Sabbah Report » Islamophobia

Will There Be More 9/11s?

Lawrence Davidson — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:52:34 +0000

I. Victims

Glenn Greenwald recently posted a short piece about "The Human Toll of the U.S. Drone Campaign." Greenwald noted that the population of the United States is kept in the dark about the civilian victims of the drone campaign by a government that "refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets [which] virtually never report on [its] victims." What the U.S. public does get from both of these sources is a picture of the Middle East "as a cauldron of sub-human demons."

Greenwald’s article references a BBC program about a Pakistani "jirga" or gathering of tribal leaders. The leaders were from the Warziristan region of the country but the gathering took place in the capital of Islamabad. Warziristan has been the site of many drone attacks and the leaders brought with them some of the maimed survivors so they could be seen and their stories told. The picture that came through is that there are now rapidly growing numbers of innocent victims of these attacks: children, teenagers, adults and the elderly–essentially anyone in the neighborhood of an intended target. The number of those actually targeted who have been killed is impossible to know because the government will claim such kills even if the only verifiable victims are "half-blinded, double-amputee teenagers."

II. Visibility

Greenwald correctly observes that "it is easy to cheer for a leader when the victims of his on-going violence remain invisible." However, the question remains, how is this invisible status maintained in a country with a "free press"? Here are some relevant points that might shed light on this issue:

1. The "news business" in America is infinitely more interested in profit than it is in journalistic excellence. Much of that profit comes from advertisers who have no wish to underwrite what might appear to be unpatriotic investigations into unwarranted wars and foreign interventions. This makes the business oriented boards and stockholders of media outlets very conservative and also encourages a "make no waves" cooperative attitude toward the government and its preferred storylines.

2. Most citizens do not care about all this. In the U.S., and elsewhere, the majority are apolitical. They focus on the local and other people are "real" relative to their geographic and relational distance. As you move further away from the average person’s focal center, victims of accident or injustice become more abstract.

3. Being apolitical does not mean that the average citizen cannot be scared out of his or her wits. Deliver the same media message over and over again, consistently and with the right amount of emotion and you can create a nationwide consensus based on nothing but a sales pitch. Among other things you can sell the population an enemy (Viet Nam, Iraq, Iran or any state you chose) to the point where almost an entire nation will support invasion and slaughter. This is what I call a "thought collective." And, as our own recent history reveals, you can create this sort of group-think repeatedly over a relatively short period of time.

III. Distorted Vision

Greenwald’s piece is an indicator that, when it comes to the Middle East, the United States has long been steeped in a thought collective that distorts the vision of both the common folk and the elites alike. The 9/11 attacks raised this national mind set to the point of near hysteria. In the immediate aftermath of that disaster anyone who suggested that U.S. foreign policy might have helped motivate the terrorists (an obvious fact for anyone who had read the speeches of Osama bin Laden) was likely to be labeled unpatriotic, maybe even a traitor, lose their job, maybe even their friends, and refused admittance into the arena of national mourning. When in early October 2001 Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave the city of New York a check for $10 million to help with recovery efforts, Mayor Giuliani rejected the offer out of hand. It seems the Prince had suggested that now was a good time for the U.S. to rethink its Middle East foreign policy.

Only in the last year or so have their been signs of small cracks in the thought collective. Growing numbers of ordinary citizens, to the extent that they think about these things at all, want the U.S. out of the Middle East. They are even starting to question the $3 billion a year that goes to Israel. And, it may be that Islamophobia has peaked as a popular topic of national concern. More and more, this bit of paranoia is being identified with fringe factions of the conservative right.

Unfortunately, these cracks are visible only outside the beltway. Inside the beltway, that is in Washington DC, nothing has really changed. The thought collective is, if anything, stronger than ever. This is because the formulation of policy is strongly influenced by special interests whose power over the politicians and the political parties is financially decisive. It will stay that way until millions of Americans decide change in our foreign policy is important enough to be a voting issue.

Because the thought collective within the government has not changed, foreign policies and actions have not changed. Violent intervention is still the mainstay of policy as can be seen in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan (with perhaps Iran in the wings). Greenwald notes at the end of his piece that while Americans "hear almost nothing" about the victims of U.S. aggression, "the people in that part of the world hear a lot about it and that explains much about the vast discrepancy between the two regions."

IV. The Verdict

And what might that continuing discrepancy mean for the future of the United States? Well, it means the U.S. will almost certainly lose the war in Afghanistan, just as it lost the war in Iraq. You see, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, there are just too many people who really hold a fearsome dislike for the U.S., its government and its soldiers, to make likely successful conquest and pacification. A more general victory in the war of terror is equally unlikely. Here the applicable logic is rather simple. There were a set of conditions that led up to the 9/11 attacks and the attacks themselves created a precedent. America’s contribution to those conditions (our policies and our behavior) have held constant. Whatever damage we have caused al-Qaida can, and probably will, be repaired and other equally dangerous groups are likely to spring up in the foreseeable future.

So what then is the answer to the question that serves as the title of this short essay? The honest answer is that if there continues to be no change in U.S. policies and behavior in the Middle East, it is more likely than not that another attack of the magnitude of 9/11 will occur within the next ten years. The time line is guesswork, but the rest of the answer is not.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

America’s modern barbarism

Lawrence Davidson — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:22:49 +0000

Has anyone noticed that the political air is wafting rancid lately? That is the smell of modern barbarism. Modern barbarism is a malodorous umbrella concept. Underneath the umbrella are lots of fetid phobias, isms and behaviours: Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, semi-fascism, scapegoating, stereotyping, bullying, libelling and a growing, aggressive intolerance of everything and everyone who is not to the liking of the modern barbarian.

Here are some recent instances of this phenomenon.

Mistaking the particular for the general

Michael Quigley, a Democratic congressman from Chicago

Michael Quigley, a Democratic congressman from Chicago, made the New York Times on 24 September 2011. He made it by promoting the virtues of tolerance and diversity and lamenting the suffering that occurs when tolerance fails. Out and about in his Chicago district, he stopped in at a meeting of the American Islamic Conference. He made a short speech to the 100 or so conferees during which he said "discrimination comes in many forms, many shapes and many guises. You have my pledge to work with you to fight them, and I think it is appropriate for me to apologize on behalf of this country for the discrimination you face."

Quigley was correct about the growing levels of Islamophobia that confront Muslim Americans. Islamophobia is a delusional mind-set which mistakes the general for the particular, which condemns an entire group (which happens to have a billion plus members) for the particular actions of a very few. There is no logic to such an overreaching generalization. It is irrational.

Within days of Quigley's brief presentation he was "attacked harshly ... in the conservative blogosphere ... on radio and TV". There was "at least one death threat on a Fox news site that by week's end was still not taken down despite requests".

Along with "hundreds of nasty calls, emails and faxes" received by Quigley's office, he was soon lambasted by Bill O'Reilly, again on Fox, who denied that there was anything to apologize for. "What discrimination?" O'Reilly asked. "Statistics don't support claims of bias against Muslim Americans."

O'Reilly was simply wrong about this. As Ahmed Rehab, Executive Director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), commented, O'Reilly would "have to be living under a rock" to believe there was no evidence. Both federal statistics on workplace complaints of discrimination and a recent report [.PDF] issued by the CAIR in conjunction with the Centre for Peace and Gender at the University of California at Berkeley have documented the rise of Islamophobia since the 9/11 attacks.

Despite O'Reilly being factually wrong on the issue of rising prejudice against Muslim Americans, Quigley's apology continued to draw scorn. Soon some right-wing spokesmen were trying to use the apology to call attention to what they believed to be the violent nature of Muslim culture. Ralph Peters, who might be thought of as a professional anti-Muslim, called Quigley, who is just 51 years old, a "silly old fool" and said you might as well "apologize for preventing them [Muslims] from beating their daughters to death for flirting".

First of all such violence is not a trait of Islam. Secondly, the United States could be made to look like hell on earth for women simply by over-concentrating on nationwide instances of spousal abuse. Such is the danger of mistaking the particular for the general.

Cheers and jeers

At about the same time Islamophobia was also playing havoc with Republican politics in Florida. Nezar Hamze, a long time Republican as well as CAIR's South Florida Director, was systematically discriminated against (to the point of the purposeful changing of local party selection rules) when he stood for election to the Broward County Republican Executive Committee. Usually those who want to serve on this committee are automatically accepted. It was "the first time ... anyone could recall ... [someone being turned down] in a county where Republicans complain about being outnumbered by Democrats." When Hamze's membership in the executive committee was denied, the 300 or so people present at the meeting "cheered loudly". Those cheers were strikingly similar to the foot stomping and applauds that have been heard from the audiences attending the Republican presidential primary debates.

