Peace and Justice Post

BBC News, July 4, 2008

A large number of Americans question what happened that day

It wasn’t only the Twin Towers that collapsed on September 11. A third World Trade Center tower that wasn’t hit by the planes also fell. As a report into Tower 7 prepares to publish its findings, Mike Rudin considers how this conspiracy theory got to be so big.

9/11 is the conspiracy theory of the internet age.

Put “9/11 conspiracy” into Google and you get 7.9 million hits. Put in “9/11 truth” and you get more than 22 million.

Opinion polls in the US have picked up widespread doubts among the American people.

A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 found that 53% of those questioned thought the Bush administration was hiding something. Another US poll found a third of those questioned thought government officials either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen.

In the UK a survey by the BBC’s The Conspiracy Files, carried out by GfkNOP in 2006, found that 16% of those questioned thought there was a “wider conspiracy that included the American government”.

For very good reason a lot of people are very suspicious about what went down that day Dylan Avery Director of Loose Change The BBC and the ‘missing’ tape

This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled “9/11 truth movement”.

Nearly seven years after the terrible events of that September day, the US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.

And Tower 7 has become a key issue for “truthers” like Dylan Avery, the director of the internet film about 9/11 called Loose Change.

“The truth movement is heavily centred on Building 7 and for very good reason a lot of people are very suspicious about what went down that day,” he says.

Avery points out that Tower 7 housed some unusual tenants: the CIA, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the very agency meant to deal with disasters or terrorist attacks in New York – the Office of Emergency Management. And some people think Tower 7 was the place where a 9/11 conspiracy was hatched.

FIND OUT MORE… The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Third Tower is on BBC Two on Sunday 6 July at 2100 BST Visit The Conspiracy Files website or catch up using the iPlayer

The official explanation is that ordinary fires were the main reason for the collapse of Tower 7. That makes this the first and only tall skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire. Yet despite that all the thousands of tonnes of steel from the building were carted away and melted down.

The way official bodies have investigated Tower 7 at the World Trade Center has made some people think they’re hiding something. Its destruction was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Continued . . .

By Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jul 7 (IPS) – Despite a torrent of mutual recriminations, the fragile truce between Israel and Palestinian resistance faction Hamas survived into its third week. Israel, however, has been slow to fulfil its pledge — as laid down in an Egypt-brokered ceasefire agreement — to allow desperately-needed humanitarian supplies into the outdoor prison that is the Gaza Strip.

“Repeated closures of the border crossings (by Israel)…are indicative of Israel’s lack of seriousness regarding the Egyptian ceasefire agreement,” Ismail Heniya, head of Gaza’s ruling Hamas government, told reporters Friday (Jul. 4). “If the ceasefire is to survive, Israel must open the crossings (into the Gaza Strip) and lift its siege.”

After several months of indirect negotiations in Cairo, Israel and Hamas — along with smaller Palestinian resistance factions — accepted a Tahdia, or “calming” of hostilities, early last month. Despite stated reservations by both sides, the truce officially took effect Jun. 19.

The arrangement calls for a halt to Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip in exchange for the cessation of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel from positions within the strip. The ceasefire, however, does not extend to the West Bank, governed by the U.S.-backed Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.

Most importantly for Hamas — and the Gaza Strip’s roughly 1.5 million people — the scheme also calls for the gradual reopening of border crossings into and out of the territory. Along with five Gaza-Israel crossings, this includes the flashpoint Rafah terminal, which represents the strip’s sole transit point into Egypt and the outside world beyond.

Ever since Hamas wrested control of Gaza one year ago (after winning elections in 2006), Israel has kept its shared crossings with the enclave hermetically sealed. The Egyptian government, meanwhile, citing the lack of a formal treaty regulating border protocol, put the finishing touches on the blockade by sealing the Rafah terminal as well.

Backed by the U.S. and the EU, the de facto siege has destroyed the Gaza Strip’s economy and deprived much of its population of vital commodities, including foodstuffs and medicine. The situation has prompted a number of commentators to describe the embattled territory as the world’s largest concentration camp.

Continued . . .

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem | The Independent, Tuesday, 8 July 2008

A pre-Christian Hebrew text shows that the idea of a messiah rising from the dead after three days was already in Jewish tradition before the birth of Jesus, a prominent biblical scholar will argue today.

