Cupid of the Underworld

And now for something completely different. This is a poem from the vaults: a poem about the redemptive power of suffering, with an anti-war counterpoint. Then again, maybe it's just about a rather fetching lady with a bow and arrow. Whichever you prefer:

Redeemer - my killer, my victim - pale Archeress

Cupid of the Underworld

Draw taut the silken sinews of your hand.

Could drops of pity foil perfection's aim?

Your bow smiles to see its prey unmanned -

an arrow flies - the killer bears no blame.

Somewhere in a desert stands a man,

about to move his finger. Blood tastes the same

in every clime - from London to Afghanistan -

a bullet flies - the killer bears no blame.

Like Zeno's arrow spinning in eternal flight,

my mind retraces time to whence it came:

You live in darkness, hunt by moonlit night

and guiltlessly you smile but bear the blame

for every cruel cut this world endures,

for which injustice there is one redress:

the poisoned barb that breaks my skin is yours;

redeemer - my killer, my victim - pale Archeress.

9/11 Still Matters

Unseen Enemies, Hidden Agendas


Approaching the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US, the BBC and other elements of the corporate media served up a steady diet of tripe on that subject. The main purpose of this seems to be to remind us why we have to be in a constant state of war and why we must continue to give up ever more of our hard-won civil liberties for the sake of security from an unseen but still deadly enemy. Given all the wars, death, destruction, surveillance and curtailment of freedom that has followed from 9/11, it is surely surprising that no one has yet been tried in a court of law for the attacks, despite the supposed 'mastermind', Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, having been in US custody for 8 years (now in Guantanamo Bay), his 'confession' extracted by waterboarding - a technique well known for making victims tell the exact truth rather than whatever their interrogators want them to say.


One would at least expect there to be some irrefutable evidence in the public domain, connecting the 9/11 attacks and especially the hijackers, to the organisation referred to as Al-Qaeda and to Osama Bin Laden in particular. Unfortunately, there is none, which is perhaps why Bin Laden was never officially wanted by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks and why he himself denied responsibility for them. It was only long after the US invasion of Afghanistan that Al Jazeera were given (by whom?) a video tape (supposedly found in Jalalabad after it fell) in which a chubby fellow with a big beard (who might be Bin Laden) talks a lot about dreams and obliquely suggests he had some foreknowledge of 9/11 and may (just possibly) have had some connection to the hijackers, although it is never very clear. The authenticity of the tape is hotly disputed, even in academic circles, but even if we assume it to be genuine, it does not provide enough evidence to convict anyone in a court of law, let alone invade an entire country. The US and NATO did not need any evidence to start that war, in any case. Ten years on, perhaps we should remind ourselves of these inconvenient facts, which the corporate media appear to have forgotten. After all, there is no bigger conspiracy theory than the idea that a fiendish global terror network called Al-Qaeda is behind virtually every terrorist plot in the world today.

Sad Liberty: Photo (edited) from NWO Observer.

So, if there is virtually no evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11, who was really responsible for those attacks? There is good evidence, albeit disputed, that Mahmud Ahmed, head of Pakistan's ISI (secret service) at the time had ordered $100,000 to be wired to one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta. Who, then, is the real unseen enemy? Surely, this is a question worthy of investigation. Unfortunately, merely asking that question can get you labelled as a 'conspiracy theorist', since it is now no longer deemed acceptable to question the truthfulness of official accounts in the corporate media. There was a time when things were different and even the BBC spoke truth to power:


In 1992, the BBC produced a three-part Timewatch documentary exposing Operation Gladio, a secret NATO network of agents connected to far-right organisations, which was created by the CIA after World War Two, which had strong connections to an Italian elite secret society called (in Italian) Propaganda Due (aka the P2 masonic lodge). As the documentary makes clear, Gladio was largely under the control of the CIA and was responsible for unleashing a wave of terrorist attacks in Europe (especially Italy) during the so-called 'years of lead' from 1968 to 1988. Many of the attacks were initially blamed on left-wing revolutionaries such as the Red Brigades, although it later transpired that most, if not all of them had been carried out by the Gladio network of far-right operatives with CIA approval. Hundreds of people were killed, including 85 in the infamous Bologna train bombing.


