CONNECTING THE DOTS: ZIONISM AND ITS EFFECTS

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by Nan Withington

Most Americans and Europeans believe that Israel was established by the United Nations after World War II as a haven and homeland for the desperate Jewish survivors of the Nazi holocaust who had nowhere else to go. This belief is wrong on two counts:

1. The Israeli declaration of statehood (1948) credits the Zionist movement for the creation of the state of Israel – not the U.N., which had withdrawn its recommendation for a partition of Palestine, and instead planned a U.N. Trusteeship for the “Holy Land” – sacred to Jews, Christians, and Moslems. At that time (1947), two thirds of the inhabitants in Palestine were Palestinian Christian and Moslem Arabs who had lived there for thousands of years, along with a small Jewish Arab population. However, European Zionist settlers had been entering Palestine for decades in small numbers, and in swelling numbers in the 1940s, so that by 1948 Jews constituted one third of the population in Palestine. (Zionism will be discussed in the next page.)

2. After W.W. II, U.S. President F.D. Roosevelt sent his friend, Morris Ernst, to enlist help from Western governments to settle the European refugees in countries of their choice. The U.S. and Britain both pledged to receive 150,000; South America, Canada, and Australia another 150,000. In his book: So Far So Good, Mr. Ernst explains why this humanitarian plan was aborted: “I was amazed and even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered and then attacked me as if I were a traitor. I was openly accused of furthering this plan of freer immigration in order to undermine political Zionism” (p. 138). Therefore, the refugees were given no choice – they were sent to Palestine, and many were incorporated into the “Haganah” which later became the Israel Defense (sic) Force. This was one of the first effects of Zionism – against Jews and against the Palestinians who would soon be “ethnically cleansed”.

WHAT IS ZIONISM?

Zionism was-and is-a political, nationalist, colonial-settler movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine and beyond, and to “ingather” (or segregate) world Jewry into that ever-expanding “Greater Israel” through a series of wars.

The Zionist movement began in the mid 1800s, but burgeoned after the publication of Theodore Herzl’s book: The Jewish State in 1896. In his Diaries Herzl outlined the future Jewish state as extending from the Nile to the Euphrates (Vol. II, p. 711).

As early as 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson learned: “The Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine.” (King-Crane Commission Report) These “inhabitants” were the Christian and Moslem Arabs who constituted 92% of the population! Lord Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British Cabinet in 1917, vehemently opposed the Balfour Declaration of that year which pledged British support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Montagu presciently wrote in a secret Memorandum to the Cabinet: “You will find a population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants, taking all the best in the country, drawn from all quarters of the globe.”

By 1943 (five years before Israeli statehood), U.S. President F.D. Roosevelt was informed that: “The Zionist organization in Palestine has indicated its commitment to an enlarged program for:

1. A sovereign Jewish state which would embrace Palestine and probably eventually Transjordan.

2. An eventual transfer of the Arab population from Palestine to Iraq, and

3. Jewish leadership for the whole Middle East in the fields of economic development and control.” (U. S. Foreign Relations: Near East and Africa, Vol. IV, pp.676-677).

Israel came into being in 1948 by means of premeditated terrorism (Plan Dalat) which resulted in the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians and the seizure of 78% of their patrimony. (See The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Israeli Professor Ilan Pappe). Leah Rabin, widow of the slain Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, told former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “We were terrorists once… Despite all the efforts of all the British army in the land, we went on with terrorism.” (The Christian Science Monitor, September 1, 1997) One example of Zionist terrorism was the bombing of the King David hotel in Jerusalem in 1948. Zionist terrorism was glorified in Leon Uris’s book and movie, Exodus. Palestinian towns and villages were subjected to massacres. (Deir Yassin, the best known). More than five hundred of them were bulldozed. (Palestinian homes are still being bulldozed today.) Secret Zionist underground weapons factories had been built in Palestine; military planes and other advanced weaponry had been smuggled in from Czechoslovakia, the U.S. and elsewhere. Ex-U.S. W.W.II pilots were hired as mercenaries to fly planes to bomb Arab towns and villages (The Pledge, by Leonard Slater).

Seizing 72% of Palestine was only the beginning of “Greater Israel”. In the words of prominent American Zionist leader Abba Hillel Silver at the 49^th Zionist Organization of America Convention in 1946: “Zionism is not an immigration or a refugee movement but a movement to rebuild the Jewish state for the Jewish nation.” This statement was recently reaffirmed by current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “‘Recognizing the state of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people implies an understanding that the Palestinians are willing to put an end to their refusal to recognize the Jewish state within some border or another.’ The Prime Minister spoke of a state of the Jewish people, meaning one that is also a national home for Diaspora Jews” (Ha’aretz June 8, 2010). Millions of Jews live worldwide outside of Israel; as former Israeli Knesset member, Uri Avnery stated in his book, Israel without Zionists: “Because Zionism considers Israel the beachhead of world Jewry, world Jewry is seen as an inexhaustible reservoir of manpower and money” (p.163). Therefore WHAT are the borders of the Jewish state Netanyahu demands the Palestinians to recognize?

How can the remnant of Palestinians living under apartheid in their occupied country – and the millions of others uprooted and living in exile – accept Netanyahu’s outrageous dictate? Netanyahu is demanding that they accept the usurpation of their patrimony and give up their lawful right to return to their ancestral home. (Dozens of U.N. Resolutions have affirmed their “right of return”; and the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”.) Furthermore, U.N General Assembly Resolution 2621 (XXV, 1970) asserts: “The inherent right of colonial peoples to struggle by all means necessary at their disposal against colonial powers which suppress their aspirations for freedom and independence.” The U.N. definition of genocide is: “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.” Palestine was a country. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier carried a Palestinian passport. Palestine was brutally erased from the map; the exclusive Jewish state of Israel took its place. An Israeli of tremendous spiritual strength, Yitzhak Frankenthal, whose son was killed by a Palestinian fighter said: “My son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of the nation that occupies the territory of another.” (The Guardian, July 8, 2002.) Another Israeli, whose daughter was also killed, joined eight other Jews in an attempt to break the siege of Gaza by sea. Jews of conscience do not support the hundred year long genocide against the Palestinians, akin to the genocide perpetrated upon Native Americans.

This historical record shows that Israel was NOT created out of necessity to find a home for Jewish refugees after World War II; rather those hapless people were used to further long-planned Zionist goals. In fact, hundreds of those refugees were killed when Zionist terrorists sank the ships Patria and Sturma filled with Jewish refugees off the coast of Palestine in 1947 (suspicion was cast on the British and Palestinians) to foment international pressure to open Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration (1968 Year Book, Encyclopedia Britannica).

THE EFFECT OF ZIONIST “INGATHERING”

Soldiers are needed to expand and settle coveted territory, and so the next “ingathering” took place. The most readily available populations of Jews resided in the Arab countries. In the 1950s Zionist agents provocateurs hid stashes of arms in synagogues and planted bombs in Iraq and other Arab countries with large Jewish populations to frighten the Jews into fleeing to Israel. One of those agents was Nissim Rejwan, who confessed that the emigration was not a rescue operation as reported, but was the result of “intensive Zionist activity inside Iraq” (Jerusalem Post, July 21, 1964). U.S. transport planes flew hundreds of thousands of those Jews to Israel where they were incorporated into the Israel Defense Force. This was confirmed in a book by anti-Zionist American Rabbi, Elmer Berger, who went to North Africa to interview Rabbis and other Jews who refused to leave their homelands. (See Who Knows Better Must Say). Thus, the UPROOTING of ancient Jewish communities in the Levant was a tragic effect of Zionism.

Millions of Jewish Americans were as yet an untapped reservoir. Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion told a delegation of American Jews that the task was: “bringing all Jews to Israel… We appeal to the parents to send their children here; even if they decline to help, we will bring the youth to Israel” (The Israel Digest, March 29, 1963). Prominent American Zionist Samuel Margoshes declared: “Next to the mobilization of World Jewry for the support of Israel, the organization of Jewish life in the Diaspora must be the great task of the World Zionist Organization. To Zionize World Jewry… to establish Zionist hegemony… is a challenge which will take a generation or two to meet adequately” (The Day, May 30, 1949).

Zionist schools were established across the U.S. teaching Israeli Hebrew. American Jewish youth were sent to Israel during summers to work on kibbutzim. By 1959 Israeli former Knesset member, Uri Avnery, declared: “The Zionist Organization of America holds dominion over the Jews of America with a complete and perfect totalitarian rule.” (Issues, Spring).

The Beyes Afroyim U.S. Supreme Court decision (five to four) of May, 1967, allowed dual U.S.-Israeli nationality to a naturalized Jewish Israeli, thus overturning two hundred years of U.S. citizenship law, and threatening E Pluribus Unum. Israel has a “Law of Return” which confers Israeli citizenship upon Jews everywhere in the world — all they need do is go to an Israeli Consulate and ask for it. Many Jewish Americans did. (President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship.) Zionist Israel now had the manpower to launch the June, 1967 war in which the entirety of Palestine was seized (and another 350,000 Palestinians expelled), along with the Golan Heights of Syria, Egypt’s Sinai, and southern Lebanon. Many Jewish Americans fought for Israel in the 1967 war; and many (now dual citizens) are settlers on Palestinian land seized in that war. These settlements are illegal under International Law, specifically U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 which: “emphasizes the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”, and the Geneva Conventions.

However, “Greater Israel” had not yet been reached. Leo Helman stated in: The Jewish Press: “As a nation, Israel must look forward, beyond the next war, and the one after that” (June 27, 1969).