At the Republican debates it is not only Islamophobia that is on display, but rabid reactions to gay rights, scorn for the vulnerability of the uninsured and calls for the blood of those on death row.

To this you can add the following stances that have come to the fore under the influence of a wave of modern barbarism centred in the ranks of the Republican party: Tea Party assertions that environmentalism is "unbiblical" and cutting taxes for the rich is righteous; health care reform is "the equivalent of drug dealing" (Rick Santorum); there is a serious threat of America turning into a "secular atheist country ... dominated by radical Islamists" (Newt Gingrich); "those who believe in evolution are part of a cult following" (Michelle Bachman); and the friendly embracing of fundamentalists who believe that the Statue of Liberty is a "demonic idol" (Rick Perry).

Who are these people who give tea a bad name and show up at presidential debates only to behave as if they are enjoying a bear baiting exhibition? Actually, they are Richard Hofstadter's politically paranoid, Eric Hoffer's true believers and Ortega y Gasset's revolting masses. They are people who are always with us even in the midst of modernity. And they obviously feel that, here in America, it is now their time. Maybe they are correct. They have captured one of the two main parties in the US, taken at least temporary control of the House of Representatives and fashioned a slate of Republican presidential hopefuls in their own image. As has been noted, in the midst of the cheering and jeering of these modern barbarians "not one Republican candidate...spoke up to admonish the crowd and call for civility".

Conclusion

For the rest of America to ignore what is going on here is the equivalent of turning one's back on a mugging in progress. And what is being mugged is the entire country.

Actually, this threat has been building up for some time. What do you think Ronald Reagan was doing, in terms of both domestic and foreign policies, if not laying the ground for George Bush Jr?

And the Democrats too have done their share to prepare the ground. Bill Clinton helped deregulate the economy to the delight of the devotees of greed and corruption, while simultaneously destroying the lives of millions of Iraqi innocents through draconian sanctions.

President Obama has allied with racists in the Middle East and let go free torturers and war criminals in our own midst.

Indeed, how many of us, politicians and voters, have turned a blind eye to the repeated bipartisan orgies of blood that sacrificed millions in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other places.

Who are these people? Well, intellectually speaking they are our lumpen proletariat. The one-dimensional thinkers and political savages that, until recently, had dwelled on the fringes of the conservative movement.

However, in another way they are a reflection of all of us and our frustrations with the built-in inadequacies of the democratic system. Winston Churchill was right when he said that democracy was the worst political system, except for all the others. The recurrent corruption, constant double standards, favouritism and influence peddling can get us all down.

But what sets the modern barbarians apart is their simple-minded intention to essentially dismantle government with nothing but a vague and vengeful minimalism in mind as a replacement. They are, if you will, intimations of our collective political ID.

So, Dr Jekyll, meet Mr Hyde. Who will it be? If you think you really share the character of Dr Jekyll, then you better assert yourself. Get active, get political, speak out, take a progressive stand. Otherwise, modern barbarism will have its way.

Carnage in Norway – Refreshing the Zionist Narrative

Jeff Gates — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:58:51 +0000

By Jeff Gates * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Photo courtesy of Skulz Fontaine

So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists...."
-- Manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik

War-making storylines tend to lose their steam. Sustained warfare requires more than just a plausible Evil Doer. A credible narrative is also essential. To remind us who to hate, who better than a murderous Nordic Muslim-hater?

Far-fetched? How many Americans had heard of the Taliban before March 2001 when destruction of the ancient Buddhas at Bamiyan was reported worldwide as a 'Cultural Holocaust'? Voila! An Evil Doer brand emerged and was soon repackaged as Islamo-fascism.

Six months later, an attack on U.S. soil left little doubt that outraged Americans would be provoked to war. Combine an emotionally wrenching mass murder with manipulated intelligence and an invasion was assured-of Iraq. That miscue required sophisticated pre-staging.

Residents of Washington, DC well recall the sniper attacks that left ten dead during the October 2002 lead-up to a Senate vote on a war resolution sponsored by Jewish Zionist Senator Joe Lieberman. Those well-timed murders ensured a heightened sense of insecurity and helped ratchet up the requisite hatred-to invade a nation that played no role in 911.

Remember the Times Square Terrorist? A car belonging to a Muslim was found with two WalMart propane tanks, an alarm clock, a box of fireworks and some fertilizer. When? In May 2010 during the lead-up to a UN vote on a nuclear-free Middle East-opposed by Israel.

To sustain hate requires a sustained stream of plausible reasons to hate. Plus careful maintenance of a 'generally accepted truth' that keeps attention focused on a credible threat.

Preparing the Minds

Islamo-phobia was a fresh threat when it first appeared in a 1993 article in Foreign Affairs. Yet it dates from 1990 when Princeton Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis, an avid Zionist, touted "The Roots of Muslim Rage." By 1996, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington was ready to publish The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.

With more than 100 nongovernmental organizations promoting The Clash, Americans experienced a seamless segue from an old narrative to a new. Without missing a beat in Pentagon spending, we ended a global Cold War and, by consensus, began a global War on Terrorism.

Huntington argued that cultural and religious identities would emerge as the primary source of conflict. To gain traction, The Clash consensus required a series of events that could be plausibly blamed on Muslim Evil Doers. That was 15 years ago-a long time to sustain a storyline.

With Osama bin Laden dead and war-weary Americans nearing the tenth anniversary of 911, The narrative was losing its punch. Plus the storytellers face a transparency problem: Intelligence agencies worldwide have identified pro-Israelis as the common source of the manipulated intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq.

What's a Zionist to do? Answer: look to past successes.

Timing is Everything

Ten days prior to 911, Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to Israeli super-spy Jonathan Pollard. Why then? The timing suggests Tel Aviv was signaling its operatives and sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers).

The Norwegian shooter is akin to the narrative-advancing snipers who emerged in the lead-up to the Senate vote authorizing the U.S. military to invade Iraq. In the lead-up to next month's UN vote on statehood for Palestine, the carnage in Norway freshened up a stale storyline.

This latest mass murder was committed on the 65^th anniversary of the bombing of the King David Hotel in Tel Aviv. That mass murder was an operation of the Irgun, Zionist-terrorist predecessors to the Likud Party of today's Benjamin Netanyahu.

The same night that Israel launched its Six-Day War in June 1967, Irgun operative Mathilde Krim was continuing her torrid affair with President Lyndon Johnson-in the White House. Why then? Because that land grab ensured the roots of the Muslim rage required to shape future events.

Why would a Norwegian Zionist target Norwegians? For the same reason that Irgun Zionist Menachem Begin murdered Jews in the King David Hotel: to advance a narrative.

In September 2000, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led a provocative march to Jerusalem's Temple Mount. When, after a year of calm, suicide bombings recommenced, Sharon and Netanyahu warned that only when Americans "feel our pain" would we appreciate their plight. To feel Israel's pain, they said, would require that America lose 4,500 to 5,000 to terrorism, the initial estimate of those lives lost to a mass murder one year later.

The well-timed operation in Norway turned to mass murder as a means to remake the world order in plain sight. Those complicit specialize in maintaining a storyline that dates from when the medieval Crusades pit Christians against Muslims.

Absent the success of such deceit, we may forget whom to hate.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

Islamophobia on the rise in USA

Paul J. Balles — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:03:44 +0000

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In an earlier article I noted that evangelic preacher Pat Robertson, David Gaubatz, Paul Sperry and Daniel Pipes are Islamophobic cult leaders who take every opportunity they can to vilify Islam and Muslims.

They were all particularly vindictive following the shooting at Fort Hood by the psychopath Nidal Malik Hassan who also happened to be Muslim.

The fact that he was Muslim had nothing to do with his maniacal action. It was no more related to the teachings of Islam than the paedophilia of a few priests is connected with Catholicism or the acts committed by Rabbi Meir Kahane of the Anti-Defamation League were related to Judaism.

Reports of a number of incidents in the past year or so strongly reveal a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes.

In May 2010, for instance, a bomb exploded at an Islamic centre in Jacksonville, Florida. In August, a man slashed the neck and face of a New York taxi driver after finding out he was Muslim.