Most of these outrages are now acknowledged, with the benefit of hindsight and declassified information, to have been 'false flag' terror attacks, almost certainly sanctioned by official state intelligence or security agencies, for the purpose of discrediting the Italian Communist Party and maintaining a state of fear (the so-called 'strategy of tension') in which people would willingly trade freedom for security. No doubt, if anyone had suggested such a thing before 1990, they would have been ridiculed and labelled as a 'conspiracy theorist'. Could it be that some of today's 'conspiracy theories' will become tomorrow's declassified history? Gladio involved hundreds, if not thousands of operatives across Europe and was successfully kept secret for over 40 years. If nothing else, it shows the willingness of certain elements within governments and security services to murder their own countrymen for political gain. It also shows the extraordinary global reach of the CIA and its deep connections to numerous extremist groups as well as to other security services. Above all, it shows that we cannot take official government pronouncements about terrorism at face value.


In fact, a former chief of the Los Angeles FBI, Ted Gunderson, states plainly (in April 2011) that the CIA were behind numerous false flag terrorist attacks on US soil, including the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. Apparently, this is not a news story, although Gunderson seemed perfectly sane and as a former FBI chief, presumably knows more than your average BBC producer.


There are many reasons why 9/11 still matters. One of them is that history tends to repeat itself, so we must try to learn from the past. It seems we have still not yet made a serious attempt to understand 9/11 and therefore have learned nothing from it. Another reason is that it still casts a huge shadow over domestic and global politics. What is the real reason why our soldiers are still dying in Afghanistan? How many more of our civil liberties must we lose before we begin to question the whole premise of the War on Terror and its domestic consequences?


Conspiracies: Theory, Fact or Paranoid Fantasy?


To be sure, there are many outlandish, wild or utterly crazy ideas about 9/11 floating around and not just on the internet. These include the idea that the towers were destroyed with lasers or 'mini-nukes', that the hijacked jetliners were holograms or that 'the Jews' did it. These patently ridiculous notions make good straw-man fodder for self-styled 'debunkers' to tilt at on their internet forums and serve mainly as entertainment to distract us from the real issues. These bizarre straw-man theories are useful to the media, since the official theory is only marginally less strange and speculative itself. The official narrative is also a conspiracy theory, so whatever you believe, we are all conspiracy theorists now. In fact, to say that 'Al-Qaeda' did it is tantamount to saying 'the crazy Muslim extremists' did it, since 'Al-Qaeda' is far from being the precise notion that the media would have us believe.


There are also many interesting questions and hypotheses still waiting for good answers or objective appraisal. The corporate media tends to lump them all together, making no attempt to distinguish between valid questions and wild speculation, labelling all unconventional ideas as 'conspiracy theories', thereby absolving themselves of any need to think rationally or objectively about any of them. This is a dangerous state of affairs.


Last week, there was an article in the Guardian purporting to debunk 9/11 conspiracy theories, together with  another insinuating that those who doubt the official narrative of 9/11 were mostly anti-semitic Holocaust deniers. These slurs do not stand up to scrutiny, since none of the most prominent advocates of serious alternative 9/11 narratives has ever denied the Holocaust or said anything anti-semitic. The most prominent members of the so-called 'Truth Movement' (which I prefer to describe as the  9/11 Sceptics Network) include eminent academics with impeccable humanitarian credentials, such as Prof David Ray Griffin (theologian), Prof Steven Jones (physicist), Prof Niels Harrit (chemist) and Richard Gage (AIA). The latter is a phlegmatic and affable practising architect of over 20 years experience, who has designed numerous steel-framed buildings and founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006, having been a die-hard Republican supporter up to that point. Gage's organisation continues to grow and now numbers over 1,500 verified professional engineers and architects who are calling for a proper independent investigation into the collapses of the three towers to fall on 9/11. The suggestion that most of these people are tinfoil-hat-wearing, irrational, gibbering loons is as laughable as it is offensive. Yet, that is exactly how the corporate media still attempt to stereotype them. This is nothing but the very crudest form of propaganda.