A larger Israel Defense Force was needed. Next were the three million Soviet Jews who were targeted for “ingathering”. After eighteen Georgian Jews appealed for emigration to Israel, a PR campaign went into full swing claiming Soviet Jews were in a new kind of Babylonian captivity. But was this true? U.S. Rabbi Marc Schneier lamented in an article in The Christian Science Monitor (June 8, 1988) that: “The great majority of Soviet Jews have not expressed interest in emigrating. They must be provided with the opportunity to learn about Judaism and the means to quicken their sense of Jewish identity.” Zionist agents began taking Hebrew language materials to them. Later, Henry Kissinger inadvertently let slip that when he was the U.S. Secretary of State: “We invented the concept of Soviet Jewish emigration” (McNeil-Lehrer Report, May, 1990).

The Jews who did wish to leave the Soviet Union wanted to go to the U.S. for economic reasons, and thousands were admitted. However, an Associated Press report from Jerusalem on June 19, 1988 stated: “The Israeli cabinet said today that it would try to force Soviet Jews to travel directly to Israel instead of settling elsewhere.” The U.S. complied; and so Soviet Jews were given no choice and were sent to Israel to help swell the population and settle the Palestinian lands occupied in the 1967 Israeli war of expansion. The Jews of Rumania and Ethiopia were also “ingathered”.

To recapitulate thus far: an effect of Zionism has been to “ingather” several million Jews from Islamic, European, and Western countries (including the USA) into an expanding Israel, and to “Zionize” other millions in the Diaspora.

THE EFFECT OF ZIONISM ON THE MIDDLE EAST

These effects have included, (besides the usurpation of Palestine), invasions, bombings and occupations of Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006. Israel covets the headwaters of the Litani River in southern Lebanon and will certainly make further attempts to gain them. The U.N. Security Council made no attempt to stop Israel’s month long assault on Lebanon in 2006; nor did it when Israel savagely launched “Cast Lead” on the defenseless population under siege in Gaza in 2008. This was not surprising in light of a comment made by former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Alright, who told a newspaper editorial board: “The U.N. is a tool for U.S. foreign policy.” (The Christian Science Monitor, May 11, 2001.)

Israel has occupied Egypt’s Sinai three times (once with French and British collusion.)

Israel has made war on its neighbors in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973; and has used its “ally”, the U.S. to further its imperial objectives in the on-going wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond (discussed further in the next section.)

Iraq (the “Cradle of Civilization”) was bombed by the U.S. into a “pre-industrial” state in 1991 according to the U.N. it’s electric grids and water treatment plants were totally destroyed. Then came ten years of severe sanctions during which 500,000 Iraqi children died. Madeleine Albright shockingly told Leslie Stahl on TV “60 Minutes” that the cost of their lives was “worth it.” Though a million Iraqis died in Bush Senior’s war of “Shock and Awe”, Iraq was even more savagely bombed and then occupied in 2003 by his son, George H.W Bush, on the basis of lies and false intelligence. Another million Iraqis were killed and four million made refugees. The killing and destruction of civil society goes on at this moment.

Afghanistan was targeted next; the U.S. is engaged in a seemingly endless war there. The so-called “war on terror” extends now into Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Sudan. Zionists like Senator Lieberman propagandize daily for a war on Iran, which is surrounded by Israeli and U.S. warships and planes loaded with nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Britain have adopted Israeli practices such as “pre-emptive” war (bombing or invading a country without just cause — a crime under international law); targeted assassinations (even of their own citizens); torture (using Israeli methods of sexual assault and humiliation; abuse of the Koran etc.); and “rendition” (kidnapping people to be sent to third countries for torture and interrogation). Iran, a nation of 72 million people, is now threatened with “obliteration” (the word used by Presidential candidate – now Secretary of State- Hillary Clinton.) Let it be remembered that in 2002, and again in 2006, the entire Arab League of twenty four states and the Palestinians offered Israel peace, recognition, and economic relations if Israel withdrew to the June 4^th, 1967 borders and implemented U.N. Resolution 242 upholding the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. Israel (and the U.S.) made NO response to this offer.

THE EFFECT OF ZIONISM ON THE UNITED STATES

Former U.S. Senator J .William Fulbright stated in his book: The Price of Empire (1989): “We have lost our freedom of action in the Middle East and are committed to policies that promote neither our own national interest nor the cause of peace… The Israeli government dominates our policy in the Middle East.” This statement was echoed in the recent well documented book, The Israel Lobby, by U.S. Professors John Mearsheimer (Chicago) and Steven Walt (Harvard): “Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby.’” They go on to say: “There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war” (in Iraq).

Evidence to support the above statements appeared in the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 1994) in an article by Bar-Yosef entitled: “The Jews Who Run Clinton’s Court” (translated by Israeli Professor Israel Shahak): “Deputy National Security Adviser ‘Sandy’ Berger, and National Security Adviser to the Vice President, Leon Perth, are warm (meaning Zionist) Jews. They have reached positions that are extremely sensitive for U.S. policies. They are by no means exceptions. In the National Security Council 7 out of 10 top staffers are Jews. The situation is not much different in the President’s office which is full of warm Jews. They are joined by a long list of senior Jewish officials in the State Department headed by the head of the Middle East peace team, Dennis Ross. The enormous Jewish influence in Washington is not limited to the government. A significant part of senior media correspondents, newspaper editors, and analysts are Jewish. In the fields of security, and science, in the film industry, in art and literature, the Jewish influence can only be described as immense, with a corresponding enhancement of the Jewish power.”

Where that “Jewish power” would be directed can be found in an article in the Journal, Kivunim, (“Directions”) of the Department of Information of the World Zionist Organization: “The dissolution of Syria and Iraq into ethnically or religiously unique areas is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target…Iraq, rich in oil… is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets” (by Oded Yinon, February, 1982).

These objectives were carried out by the U.S. and Britain for Israel. The “Cradle of Civilization” has been destroyed; two million Iraqis killed; four million made refugees; countless others injured or sick from WMDs (depleted uranium, phosphorous bombs, poisonous water, etc; thousands of Americans and British killed and wounded; a trillion dollars spent for the carnage; and economies plunged into chaos. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Joseph Wilson, said of this debacle: “This war was never about WMD. It was never a war about terrorism. The so called front on terror didn’t exist until we created it, and it wasn’t about liberation of the poor Iraqi people…it is all about redrawing the political map of the Middle East. What I mean by that is returning the Arab world to its pre-Ottomon stage, so that Israel is surrounded by demographic entities that are no larger than it is and would spend all their time fighting each other and are unable to provide a monolithic block against Israel. It looks to me like they are all geared up to do something with Syria, perhaps Iran” (The Independent Nov.6, 2003, p.27).

Was it by “coincidence” that the U.S. and Britain fulfilled the plan outlined above by Yinon? Or was Senator Fulbright exactly right when he said that Zionists control U.S. foreign policy? An article in The Christian Science Monitor gives a clue to the answer: “Within days of 9/11 Netanyahu said (in D.C.) the attacks present a historic opportunity for the U.S. to dismantle the regimes in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and the leadership of the Palestinian territories” (April 9, 2003 p. 3). Though millions of Americans demonstrated for peace, the U.S. government illegally and “preemptively” carried out Israel’s instructions.

A shocking revelation of U.S. collusion with Israel in the 1967 “Six Day War” was revealed twenty two years later on TV “Frontline” in a broadcast entitled: Israel, the Covert Connection: “In June 1967 Israel went to war with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria capturing all of Jerusalem and what are now the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. Officially, the U.S. was neutral. Secretly, it gave Israel full diplomatic support…the final decision to go to war was not taken, say the Israelis, until their intelligence chief Meir Amit had met secretly with CIA Director Richard Helms. The first ones to fire were the Israelis who through this secret channel got the green light of the U.S. Administration to start the war.” (May 16, 1989) Most Americans still believe Egypt started the war; and to this day they are unaware of U.S. collusion with Israel in that war of expansion.

Even more shocking is the story of the U.S. spy ship, Liberty off the coast of Sinai when the war started. Israel attacked and tried to sink the ship with no survivors. When the U.S. 6^th fleet in the Mediterranean sent rescue planes, President Lyndon Johnson personally told the commander of the fleet, Admiral Geis, to call the planes back. Johnson said: “I don’t give a damn if the ship sinks and all the Americans are killed. I will not embarrass my ally (Israel)” (James Bamford, Body of Secrets; also Council for the National Interest Newsletter, 12/’91). THIS WAS TREASON!

The Liberty was not the first U.S. target Israel attacked. In 1956 Israeli terrorists of Egyptian origin tried to bomb British and American buildings in Cairo to create public hatred in the West for President Nasser. The agents’ provocateurs were caught. This was called “The Lavon Affair” which brought down the Israeli government at the time. Israel is supposedly the U.S.’s “strategic ally”!

Then there is the case of Jonathan Pollard, Zionist American who passed on tens of thousands of top U.S. military secrets to Israel, who is serving a life prison sentence for doing so. Israel and its Lobby have strenuously pressured the U.S. government to release him.

Will the U.S. continue to support Israel’s imperial goals? Professor Israel Shahak laid them out candidly in his book, Open Secrets: “Israeli strategies are aimed at establishing hegemony over the entire Middle East which it has always sought covertly, without hesitating to use for the purpose all means available, including nuclear ones. By insisting on its nuclear monopoly, Israel aims at reducing all other Middle Eastern states to the status of its vassals.”