Four days later, someone set fire to construction equipment at the future site of an Islamic centre in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This March, a radical Christian pastor burned a Quran in Gainesville, Florida, leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan that left at least 20 people dead.

A few days ago, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) published a benchmark report on Islamophobia in America.

Islamophobia is close-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims. An Islamophobe is an individual who holds a closed-minded view of Islam and promotes prejudice against or hatred of Muslims.

CAIR identifies a number of individuals and groups who have rallied against Islamophobia as well as a number who can be identified as Islamophobes.

Those who CAIR says

deserve recognition for their outstanding contributions to pushing back against Islamophobic trends during the period include: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Loonwatch.com; Congressional Tri-Caucus; Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN); Jon Stewart, Aasif Mandvi and "The Daily Show"; Keith Olbermann and Countdown; Stephen Colbert and "The Colbert Report"; Media Matters for America; interfaith leaders; and Rachel Maddow and "The Rachel Maddow Show."

Many are available on TV in Bahrain.

Some individuals, institutions and groups were at the centre of pushing Islamophobia in America during the period covered by the report:

Pamela Geller and Stop the Islamization of America; Robert Spencer and Jihad Watch; Brigitte Gabriel and Act! for America; Frank Gaffney and the Centre for Security Policy; Steven Emerson and the Investigative Project on Terrorism; Newt Gingrich; the four members of Congress who called for an investigation of Muslim Capitol Hill interns; Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and other violent extremists; and Daniel Pipes.

According to those interviewed for the CAIR report, on a scale from 1 (best situation for Muslims) to 10 (worst possible situation for Muslims) Islamophobia in America stands at 6.4. Interviews were conducted in September and October of 2010.

The public's favourable rating of Islam sank from 40 per cent in November 2001 to 30 per cent in August 2010, according to the Pew Research Centre. In late November 2010, the Public Research Institute found that 45 per cent of Americans agree that Islam is at odds with American values.

"Sources of Islamophobia are those individuals and institutions that produce and package materials, ideas or rhetoric about Islam in order to promote a skewed view of the faith and to induce fear, hate or prejudice in those who receive the materials," says CAIR.

Islamophobic behaviour is being repeated in Europe and elsewhere. The much-needed CAIR report details its nature. The report can be accessed and downloaded [.PDF] from the internet.

CAIR's work on Islamophobia has been a long time coming; too long, as the disease grows and spreads. Zionists scream "anti-Semitism" to silence critics of Israel. Long overdue has been the more honest label "Islamophobia" for those who wrongly vilify Islam and Muslims.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

Pat Robertson: Muslims are the New Nazis

SR Editor — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 09:27:50 +0000

By Tim Murphy * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

American TV personality and evangelical Christian leader Pat Robertson, backed by an Israeli flag, delivers a speech on a pilgrimage to Israel. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

Televangelist Pat Robertson isn't the powerful political force he once was, but as the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, he's still an influential voice on the Christian Right. Yesterday, on his television show, The 700 Club, Robertson delivered a warning to a weary nation: Muslims are the new Nazis:

Robertson: I was thinking, you know, if you oppose Muslims, what is said? Well, you're a bigot, right? Terrible bigotry. I wonder what were people who opposed the Nazis. Were they bigots?

Co-host: Well, in that day I think they were looked down upon and frowned upon.

Robertson: Why can't we speak out against an institution that is intent on dominating us and imposing Sharia law and making us all part of a universal caliphate? That's the goal of some of these people. Why is that bigoted? Why is it bigoted to resist Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and to say we don't want to live under Nazi Germany?

Watch:

Video link: http://youtu.be/mQOujxM585w

Not to nitpick here, but people who opposed the Nazis were not "looked down upon and frowned upon" as bigots. This was a few decades ago, so it's understandably a little obscure, but the United States actually went to war with Nazi Germany. There was a movie about it and everything.

As you'd probably guess, this is hardly the first time Robertson has compared a large and diverse group of people to Nazis:

Here's Robertson in 1995:

"Since the advent of the head of the Justice Department, Janet Reno, things have gotten out of control. Something is going on that is just very unwholesome in this nation....this is a shocking abuse of federal power. It is reminiscent of the Nazis. Something has got to be done."

And in 1993:

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians."

Also in 1993:

"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together."

And in 1990:

"[T]he liberal media and the screenwriters...are the spiritual descendants of Goebbels and the Nazis. They're not just talking about kikes and Jews; they're not talking about, quote, 'n-----s.' They're talking about Christians now."

And in 1984:

"The state is steadily attempting to do something that a few states other than the Soviets and the Nazis have attempted to do, namely, to take the children away from the parents and educate them in a philosophy that is amoral, anti-Christian and humanistic and to show them a collectivist philosophy that will ultimately lead to Marxism, socialism, and a communistic type of ideology."

So as you can see, Muslims are the new gays are the new Clinton Justice Department are the new gays (again) are the new screenwriters are the new public schools are the new Nazis; it's worse than we thought.

* Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

Source: Mother Jones

Yahweh Good Allah Bad [Satire]

Mantiq al-Tayr — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:06:58 +0000

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Something else bothered Orlich. Yee mentioned he had studied in Damascus. Orlich wondered about a man who would go to Syria - a state sponsor of terrorism - to find God.

Maj. Jason Orlich

What do you do after you help destroy a man's military career and then help create a system of prisoner abuse that is then used against hundreds of prisoners? I mean that's a pretty good track record right there. What would you do for an encore? (See here for a complete expose. Also, take a look here and here and here and see Orlich suck up to Steve Emerson here.)

Why not put together a huge bullshit-filled KKK-like anti-Muslim briefing up on the internet? Oh, and make sure to put your name and military rank on it so that the whole world will know, as I demonstrated last week in my most recent post, that the US government is rife with anti-Muslim bigots. (Go here for the downloadable power point presentation and go here to see it in html format.)

You can read about this guy's antics in the links below, but for your amusement, I have also drawn a few quotes from the relevant articles:

Of course the quality of language work at Guantamo was always superb as we can see from this article on how totally fucked up the government's case was:

Another accusation, that he distributed radical literature to the detainees, was based on an erroneous translation of an Islamic symbol in Ottoman-style calligraphy.

Later on in the same expose of government malfeasance we read of more great language work being done:

Airman Al Halabi's lawyers also made a charge of misconduct after a government translator contacted them to say that one of the prosecutors, Capt. Dennis Kaw, had discouraged her from alerting the court when she found a mistake in her translation of the Syrian government's letter. Captain Kaw had insisted, rather improbably, that the Syrian government had given Airman Al Halabi permission in the letter to travel not only to Syria but also to Qatar; instead, the relevant word meant "the homeland."

And read this:

As recently as a week ago, reports suggested that at least 17 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay have been subjected to the program. But Maj. Jason Orlich, a creator of Guantánamo Bay's "incentives" program that uses long-term sleep deprivation as a punishment for those who misbehave or fail to cooperate, testified that nearly all of the 350 to 400 prisoners held in two Guantánamo Bay prison camps were subject to the program, which entails waking the prisoners, shackling them, and moving them to a different cell along with all their belongings. Maj. Orlich was reluctant to specify the frequency of the moves, but testified that three-hour intervals "would not be abnormal."

Maj. Orlich also revealed that the Frequent Flyer Program was Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), although it did not appear in writing in the SOPs of that time-begging the question of what other detainee treatment policies were omitted from the written records. According to Maj. Orlich, Guantánamo Bay leadership was aware that the Frequent Flyer Program was in use, and the program was a routine included in what the military calls its "daily synchronization matrix." Maj. Orlich also said that the Frequent Flyer Program was ongoing at the time of his departure from Guantánamo Bay in April 2005, and he had never heard of any order to stop the program. This is despite previous government claims that the program had been discontinued in March 2004.

And here are some excerpts from the extremely bigoted and ignorant slide show this guy has put up on the web apparently subsequent to his tour in Guantanomo. I wonder if he gives this briefing to other people in the military and the US government. On the first slide of his presentation he mentions his PACOM affiliation. Maybe you all investigative journalists out there could ask PACOM if this means that they endorse his presentation.

You know it's gonna be good when it starts off with a quote from the fraud Walid Shoebat which I will spare you. Note to Shas Party members: the headlines in bold are mine, not from the presentation by Maj. Jason Orlich – though I can understand why people could get that confused. The quotes from the slide show are in italics.