Even more offensive is the suggestion that the 9/11 sceptics are somehow dishonouring the memory of the victims and their families. Nothing could be further from the truth, since the Truth Movement began with the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, including the Jersey Girls (aka Jersey Widows) and their struggle for an independent investigation into the attacks, which was initially denied to them by the US government. They wanted answers to numerous legitimate questions about those attacks which killed their loved ones. Public pressure eventually forced the President to announce the setting up of the 9/11 Commission. The Commission was beset with controversy from the outset and its final report was widely considered a whitewash, containing numerous omissions and outright falsehoods. The victims' families were far from satisfied and commented that it did not even touch on most of their questions, let alone answer them satisfactorily. Their story is well told in the acclaimed documentary, Press for Truth. The victims' families, as well as survivors and rescue workers (e.g. Firefighters for 9/11 Truth) remain among the most active and prominent members of the Truth Movement today. Many of the rescue workers are now dying of cancers most likely caused by inhalation of dust and a lot of them have suspicions that the truth about 9/11 is being suppressed by their government, which is also denying them the compensation and medical care they need. Their perspective is covered in another award-winning documentary called The Elephant in the Room.

Film about the struggle of victims' families for answers to their questions

Hard Evidence and Unanswered Questions 1: The Collapse of Building 7


There is a huge amount of hard evidence contradicting the official account of what happened on 9/11; far too much to document in a single article, but I will attempt to draw attention to just two issues which I believe are sufficient to refute the official story and support a particular alternative hypothesis which can now be established beyond reasonable doubt.


I am an applied mathematician, with a PhD from an engineering department. My specialism is statistical modelling and machine learning, having published a number of papers in these areas as a post-doctoral researcher at Imperial College. I also have first degrees in physics and psychology. The rapidity of the towers' collapses had always surprised me, as had the fact that a third tower also collapsed on 9/11, apparently due to fire, despite not having been hit by any aeroplane. The collapse of the third tower has always been the most troublesome anomaly of 9/11; so much so that the 9/11 Commission Report did not even mention it at all, despite the fact that it remains the only case in history of a steel-framed skyscraper collapsing completely and symmetrically due to fire alone.

The only total collapse of a steel-framed skyscaper from fire in history

There are numerous examples of steel-framed buildings being utterly consumed by uncontrolled fires for many hours. Although it is normal for parts of those buildings to collapse, particularly the concrete floors, roof and walls, the bulk of their steel frames always remains intact, albeit often twisted and buckled. A good example is the Windsor Building in Madrid. Building fires (max. air temp 800 deg C) are never anywhere near hot enough to melt steel (melting point 1540 deg C) and the frame tends to act as a heat sink, so it is rare for structural elements to be weakened sufficiently to collapse. It is virtually impossible for a steel-framed building to undergo a sudden, global collapse due to fire. Steel does lose a lot of its strength at around 600 deg C but it is always fireproofed and rarely reaches this temperature in normal fires. Even the official reports agree that almost none of the steel in the towers would have come close to this temperature. In fact, 99% of the steel in each of the towers would have been totally unaffected, since the fires were isolated to a few floors. Even an aircraft impact should not cause more than localised damage. These buildings are designed to withstand far more destructive and energetic natural phenomena, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, compared to which the impact of an airliner would be no more than a pin-prick.