U.S. Presidential candidate John McCain sang “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the delight of his Zionist supporters. Candidate Clinton (now U.S Secretary of State) declared that Iran would be “obliterated” if it attacked Israel. Interestingly, Burrows and Windrem in their well documented book about Israel’s WMDS, Critical Mass wrote: “Israel wired itself for nuclear war. It was a system that Israel’s enemies could not counter or match. Indeed, they could barely comprehend its complexity… Israel has achieved what strategic analysts call ‘escalation superiority’, the ability to control the pace of a conflict by being able to guarantee that its attackers WILL BE OBLITERATED” (pp. 286 and 288). (Did Hillary read their book?)

Amos Harel, in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on June 8, 2010, writes that Israel recently asked the U.S. to double the US army weaponry stockpiled in Israel, including JDAM bombs (Joint direct Attack Munition bombs (used against Lebanon and Gaza) in: “the eventuality of a prolonged war, which would necessitate using the IAF (Israeli Air Force) to attack many targets. AMERICANS MIGHT NEED TO FIGHT.”

Is it a coincidence that the Project for the New American Century created by Zionists Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld states as its “core mission”: “The U.S. must fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars”. And to do so: “advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.” (Was AIDS really from monkeys?) How many Americans know about this “project”? How many would give their consent to these horrors? Do Americans know that Iran is surrounded by U.S. and Israeli ships and submarines loaded with nuclear weapons? Will Iran suffer the same fate as Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and-increasingly-Pakistan?

Zionists have fabricated the idea of a “clash of civilizations” that necessitates a “war on terror”. George H.W. Bush used the word “Crusade” in describing that war—a code word that was well understood in the Islamic world. “Shock and Awe” on Iraq certainly was terror. Islamic, African, South American and other populations have been subjected to Zionist directed terror for decades.

Israeli Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi ominously warned: “Israel’s activities in the Third World are significant reflections of the basic nature of Zionism and the state of Israel, and of the resulting Israeli society and world view. From Manila in the Philippines, to Tegucigalpa in Honduras to Windhoeck in Namibia, Israel’s emissaries have been involved in a continuous war, which is truly a World War. And what enemy is Israel fighting? It is the population of the third world”. (The Israeli Connection, p. 243)

After examining what Zionism is; what its goals are; and what its’ effects have been thus far, this premonition of former Professor of history at the American University of Beirut, Constantine Zuraik, (a Christian Palestinian), written in 1948 shortly after the “Nakba” (“disaster”-the ethnic cleansing of Palestine) is harrowing with portent: “The forces which the Zionists control in all parts of the world can threaten the independence of all the Arab lands and form a continuing and frightening danger to their life. The facilities that the Zionist forces have for growth and expansion will place the Arab world forever at their mercy and will paralyze its vitality and deter its progress and evolution in the ladders of advancement and civilization—that is, if this Arab world is permitted to exist at all” (reprinted in Middle East Forum, Vol. XLIII, 1967). And as Professor Beit-Hallahmi revealed, not only the Arab world is in peril of destruction.

What can “We, the People” do to stop this horror when our government is Zionist controlled?

There ARE signs of hope. There are grassroots movements like Free Gaza which has sent many ships carrying humanitarian supplies and international activists to break the Israeli siege of Gaza. Though Israel attacked a flotilla and murdered nine passengers, more boats will go until the siege is lifted. Viva Palestina, spearheaded by former British Parliament member, George Galloway, has taken several international convoys carrying desperately needed medical and other supplies as well as ambulances and fire engines to Gaza. Jewish Voices for Peace; the International Ant-Zionist Jewish Network; the BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) campaign; the writings and music of ex-Israeli jazz artist, Gilad Atzmon; the 9/11 Truth movement—these and other organizations and activists are mounting growing opposition to Zionism’s agenda for continuing genocidal wars.

When Iran’s President Ahmadinijad raised questions at the U.N. about 9/11, Western ambassadors walked out. However, the majority of people throughout the world do not believe the U.S. official explanation. The most telling evidence that belies the official story is the discovery by nine eminent physicists of military Super-thermite and Nano-thermite in four different samples of dust from the Trade Center. Their findings are recorded in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2 ISSN: 1874-4125 (pp.7-31); and they point to a false flag operation perpetrated to justify the “war on terror”; the “Patriot Act” (sic); the ensuing wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the imminent war on Iran; and torture, rendition, and assassination in the name of “national security”.

If enough people challenge the myth of hijackers with box cutters; and an independent investigation proves 9/11 was an “inside job”, the Zionist stranglehold on the U.S. might be broken and a brighter future may unfold.

Nan Withington holds a M.A. in Political Science/ Middle East Studies (thesis: “Zionism and the Arab/Israeli Conflict”, Kent State University). Her husband (from Jaffa) was expelled from Palestine with his family in 1948.

ADL Sidles Up to Anti-Muslim Bigotry

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By Morgan Strong

For decades, the Anti-Defamation League was a respected voice against anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry. However, over the past several decades, especially under the leadership of Abraham Foxman, the ADL has transformed itself into an advocacy group on behalf of Israeli government policies, even feeding anti-Islamic prejudices.

That new role was underscored by Foxman’s statement last week when he attacked the idea of the international community granting Palestinians recognition as a sovereign people. Foxman told the New York Times that the initiative was "part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel" and must be thwarted.

Foxman, in Israel to confer with Israeli leaders, demanded that the Obama administration block any international "declaration of a preemptive state" for the Palestinians. He justified this denial of a basic human aspiration as necessary to promote peace in the Middle East.

"All the exit doors have to be closed for the Palestinians so they have no choice but to negotiate," said Foxman, who has led the near-century-old ADL since 1987.

But Foxman’s argument turned reality on its head, since it has been the Israeli refusal to suspend West Bank settlements and Likud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new demand that Palestinian officials recognize Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state” that have stalled the latest peace talks, not Palestinian intransigence.

But word games have been part of Foxman’s approach for years as he has manipulated language to bridge the ever-widening gap between ADL’s traditional role as a voice against bigotry and its new role as a voice for Likud’s interests in the United States, even if that means fanning the flames of anti-Muslim hatreds.

Earlier this year, Foxman shocked some longtime ADL supporters by lending cover and legitimacy to the hysteria over a planned Islamic community center to be located two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, which Islamic terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Foxman couched ADL’s opposition to the Córdoba community center in reassuring words about tolerance and healing. He accepted the right of Muslims to build wherever they liked but called the community center’s location near “Ground Zero” hurtful to families of the victims.

“We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry,” the ADL statement said. ”However, there are understandably strong passions and keen sensitivities surrounding the World Trade Center site.

“We are ever mindful of the tragedy which befell our nation there, the pain we all still feel – and especially the anguish of the families and friends of those who were killed on September 11, 2001. The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process.

“Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.”

Financial Investigation

Yet, even in as Foxman cloaked the ADL’s opposition in reluctant tones, he took the side of anti-Islamic activists and politicians who have demanded government investigations into who is contributing to the construction of the Islamic center.

“In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values,” the ADL statement said.

“These questions deserve a response, and we hope those backing the project will be transparent and forthcoming.”

While a call for transparency may seem reasonable, the demand in this case carries with it the certainty of retaliation against contributors, as Foxman well knows. In other words, ADL’s position is just another maneuver to block the community center by allowing bigots to harass its donors and engage in guilt by association.

Foxman further enflamed the debate by going on HuffingtonPost and comparing the building of the Islamic community center near Ground Zero with the construction of a Catholic convent next to the Auschwitz death camps.

“The lessons of an earlier and different controversy echo in this one,” Foxman wrote. “In 1993, Pope John Paul II asked 14 Carmelite Nuns to move their convent from just outside the Auschwitz death camp.

“The establishment of the convent near Auschwitz had stirred dismay among Jewish groups and survivors who felt that the location was an affront and a terrible disservice to the memory of millions of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust.

“Just as we thought then that well-meaning efforts by Carmelite nuns to build a Catholic structure were insensitive and counterproductive to reconciliation, so too we believe it will be with building a mosque so close to Ground Zero.”

Yet, as tragic as the 9/11 attack was, with some 3,000 people killed, it doesn’t compare with the Holocaust in which an estimated six million Jews were exterminated. Indeed, if a similar comparison were made in a different context, Foxman would surely join in condemning the offending party for trivializing the Holocaust and engaging in implicit anti-Semitism.

Foxman’s comment also ignores the fact that the Vatican shared guilt for the Holocaust through its tolerance of the fascist dictatorships in Europe and its public silence during the Jewish extermination campaign.

By contrast, the organizers of the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan had no complicity in the 9/11 attacks and have loudly denounced al-Qaeda's Islamic extremism. Linking the two cases is not only offensive but unfair, an implicit attempt to associate the builders of the community center with both 9/11 and one of the worst crimes in world history.

Shock and Dismay

Responding to the ADL statement opposing the Córdoba center, Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, a pro-peace and pro-Israeli lobbying group, said the American Jewish community should be in the forefront of defending religious freedom “rather than casting aspersions on [the community center’s] funders and giving in to the fear-mongerers and pandering politicians urging it to relocate.”

Rev. Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based advocacy group for religious tolerance, said he read the ADL statement “with a great deal of sorrow.”

Defenders of the community center – named for Córdoba, a Spanish city known for its religious tolerance – note that the building’s location is not even that close to Ground Zero, at least two long city blocks away and not within view. It is not a mosque and would not remotely resemble one. There are no minarets, no Mizzen’s calls to prayer, and no Jihadist clerics broadcasting vitriol out into the streets of New York.

The center would have only a prayer room, which could be used by people of various religions including Jews and Christians. The prayer room would be located on two levels in the basement.

Despite its opponents labeling the building “the Ground Zero Mosque,” the site would be more a cultural center, a meeting place and a sports center.