Also, the author of the presentation states:

This brief is based upon Extensive Research, Islamic texts, history, and lessons learned at JTF GTMO

So let's take a look at some of the fruits of this extensive foray into Islamic texts.

Yahweh be good, Allah be bad:

Yahweh = Allah

* Yahweh is a loving Father, who, along with the Son and the Holy Spirit, is One God.

* To Muslims, the concept of a triune God is a blasphemy.

"They do blaspheme who say God is one of three...,for there is no God except one God." Surah 5:73

. . .

God." Surah 8:30 * Allah of Islam is frightening.

"It is God whom ye should more justly fear, if you believe." Surah 9:13

Muslims are Moonies:

2 Different Spiritual Worlds

Yahweh and Allah

* Before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess.

* Common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad's tribe.

* Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times.

* An Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time.

* The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed.

* The idol of their moon god, Allah, was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca.

* The worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah-worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship.

* The early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allah, the moon-god.

* The use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca.

Moohammad he a bad man and Khadijah, she be a bad girl getting her daddy drunk and all.

Genesis of the Islamic Faith

570 C.E. Muhammad born in Mecca

– Both parents died before Muhammad was 6

Abandoned by Mother, Amina, and passed around, rejected and possibly abused by 2 men (Ishaq 71, 72)

– Muhammad was raised by his Grandfather Abd al-Muttalib who almost

Sacrificed Muhammad's Father Abd-Allah in the Ka'aba while praying to Allah and

Practicing divination. (Tab VI 2,5)

– He also liked to constantly stroke/pet Muhammad. After his Grandfather's death, his Uncle Abu Talib raised him. (Ishaq 73)

-Muhammad became a trade agent for a rich female merchant named Khadijah who was 40 years old.

Khadijah who was 15 years his senior invited Muhammad and his uncles to her home. She got her father so drunk that he married them. Her Father later regretted marrying them. His sons, Al-Qasim, Al-Tayyib and Al-Tahir died in infancy; He had Fatima (wife of Ali) and 2 other daughters. (Tab VI 49)

Mongol invaders good, resistance to them very very bad and Ibn Taymiyya is a hadith.

Ibn Taymiya and NO TOLERANCE

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD RESIST, FIGHT AND OVERTURN ANY ISLAMIC GOVERNMENT THAT DOESN'T GOVERN THE LAND ACCORDING TO THE ISLAMIC LAW ONLY!

PRINCIPLE: MUSLIMS SHOULD ENFORCE JIHAD ON ANYBODY WHOSE BELIEFS DIFFER FROM ISLAM, ESPECIALLY JEWS AND CHRISTIANS.

1263 A.D. – Born in Syrian town of Haran

Fought Mongolian invaders of Syria (1299-1303) and taught that Mongolians

were not true Muslims and that fellow countrymen should not submit to their authority.

Declared that anyone who submitted to Mongolians, helped them or dealt with
them was an infidel.

Taymiya acted as if he were a military leader, declaring the Muslims to be
infidels and attacking them.

Taymiya established the mind-set of NO TOLERANCE and refinforced principles that were practiced centuries earlier in the times of Muhammad.

REMEMBER: Today's terrorism is a result of this mindset and Taymiya is one of most widely read Hadiths.

2. Yes, it's already video time. Now the first video below is one that I found on Rick B's site http://ww3zionism.blogspot.com/ Check his site out.

And no doubt many of you have seen it. But I'm linking to it because:

A. It is very well done. I take my hat off to the people at the Onion. They are superb.

B. Listen to the little girl's Arabic at near the end of the video. Shows you what happens when David Gaubatz types are teaching people Arabic.

C. It is short, so Shas Party and Tea Party members can follow it.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqpEacxdS0

And now for some serious study of the gifts that ~~Yahweh~~ er, Allah, has bestowed upon us. Kind of makes you all want to shout out in unison الحمد لله doesn’t it?

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezDRxqI7x0

As we all know from Peter King’s (Asshole, New York) inquisition, Shakira law made it to Nashville. Maybe that’s not so bad after all.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTdV6dn_3_0

نشكر الله

* Mantiq al-Tayr is a blogger who is attempting to wake up other American citizens to the true dangers and challenges which face their country and is devoted to justice for the Palestinian people. Truth is his objective, satire is his tool. He also enjoys reading the Qur'an from time to time. See his website.

No related posts.

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace [Satire]

Mantiq al-Tayr — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 18:44:05 +0000

WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE

By Mantiq al-Tayr * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1. Today I just want to do a couple of things quickly. First of all, Skulz Fontaine has been sending me some great stuff and I've been a bit remiss in not sharing some of these with you. I like this one.

But of course the land theft continues, as does the killing – killing Palestinians being the Israeli national pass time. Plus it just seems that attacking, harrasing and shooting at Palestinians is as Israeli as assaulting the USS Liberty.

2. But I want to address something else as the main topic today. What some people like to call Islamophobia – I call it what it is – Anti-Muslim Bigotry – in the United States is getting out of hand. Our country is sick and we need to understand the source of this sickness and do something about it. One good place for you to go as you begin searching for the source is an article I've linked to before by Max Blumenthal. It is here. And here's another real interesting one. And you should read all about David Horowitz – who pays Robert Spencer something like 132k a year to write his bullshit. I strongly recommend you go to Loonwatch and do a search on David Horowitz. Oh hell, I'll do it for you.

And this brings me to:

3. But I also want to draw your attention to something else. Islamphobia is being actively supported by local, state and federal governments and law enforcement. Anti-Muslim hatemongers routinely train local, state and federal officials to hate Islam and Muslims and it looks like they get good money for it. I tell you, I am in the wrong business, but I digress.

It is very possible that these hate mongers have trained people in your community and your state and for sure some of them have been saying some real interesting bullshit to people in the federal government. I mean real wackos like Nonie Darwish and Walid Phares and Steve Coughlin.

I can hear you know, "Okay, Mantiq, prove this. How come you haven't provided one single link under this topic whereas you are always linking everything to everything else and we can't even finish your goddamn posts because we are running of all over hell's half acre reading your links?

Never, fear. Your link is here. It is to a new 80-page study of this phenomenon done by Thomas Cincotta of Political Research Associates. It is entitled:

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants and the Threat to Rights and Security. It's a nice PDF file and you can download the whole thing for free.

Here is an excerpt from the preface to the report about how effectively your public officials are being trained:

"Kill them, including the children."

That's how to solve the threat of violent militant Muslims?

The above quote is from what one official involved in homeland security said was how she understood the underlying theme of a speech by Walid Shoebat at an anti-terrorism training in Las Vegas in October 2010. Our investigator had turned around after Shoebat's speech and asked the woman seated one row back what she thought was the solution offered by Shoebat.

The report focuses on three private training outfits and the loons who work for them. They are:

A. the International Counter-Terrorism Officers Association (ICTOA)
B. Security Solutions International, LLC (SSI)
C. The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre)

I like how the CI Centre (where Walid Phares plies his trade) spells centre the British way. Makes them look cool.

And the report has a section on each of the following people who work for one of the three firms mentioned above:

Mark A. Gabriel – ICTOA guest speaker
David Gaubatz – SSI guest speaker
Walid Phares – CI Centre Faculty
Clare M. Lopez – CI Centre Faculty
Tawfik Hamid – CI Centre Faculty
Stephen Coughlin – CI Centre Faculty
Nonie Darwish – CI Centre Faculty
Detective Ebrahim Ashabi – SSI Expert
Walid Shoebat – ICTOA Guest Speaker

This report is a must read and it is free. Send it to your congressmen and your state representatives and demand that your state, local and federal governments stop funding these modern-day equivalents of the Ku Klux Klan.

4. There are five million decoy Muslims in the US. They are here to trick you and then to kill you.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drQETQ2iprU
(I bet Shas Party members won't get this.)

5. Shakira law spreads to MUST (Missouri University for Science and Technology)

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=626Z2wmieUo

Anti-Muslim brainwashing

Paul J. Balles — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:47:07 +0000

By Paul J. Balles * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

At least seven times today [12 February] I heard TV newscasters refer to Muslim or Islamic extremists.

The amount and level of this kind of fraudulent suggestiveness has been increasing almost daily.

I call it fraudulent because people hearing this mix of Muslim with extremist repeated often enough become brainwashed into thinking that all Muslims are extremists.