Until recently I had always assumed that there was a rational, non-conspiratorial explanation for these unprecedented events and that the official report on the third tower, World Trade Centre 7 (WTC 7), would clear up any lingering doubts. Most professional engineers would probably think the same. Without reading the official report, produced by NIST, they would just assume that it was a good, thorough piece of work and take its conclusions at face value. Those who actually take the trouble to read it, however, will see that it is methodologically unsound, factually inaccurate and contains astonishing omissions. It explains nothing, provokes further questions and looks very much like a deliberate cover-up, designed to pull the wool over the eyes of non-engineers, in the hope that real engineers will be too busy to bother reading it.


My doubts about the official report were first raised by watching an analysis of the dynamics of WTC 7's collapse by the physics teacher, David Chandler. This analysis blew a huge hole in NIST's draft report and forced NIST to revise its earlier assertion that the building did not descend in free fall (i.e. with no significant resistance whatsoever). NIST's final report was therefore forced to accept that WTC 7 was in free fall for over two seconds immediately after the onset of global collapse. Even half a second of free fall would be enormously significant and defies any explanation of fire-induced collapse. The reason is that even buckled columns must offer some resistance to the collapse (they retain roughly 25% of their strength) and that buildings are highly over-engineered in order to support loads far in excess of their own weight. The maximum rate of global collapse for a typical steel-framed skyscraper would therefore be no more than about half the acceleration due to gravity. The Twin Towers descended at around 64% of free fall acceleration. WTC 7 was 100% in free fall for over two seconds. This implies that all of its 82 steel columns must have been completely severed almost simultaneously, as they would be in a controlled demolition using explosives. Note: some 'debunkers' still claim that the building was never in free fall (since this is what NIST had originally said before they changed their story). This just proves that 'debunkers' rarely even know what the official account says and tend not to read primary sources.

Floor plan of WTC 7 showing positions of columns and beams. Coumns run the entire height of the building in both core and perimeter. From NIST NCSTAR 1-A official report on WTC 7.

NIST simply refused to acknowledge the significance of free fall for WTC 7. Instead, they proposed a 'new kind of progressive collapse' initiated by thermal expansion of a single beam by a few centimetres, which caused a single column to buckle, followed by all the others over a short period. Their explanation is based almost entirely on computer simulations and they even published a video explaining their theory, which is worth watching. They cut short the part of the video showing their computer simulation of progressive collapse, but the full version was previously available and can be compared to the actual collapse. Clearly, the NIST simulation bears absolutely no resemblance to the actual visually recorded collapse of WTC 7 and is therefore a work of fiction.

The single column failure supposed by NIST to have initiated a global collapse. Diagram from NIST NCSTAR 1-A official report on WTC 7

NIST refused to consider a hypothesis of explosive demolition, citing their opinion that explosives would have been very loud and audible up to a mile away. This was based solely on a consideration of one of the loudest available explosives (RDX) being used without any sound-proofing. Strangely, they asserted that there was no eyewitness testimony for explosions and that none were recorded. Both assertions are patently false, since there are numerous statements by fire-fighters (original source here) and survivors claiming to have heard multiple separate explosions at all three towers before and during their collapses. At WTC 7, the main witness is Barry Jennings, who is not mentioned at all in the official report, perhaps because his testimony completely contradicts that report. Some explosions were even caught on film. This is the kind of irrefutable evidence that 'debunkers' and official reports have the barefaced cheek to deny outright. Sadly, Barry Jennings is now presumed to have died just a few days before the publication of the official draft report, although no one appears to know where he is buried, what he died from or even the whereabouts of his family. He joins the legion of 9/11 witnesses and whistleblowers who have died in mysterious circumstances, although in Jennings' case it seems he has simply vanished without trace, having been airbrushed out of official history.


There can be very little doubt that WTC 7 was demolished using explosives. Not only is it more likely than the fire hypothesis on a priori grounds, all the known evidence and data also support the theory of controlled demolition. Even so, I was not fully convinced of this until I had read the official report and seen how thoroughly inadequate and mendacious it is. Therefore, I urge everyone to read it, with a critical and open mind, in the light of all the data. In case you think it outlandish to conclude that WTC 7 was destroyed in a controlled demolition, it should be remembered that from a purely scientific and engineering viewpoint, this is actually the mainstream interpretation of the data. It is the simplest, most conservative theory, not a maverick view at all. The consensus among engineers and architects has always been that steel-framed buildings cannot collapse completely and symmetrically at free fall due to the effects of fire. Such an event would be utterly unprecedented and would require extraordinary evidence to be believed. The burden of proof really should be on those who believe that WTC 7 was destroyed by some mechanism not involving explosives.