The largest part of the building – four of the 16 floors – would be taken up by a sports, fitness and swimming facility. Another full floor would be devoted to a child-care center and playground. Much of the rest of the building would be occupied by a restaurant, culinary school, artist studios, exhibition space and an auditorium for cultural events.

A Different Approach

An irony of Foxman’s opposition to the Islamic community center is that while he has given cover to anti-Islamic bigots fighting its construction, Muslims in the Middle East – even militant opponents of Israel – have lent their support to the reconstruction of a historic Jewish synagogue in Lebanon.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in August that Beirut’s Maghen Abraham Synagogue, which was damaged during warfare that ripped apart Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, was being rebuilt with funds donated by the local community.

The donations include money from Hezbollah, the fundamentalist Islamic group that fought Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah said his group has no quarrel with Judaism, only with the state of Israel, which invaded Lebanon in 1982 and 2006, killing thousands of Lebanese and destroying much of the country’s civilian infrastructure.

It is ironic indeed when Hezbollah speaks and acts in defense of religious tolerance and the ADL puts itself in the company of religious bigots.

Morgan Strong is a former professor of Middle Eastern history, and was an advisor to CBS News “60 Minutes” on the Middle East.
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Is Leading 9/11 Truth Site Working For The Other Side?

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Is 9/11Blogger Working For The Other Side?


BY RCFP STAFF WRITERS

In the nine years since the attacks of September 11, 2010, 9/11 truth has become a significant social movement, with hundreds of millions of adherents worldwide. A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll in 2006 found that 36% of Americans believe that the US government either promoted the attacks, or intentionally sat on its hands and let the attacks unfold.

Since 2005, the leading portal for news and discussion about 9/11 has been 911blogger.com. Of the many websites for researchers investigating the events of 9/11 (a Google search for “9/11truth” brings up over a half a million results), 911blogger is the most heavily trafficked. The content is user-generated; registered users post items of interest and other users post comments.

But over the past two years, many well respected 9/11 truth activists and scholars have been banned from 911 blogger without explanation or cause, while the moderators have become heavy-handed in squelching the views of one particular group. These actions have caused many of the banned activists to suspect that Blogger has been infiltrated by agents working for the other side, i.e., those tasked with keeping the truth about 9/11 from gaining widespread acceptance.

The mass bannings are not random, but directed at, among others, users who support the work of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT). (The RCFP ran front page articles about CIT in the April 2009 and July 2009 issues. All back issues are available as PDFs at rockcreekfreepress.com.)

The uninitiated are urged to read those 2009 articles to get the full picture, but a drastically reduced summary is: no plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11. CIT showed, through interviews of seventeen eyewitnesses, that the plane that was seen approaching the Pentagon flew over it and away, as explosives simultaneously detonated inside the building. This created an enormous fireball, filling the sky with dense, black smoke, which obscured the escaping plane. Observers who saw the plane head toward the Pentagon, and next saw the fireball, falsely but understandably concluded that the plane had hit the building. However, the airliner was seen after the fireball by several people, including a Pentagon police officer.

CIT has been endorsed by many of the leading figures of the 9/11 truth movement, including Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, University of California at Berkeley professor and author Peter Dale Scott, author David Ray Griffin, and actor Ed Asner. In the 9/11 truth community, even among those who are not familiar with CIT, the general consensus is that no plane hit the Pentagon. For starters, plane crashes leave wreckage, and there was no wreckage at the Pentagon. No wings or tail, no fuselage, no luggage or bodies, no skid or burn marks on the pristine green Pentagon lawn.

Many 9/11 truth researchers had strongly suspected for years that no plane hit the Pentagon, then CIT came along and proved it: the plane flew away. And yet, the leading 9/11 truth site is actively suppressing CIT’s evidence and aggressively promoting the view that the plane hit. What is going on?

Before looking at the evidence that 911blogger is censoring the truth about the Pentagon and promoting disinformation, let’s look briefly at why this matters and what their motivations might be.

Although the entire 9/11 story is full of holes, the evidence proving that no plane hit the Pentagon stands in a class by itself, because a deception at the Pentagon is unspinnable. It may be possible to convince the American public that al Qaeda placed bombs in the World Trade Center towers, but the public will never believe, (nor should they) that al Qaeda planted bombs in the Pentagon. The military headquarters for the most powerful nation on earth is a very secure place, and evidence of an elaborate deception at the Pentagon is iron clad proof of complicity at the highest levels of government. Hence, for those trying to keep a lid on the truth, it is absolutely imperative that the facts about what happened at the Pentagon not get out.

Infiltration of the enemy is a common tool of warfare, and it would be surprising if the perpetrators of 9/11 had not attempted to infiltrate and subvert the 9/11 truth movement, to prevent it from doing them (the perps) any damage.

Why activists are so alarmed

Barrie Zwicker is an award-winning journalist, lecturer, author and documentary producer. He was astute enough to question the official 9/11 story from day one, as it was happening. He produced one of the first 9/11 Truth documentaries, “The Great Conspiracy”, in 2003. His most recent book, Towers of Deception, explores the media’s role in covering up the truth about 9/11. Based in Toronto, Canada, Zwicker is an expert on the subject of infiltration of social movements. When Zwicker peaks, people listen.

This summer, via YouTube, Zwicker created a ringing endorsement of CIT’s “National Security Alert” video. He not only enthusiastically applauded CIT’s work and their conclusion (that the plane seen at the Pentagon overflew the building as explosives were detonated), Zwicker delivered a stinging rebuke to CIT’s detractors:

“To me, two most important questions now, almost nine years after the events, urgently call out for investigation. First, who are those behind the vicious attempts to discredit the work of the Citizen Investigation Team? Second, what are the motives of the would-be discreditors and those behind them? And I say “attempts” because careful examination of the arguments of CIT’s tormentors show them to be tricky and unreliable, in fact as flimsy as the official story they try to defend.”

Zwicker submitted the video endorsement to 911Blogger on July 22, 2010.

Now, this is big news in the truth community. For someone of Zwicker’s stature to provide unambiguously enthusiastic support of citizen investigators, on an issue that has not (until now) had clear answers (namely, what happened at the Pentagon), is important to everyone in the truth community. But incredibly, Zwicker’s post to 911blogger was never published.

Zwicker, ever the gentleman, politely emailed the 911blogger moderators,
asking why his entry wasn’t approved. He never received a reply from any of
the four moderators.

However, just ten days later, 911blogger published a 3100 word article from an anonymous poster, titled “CIT is useless.” The amateurish writing and ad hominem attacks are evident from the very first paragraph:

“Some time ago I wrote an article about not wasting time on CIT. Most of their followers are impossible to convince and consequently the endless debates with them are entirely fruitless, resulting in nothing more than distraction. But that’s not to say we should ignore them completely. Just because we ignore them doesn’t mean they won’t be zipping around spouting their fl awed testimony, their aggressive behavior, anything that discredits those of us who are careful and have realistic standards of evidence.”

In part because of this decision by 911blogger, to reject Barrie Zwicker’s endorsement of CIT while publishing a childish hit piece from an anonymous source, Southern California 9/11 truth activist and We Are Change LA member Adam Ruff wrote:

“In my view it is now 100% confirmed that 911blogger is an enemy of the truth
movement as a whole and is engaged in an open campaign of attack on good
truthers.”

The RCFP interviewed Zwicker via email

RCFP: What do you find most compelling about CIT’s work?

Zwicker: A historically significant deception has been revealed by these eyewitnesses. The simplicity of CIT’s findings is also significant, as they don’t lend themselves to being undermined by obfuscations or convoluted scientific discussion. It comes down to this: South side of the gas station = official story, North side = inside job. Not even CIT’s detractors have found a way around this, try as they might. Any honest person who watches the interviews has to agree that the plane was on the north side proving inside job. It’s as good an example as any of critical truth, the primary goal of the 9/11 Truth movement.

RCFP: What do you make of those who say they appreciate CIT’s work but do not think they proved “flyover?”

Zwicker: Commercial airliners cannot make startling turns to left or right in such limited airspace, nor can they vanish into thin air. Flyover is the only rational explanation, not to mention that CIT provides a witness who saw the plane flying away. If this ever gets to a fair and uncorrupted court of law, I am as confident as I am of anything, that such a court will determine this plane overflew the Pentagon.

RCFP: Have you read the criticisms of CIT’s work from Arabesque, Jim Hoffman and Victoria Ashley, and do you think they have merit?

Zwicker: They lack merit because they do not provide counter-evidence. They have no firsthand eyewitness interviews from people who specifically place the plane to the south side of the gas station. Those I could weigh against the eyewitnesses interviewed by CIT. As far as I can see, Arabesque, whoever that is (I don’t care for anonymity), Hoffman and Ashley have provided none at all. They take snippets of third-hand printed media quotes, none of which are actually South of Citgo witnesses, just statements by people who said they saw the plane hit the building. Indeed, one particular detractor blog by “Caustic Logic” quotes a few people as “witnesses” who were not even in the area at the time of the attack! One was in North Carolina, arrived in DC the afternoon of 9/11, saw the downed light poles, and was thus presented as a “light pole witness.” This is in a blog entry titled “The South Path Impact: Documented.”

RCFP: What conclusions do you draw from 911blogger refusing to post your endorsement of CIT?

Zwicker: Actually, my endorsement was briefly posted for about 30 minutes, then withdrawn. It’s painful for me to learn that 911blogger, which I consider to be the premiere 9/11Truth site, is censoring CIT and those who support CIT. Even more distressing is that 911blogger has failed to censor some quite rude comments about CIT’s work and its team members. So it’s clearly one-sided. One conclusion that can be drawn is that there are players behind the scenes who have prevailed upon the moderators at 911blogger to stultify CIT and its findings. Since the censorship is so blatant and carries with it obvious penalties in the form of loss of credibility, those behind the censorship orders must really have their knickers in a knot about something. It’s a clear sign that those who control that website are trying to control thought when it comes to the Pentagon. Most people in the truth movement that I talk to in the real world are agreed that no plane hit the Pentagon. That the most visited 9/11 truth website would be so hostile towards evidence that supports this widely held belief within the ranks of Truthers is at the least disconcerting.