The reference to Islamic extremists is frequently made on Fox News by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

A headline on MMTV asserts that "O'Reilly supports Rep. King's Islamic Extremism Hearings: 'you've got to get a handle on it'". The language of Islamic extremist has infected the US congress.

For years, since he was on CNN, Glenn Beck has made wild false claims, like, "Islamic extremism is the biggest threat to our way of life since World War II and we'll never be able to fight it – if we can't see it".

Now, as chief Fox propagandist, Glenn Beck has the American left wing collaborating with his paranoid vision: "Believe what you want but the left is working hand-in-hand with the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim extremists... Hand-in-hand"...

Sean Hannity isn't much better, saying things like, "It seems to me that Islamic extremism is the 21st century threat that (communism) posed in the last century..."

Similar Islamophobic references have been heard on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and other networks in the USA. Even reporters on the liberal MSNBC have been guilty of falsely connecting Islam and extremism.

The Associated Press says: "A Senate report on the Fort Hood shooting is sharply critical of the FBI's failure to recognize warning signs that an army psychiatrist had become an Islamist extremist..."

Do lunatics who commit wanton killings need to be identified according to their religious affiliations? If so why weren't the killers at Columbine and in Arizona recently referred to as Christian extremists?

That is if indeed they were Christians. The media only seems interested in making the religious connection when the mad murderer also happens to be a Muslim.

A Senate committee, headed by Joe Lieberman, asserted that "The enemy – Islamist extremists – must be labelled correctly and explicitly ... in order for the military to counter the extremism."

Recently, while commenting on the protesters in Egypt, several reporters referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as extremists.

Professor Sami Hamod says that the Muslim Brotherhood originated as a tool of America. How can they be extremists?

It seems that members of groups opposed to US interference in the Middle East get labelled Islamic extremists.

Palestinians trying to protect their property have been dubbed Muslim extremists, even when they're Christians.

According to Western broadcasters, all members of Hamas and Hezbollah automatically qualify as Islamic extremists.

The entire population of Iran seems to have qualified as Islamic extremists because Iran refuses to cow-tow to Israel and America.

Syria and Lebanon, despite non-Muslim populations, have been dubbed Islamist extremists because they have failed to sign peace treaties with Israel.

So-called Islamic extremists have forced the king of Jordan to fire his entire cabinet. In Yemen, they provided the impetus for Ali Abdullah Saleh to announce that he won't run for re-election. Both instances were obviously meant to stave off popular rebellions.

Despite the fact that Hosni Mubarak and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the departed president of Tunisia, were both dictators hated by their publics, the rebellions have been referred to as the work of Islamic terrorists.

Recently Tony Blair warned the West that it must abandon its "wretched posture of apology" towards Islamic extremism.

Newscasters, reporters, commentators, politicians and leaders, infected with religious bigotry, need urgent rehabilitation.

The parcel bomb plot: Al-Qaeda’s gift to Israel

Maidhc Ó Cathail — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:45:19 +0000

Al Qaeda Ink Cartridge Bomb

By Maidhc Ó Cathail * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

While Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) may have claimed responsibility for the parcel bomb plot, it's worth considering how this latest Yemen-linked terror scare has been a gift to their avowed enemies.

A mere two weeks before the discovery of mail bombs addressed to "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago", Rupert Murdoch sounded prescient as he received an award from the Anti-Defamation League for his support of Israel. "The terrorists continue to target Jews across the world," declared the media mogul in his acceptance speech. "But they have not succeeded in bringing down the Israeli government - and they have not weakened Israeli resolve." Equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the Fox News owner smeared the growing worldwide condemnation of Israel's rogue behaviour as an "ongoing war against the Jews".

Binyamin Netanyahu, a frequent London house guest of Murdoch and a likely recipient of his political contributions, was quick to make hay of the foiled plot. Briefing the cabinet on his impending address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli prime minister told them that it would be "held against the background of reports about the attempt to attack the Jewish community in Chicago".

Linking the parcel bomb plot to some of the most iconic terrorist attacks of the post-9/11 era, Netanyahu said that "it does not matter if the target was a synagogue in Chicago or a railway station in Madrid, London, Mumbai or Bali". Deftly associating his increasingly isolated government with the victims of those attacks, the Israeli prime minister proclaimed: "We are facing a growing wave of terrorism by extremist Islam."

Netanyahu, never one prone to understatement, offered this analysis of the unsuccessful attempt to use desktop printers as terror weapons: "It is growing in the scope and brazen gall of its attacks, in the weapons with which it is arming itself, and in the sweeping objectives of the leaders of global terrorism."

He then assured his colleagues that "one of the main issues" he would be addressing in New Orleans with American Jewish leaders was "the steps that the civilized and free world must take in order to stop this wave that threatens us all."

Needless to say, those "steps" are unlikely to include an end to the 43-year occupation and colonization of the West Bank or a lifting of the four-year blockade of Gaza.

An American apologist for Israel's self-appointed guardian of "the civilized and free world" took a similar line. Joel Pollak, a Republican candidate in the mid-term elections, released a statement condemning the attempted terror attack, saying he would be spending the Jewish sabbath in West Rogers Park "in solidarity with the people of the ninth congressional district who were the direct targets of Al Qaeda terror". Sounding a lot like Netanyahu, Pollak attempted to rally his constituents by telling them, "We must not stop fighting to eradicate the twin evils of terror and hatred."

Again, we can take it as read that the "terror and hatred" Americans are being urged to combat only applies to Israel's enemies (PDF).

The Israeli news website DEBKA-Net-Weekly, which describes itself as "the leading geopolitical newsletter", has even attempted to implicate Israel's current enemy number one, Iran. The next issue, for subscribers only, promises to reveal "how the Al-Qaeda air package plot fit [sic] into the selective partnership between Tehran and Al-Qaeda and homes in on the areas where their schemes dovetail".

But how trustworthy is this "leading newsletter"?

"Debka is prepared mostly by former Mossad operatives. A reliable stream of information," Martin Peretz, the Islamophobic editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-Israel New Republic assures us.

Ever since an Israeli firm let the Christmas Day crotch bomber "slip through" security at Schiphol Airport without a passport, a few influential voices with close ties to Israel have been instrumental in making Yemen "the new buzzword".

Appearing on Fox News two days later, the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman, announced: "Iraq was yesterday's war. Afghanistan is today's war. If we don't act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow's war."

Within a week, Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Saban Center in the Brookings Institution, had an op-ed in the Daily Beast titled "The menace of Yemen". Touting the botched Christmas Day plot as evidence of "the growing ambition of Al-Qaeda's Yemen franchise," Riedel called for "significant American support to defeat AQAP".

Riedel's employer, the Saban Center, is named after Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media mogul, who in 2002 pledged 13 million dollars to found the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Two years later, Saban admitted to the New York Times: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."

"The US may be walking into a bit of a trap," warns Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies.

That "trap" has been best described by a former CIA officer. "America's misguided war on terror", Philip Giraldi pointed out in a recent article, "is in fact a complete adoption of Israeli security paradigms without any regard for the actual threats that confront the US, making Israel's many enemies also the foes of Washington".

Israel must be very grateful indeed for this latest terror scare. If Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula did not exist, they might have to invent it.

* Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan.

Dealing with Islamophobia [video]

Haitham Sabbah — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 08:10:02 +0000

These are the words that we wish all non-Muslims brothers and sister to hear and learn about Islam.

First Community Church, Columbus, OH
Preaching on Sunday, August 29, worship service with Rev Deborah C Lindsay:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxMdhLBTxLE

Xenophobia and Islamophobia in the USA

Paul J. Balles — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:08:51 +0000

By Paul J. Balles* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Cartoon by Steve Sack

"To generalize is to be an idiot." – William Blake

Xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people. It includes hatred of persons belonging to a different race, or different ethnic or national origin.

The fear or hatred that makes up xenophobia involves a great deal of generalizing about "others".

Unfortunately, if you develop a mindset about large numbers of people based on the actions of a few, you can treat whole populations badly.

British historian Thomas Macaulay said: "In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at classes."

Generalizations involving xenophobia include thoughts like "immigrants are not as worthy as natives", and "women are not as capable as men".

There are those in America who consider Barak Obama unworthy of being its president because of his colour, because his father was not American by birth or because Obama's middle name is Hussain.