The controversial theory of Professor Israel Knohl, citing his new reading of a tablet inscribed in the 1st century BC discovered nearly 10 years ago, is expected to trigger a new Judaeo-Christian debate over the meaning and origin of the most central tenet of Christianity, the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Professor Knohl, a professor of biblical studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, will unveil his interpretation of the text at an Israel Museum conference of scholars, saying that it quotes the Archangel Gabriel telling an earlier “Prince of Princes” that: “In three days you shall live, I Gabriel, command you.”

Using other lines in the text that refer to blood and slaughter as routes to righteousness, along with the overall context of the Jewish revolt against the Romans at the time, Professor Knohl suggests that it refers to the death and resurrection of a Jewish leader.

The tablet, known as Gabriel’s Vision of Revelations because it contains an apocalyptic text ascribed to the angel, has attracted the intense interest of scholars. It came to light after it was bought from a Jordanian antiquities dealer by an Israeli-Swiss collector, David Jeselsohn, who kept it in his Zurich home. The location of the original discovery is not clear, though it may have been in Jordan on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea.

Continued . . .

Spidered News

UPDATE: Tried to email Al-Jazeera for clarification of this claim. As yet NO response. After the BBC censored this clip and then reinstated it, then some of them now claiming they NEVER censored it, the mystery DEEPENS. With Benazir Bhutto assassinated the motive arises in that she quite clearly leads not only her death to the door of the Pakistanis but also responsibility for the 9/11 attacks are implicated as well. Aired on 2nd November 2007,David Frost the presenter did not challenge her on her assertion (2:14) that Bin Laden was murdered, so maybe he was and the West has not announced it.

It would make sense that the West would cover up such a truth, as Bin Laden is needed as a “bogeyman” to continue the farcical “War on Terror”

Related video : BACK TO BACK: Uncensored and censored Benazir Bhutto

This video is a call to arms for us Bloggers. This video is dynamite proof of covert editing of an important news story. There can be NO EXCUSE for this editing. Join the move to actively complain and DEMAND answers from the BBC

Also see videos on setfree70

By James Cogan | WSWS, July 2008

Three Afghan men and 19 women and children were slaughtered on Sunday when US aircraft bombed a wedding party in the remote Deh Bala district of Nangarhar province, in the country’s east close to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The killings were reported by the district governor and confirmed by survivors who were being treated at a hospital in Jalalabad, the provincial capital. Afghan officials have also reported that as many as 12 civilians were killed by air strikes last Friday in the nearby province of Nuristan province.

Following standard operating procedure, the US military has categorically denied that any civilians were killed during the bombing raid in Nangarhar. Captain Christian Patterson insisted to Agence France Presse that “it was not a wedding party, there were no women and children present”. Another spokesman alleged that five to 10 anti-occupation insurgents had been killed.

However, the latest incidents follow the release of a report by John Holmes, the head of United Nations humanitarian affairs operations in Afghanistan, which found that the number of documented civilian deaths has increased by 62 percent this year compared with the first six months of 2007. The agency had recorded a total of 698 civilian fatalities. The UN blamed the actions of US, NATO and Afghan government forces for 255 deaths and anti-occupation insurgents for 422.

The figures are further evidence of the expanding insurgency against the US military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and the desperate character of the fighting over recent months. More than six years after the US-led invasion in October 2001, the occupation forces have proven incapable of subduing the armed resistance to their presence and are ever more reliant on air strikes to disrupt insurgent activity.

Guerillas loyal to the former Taliban Islamic regime, which was overthrown in 2001, as well as various tribal militias from both Afghanistan and Pakistan, are taking advantage of the summer months to increase operations across the south and east of the country. The number of attacks on US troops in the eastern provinces has increased by 40 percent this year, according to American commander, Major General Jeffrey Schloesser.

More US and NATO troops lost their lives in Afghanistan in June than in any other month since the country was invaded. A total of 45 soldiers were killed, 27 American, 13 British, two Canadian, one Polish, one Romanian and one Hungarian. The death of a US Army specialist Estell Turner on July 2 in a roadside bombing pushed the overall toll for 2008 to 124 and the total number of US/NATO deaths in the Afghan war to 873. More than half the deaths have been caused by roadside bombs.