A little more than a month after Zwicker’s endorsement of CIT was rejected, the situation repeated itself, when retired NASA aeronautical engineer Dwain Deets recorded a video endorsement of CIT on August 30, 2010 and submitted it to 911blogger. Once again, 911blogger refused, without explanation, to post the endorsement of a highly qualified professional.

Prior to 911blogger rejecting these video endorsements from Zwicker and Deets, nearly all users at 911blogger who were vocal in their support of CIT had been banned. An informal poll easily came up with 25 former users of 911blogger who had been banned without explanation—about half of whom are CIT supporters.

Three of the most well-informed, articulate and prolific CIT supporters were banned simultaneously on May 24, 2010, while in the midst of a heated online debate with 911blogger moderator Erik Larson (aka Loose Nuke). Truth activist Stefan S. of London, England explains it:

“The exact moment that Adam Syed, Adam Ruff and I were banned, we were in mid-debate with Erik Larson. Nothing remotely offensive or rule breaking was being said by any one of us, let alone all three of us at the exact same time.

“What was happening was that Larson had been backed into a corner over a blog entry of his, which was a listing of what he claimed were witnesses to the plane flying south of the Citgo station prior to it striking the Pentagon.

“Not a single one of those witnesses even mentioned Citgo, it was just a collection of laughably tenuous arguments for why ambiguous witness statements must be supportive of the official story. The list was submitted to an intensive analysis and it was shown conclusively that none of the witnesses supported the official flight path, that the list included several witnesses who stated that the plane flew to the north of Citgo, and most strikingly, several who explicitly stated that they were not even in the vicinity at the time of the attack.

“The discussion was drifting into increasingly embarrassing territory for Larson when — presto — all three of us were banned and Larson, in a completely childish fashion, proceeded to have the “last word” in full knowledge that he had just stopped the people he was addressing from being able to respond.

“Larson’s articles are disinformation; the information he puts out there is deliberately false with a motive to undermine genuine research. 911blogger is no longer a 9/11 truth site, that much is clear.”

Response from 911blogger

Other than from moderator John Wright (aka LeftWright), who stressed that he was giving only his own personal views, not those of the website, there has been no response from 911blogger to questions emailed to them on September 15, 2010 about their treatment of Citizen Investigation Team. The email, which stated that the Rock Creek Free Press was working on an article about 911blogger and wanted to include their side of the story, was sent to the current email addresses for site owner Justin Keogh and moderators Erik Larson, Ted Tilton, Jr. and John Wright, as well as to the joint email address for the “blogger team.”

John Wright stated on September 16 that he was available for a phone interview, but, as of press time on October 23, has not replied to an email sent on October 5 to arrange that interview.

The lengthy emails from Wright explaining his view of why CIT has been treated so badly at 911blogger amount, in our view, to implausible excuses: he’s been busy; as a fulltime truth activist he has higher priorities; despite their best efforts, rules are not always enforced fairly; the site has been in a state of transition; and personality conflicts have gotten out of hand.

Most shockingly, Wright claims that Barrie Zwicker broke the site rules by stating in his endorsement that there is a “cadre of disinformation agents who are in the business of attempting to mislead and confuse honest authentic people everywhere about 9/11.” Is Wright really saying that the leading 9/11 truth site will not allow discussion of disinformation or even acknowledge that such a thing exists?

Truth activist and professional orchestral musician Adam Syed of Cincinnati, Ohio, who was banned during the debate with Larson in May, offered this comment on the censorship at 911blogger:

“Arguments in an online forum may at first glance seem to be of interest only to diehard keyboard warriors. But without the Internet, most of us would never have learned about 9/11—certainly the traditional media won’t go near it. 9/11 truth lives or dies on the Internet, and when the most heavily trafficked truth site decides to suppress certain evidence, it obviously makes it harder for people to learn the truth and figure out what happened. In the case of CIT, we are being told to disregard one of the most incriminating facts about 9/11: no plane hit the Pentagon. Now, why would any genuine truther ask us to turn our backs on such damning, unspinnable evidence?”

Answer: they wouldn’t.

Download the pdf which is the November 2010 edition on their website.
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Why 9-11 Truth Has Won - The Coming of the Flood

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By Allen L. Jasson

Introduction

I recently wrote in MWC News arguing the case for Why 9-11 Truth Has Won, due primarily to the weight of irrefutable scientific proof of the two key elements that evidence controlled demolition of the three WTC Towers – free fall collapse and the presence of thermite, explaining the total absence of structural resistance. For this and for other reasons the successful demand by the 9-11 Truth Movement and others for a new, wider, proper investigation is only a matter of time. The flood would come. The recent political squabble in Australia represents further breaching of the dam wall that will bring that flood.

For those who usually give no attention to the list of US client states that rubber-stamp the UN votes of the US and Israel and contribute to the thin veneer of moral legitimacy of its obviously illegal wars for oil and empire, Australia is that large Southern Hemisphere continent between Indonesia and Antarctica. Aside from assisting the CIA in minor ways in its intrigues against the Chilean, left-wing government of Salvador Allende in 1973 the Australian secret services were doing their treasonous part at home by contributing to similar intrigues against the Australian, left-wing government of Gough Whitlam. Many Australians today understand that both of the major parties dominant in Australian politics (just as in the US and Britain) are, in the words of George Galloway “two cheeks of the same backside” and that whichever is in office, which always depends on the consent of the US ambassador and the foreign owned corporate media, the government is a US-compliant puppet no different to those of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kevin Bracken appears to be one Australian who understands the situation and gave some indication of it in his attack on a radio talk-show host with the comment that “Unfortunately cowards like yourself have set the political agenda in this country for too long”. In his position, as Victorian Trades Hall president, he probably knows better than most how Australia’s situation came to be. But Bracken has opened another great crack in the dam wall for 9-11 Truth with his public comments that the attacks of 9-11 were not the result of terrorist activity and that the official story was itself a conspiracy theory that "didn't stand up" to scientific scrutiny.

Stamping on the Ants’ Nest

Predictably, Bracken’s comments brought out the swarms of angry demands for silence. The talk show host instantly drew the “nutter theory” card and dismissed any suggestion of debate, the political “opposition” demanded that the government take action against Bracken “to send a message that such remarks are unacceptable” and the Prime Minister dismissed the comments as “stupid and wrong”. This pattern of certain opinions being “unacceptable” or offensive is so long established in Australia that it has become part of the “culture”. One is often told, in the manner of a gentle warning, that “you’re entitled to your opinion” but the expression of opinion, particularly if at variance with the accepted wisdom, is generally regarded as anti-social behaviour. Having the audacity to ardently defend an opinion is a social outrage that will attract a reputation for intellectual arrogance or, in the Australian idiom, being “up yourself”. Corporate power has assumed the de facto role of censor and enforcer having not only the capacity to deny livelihood or career advancement but also to deny service when “unacceptable” opinions are expressed (For example).

Opinion flows from the top as a lava of unfounded assertions such as “It was a terrorist attack, and we condemn it” from zealous lackeys to power like Trades Hall secretary Brian Boyd while contrary opinions may be dismissed out of hand as “stupid and wrong”, also without any need for rational substantiation.

However, none of these defenders of the nest, it seems, has realised that their exertions only emphasize that if these views were so “stupid and wrong” they would be no threat to the establishment view, and probably would not be shared by more than 50% of the Australian public. Still more, none of these instruments of managed public opinion has the wit to understand that once the accepted wisdom is seen as obviously flawed, the tactic of silencing all debate on the subject only further entrenches the widespread view that there are matters in need of debate and that resistance to it suggests they may somehow pose a threat to established power.

It was the opposition’s shadow Attorney General, Robert Clarke who made the inevitable appeal to “support the troops” in claiming that the remarks “were a direct insult to Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan”; this from a man who should realise their presence there is illegal. Here again, we have remarks reflecting a failure to realise that a public increasingly unhappy about an ongoing involvement in Afghanistan, even those who find offensive any reference to the ongoing murder and maiming of Afghan civilians, may be inclined to consider that it would mean something far worse than an “insult” to Australian soldiers if indeed, it should emerge that they are fighting a war for profit for oil companies based on a lie (particularly if there is little sign of an Australian share in the spoils falling to influential people)..

Losing Their Grip

In general, the organizations of the left/progressive movements have been tirelessly relentless in their persistence in tactics that are now obviously failing, if they ever were successful. (Why?) The unbelievable stupidity of engaging in absurd antics to attract the attention of corrupt, corporate, mainstream media to their causes is still evident and demonstrations are still the tactic of choice despite the now obvious indifference of governments to the numbers and to emerging public disillusion, not only with these forms of dissent, but to the political process in general. The people who own western capitalism on the other hand maintain and apply a knowledge base that grows with experience and usually adapt their methods. Their resort to overworn tactics for stifling debate is unusually inept and suggests that in spite of their now universal daily access to the minds of the masses they are losing their grip.

Given the now widespread awareness of:

• The fallacy of “liberation” of Iraq
• The absence of WMD
• The transfer of Iraqi oil reserves to control of US companies
• The invalid association of Iraq with Afghanistan in terrorism
• The expanded US influence in the Middle East as a result of these wars
• The many other exposed dishonesties involved in initiating them
• UN opposition to them
• Their now obvious and widely acknowledged illegality
• The PNAC call for a “new Pearl Harbour”
• The ongoing racism, violence and savagery against the civilian populations,

and many other matters that are under discussion outside the realm of the corporate mainstream media, it seems all the more surprisingly inept that the establishment reflexes are resorting to tactics of silencing debate.