Controlled demolitions are big jobs. WTC 7 would be the tallest building ever demolished this way, beating the J L Hudson department store in 1998, although the Hudson building had a bigger footprint. These projects cannot possibly be carried out in one day. They require weeks of preparation, which implies foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. The evidence concerning the twin towers (also owned by the same man, Larry Silverstein) is less clear cut but still points towards (a much less conventional) controlled demolition, in which case they would be by far the largest buildings ever brought down this way. That would possibly have taken months of preparation, but it is perfectly feasible and there was a supposed elevator modernisation programme taking place in the buildings which could act as cover.


Hard Evidence and Unanswered Questions 2: Molten Iron and Explosives in the Dust


The official investigation never looked for evidence of explosives in the rubble piles and dust from 9/11. Indeed, the evidence was quickly destroyed, as the steel was carted away for recycling abroad before much of it could be analysed, in defiance of federal law. Nonetheless, some pieces of steel from the towers were examined in the first report by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). What they found was extraordinary and is documented in Appendix C of their report. The steel had undergone sulfidation and melting due to a high temperature corrosive attack, possibly from thermate or a similar incendiary. The report does not consider explosives or incendiaries but recognises the otherwise inexplicable nature of the attack on the steel and recommends further research. That further research never happened.


There is another inexplicable phenomenon to be found in every sample of dust from 9/11 which has ever been studied. In 2003, an insurance report by RJ Lee showed that nearly 6% of the dust consisted of microscopic elemental iron spheres. The report concludes that these spheres were formed from a molten state during or prior to the collapse of the towers, since the spheres are found in dust from all over Manhattan and elemental iron is very rare in the natural environment. Iron can be found in concrete, when mixed with so-called 'fly-ash' but largely in the form of oxides and not exclusively spherical. Elemental iron in such abundance is hard to explain, except by reference to very high temperatures during the collapses of the towers: temperatures far higher than those from office fires. Yet, this does not deter the self-appointed champions of the official narrative from claiming that elemental iron spheres are abundant everywhere. There is not much one can say about such ignorance, except that the only place one would expect to find iron spheres in their elemental form in great abundance would be volcanic ash or a meteorite. The history of metallurgy is an illuminating aside.


RJ Lee's report assumed that the iron spheres had come from fires within the towers, but they overlooked the fact that office fires cannot possibly burn hot enough to melt steel or release iron from its oxide. I imagine they simply did not want or need to offer a genuine explanation for the microspheres. That had to wait for a peer-reviewed scientific paper published in 2009 by Prof Niels Harrit's team of professional chemists, physicists and engineers. They found highly engineered microscopic red-grey chips in four independent dust samples. They first tested to see if the chips were from primer paint as painted onto the steel structure of the towers but rejected that idea conclusively, since the chips did not dissolve in MEK (an industrial solvent) and didn't contain the elements one would expect to see in paint. Nonetheless, you will often find detractors, such as (Conspiracy Files producer) Mike Rudin at the BBC, still claiming that what Harrit's team found was merely paint. This only goes to show that most of the critics have not even read, let alone understood, this paper. Another rather un-paint-like property of these nano-particle chips is that they ignite in a highly energetic explosive reaction at around 430 deg C, producing tiny elemental iron spheres, exactly like those found in the dust. This confirms that the chips are a form of unreacted nano-thermite: a high explosive which slices easily through steel. This is the kind of material only made in a handful of laboratories in Europe and the US.


