume Al Qaida's offensive against the United States and Western allies,the sources said.
They said the organization regards the United States as the main target
followed by Israel.
"In this case, it doesn't matter whether Bin Laden is alive or not," a
senior Israeli intelligence source said. "The organization goes on with
help from key people."
The sources said Al Qaida has already determined Bin Laden's heir. They
said the heir has not been identified, but is probably not Bin Laden's
son, Saad. Saad is said to be in his 20’s and ranked within the top 20
members of Al Qaida.
Earlier this week, Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, was said to have
released a videotape in which he claims that the Al Qaida leader is aliveand functioning. Bin Laden's voice was not heard on the tape.
A senior Bush administration economic official said last week that another major Al Qaida attack anywhere in the world could have devastatingeconomic repercussions.
The FBI warned last week that Al Qaida may be preparing for a major
attack. The warning followed the release of an audio tape featuring the
voice of Zawahiri.
Bombings in Bali aimed at tourists, an attack on U.S. soldiers training in Kuwait and the bombing of a French tanker in Yemen are signs of the new
campaign, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported in its Oct. 22 edition.
The first attack was carried out last week with the Al Qaida terrorist
attack on the French tanker Limburg, a 157,000-ton ultra large crude oilcarrier, that was bombed as it picked up a pilot before mooring at theYemeni port of al Shihr.
One crew member was killed and others were injured in the blast.
According to intelligence officials, a small boat approached at high speed from the starboard side of the ship and detonated a large explosive device.
A week earlier, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued an alert to shipsin the Middle East to be alert for Al Qaida terrorist attacks."
For almost a decade there have been disturbingly contradictory stories circulated about Osama bin Laden which suggest that to a high degree of probability he died in late 2001. For example:
1) The Clinton administration turned down the Sudanese government’s offer to turn bin Laden over to the United States claiming they didn’t have enough evidence against him. Why when he was the most notorious terrorist in the world?
2) Why was the bin Laden family flown out of the USA after the 911 attacks when all our planes were grounded? One plane was actually chartered by bin Laden himself. Why? Who made that decision and why?
3) Why did the US refuse the Taliban offer to turn over OBL to an Arab state just after 911?
4) Sibel Edmonds the famous whistleblower muzzled by the US government, says bin Laden was working with the CIA right up to and after 911. Why? CIA agents visited OBL in the American Hospital in Dubai in July 2001. Why?
5) Why was bin Laden never indicted for the crime of 911? Why did his FBI “rap sheet” not include the crime of 911 if he planned and had it executed?
6) Why kill bin Laden when he might have had valuable Intel, secrets etc. especially when he was allegedly unarmed?
7) Why lie about a live feed for President Obama so he could watch the killing when there was no live feed of the execution?
8) Why say bin Laden was armed when he wasn’t?
9) Why say bin Laden hid behind a woman when he didn’t?
10) Why stage the photo’s of Obama Sunday night and in the situation room?
11) Why say that Seal Team 6 encountered a huge fire-fight when then didn’t?
12) Why didn’t the people in bin Laden’s compound hear the helicopter’s and shoot at them? Didn’t bin Laden the most dangerous terrorist in the world have any security forces?
13) Why say that bin Laden was buried at sea so quickly, claiming it was in-keeping with Muslim tradition and practice when it wasn’t?
14) Why say no country would accept OBL’s body when this is false? Many have subsequently said they would have accepted it.
15) The United States is now working with al Qaeda in Libya. The so-called “rebels” from the Benghazi area are al Qaeda operatives who have a working relationship with the CIA. Why then are we supporting them?
16) If bin Laden was just killed by Seal Team 6, why did American officials say that he died years ago including Madeleine Albright former Secretary of State, Bob Barr of the CIA, Dr. Steve Pieczenik and former Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts and others. In addition, Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan said bin Laden had been killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh just several weeks before she was assassinated. Years ago even General Pervez Musharraf said he thought bin Laden was dead. Moreover, David Ray Griffin perhaps the most prolific writer alleging that 911 was a false flag event, wrote an entire book about how Osama bin Laden had died in late 2001.
Note the following newspaper article from 2001 posted at littlecountrylost in Januarny 2008:
An Egyptian newspaper called al-Wafd published the following article (Volume 15 No 4633) on December 26th, 2001:
"A prominent official in the Afghan Taliban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that bin Laden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa'da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taliban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden."
If the funeral took place 10 days before this article was published in al-Wafd and The Observer of Pakistan, this would put the death of Osama bin-Laden around the 16th or 17th of (December) 2001. Israeli intelligence officials also told reporters in October 2002 that they and United States officials believe that Osama bin-Laden had been killed in December 2001.