Given the vast amount of material now available outside the realm of the corporate mainstream media, which not only discredits the official account but also points strongly to the “inside job” conclusion, there is a lot for inquisitive minds to discover when motivated by conspicuously suspicious attempts to silence debate. It has to be conceded that some of this material is trite rubbish; one thread of discussion even asserted that the planes that struck the towers were holograms. But people understand that there will always be this diversionary element. Indeed, it’s an acknowledged tactic in the information wars to infuse such nonsense into the opponent’s camp.

However, returning to my original point as to why 9-11 Truth has won, there is irrefutable science underpinning the key facts that point to controlled demolition. Awareness of these facts will inevitably reach and capture public opinion.

No Honour Among Thieves

We are all compromised by capitalism; it’s only a matter of degree. We are born into a system based on ownership in which all the sources of all the things we need in order to live, love and raise children are already owned, were already owned generations before we were born. Most people don’t give much thought to this; they simply learn to comply with the mechanisms of control that this system applies to them in order to serve their needs and assume the context as given. Consequently, all the way from the corrupt politician who “knows” that playing politics is like wrestling a pig and thinks “the price is worth it”, the compliant journalist who avoids any consideration that if his opinions were different he would not have a job, the many professionals who think that professionalism necessarily involves moral compromise, the soldier who kills civilians for sport and dismisses it as “his job”, the interrogator who says “The Christian in me knows it’s wrong, but the corrections officer in me just loves to see a grown man piss himself”, all the way down to ordinary Joe who knows better than to discuss politics at work, there are degrees of cooperation with the system’s immorality and a general reluctance to see ourselves in the context of the bigger picture: an evasion of responsibility for what the capitalist system we all contribute to and depend on is doing to human beings, human destiny and the planet.

In this context the widespread acceptance of the idea that “Saddam Hussein had to be got rid of” and public concern to “liberate the people of Iraq”, despite universal indifference to their appalling suffering under 12 years of our cruel sanctions, can only be seen as wilful self deception. Similarly, the often heard argument about ‘our’ obligation to the people of Afghanistan due to the disaster that might befall them if we leave, despite the regular slaughter of Afghan civilians every day that we are there and the fact of history that in the late 1970s they had, of their own making, a more open, secular, moderate, tolerant and egalitarian society than ever they could hope for under the boot of western occupation and that it was destroyed by western meddling, is as perverse a notion as the “white man’s burden”. Australians generally understand, and with increasing stake in the nation’s economy according to their social strata, are generally committed to the idea that “if we keep in good with the US and the US gets its oil then our economy will be healthy and we will be able to pay the mortgage and upgrade the BMW next year and all will be well. – don’t rock the boat!”.

I had a very stark encounter with this one day in 2007 in a café in Bruges where I met a group of obviously affluent Australian tourists, all four of them grossly overweight and still gorging themselves on Belgian chocolates and cream-cakes. I was so disgusted with this and their self-congratulatory conversation that I was moved to take them to task over the fact of Australia’s disgraceful involvement in the war in Iraq, in consequence of which millions of Iraqis were without basic essentials, even clean water while they sat here stuffing their faces. One spluttering, red-faced, angry response that emerged obviously from some primordial, irrational, subconscious corner of this unexplored mind was “Every country has the right to defend its economy!”. I was awestruck at what this “Freudian slip” revealed.

Notwithstanding the widespread, vehement opposition to the wars that have arisen in consequence of 9-11 the equally widespread passive, silent coalescence and even support of the kind that parrots the obviously flawed arguments in support of them, is in fact complicity; people who are wilfully deceived or unwilling to voice contrary opinions because they are compromised by their share in the spoils – the paltry crumbs that fall from the table, however vile the crimes that brought the loaf to be cut.

But the wealth gap has been widening for the past 30 years and the rate at which it widens is becoming extreme. The privatisation and increased charging for essential resources, the growth in regressive taxation, tax havens and concessions for the wealthy, the shift of government expenditure from health care, education and public services to infrastructure amenities for capital, corporate subsidies, football stadiums and other sweeteners to established wealth and capital are creating massive exclusion. The suburbs of cities have become people farms full of welfare dependants kept ill educated and ignorant by decrepit and decaying education systems whilst ill informed and diverted by television “news and entertainment”. Greed and corruption in both the government and private sectors has rendered impossible any hope or desire to correct the situation and people of wealth with any vestigial capacity for moral reflection sigh a “ho hum” at the depravity of their advantage. Meanwhile the global, economic ship is already faltering on the rocks of corruption, financial incompetence, outstripped energy resources and a declining, overheating biosphere.

The Effect of Emerging Truth

Kevin Bracken is a prominent person who has voiced key points in the public domain:

• The attacks only worked because the US Government was in some way involved
• It couldn't have happened unless there was participation from key elements of the American military and government and security services
• The official story for September 11 doesn't stack up
• The buildings were imploded
• Aviation fuel doesn't get hot enough to melt steel and no high rise steel frame building before or after September 11 has ever collapsed due to fire
• If they want to stop terrorism they've got to look at who was really behind September 11,

These points are only a fragment and have all been said before but very little repeated in the mainstream media – by contrast with the opposite views. They are being met with demands to “shut up” based on hollow and illogical claims they are insulting and disrespectful and unfounded assertions they are stupid and wrong. The union movement, of which Kevin Bracken is an executive, is being chastened into “damage control” with officials being compelled to publicly distance themselves from Bracken’s remarks, which serves only to reinforce the sense of public figures being coerced by power into alignment with the accepted, official wisdom, a phenomenon that has been starkly evident since September 12^th 2001.

But even as Bracken was speaking callers were phoning in to ask such things as “I think if you've seen the videos of [one tower] - nothing hit it and it fell down. I mean, what's the story there?" or to assert “The investigation was a joke and most thinking people agree”. Similarly, despite the silence of mainstream media about the facts supporting views contrary to the official explanation, information is circulating and two (of some 500) comments on an Australian, online publication of the story (one of them incidentally from a reader in the US) made the following significant points:

a) World Trade Center 7, a 47-story skyscraper that would have been the tallest building in 35 states and was nearly a football field in length and 140 feet wide, came down in about 7 seconds at 5:20 pm on 9/11 at freefall acceleration for over 100 feet. The only way an object can fall at freefall acceleration is through air. WTC 7 had 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns that would have had to [be] removed simultaneously on 8 floors in order for freefall to have occurred. WTC 7 had fires on only a few floors; fires that persisted in any given place for only 20-30 minutes. Ordinary office fires (and jet fuel fires, although WTC 7 was not hit by a plane) cannot exceed 1,000 ºC. Steel is an excellent heat sink and does not reach the same temperature as a fire except over a prolonged period of time. The fire proofing for WTC 7 was not compromised.

b) Even members of the US Govt’s own 9/11 Commission who wrote the official version of events have now labelled the official story a fabrication. The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was all based on false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. John Farmer, Dean of Rutger Universities' School of Law and former Attorney General of New Jersey, Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission was responsible for drafting the original flawed 9/11 report. In his book released last year: The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11, the author builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version is almost entirely untrue... Farmer states clearly in his book... at some level of the government, at some point in time there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened...On that basis alone, even putting aside the compelling scientific evidence that the planes did not bring down the 3 World Trade Centre Buildings, Kevin Bracken is quite rightly calling for a proper investigation so that the truth be known.

Bracken is not alone. Intellectuals all over the world and even members of the Japanese and European parliament, not to mention the “unmentionable” Iranian President Ahmadinejad have publicly voiced doubts or urged debate about 9-11.

What this points to is that there is a widespread public debate going on, despite its invisibility in the mainstream media. It’s a highly informed and astute debate that is sorting the grain from the chaff and there are some substantial facts that this debate will inevitably bring to widespread acceptance with potent impact.

It points to the old saying that you can fool some of the people all the time and even all of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. The time is fast approaching when very few of the people are fooled by all the adamant, hollow assertion of the official 9-11 conspiracy theory, or cowered into submission by the bullying coercion of its powerful adherents.

As one Australian trade union official said, regardless of the leadership compliance with demands to distance themselves from Bracken’s remarks, and even question his future in the movement, his comments have kindled renewed, intense debate within the movement and no doubt also among its rank and file membership.

Airing the Linen

The Bush era and the consequent ten years of war have fomented intense international disenchantment with the US. In Australia, the once widespread enchantment with all things America has shrunk to the confines of the entrepreneurial and affluent middle class. The inevitable debate about 9-11 will occur in this context and there is a lot of unclean linen associated with US involvement in Australian domestic political and economic affairs, past and present, which may be dragged out for airing.

Bracken’s comments are just one significant breach of the dam. There will be others, many others, because the world is full of people who will dare to ask for more than a world run by psychopathic criminals; people who can inflict pain suffering, injury, even death without empathy, compassion or remorse. As the debate goes on outside the compliant mainstream media it will intensify because it comes from a human spirit full of imagination and creative energy that lives outside the artificial confines of a bogus social system dominated by people who manipulate it to their own designs and indulgence, people who, by their very lack of scruple, circumspect or conviction for anything other than the accumulation of wealth, rise to dominate it and, having done so, corrupt and coerce others to their own image.

The change is coming. The flood will come.

In Australia, as in other places, there will be wider ramifications.