The findings of Harrit's team have been independently replicated by a chemical engineer, Mark Basile. The mainstream academic community has remained strangely silent on this subject, although no one has offered any serious criticism of the paper's methodology or its findings in an academic context. Privately, when I speak to physicists or engineers about these matters, I find those who are familiar with the evidence tend to accept that the official story is probably wrong and that the explosive demolition hypothesis is the strongest theory, worthy of serious consideration. However, no one is willing to jeopardise their career for the sake of pursuing this line of research. When Prof Steven Jones started questioning the official narrative by drawing attention to strong contrary evidence, he was relieved of his academic position at Brigham Young University. Most of those (rather few) scientists or professional experts who actively support the official narrative are either paid consultants to government agencies or derive the bulk of their research grants from government or military sources. Another obstacle to independent research is the fact that access to primary evidence (e.g. most of the dust samples, video and photographic evidence, CCTV footage, black box flight data, building blueprints and data sheets) is controlled by government and security agencies who only allow it to those who can be trusted to draw acceptable conclusions. The odds are very much stacked in favour of those with a vested interest in promoting the official story. In spite of that, its supporters have offered very little by way of good explanations and even less by way of evidence.


Conclusions


The corporate media continues to ignore or trivialise the complex issues brought up by those who legitimately question the official account of 9/11. Often, media disinformation takes a particularly crass form which can even be self-defeating, such as the recent BBC 9/11: Conspiracy Road Trip programme. This was such transparently awful nonsense that I would recommend it to an impartial observer, just to confirm that the mainstream media has no interest at all in rational perspectives on 9/11 and would rather insult the intelligence of viewers by peddling pseudo-science - with the aid of lego and eggs! At one point, the programme attempted to show that ordinary thermite (not nano-thermite) was incapable of cutting through a steel beam, by staging a laughably incompetent demonstration. For those interested in a proper scientific demonstration of how to cut through steel using thermate (thermite plus sulphur), I refer you to this video by professional engineer, Jonathan Cole.


Clearly, that BBC pseudo-documentary was pure propaganda aimed at the gullible, as is virtually all coverage of so-called 'conspiracy theories' in the corporate media; even outlets I sometimes respect, such as the Guardian, New Statesman and so on. Crude stereotyping of anyone with a minority view is the order of the day. Of course, this has always been the case and extends well beyond those who pursue the truth about 9/11, as Muslims, immigrants, single mothers and the disabled can also testify. If an idea is truly absurd, why waste time, effort and money attacking it? On the other hand, large sections of the media do promote genuinely weak and harmful ideas such as climate change denial. The media war on truth is intensifying because, fortunately, we live in an age in which there is an explosion of information sources, some of which are more reliable than the traditional ones controlled by state and corporate interests. Let us turn the tables for a moment and enjoy this light-hearted pastiche of the official conspiracy theory of 9/11, which the media wants us to believe:

Never stop asking questions. Demand non-trivialising answers. Distrust authority. Beware of bullshit. We will never be free of tyranny until we first free our minds of illusion.

Colours: A Poem

British newspapers have themselves been in the news spotlight of late, much to their discomfort, as allegations of phone hacking, bribery and possibly even perverting the course of justice, have forced the closure of the News of the World and look likely to bring down the whole News Corporation empire. This update isn’t about that case. Instead I want to make some related points, which are true about the mainstream media in general – and war in particular – that will remain true long after the Murdoch empire has crumbled to dust.

The media has a primary role to play in maintaining public support for overseas wars, as well as internal repression at home, all justified in the name of the War on Terror. They appeal to patriotism and the cult of blind sacrifice. Every now and then, this backfires, as the reality of war comes home, wrapped in a flag, wrapped in the colours: wrapped in a newspaper. One of those newspapers was caught hacking into the mobile phones of the relatives of dead soldiers, which should be enough to show that the corporate media cares for nothing except money. 