The mental degradation as part of this generalizing applies to any and all who don't belong to the tribe or group of the xenophobes.

Philosopher and author Eric Hoffer observed that "We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious."

Thus, by faulty reasoning, if there is one bad black, all blacks are bad; and if one Muslim has committed a crime, therefore all Muslims must be criminals.

A special name – Islamophobia – applies to xenophobia involving Muslims; and Islamophobia has been growing alarmingly in America recently.

A knife-wielding lunatic attacked a Muslim taxi driver in New York City. Why? The driver admitted to a drunk lunatic that he (the taxi driver) was a Muslim.

The attacker reasoned from the specific (an attack attributed to Muslims on 9/11) to the general (all Muslims were responsible).

A mosque under construction in Tennessee suffered an arson attack. Why? Comments by Islamophobes like Newt Gingrich have incited a general hatred of Muslims.

Newt Gingrich, once the speaker of the US House of Representatives, would naturally have others attaching greater credence to what he says.

How many people has Gingrich fed anti-Muslim thinking with his inflammatory public remarks about Islam? The false generalization: if one Muslim is bad, all Muslims must be bad.

Florida Pastor Terry Jones planned to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11. Why? He generalized from Muslims alleged to have been responsible for 9/11 to all of Islam.

Documentary film-maker Michael Moore pointed out: "Blaming a whole group for the actions of just one of that group is anti-American. Timothy McVeigh was Catholic. Should Oklahoma City prohibit the building of a Catholic Church near the site of the former federal building that McVeigh blew up?"

Protesters have been assailing the building of an Islamic cultural centre – including a mosque – near Ground Zero in New York. The protestors disregard the fact that before Ground Zero became Ground Zero, it had two mosques.

The problem: general and increasing Islamophobia. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 49 per cent of all Americans say they have generally unfavourable opinions of Islam. A larger percentage opposes the cultural centre.

Poet Ezra Pound wrote: "Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it." In other words, if the money isn't in the bank the cheque is worthless.

Applied to the generalizations about Islam, if they don't fit Muslims generally, they are worthless expressions of xenophobia and the ignorant fear called Islamophobia.

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. For more information, see http://www.pballes.com.

America’s War on Islam

Stephen Lendman — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 09:53:14 +0000

By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

America prides itself on religious freedom, the Constitution's First Amendment stating:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

In fact, those rights are selectively enforced, and consistently denied at the whim of administrations, Congress and courts, including equal respect for all religions - more than ever post-9/11 under Bush and Obama, agents of privilege, not Constitutionally protected freedoms. A sad testimony to a rhetorical, not real democracy, Muslim Americans especially victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and charity - innocent men and women bogusly called terrorists, used for political advantage.

More than any other ethnic/religious group, Western discourse especially wrongs and unfairly portrays Muslim/Arabs stereotypically as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent.

In his book, "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People," Jack Shaheen explained how they've been defamed and used as fair game throughout decades of cinematic history (from silent films to recent ones) to foster prejudicial attitudes, and reinforce notions of Western values, high-mindedness, and moral superiority.

Worse still are slanderous media commentaries about dangerous gun-toting terrorists, vital for authorities to arrest and imprison, never mind the rule of law, right or wrong, or whether those accused are guilty or innocent. It's no surprise when new suspects are named, media reports automatically convicting them in the court of public opinion, poisoning it by stereotypical characterizations and baseless charges, invariably against Muslims, and by implication their faith.

No wonder politicians and extremist Christian fundamentalist ministers rage over Muslim "terrorists" and a proposed New York Islamic cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, threatening a public 9/11 Koran burning in protest - cancelled, then suspended, now re-cancelled, so stay tuned, the outrageous media frenzy may encourage it ahead, as well as attacks around the country against mosques, perhaps with Muslims inside praying, authorities turning a blind eye about people they despise, pretending, like Obama, they care.

On 9/11/2010, he disingenuously said America's not "at war with Islam," while he wages it against at least six Muslim countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia Yemen, and Palestine by supplying Israel with annual billions in aid and the latest weapons and technology. He also threatens or intimidates other countries, including Iran, Lebanon, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, even though none of them pose a regional or global threat.

In addition, Special Forces death squads (like Task Force 373), extrajudicially murder or capture suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda figures, many hundreds or perhaps thousands on a so-called Jpel (joint prioritized effects) list.

Further, drones and ground forces kill civilian men, women and children daily, falsely called "terrorists" or "insurgents," and Special Forces and CIA operatives operate lawlessly in 75 or more countries, warring covertly against anyone opposing US interests.

It's America's secret war, mostly against Muslims, including US citizens abroad, denied due process or judicial fairness. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat, Obama's summary judgment, defiling the rule of law - counter-insurgency madness to cow people into submission, advancing permanent war and endless violence, breeding resentment and hatred throughout the Muslim world.

On 9/11, AP said, for the second straight day, thousands of Afghans in Kabul responded to anti-Muslim hatred, specifically the announced Koran burning. Despite cancelling it, the damage was done, crowds burning tires and shouting "Long live Islam, death to America." Earlier in the week, they heard fiery speeches from parliament members, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics, criticizing Washington and demanding foreign troops withdraw. Some also threw rocks at a passing US military convoy.

Protesters in front of western Kabul's Milad ul-Nabi mosque raised and flags with slogans calling for Obama's death, also a cardboard effigy of Dove World Outreach Center's pastor Terry Jones. All religious holy books are sacred, demanding the respect they deserve. Burning or desecrating them is morally wrong and profoundly offensive.

In 2005, Afghan riots killed 15 and injured dozens following stories about Guantanamo interrogators placing Korans in washrooms and flushing one down a toilet. Imagine the outrage in America if Muslims did it to Bibles or other Judeo-Christian scripture.

Against that backdrop, Obama's 9/11 address at the Pentagon (symbolic of America's war agenda) was an exercise in demagoguery and lies saying:

"We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust....The highest honor we can pay those we lost, indeed our greatest weapon in this ongoing war, is to do what our adversaries fear the most. To stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are."

Fact check:

in 20 months as president, Obama continued what Bush began, stripping civil liberties, defiling human rights, waging imperial wars, increasing homeland repression, and targeting dissent and democratic freedoms;
at home and abroad, he's fostered hate, loathing, and mistrust throughout the entire Muslim world;
"those (9/11 victims) we lost" were by our hands, not "crazed Arabs" from an Afghanistan cave directing their American operatives;
"true to who we are? our sense of common purpose? the character of our country?" In fact, a cavernous divide separates most Americans from our criminal ruling cabal. Obama is its titular head allied with corporate predators, exploiting human resources and strip mining the world for profits, allied with out-of-control militarists, destroying it for power and privilege;
"some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent?" America's marauding armies wage ruthless wars on planet earth, slaughtering millions on every continent;
"distort who we are?" The above account explains it, unmasking Obama's demagoguery.

Saying "We champion the rights of every American (to) worship as one chooses," Obama omitted the New York cultural center or announced Koran burning, now cancelled, showing his contempt for Islam, his words notwithstanding, disingenuous rhetoric like everything he says, what everyone needs to know, what too few understand, still thinking he's different. He's not, and in many respects he's worse than his predecessor.

Justifying America's imperial wars and homeland repression requires enemies, Muslims the target of choice, vilified for their faith, "terrorists" or "Islamofascists" because we say so. It's reminiscent of the false late 1990s accusations against Nation of Islam National Representative Louis Farrakhan, saying he called the Pope "the anti-Christ" and Judaism a "gutter religion."

He strongly rebutted the assertions, what Washington can't do about Islam, calling it a "religion of war," when, in fact, it promotes love, not hate; peace, not violence; good over evil; charity, not exploitation; and a just and fair society for people of all faiths.

America's Judeo-Christian "war on terror" disdains these beliefs, vilifying people for their faith, slaughtering and torturing them abroad, conducting a modern day Inquisition at home, a lawless holy crusade, based on lies, deceit, and managed news. Regular state propaganda over the airwaves preaches hate for global conquest, masquerading as democracy, the kind Washington won't tolerate anywhere, including at home.

A Final Comment

Washington's one-sided Israeli support underscores its disdain for Islam. Obama accentuated it by telling Netanyahu that "The bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable," assuring him of America's "deep, abiding interest in Israel's security," a message Palestinians and world Muslims know means no interest in theirs.