My 75 days of horror in the hands of Anti-Terror Squad

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In the police custody of 75 days, I never forget the words of Asstt. Commissioner of Police late Shri Vinod Bhatt, who committed suicide in the second week of August. Before his suicide, during interrogation he told me that he was under immense pressure from his senior officers to implicate us falsely in Mumbai train blast case and he also promised that he will try his best not to implicate all of you innocent people till he is alive.

Here is the story of Ehtesham Qutub in his own words how he was detained and tortured for two and half months by the Mumbai Anti-Terrorism Squad during the 7/11 blast investigations. He is resident of 202, Safiya Manzil, Naya Nagar, Mira Road (E), Distt. Thane, Maharashtra - 401107. He is currently lodged in a Mumbai jail where his address is: UT-1129/10, 2/4 (Anda Cell), Mumbai Central Prison, Arthur Road, Mumbai. According to an estimate around one thousand such Muslim youths are currently lodged in Indian jails on mere suspicion, concocted evidence mainly confessions extratcted through inhuman torture.

My name is Ehtesham Qutubudin Siddiqui, age: 29 years, occupation: Book Publisher. I was born in Uttar Pradesh in a poor family. In the year 1996, I moved to Mumbai for further education. My residential address in Mumbai is 202, Safiya Manzil, Naya Nagar, Mira Road (East), Thane – 401107 Maharashtra. I completed my XII standard through Maharashtra College, Belasis Road, Mumbai Central. I took admission in Narayan Nagu Patil Engineering College, in Pen. Raigad through Mumbai University in Chemical Engineering course in 1998. I used to stay in a hostel near the campus. However, during my vacation and holidays, I used to visit Mira Road which is my residential permanent address.

On 27 September, 2001 while I was travelling from Pen to visit my house, on the way, I thought of visiting a library situated at Feetwala Compound, Kurla (West) Mumbai, for reading some books. That evening around 8:00 pm, some policemen came in the library and took me along with seven other people to Kurla Police Station. They did not tell me the reason for detention, and arrested me under section 10&13 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. They informed me that Students Islamic Movement of India has been declared as a banned organisation. They informed me about the offence only after the arrest i.e. when they produced me before Magistrate of Kurla Court. The truth is that I was never associated with any organisation which is mentioned above. The Hon’ble magistrate of Kurla court had released me on bail of Rs. 3000. However the Kurla police, instead of releasing me took me to the police station and put me inside the lock up and said that I have been arrested in another case of the same offence. Kurla police has framed me in false cases which I had nothing to do with, and they have spoilt my reputation in society. In regard to second false case, the police took 15-day custody. After 15 days, I was granted bail of Rs. 8000 security. As it was a conditional bail. I could not continue my studies which resulted in the end of engineering course. After that, I learned Desktop Publishing on my Personal Computer and started a DTP business from my house in Mira Road known as "Graphic Point". In March 2004, I started a publishing company known as "Shahadah Publishing House" publishing Islamic literature and books on general knowledge. In July 2003, I had taken admission in B Sc to complete my graduation through Indira Gandhi National Open University. But due to my arrest and false implication in 11th July 2006, Mumbai serial train blast case my whole career has gone for a toss.

Due to old record in Kurla police station, it had become a regular routine of detaining me. Every time or whenever any incident took place in Mumbai, I was called by police for a formal interrogation. Besides those two false cases registered by Kurla police,. I do not have any other criminal record as I was living a normal life in Mumbai.

On 11 July, 2006, serial bomb blasts took place on Western Railway during peak hours, that time I was at home. When I learned about the blast at Mira Road, I went to the blast site to help the victims. I knew very well that police will come to me for formal enquiry like the regular police routine, that had been a trend since 2001. Hence senior police Inspector namely Murade of Mira Road police station came to my house on 13 July, 2006 in evening time and asked me to come to the police station on the next day. On 14 July, 2006 at 11:00 am, I went to Mira Road police station to meet Sr. PI Murade. He questioned me about my whereabouts and asked me for my phone number, which I gave him (28115084) and left the police station. He also told me that if required for further investigation I will be called.

Torture position 1: Hitting the victim by flour mill belt on the inner part of hand, buttock and feet about 200 times per spell leaving part of hand and feet in blue colour with strong pain during torture. Other body parts too were hit by this belt any part of body

On 24 July, 2006, in the morning around 11:00 am, police sub-Inspector Sunil Mane of Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) unit-II, visited my house and asked me to come at Nagpada ATS office, the same day before 3:00 pm. That day I went to Nagpada ATS office at around 2:00 pm. I met PSI Sunil Mane and he told me that senior officials will interrogate me so they will take me to Bhoiwada ATS office. Upon reaching Bhoiwada ATS office, PSI Sunil Mane took me to the second floor in lock up, where he called PI Vilas Joshi, PI Dinesh Ahir, PSI Shailesh Gaekwad and other beating me with belts and sticks and continued beating me till evening. Later they took me from Bhoiwada to Nagpada handcuffed. They did not allow me to inform my parents or any of my relatives. When I was taken from Nagpada to Bhoiwada, before taking me inside the lock up, they emptied my pockets during my physical search. They took away my mobile, ATM card, PAN card and Rs. 25.000 cash, which I was carrying off, with which I wanted to purchase a personal computer. PSI Sunil Mane only made entry of ATM card, PAN card and mobile in panchnama. However they distributed the Rs. 25000 cash among themselves. On 29 July, 2006, when PSI Sunil Mane was prepreparing panchnama, I noticed that he did not mention the Rs. 25.000 cash in the recovery. upon which I asked him about the money. I was surprised by his reply: "bhool ja be tere paise!" (forget your money)

Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) detained me illegally from 24 July, 2006 to 29 July, 2006, as I was not produced before any Magistrate till 29 July, 2006. During this period ATS officers continued beating me for several hours everyday.

ATS officers had searched my house in my absence, as I was in their custody. They took all the books and literature which was published recently into their custody. ATS officers had taken all valuable things from house, which I saw in ATS office and which included computer, printer, drill machine, tape recorder, Rs. 10.000 cash, blankets etc. ATS officers chose two books namely Jihadi Azkar and Islam ki Rooh-Jihad fi Sabilillah, which described basic fundamentals of Jihad in Islam, and contains verses of Qur’an and saying of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and does not contain any inflammatory material and is easily available in the market. On the basis of these two books they arrested me on 29 July, 2006 and produced me before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, 2nd Court, Mazgaon, Mumbai and took me on 15 days police custody u/s 10&13 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. I was surprised when charge sheet was filed and one book namely Jihad fi sabilillah-kyon added in recovery which was not at my house. I wanted to tell many things to magistrate about the torture and illegal detention but ATS threatened me not to say anything to magistrate or else they will torture me more severely using third degree torture methods, therefore I could not tell any thing to the magistrate.

Torture position 2: Giving shock using an electric current machine by making the victim nude. They tie wire on thumbs of legs and private parts of body, then current is passed at regular intervals.

ATS officer took me to unit-II office and they started beating me, they never told me any thing why they had arrested me but kept beating me. While torturing they used to say that too musalman hai isliye tere ko mar rahe hain (You are Muslim therefore we are thrashing you) with every blow they used to abuse my religion and said tere ko yehan koi nahi bachayega (No one will save you here). On 03 August, 2006 I was cruelly tortured by PSI Shailesh Gaekwad, PSI Sunil Mane and PI Vilas Joshi and asked me to accept the said crime of bomb blast in front of senior officials of ATS because of the torture I agreed to do whatever the ATS officers told me to do. After which they took me to ATS head office, where ATS Chief KP Raghuvanshi and DCP Naval Bajaj were seated in the office. There in front of these senior officers I complained about the torture that PSI Shailesh Gaekwad, PSI Sunil Mane and PI Vilas Joshi had done, and I also told ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, that I am innocent and they are trying to involve me in the blast case. But to my surprise KP Raghuvanshi slapped me and told the officers that this torture was not enough and asked them to take me to Bhoiwada and beat me black and blue. I completely lost faith in the senior-most officers as well as junior officers because this fraud of framing innocent people was ordered by senior officers of ATS including ATS chief. That on next day i.e. on 05 August, 2006 an officer namely PI Sunil Deshmukh took me to Chandan Chowki at Juhu where the officers conducted Narco analysis test which was illegal and without permission of court, and the officers from Forensic Science Laboratory, Mumbai were also present there. Before taking me to Chandan Chowki, I was taken for medical check up at KEM Hospital, where I had complained about the torture, the medical officer present there referred to get x-ray and gave some medicines. However the medical reports were false and no report of torture was registered. After the illegal Narco test DCP Naval Bajaj told me that, I confirm that you are innocent and we will transfer you to judicial custody on 12 August, 2006. However the next day I was taken to Nagpada unit-II by PI Dinesh Ahir, and upon reaching there he along with other officers tortured me and also gave electric shock on my private parts. After torturing me for ten hours they left me back to Bhoiwada lock up.

Torture position 3: After removing clothes, the victim is made to sit on floor with both hands tied behind by rope; thereafter both legs are stretched in opposite direction making 180 deg. angle.

On 12 August, 2006, ATS officers arrested me in Mumbai train serial blast case and took on police custody for two days. ATS officers told me that I will be sent to Judicial custody on 14 August, 2006. However on 14 August, 2006, they took police custody upto 25 August, 2006. On the same day I was taken to Kurla in Vijay Salaskar’s anti-Robbery Squad office which is also a torture room. There the officers beat me with belt and stick and then they handcuffed me to the window and did not allow me to sleep and I remained standing whole night.The same night ie. in the night of 59th anniversary of Independence day, horrifying torture were carried out by Vijay Salaskar’s men on the family members of an accused namely Faisal Shaikh, who is under arrest in the Mumbai train serial blast case. These tortures are a great shame for nation as our country became Independent on the ideology of "ahinsa" propounded by father of nation Mahatma Gandhi. In front of us Vijay Salaskar’s men had removed the dress of 75 year old Faisal’s father and beat him with belt. They also insulted the modesty of woman by uncovering the face of wife of Faisal’s brother, which was covered by veil.