Photo: AP

Despite that, I found this Daily Mail report of a young widow’s grief particularly sad and moving.
I cannot read it or look at the picture of Mrs Kirkpatrick, dressed unusually in pink, placing a rose upon the hearse bearing the body of her husband, without crying. These images have haunted me for over a year. The pink dress seems like a defiant expression of love in a world governed – literally – by hate. I had to write a poem about it, in Sapphic stanzas; the form associated with Sappho, one of the very first love poets. Why? How else does one defeat war, but with love? How to stand out against black, but with pink? It’s all about the colours …


Colours

Wearing pink, she places a rose upon the
coffin of her former defender; so the
lines would claim. He died not for nothing, words cry,
draped in the colours.

Red and white and blue are the colours; shrouding
dead and dying soldiers of Empire, shrouding
too the things of love, which were broken, long lost
covenants buried:

Sacrificed and sold for a well of black gold.
Keep the wheels in motion and don’t ask why, or
who or where your enemies really are – just
follow the colours.

---

By coincidence, the Daily Mail story is dated on the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London, which claimed 56 lives and which was used by the Blair government to shore up support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have in their turn destroyed many thousands of lives and continue to claim victims today: mostly innocent civilians including many children. US troops are finally due to begin withdrawal from Afghanistan this month. I would like someone to explain to me exactly why it was all worthwhile and why all those people had to die. Mrs Kirkpatrick is also owed an explanation.

Note on form: Sapphic stanzas were originally written in patterns of long and short syllables in ancient Greek. The English Sapphic form translates this pattern into a regular metre based on stress. The predominant foot is the trochee, although each line incorporates a dactyl. The effect in English is to induce a sombre and solemn mood, reminiscent of a funeral cortège, but injected with a note of urgency thanks to those dactyls.

Bin Laden 'Buried at Sea'. Skepticism Killed in Crossfire.

I was going to blog about the death of free speech in Britain, following the pre-emptive arrests of dozens of anti-government activists in advance of the Royal Wedding, but that will have to wait, because there has been another reported death since then which has totally captured the news agenda. Osama Bin Laden is reported to have been killed by US special forces in Afghanistan, on 30th April, 2011; a date which happens to be the supposed anniversary of Adolf Hitler's suicide, although I'm sure this is nothing but a curious coincidence.

Osama Bin Laden has been presented as the great bogeyman of the West, the prime suspect for the 9/11 terror attacks, the official main reason for the invasion of Afghanistan and the prosecution of that war for nearly 10 years, at the cost of countless, mostly innocent, lives. Bin Laden's media persona is a character strongly reminiscent of George Orwell's Goldstein, from 1984. Yet there has long been speculation that he may have died some time ago, given that he has been more elusive than Elvis for a number of years; his appearances confined to videos of increasingly dubious authenticity, or a few unreliable witness reports. Even the Daily Mail has taken seriously the possibility that Bin Laden may have died on 13th December, 2001, just 3 moths after 9/11. This belief comes originally from an item in the Egyptian newspaper, al-Wafd, on 26th December, 2001, which is sourced to a senior Taliban official and is, until now, the only credible report of Bin Laden's death. It was repeated by several Western media outlets, but quickly forgotten. The report is given credence by the fact that Bin Laden was a kidney dialysis patient who needed special medical equipment to keep him alive; equipment and expertise which is unlikely to have been available in the mountain caves of Tora Bora.

Osama Bin Laden (1957 - 20??). Photo: AP

Whilst searching for further information about these reports, I chanced upon a website which claims to document the evidence concerning Bin Laden's death. When I last checked at 22:43 on Sunday, this website was claiming that it was under a continuing massive distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack which began just moments before the official announcement of Osama Bin Laden's death by President Obama. Of course, this may be some kind of joke or deception, but I find it somewhat strange, if it is true. For now, I would treat that claim with the same skepticism with which I would like us all to treat official reports of Osama Bin Laden's death. The fact that the website is still up suggests that the DDOS attack was not very successful. Another reason to doubt the website's claims is that it also seems to advocate a number of causes such as climate change denial, for which there is very good contrary evidence. However, the evidence it presents concerning Bin Laden's death must be judged entirely on its own merits, which is something I invite readers to do for themselves: it does present numerous links to reputable independent news reports supporting the contention that Bin Laden may have been dead for many years. Those who prefer a more authoritative investigation of these claims might want to read Professor David Ray Griffin's book on the subject, 'Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?'