Worse still, he endorsed Cast Lead and Gaza's siege, mercilessly and illegally suffocating 1.5 million people posing no threat whatever. Hamas is targeted for its independence, not militancy, what he and Western media won't explain.

The latest round of peace talks continue, as bogus as others, on and off for the past 35 years, resolving nothing but empowering Israel at the expense of Occupied Palestinians. The only possible outcome this time is like before - total failure or unconditional capitulation, nothing in between, because Washington and Israel won't tolerate a just, equitable agreement.

Obama also rejects Hamas as Palestine's legitimate government as well its right to self-defense. Under occupation, it's essential against a nuclear-armed marauder, a rogue state, a military powerhouse aggressor believing violence is the only language Arabs understand. No wonder growing millions globally see Israel for what it is - a regional and world menace complicit with its Washington paymaster/partner.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

America’s True Believers and the Great Muslim Scare

Lawrence Davidson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 21:08:39 +0000

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Great Muslim Scare

In the year 1951 the American working class intellectual Eric Hoffer described those he called the True Believers.These are people who are alienated from their present conditions and suffer feelings of insecurity and uncertainty about the way their lives and communities are heading. To set things straight they seek out movements, either of the right or the left, that claim to have assured answers to problems while offering comfort and solidarity in a fellowship of like believers. The leaders of such movements often can be demagogues who expect their followers to be, well, true believers. The one and the many are made for each other in this regard. The solution to problems almost always entails conspiracy theories and the confronting of enemies, both internal and external. In generally uncertain and fearful times, more and more of the citizenry can be pulled into such movements, attracted by leaders who are assertive in a mesmerizing way. All societies have such true believers in them and today’s America is no exception.

Since the end of the Cold War, communism has been replaced by a new enemy, the religion of Islam and the billion Muslims who make it up. Even before 9/11 there was an on-going effort by radical Zionists to focus American fears and uncertainties on the Muslim world. The 9/11 attacks seemed to be proof positive of their position and, with the media’s full cooperation, increasing numbers of citizens began to think a new crusader war was justified. After all, did not President George W. Bush say that the attackers "hate our values?"

In truth, the terrorism that came home to America on 9/11 was the result of decades of American foreign policies that had killed and injured incalculably more Middle Easterners than the 2,973 victims of that fateful day. But most US citizens were (and still are) unfamiliar with the realities of their country’s foreign policies and the government, along with the media, was not about to educate them. And so the nation entered a time of high anxiety allegedly made understandable through a mixture of propaganda, bigotry and official lies. It was (and still is for the era continues) a time made for true believers.

Introducing Pamela Geller

Zionist Pamela Geller likes to splash around in the Atlantic Ocean wearing a bikini, declaiming 'here I am in my chador, my burka'

Now enter Pamela Geller, one of America’s up and coming, famous and infamous, purveyors of Islamophobia. Essentially, Ms Geller is advocating an American crusade against Islam. She would no doubt yell and scream that this is not so, but consider the fact that she is the one who, almost single handedly, turned the debate over the proposed Islamic centre for southern Manhattan, the one two blocks from "ground zero", into a clash of civilizations. Along with air time on Fox News, Ms Geller accomplished this via the web, from her blog, Atlas Shrugs. This achievement must stand as a milestone in web history, though not a particularly wholesome one. It looks very much like this lady is positioning herself to be a leader of just the kind of movement Eric Hoffer described. Here are some of Ms Geller’s other particulars:

Geller is a 51 year old ex-employee of the New York Daily News (she worked in marketing) and then, until 1994, was an associate publisher of something called The New York Observer. After that she seems to have devoted herself to political advocacy and blogging.
She is co-founder of the Freedom Defense Initiative which is dedicated to stopping "Islamic supremacist initiatives in American cities" and identifying "infiltrators of our federal agencies". She is also a founder of the organization Stop Islamization of America which, in the finest Orwellian fashion, describes itself as a "human rights organization”. It recently raised enough money to place advertisements on the sides of New York City buses identifying the Islamic religion with the 9/11 attacks. The organization’s motto is "Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense."
She is a pal of any number of right wing politicians known for their anti-Islamic positions such as Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, Gary Berntsen and the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders.
She is a right-wing Zionist with connections to the West Bank settler movement. This may be the real root of her anti-Islamic sentiments.
And finally, Ms Geller may very well be a megalomanic. She likes to go around dressed in superman customs and has taken to calling herself "Atlas" (after Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged). She also likes to splash around in the Atlantic Ocean wearing a bikini, declaiming "here I am in my chador, my burka". When she is accused of obvious anti-Islamic statements and positions, she gets huffy and offers a flat denial made at suspiciously high volume. It is all a "gross misrepresentation", according to Geller. It should be kept in mind that just because it is tough to elect a female president does not mean that there is no American constituency for a female demagogue

As suggested above, there are millions of Americans who may find Geller’s message attractive. For example, most of the followers of Glenn Beck, Franklin Graham, Michael Evans, Rob Grant and the late Jerry Falwell are probably on the same page as Pamela Geller. Taken altogether they might account for about 10 per cent of the adult population (that is roughly 30 million people). These are the sort of people who think that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim and that there is an Islamic plot to take over the country and institute Shari’ah law. These are Hoffer’s hard core true believers. However, there are many additional Americans who are ready to see it Geller’s way on single issues. Again, take the Manhattan Islamic centre that Geller thinks is the launching pad for the "Islamization of America". About one third of the US do not think that American Muslims have a constitutional right to build at that spot. One half of all Americans think it is legal to ban Muslims from building mosques anywhere in the US. About 31 per cent would be OK with doing just that.

A partial explanation

How are we to understand this phenomenon? How could millions upon millions of at least potentially sensible people stereotype an entire religion of a billion people (the vast majority of whom disavow the likes of Osama bin Laden) as enemies?

I suggest consulting Walter Lippman for at least part of the answer. Walter Lippman was a Pulitzer Prize winning political commentator. He was born in 1889 and lived on until 1974. Lippman wrote a book in 1922 entitled Public Opinion. In this work he considered the problem of the individual’s knowledge of events and situations beyond his or her local environment. Here is how Lippman explained what is really a universal predicament:

Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth's surface, moves in a small circle... Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine.

Inevitably, for most, those opinions of things beyond the local will be based on indirectly acquired information. Indeed, the further from home we look the more dependent we are on limited and often distorted information coming from sources which we assume to be knowledgeable but the biases of which we know little. This information underpins the "pictures in our heads" as Lippman characterized them, and it fleshes out the superficial views upon which make our judgments.

It is in times of high tension involving problems coming from beyond our local environment that we become most aware of our ignorance. To compensate for that ignorance we automatically place the unfamiliar situation within a culturally prescribed context and simultaneously turn to others of our group whom, it is assumed, know what is going on. The primary medium that brings us these "experts" – government officials, news pundits, academics and sometimes the likes of Pamela Geller – is the news media in all its forms. However, as Lippman tells us, "news and truth are not the same thing". One of the reasons for the divergence is the fact that the former is filtered through the minds of those "in the know" and their media facilitators. Thus, Lippman continues, we can assume that the guidance offered by the "experts" is "in some vital measure constructed out of his [or her] own stereotypes … and by the urgency of his [or her] own interest". One can think of no better examples of this than Pamela Geller and Fox News.

Conclusion

We have two factors working here, one is limited and the other ubiquitous. We have the limited but ever present subset of the population who are potential true believers. And in addition, we have a ubiquitous ignorance of that which is going on beyond our local environment. You might argue that, in an era of globalization and the web, this cannot be so. Unfortunately it is so. While there might be a lot of information out there, some of it even reliable information, most people do not seek it out nor do they necessarily have the background to recognize truth if it happens to run counter to their culturally influenced stereotypes and favourite "news" sources. These two factors are not uniquely American. You find them in all societies, including Muslim ones. Regardless, they are increasingly serious and dangerous factors right here in the USA.

Gunning for Islam. The Islamophobes: fringe wackos, or rising mass movement?

SR Editor — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:16:29 +0000

By Justin Raimondo* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Randy Bish, Pittsburgh, PA - The Tribune Review

Three people are dead because US "pastor" Terry Jones, in collaboration with the American media, staged (or threatened to stage) an anti-Muslim Koran-burning exhibition, which predictably stoked anti-American protests in Afghanistan: also predictably, US troops fired on demonstrators. The result: yet more "collateral damage."