The fatalities are only one aspect of the cost of the conflict. As of June 28, 2,167 American soldiers had been wounded-in-action in the Afghanistan theatre. As of June 18, the British military had reported 510 wounded-in-action as well as 1,130 non-battle or disease injuries. The number of Canadian wounded is now well over 350.

Continued . . .

RINF.COM, Monday, July 7th, 2008

By David Connett

MPs are to launch an investigation into US activities on Diego Garcia after accusing Washington of lying about extraordinary rendition flights from the British-controlled island in the Indian Ocean. They described false assurances given by the US about its use of Diego Garcia for the controversial flights as “deplorable”.

Following one of the strongest British condemnations of the US rendition policy, by which terror suspects are sent overseas for interrogation, the influential Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) plans to scrutinise Whitehall’s supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from there.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was forced to apologise to the Commons in February after it was revealed that two US “extraordinary rendition” flights had landed on UK territory in 2002. Britain had previously been told that no such flights had passed through its territory.

His apology came after the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, admitted that two suspects had been on flights to Guantanamo Bay and Morocco in 2002 that had stopped to refuel on Diego Garcia. In a report published today, the MPs conclude that it is “deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the US administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK government inadvertently misleading our select committee and the House of Commons.”

Andy Tyrie, a Tory MP, welcomed the report last night. Mr Tyrie, chair of the parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said: “In October 2007, I started asking questions about Diego Garcia. I was very concerned that Britain and British territory could have become complicit in America’s programme of extraordinary rendition, whereby people have been kidnapped around the world and taken to places where they may be maltreated or tortured. The Foreign Secretary persistently gave me the brush-off. He said we could rely on US assurances. My allegations were correct. The Foreign Secretary’s brush-off was not just misplaced, it was a disgrace.”

Continued . . .

Charged With Disseminating ‘False Information,’ Men Go on Trial July 1

Human Rights Watch, July 1, 2008

(New York): Morocco should drop criminal charges against a human rights defender and a television reporter, both of whom are accused of disseminating “false information,” Human Rights Watch said today.

Authorities should want to find out the truth about the extent of police abuse in Sidi Ifni. They should allow an open discussion about the incident instead of using repressive laws to ‘shoot the messenger.’ Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch

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Al-Jazeera’s Rabat bureau chief Hassan Rachidi and rights defender Brahim Sab’alil go on trial July 1 before the Rabat Court of First Instance on charges of disseminating “false information.” The court will reportedly open a second trial of Sab’alil later in the day for disseminating “false information” in a separate incident.

Police arrested Sab’alil on June 27, a day after he took part in a press conference in Rabat, at which he presented evidence alleging human rights violations by security forces trying to quell sometimes violent protests in the southern city of Sidi Ifni that began June 7. The forces intervened to break up a protesters’ blockade of the city’s port.

“Authorities should want to find out the truth about the extent of police abuse in Sidi Ifni,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “They should allow an open discussion about the incident instead of using repressive laws to ‘shoot the messenger.’”

On June 27, several men came to Sab’alil’s Rabat home at about 1:30 a.m., saying they were police but without presenting identification or a warrant, his wife, Khadija Sared, told Al-Jarida al-Oula daily. She said the men took him away to an unknown destination.

Sab’alil is president of the Sidi Ifni section of the Moroccan Center for Human Rights (Centre Marocain des droits humains, CMDH), an independent organization that has provided ongoing information about human rights conditions in Sidi Ifni, where protests erupted largely over economic grievances. Sab’alil is also a member of the CMDH’s executive committee.

On June 29, authorities brought Sab’alil before the prosecutor at Rabat’s Court of First Instance on suspicion of disseminating “false information” at a June 26 press conference, where he released the preliminary findings of the CMDH’s report on the Sidi Ifni protests. Sab’alil remains in custody.

The extent of human rights violations in this remote coastal city 750 kilometers south of the capital of Rabat has been a source of contention since street protests turned violent on June 7. Some city residents have alleged that the police are responsible for deaths, rapes, and extensive property damage during punitive raids on homes. Authorities have acknowledged injuries among both civilians and the security forces but have heatedly denied any deaths. Human rights organizations and a commission appointed by Morocco’s parliament have traveled there to conduct investigations.

Continued . . .