If you look at a timeline of events involving Osama bin-Laden, ignoring the questionable videotapes, there is a noticeable shift in the type of communication Osama bin-Laden has with the world and the rhetoric used by Bush Administration and Pakistani officials in regards to the threat Osama bin-Laden poses starting in the middle of December 2001. Some highlights:
September 15, 2001 – President Bush says of bin-Laden, “If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.”
September 17, 2001 – President Bush says, “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’”
November 7, 2001 - Pakistani reporter Hamid Mir interviews Osama bin-Laden in person.
November 16, 2001 - Battle of Tora Bora begins.
November 25, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden gives his last known public speech to his followers in Milawa, Afghanistan, a village located on the route from Tora Bora to the Pakistani border.
November 28, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden reportedly escapes Tora Bora.
December 15, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden's voice is reportedly intercepted for the last time communicating with his fighters in Tora Bora via his shortwave radio.
December 17, 2001 - US Intelligence and Pentagon officials admit they have lost Osama bin-Laden.
December 17, 2001 - United States declares victory at Tora Bora.
December 26, 2001 - Article about Osama bin-Laden's funeral is published in Pakistan and Egypt. The funeral allegedly takes place about 10 days earlier. The article is also discussed by Fox News.
December 28, 2001 – President Bush says, “Our objective is more than bin-Laden.”
January 18, 2002 – Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf tells CNN that he believes Osama bin-Laden to be dead.
January 27, 2002 - Vice President Dick Cheney says that Osama bin-Laden "isn't that big of a threat. Bin Laden connected to this worldwide organization of terror is a threat."
January 27, 2002 – White House Chief of Staff Andy Card tells CNN, “"I do not know for a fact that he's alive. I happen to believe he's probably alive… Our overall objective is to defeat terrorism, wherever it is around the world. And so, our objective is not to get Osama bin Laden."
January 29, 2002 – President Bush delivers his first State of the Union address since 9/11. While he labels Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the “axis of evil”, he fails to mention Osama bin-Laden at all.
March 13, 2002 – President Bush says, “Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all… He’s a person who’s now been marginalized.… I just don’t spend that much time on him.… I truly am not that concerned about him.”
April 4, 2002 - Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers says, "The goal has never been to get bin-Laden."
October 14, 2002 – President Bush says, “I don’t know whether bin-Laden is alive or dead.”
October 16, 2002 – Middle East Newsline reports that Israeli Intelligence officials confirmed that Israel and the United States believe Osama bin-Laden was killed in mid-December 2001 during the Tora Bora bombing campaign.
This timeline, with Osama bin-Laden's death allegedly occurring in the middle of December 2001, makes it possible that Omar Sheikh could have committed the murder. From October 2001 through January 19, 2002, Omar Sheikh was living openly in his home in Lahore, Pakistan. His positions as leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (a Taliban and Osama bin-Laden partner) and ISI agent (the source of funds for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) would also have given him means for access to Osama bin-Laden.
While it is disturbing that Benazir Bhutto may have revealed that our government has been (and continues to be) lying to us about Osama The Big Bad Wolf, the revelation that his supposed killer was Omar Sheikh raises even more questions than the obvious 'Who the hell is making and releasing all those Osama bin-Laden videos and for what purpose?'
Here are some interesting facts:
• Daniel Pearl was investigating, among other things, connections between the Pakistani ISI and terrorist groups when he was kidnapped and killed.
• On February 5, 2002, before Daniel Pearl's body was found, Omar Sheikh turned himself in to ISI officials. ISI kept Omar Sheikh (one of their agents) in custody for a week before turning him over to Pakistani police. What happened during that week is unknown as Omar Sheikh wouldn't discuss the details fearing his family will be killed.
• The trial of Omar Sheikh in Pakistan, the result of which was a death sentence, was held entirely in secret and with questionable evidence. According to The Guardian, both US officials and Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) have concluded that Omar Sheikh is not guilty.
• Before Omar Sheikh's trial had concluded, Pervez Musharraf publicly declared that he wanted the trial to result in a death sentence, leading many to believe he effectively ordered the courts to render that verdict.
• As of today, Omar Sheikh has not been executed. He has been held by the Pakistanis for years awaiting his appeal which has been delayed 32 times.
• Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales told Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad confessed to the murder of Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl's family and former CIA investigators doubt that the confession, received only after Mohammad was tortured, is true.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is the so-called "9/11 mastermind" whose identity was supposedly provided by the interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes of these interrogations were the ones famously destroyed by the CIA in 2005.