In more 9/11 anniversary news: a rally sponsored by the David Horowitz-affiliated "Jihad Watch," in alliance with Pamela "Shrieking Harpy" Geller's "Stop the Islamization of America" grouplet and the British neo-fascist "English Defense League," attracted a few thousand wackos to a site a few blocks from Ground Zero, where uber-wacko Geert Wilders (Dutch neo-fascist and leading Islamophobe) made the case for banning Islam in the name of ... "Dutch tolerance":

"America, New York and Shariah are incompatible in New York. New York stands for openness and tolerance. Suppose there was a place and it only allowed people of one persuasion within its walls. It would not be New York. It would be Mecca."

Maybe Wilders has been smoking too much of that strong Dutch weed, but to argue that we're too tolerant to tolerate the intolerant seems a bit odd. Then again, Dutch neo-fascism no doubt suffers in translation.

Wilders, Geller, and "Jihad Watch" anti-Islam guru Robert Spencer want to import Europe's Muslim-hating racist fringe to America: their thesis is that Islam is not a religion, but a political conspiracy to impose Sharia law on non-Muslims. They raise the specter of an Islamic States of America, with American women draped in the chador and mandatory mosque attendance - a scenario that doesn't even qualify as credible science fiction.

And if you think it doesn't get any kookier than that, then you didn't listen to John Bolton's speech to the anti-mosque rally, delivered via videotape, wherein he attacked the effort by "politicians" to "impose tolerance and understanding on us, whether we like it or not." He also indirectly attacked his own former boss, George W. Bush, when he lashed out against Imam Feisal Rauf's role as a State Department emissary of good will to Muslim nations. It was Bush's State Department who first sponsored him in that role. Shortly before delivering his remarks, Bolton confirmed he is considering a presidential run: can he ride the wave of hate all the way to the White House?

Another aspiring anti-Muslim Know-Nothing demagogue who spoke at the rally is one Ilario Pantano, whose credentials as a murderous hater are surely impeccable. We last heard about Pantano when Army prosecutors accused him of murdering two Iraqis in some very cold blood, as Mother Jones relates:

"The central facts of the incident that made Ilario Pantano famous are not in dispute. On April 15, 2004, Pantano, a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, led a small group of Marines to search a suspected insurgent hideout in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, outside of Fallujah. As the patrol neared the house, two men tried to leave in a car. The Marines stopped, searched, and handcuffed the men. A Marine scoured the vehicle, but didn't find anything incriminating. After other Marines found weapons in the house, Pantano had the men uncuffed and ordered them to search the car themselves. At some point during that search, Pantano felt threatened by the two men. He shot them both-pausing to load a second magazine into his M-16 before emptying that clip too. Then he placed a cardboard sign reading 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy'-the motto of his Marine battalion-on top of the car. He wanted 'to send a message to these Iraqis and others,' he said later.

"For a time in 2005, it looked like Pantano might be court-martialed for killing the two Iraqis. One of his subordinates claimed the shooting was unjustified. But the prosecution's case collapsed in an early hearing, and Pantano was never even tried. The judge in charge of the hearing recommended non-judicial punishment-but Pantano's commander didn't agree, and he was never disciplined."

This is the kind of person at the head of the "anti-Islamization" movement - an escaped war criminal.

Pantano is now running for Congress in North Carolina - as a Republican, naturally.

Joe Conason made an important point about this hate movement, and that is its intensely partisan nature. Go here to listen to hate-monger Geller, aka Pamela Oshry, at a pro-Israel rally earlier this year. She ends her ultra-Likudist diatribe - "There is no Israeli occupation: the Arabs are occupying Israel!" - by urging her audience to "Dump Chuck!" Chuck Schumer, that is, the Democratic US Senator from New York who "dared" oppose John Bolton's nomination for UN ambassador: after all, "reasons" Geller, Bolton is "the best friend Israel ever had!" What else do we need to know?

If you think this gathering of pro-Israel fanatics, British football hooligans, and a Dutch neo-fascist is just a fringe phenomenon, ask yourself how many Americans believe Obama is a "secret Muslim"? The answer is depressing: and Republicans like Newt Gingrich are already using the anti-Muslim hysteria to target the President and his party in a display of shameless opportunism that is a new low, even for the GOP.

Part of this is due to internal Republican party politics: with the economics-driven "tea party" faction rapidly overturning the GOP Establishment, the neoconservative remnants are trying to stage a comeback by diverting the movement's energy to anti-Muslim scapegoating - anything other than holding Republicans as well as Democrats accountable for spending us into penury.

The impetus for this comes, as I detailed in last Friday's column, from the pro-Israel lobby, which is moving into high gear with its bomb Iran campaign, with Bolton calling on both the US and Israel to launch an immediate military strike. Millions of dollars are being poured into this effort, with Spencer's "Jihad Watch" and various and sundry other pro-Israel groups on the receiving end of the moolah. Like many right-wing movements, the anti-Islam activists have founded a new industry, marketing books, videos, and t-shirts, and throwing up "celebrities," e.g. the exhibitionistic bikini-wearing Geller, whose nude body painted gold adorns her blog's masthead. Follow the money!

As nutty and improbable as the idea of an "Islamic States of America" might be, there is real potential for a mass anti-Muslim movement in this country. All we need is another terrorist attack, not even one on the scale of 9/11, and the smoldering fires of unfocused anger that burn just beneath the surface of polite society will burst through to the surface. Ask any Japanese-American.

Languishing for the lack of a proper enemy in the post-cold war world, the neoconservative right was saved from extinction by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The specter of militant Islam is, for them, the perfect villain, one who represents a threat not just to the US but also to Israel, a country which is to them as the old Soviet Union was to American Communists: a model and a fatherland. Their strategy is to replicate in the US the anti-Muslim xenophobia that swept Likud into power in Israel, and which has catapulted Avigdor Lieberman, head of an anti-Muslim ultra-nationalist party, into the Foreign Ministry. Bolton is our Lieberman, and hopes to take the same route to power.

"I don't think anybody has a problem with Muslims in America," opines Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie on PBS. Is that why the anti-mosque campaign has gone national, and with some success? Is that why "mainstream" Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich and Speaker John Boehner are weighing in against the Park51 community center? Is it because there's never been a mass political movement in America targeting a vulnerable religious minority?

I'd like to believe these people won't get far: after all, how many Americans feel threatened by the possible imposition of Sharia law? On the other hand, it takes very little to drive people over the edge, especially in these troubled times.

The only way to defeat these bastards is to counter-attack immediately, and mercilessly: don't let them get away with it for one moment. The very idea of forbidding the building of a mosque, or any religious edifice, is anti-American to the core, and must be fought tooth and nail. What could be a clearer confirmation of the libertarian contention that a foreign policy of global intervention necessarily means the rollback of our civil liberties here at home? For libertarians, there is no question but that Muslims must be defended against the gathering lynch mob.

How to do this is another question, but that's a subject for a future column. Suffice to say here that the defense of the Muslim minority in the US is the acid test for all those who claim to believe in "freedom" and "liberty."

* Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (ISI, 2008), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996).He is a contributing editor for The American Conservative, a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute, and an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Rallies, demonstrations, "Collateral Murder" film screenings, whistle-blowing parties and forums will be held around the world between the 16th and 19th of this month as vital expressions of international solidarity with Bradley Manning. To find out how you can show your support for the brave young man who dared expose US war crimes, go here.

I'm taking my show on the road this autumn, to campuses around the country, talking about some of the ideas expressed in last Wednesday's column on "Anti-Interventionism: The Left-wing Tradition." My talk is entitled "Why Has the Left Sold Out the Antiwar Movement?" - which is sure to provoke a controversy, or at least that's the hope.

If you're interested in booking me at your campus, write wendy@antiwar.com, or call the Antiwar.com office, at: 510-217-8665.

Source: AntiWar

9/11. The Mother Of All Coincidences.

SR Editor — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 13:07:33 +0000

By Eric Margolis* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

By Bob Englehart

"America's strategic and economic interests in the Mideast and Muslim world are being threatened by the agony in Palestine, which inevitably invites terrorist attacks against US citizens and property." Eric Margolis. Sun Media. 2 September, 2001.

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

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

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

While visiting the Pentagon to consult on the Mideast, I also inspected its outside wall hit by the third hijacked aircraft.
I saw photos of the impact site and could not understand what had happened to all the aircraft wreckage. There was almost none.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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