The most curious feature of the official US report of Bin Laden's death is that his body was apparently buried at sea, within hours. US officials say this was in accordance with Islamic custom and to prevent his grave becoming a focus for anti-US sentiment. This excuse does not impress many Muslim scholars, nor does it impress me. Indeed, it is standard custom throughout the world, since time immemorial, to exhibit the bodies of your defeated enemies, or at least to exhibit incontrovertible evidence of their death. This is exactly what the US did with the body of Che Guevara in 1967 and those of Saddam Hussein's sons; there was no standing on custom out of respect for the traditions of the deceased, or concerns about martyrdom. The most crucial thing is to prove that your enemy is dead. If America were really concerned about not offending Muslims, perhaps they should not have invaded two Muslim countries and killed tens of thousands of innocent Muslims over the last 10 years.

Still, it seems very likely that US special forces did mount a raid on a 'compound' in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Saturday night. We have already been treated to some video footage of the supposed aftermath of that raid and I expect more will follow in due course. We may get a photograph of the deceased, but we know that such things are all too easily faked. It is possible that a man or several people were killed in that raid. It is even possible that the men who died were Taliban or even Al-Qaeda fighters (if the term 'Al-Qaeda' still has any useful meaning). What we cannot say with any confidence at all is that one of these men was Osama Bin Laden.

Hence I find it alarming that there has been so little skepticism in the mainstream media and even among self-proclaimed rational skeptics in the blogosphere, concerning the official statements from US military, government and intelligence sources. Instead, accusations of 'conspiracy theory' are routinely hurled across Twitter in the direction of anyone who dares raise so much as an eyebrow. Perhaps it is time we began to deconstruct the phrases 'conspiracy theory' and 'conspiracy theorist', exposing them for the cheap insults and avowedly unskeptical thought-bypass devices that they are. We may find that the idea that Osama Bin Laden was the criminal mastermind and head of a global terror network called Al-Qaeda, which was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and many others, is equally worthy of the label 'conspiracy theory'. Personally, I find that line somewhat self-defeating. I prefer to reject all accusations of 'conspiracy theory'; then we are left looking for actual palpable evidence of things. This is a concept which often proves far too hard for the mainstream media to grasp, sadly. We are therefore left with little more than fables, constructed from prejudice, suggestion and misdirection.

Sometimes these fables are exposed, just as the ridiculous claims of Donald Trump and the so-called 'birther movement' were exposed. Those claims had no credibility to begin with because they were based on no real evidence. Ironically, President Obama's victory over the 'birthers' will help to deflect skepticism over his own equally unsupported claims that the US has now killed its greatest enemy. It was really a victory over nothing, since it was always going to be easy for Obama to produce his birth certificate. I suspect it will be very much more difficult for him to produce truly believable evidence that Osama Bin Laden was killed by US forces this weekend, but I am willing to be convinced.

Nonetheless, there is real significance in the demise of the legend of Osama Bin Laden, and there is a real sense in which a bogeyman has been laid to rest. Bin Laden's assumed death paves the way for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was already set to begin in July this year. It gives President Obama an immediate popularity boost (in spite of bad economic news) and will allow him to claim some kind of victory, both in Afghanistan and the closely related phony 'War on Terror'. The truth is that the Afghan War has been a defeat for the US (and its allies) and it never had anything to do with homeland security or global terror. It was always a war about access to Caspian oil fields, as was ably demonstrated in The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia, a book by the Berlin-based journalist, Lutz C. Kleveman.

RIP Osama Bin Laden (1957 - 20??). RIP The War on Terror? Until the CIA invent a new bogeyman to support the next foreign adventure, perhaps.