On 21 August, 2006, PI Vilas Joshi, API Survey of Nagpada unit took me to Ujjain by train. There ATS officer showed me a hut 20 km away from Ujjain city. After that they told me that now you had attended a meeting held in 1st week of July at the said place. I was stunned and surprised because they falsely implicated me in the said meeting. On 24 August, 2006, I was taken back to Bhoiwada lock up.

On 25 August, 2006, I was produced before Hon’ble Judge of Mazgaon Court and ATS again took me in police custody till 08 September, 2006 in another case of Mumbai serial train blast registered by Andheri Railway Police Station. ATS officers did not allow me to sleep for six consecutive days. During this period an officer from Ahmadabad, Gujarat namely DG Vanzara also interrogated me and also abused and tortured me. He said that you are in Mumbai that is why you are alive, if you were arrested in Gujarat, I would have done your encounter. DG Vanzara told Naval Bajaj that the arrested accused are Muslims, therefore implicate them in the blast case to avoid public reaction and pressure from the government, and if required shoot any of them and show that they were trying to escape from custody.

Torture position 4: Victim is tied to a chair so that he is unable to move his head in any direction; water is dropped slowly on his scalp for hours causing very strong pain in neck and head.

On 05 September, 2006, I was taken to ATS Head Office, where police commissioner AN Roy, ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, Adl. CP SK Jaisawal, Jaijeet Singh were present. However Jaijeet Singh and SK Jaisawal left the room. KP Raghuvanshi told me that "we are not able to find the real culprits and were are planning to frame up the case because government is pressurising us to implicate the arrested accused and finish the case, and also told me that "we will make you an approver in the case and you will be released after some months". He also offered me Rs. 25 lakhs for becoming an approver. I refused and told him that I am innocent and there is no question of confessing the crime or turning into an approver. The next day I was taken to Bangalore to conduct Brain mapping test, polygraph test and Narco analysis test. PI Raja Mandge and PI Prasad Khandekar took me along with them to Bangalore through Jet Airways. In Bangalore I was taken to Forensic Science Laboratory, where brain mapping and polygraph test was conducted by Dr S Malini. Next day I was taken to Bowring & Lady Curzon Hospital for the Narco analysis test. After conducting this test I was brought back to Mumbai on 08 September, 2006. While returning to Mumbai API Shelke told me in the plane that the test confirms that I am innocent and will be released shortly. However ATS officers produced me before the court and took me in police custody till 14 September, 2006, and arrested me in another case of Mumbai train serial blast registered by Bandra Railway Police Station. On 10 September, I was again taken to Bangalore for another Narco analysis test. The Narco test was conducted on 12 September by Dr S Malini. During the test, I was conscious and understood all the questions asked by Dr S Malina and answer given by me. The next day i.e. on 13 September, 2006, I was brought to Mumbai by another officer PI Prasad Khandekar and was taken to Nagpada ATS head office and produced before KP Raghuvanshi who told me that I have taken lot of rest and now it is time to break your bones. If you want to save yourself then do as directed and become an approver. I declined his offer saying that I am innocent and you all are trying to frame me in an offence which I have nothing to do with. This infuriated him and he told to PI Tajne to take me to Kalachowki police station and beat me till I obey them. PI Tajne took me to Kalachowki police station, there officers including Adl. CP Jaijeet Singh, DCP Naval Bajaj, ACP Sadashiv Laxman Patil PI Raja Mandge, Tajne, Khanwilkar and other constables started beating me using third degree torture methods. During the torture ATS officer showed me an edited CD of the Narco test. When I told them that the CD was edited, they started beating me mercilessly and asked me to act according to their wish. The series of tortur continued till 18 September, 2006, and on the same day PI Khanwilkar talked to me in private and said that he will request to the police commissioner AN Roy for my judicial custody on 22 September, 2006 and after one month I will be discharged from this case. However, when I was produced in court on 22 September, 2006, PI Khanwilkar told me that the senior officers have planned to falsely implicate you people in this case, but also said that do not worry as ATS have no proof of your involvement in this case and you will be discharged or acquitted from this case in about two years.

On 24 September, 2006, ATS officers again took me to Bangalore for Narco analysis test and I understood that the frequency of conducting so many Narco test was only to convince the senior officials of the government. From the Narco test ATS officers wanted some specific word from the accused persons which would incriminate them in this case and they wanted the Narco test video CD edited in a proper manner, which they did with the help of Dr S Malini, who conducted the Narco test thrice on me and other co-accused persons. Dr S Malini is also involved along with the ATS officers in this fraud. On 27 September, 2006, I was brought back to Mumbai on 28 September, 2006, I was produced before Hon’ble special judge Shri Abhay Thipsay in Sewri Session Court and ATS took my police custody under Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act 1999 till 09 October, 2006.

On 29 September, 2006, I was tortured continuously for five hours using third degree methods by PSI Sachin Kadam, later I was produced before police commissioner AN Roy and ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi. Both the senior officers laughed at me and KP Raghuvanshi told me that I have been implicated in the blast case and forget about India being a democratic country. India is a Hindu rashtra and there is no place for Muslims in India. Muslims in India are only for jail and encounter. Now the only way to protect yourself from long imprisonment is that you become an approver in this case. I refused to become an approver and told them that the method to save myself was that you people catch the real culprits and release the innocent people. On this AN Roy told me that I have pressure from the home minister of India and home minister of state, and we are unable to do anything besides framing the case on you people and fabricating evidence against you people because I have to answer my seniors also. After this AN Roy told me that tomorrow we are calling a press conference and you all will be famous as terrorists.

On 03 October, 2006, DCP Naval Bajaj came to meet me in Bhoiwada lock up. He was convincing me to sign on some blank paper and some paper with written material, but I did not sign on any of the papers. He abused me and said that I was very stubborn and would not obey without being tortured. After that I was taken to Kalachowki police station for torture.

On 06 October, 2006, PI Tajne produced me before DCP Dattaray Karale of zone IV, where the DCP asked my name and lodged me in Matunga General lock up for 22 hours. During this time PI Tajne and API Deore tortured me in Matunga lock up and threatened me to sign on the papers given to me on next day. Then next day I was taken to the office of DCP Dattararay Karale, where he forced me to sign on some papers, with written material on it. PI Tajne and API Deore were also present in DCP’s cabin. I did not sign the papers voluntarily but upon police pressure and threats I did. Later I was produced before chief metropolitan magistrate SS Shirke. The magistrate asked my name and date of first arrest in front of ATS officers. I did not understand what was going on, then I was sent back to Bhoiwada lock up. On 08 October, 2006, one of the ATS offices told me that the papers which I had signed was my confession, which I was not aware of till this ATS officer informed me. On 09 October, 2006, I retracted my "confession", which is false and fabricated, before Hon’ble special judge Mridulla Bhatkar, and on the same day I was remanded to judicial custody.

Torture position 5: Victim is tied upside down, both legs and hands also are tied by rope, then water is poured into his nose at regular intervals for about one hour

In the police custody of 75 days, I never forgot the words of Asstt. Commissioner of Police late Shri Vinod Bhatt, who committed suicide in the second week of August. Before his suicide, during interrogation he told me that he was under immense pressure from his senior officers to implicate us falsely in Mumbai train blast case and he also promised that he will try his best not to implicate all of you innocent people till he is alive. Unfortunately Shri Vinod Bhatt committed suicide under tremendous pressure.

In the 75 days long period, police custody, ATS officers used third degree method for torture. The third degree torture methods which were used by ATS officers on me are as follows:

• ATS officers used belt, which is used in flour mill, to beat us. They strike on the inner part of hand and feet about 200 times per spell leaving part of hand and feet in blue colour with strong pain during torture. After beating the parts of hands and feet become swollen. Medical officer of KEM Hospital supported ATS by not examining properly. ATS also used this belt to torture us also on any part of body, even on buttock also, due to this torture I cannot sit properly.

• ATS officers gave me shock using an electric current machine by making me nude. They used to tie wire on thumbs of legs and private parts of body. After that they pass the current at regular intervals. ATS used this method of torture four times on me during police custody.

• After removing my clothes, I was made to sit down on floor, both hands tied by rope behind the body, thereafter my both legs stretched in opposite direction making 180 degree angle. This torture method was repeated many times. During the period of custody they stretched my legs five times.

• ATS officers tied me on a chair, which is kept very close to wall, they tied my head in a way that I cannot move my head anywhere in any direction. Then they dropped the water drop-by drop on my scalp upto eight hours. Due to this torture very strong pain occurred in neck and head.

• They used to tie me upside down (i.e. in reverse position) and my both legs and hands also tied by rope, then they used to pour water in my nose at regular intervals about one hour, they used this technique of torture on me 3 times.

• ATS officers threatened me that my family members also will be arrested in this case or brought by ATS and they will be molested, if I do not sign on confessional statement. They used the example of the family of my co-accused Faisal Shaikh, who was molested by Vijay Salaskar team in front of me.

• ATS officers, including senior officers of IPS rank police commissioner AN Roy and ATS chief KP Raghunvanshi had given huge amount of cash after release, and also given the inducement of settlement anywhere in the world. These officers also promised many times to discharge me from the case if I became an approver.

This article appeared in The Milli Gazette the print issue of October 2010 on page no. 8


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