• On October 7, 2001 General Mahmood Ahmad was replaced as the head of the ISI at the request of the United States due to numerous reports that he had ordered Omar Sheikh to transfer $100,000 to Mohammad Atta before 9/11.
• ISI director General Mahmood Ahmad was in the United States during 9/11. In the days preceding the attacks, he met with CIA director George Tenet and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Mark Grossman. During the attacks, we was meeting with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss (who will take over as CIA director after George Tenet leaves). After the attacks, Graham and Goss will co-head the House-Senate investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
• The previous time the director of the ISI, Ziauddin Butt, came to the United States was a few days before Pervez Musharraf took over control of Pakistan in a 1999 military coup.
• General Mahmood Ahmad received his position as the director of the ISI after helping dictator Pervez Musharraf claim power.
• Benazir Bhutto said that a "key figure in security" (ISI?) would be on the list of people who would want her dead.
• The ISI has been in existence since the 1980's due to the financing of the CIA and according to The Guardian "it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA."
I don't really know what to make of these facts and don't even know if all of them are relevant. But I do have some questions:
• Is it possible that Daniel Pearl had found out that Osama bin-Laden had been killed during the course of his investigation, leading him to be kidnapped one month after the alleged murder?
• If Omar Sheikh did kill Osama bin-Laden, could that explain why he was falsely accused and convicted of the murder of Daniel Pearl? To shut him up? Is he still alive, as believed, because of his ties to Pakistan's ISI?
• (The uncomfortable question) How much do CIA and Bush Administration officials know about the murder of Daniel Pearl? Did they have an interest in the silence of both Daniel Pearl and Omar Sheikh? Why hasn't the Bush Administration demanded that Pervez Musharraf allow the United States to question Omar Sheikh, since he is still alive and in their custody?
• How deep and how sinister is the alliance of the Bush government and the Musharraf government? How interconnected are the ISI and CIA and could the ISI assist Osama bin-Laden, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and the Taliban without the knowledge of the CIA?
• Why does the Bush Administration want us to think Osama bin-Laden is still alive? How do they personally benefit from this deception more than they would benefit by publicly taking credit for catching Osama bin-Laden?
I understand that Benazir Bhutto's statement is uncorroborated and could very well not be true. However, she was the Prime Minister of Pakistan twice and is no doubt privy to more information than any reporter, especially reporters working for the American press. Also, it's her word against those of the Bush Administration, the CIA, Pervez Musharraf's government, and the American and British mainstream press. Who is more deserving of our trust?
Note this report from 2002:
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
"TEL AVIV Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have
decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United
States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said.
Al Qaida terrorists have launched a new campaign of economic warfare and are targeting shipping in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin
Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in
December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are
probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.
But Bin Laden's heir has been chosen and his colleagues have decided to
resume Al Qaida's offensive against the United States and Western allies,the sources said.
They said the organization regards the United States as the main target
followed by Israel.
"In this case, it doesn't matter whether Bin Laden is alive or not," a
senior Israeli intelligence source said. "The organization goes on with
help from key people."
The sources said Al Qaida has already determined Bin Laden's heir. They
said the heir has not been identified, but is probably not Bin Laden's
son, Saad. Saad is said to be in his 20’s and ranked within the top 20
members of Al Qaida.
Earlier this week, Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, was said to have
released a videotape in which he claims that the Al Qaida leader is aliveand functioning. Bin Laden's voice was not heard on the tape.
A senior Bush administration economic official said last week that another major Al Qaida attack anywhere in the world could have devastatingeconomic repercussions.
The FBI warned last week that Al Qaida may be preparing for a major
attack. The warning followed the release of an audio tape featuring the
voice of Zawahiri.
Bombings in Bali aimed at tourists, an attack on U.S. soldiers training in Kuwait and the bombing of a French tanker in Yemen are signs of the new
campaign, Geostrategy-Direct.com reported in its Oct. 22 edition.
The first attack was carried out last week with the Al Qaida terrorist
attack on the French tanker Limburg, a 157,000-ton ultra large crude oilcarrier, that was bombed as it picked up a pilot before mooring at theYemeni port of al Shihr.
One crew member was killed and others were injured in the blast.
According to intelligence officials, a small boat approached at high speed from the starboard side of the ship and detonated a large explosive device.
A week earlier, the Office of Naval Intelligence issued an alert to shipsin the Middle East to be alert for Al Qaida terrorist attacks."
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