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WTC UFO # 1

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WTC UFO # 2

http://www.konformist.com/911/modern-day-maccabees.htm

Killing Modern-Day Maccabees
By Diana Ralph
dianar@magma.ca

As I light the Chanukah candles, I am struck by the parallels between 
the Maccabees and the Taliban.  Both of them organized to overthrow 
brutal, corrupt, and sacriligious governments. For both, their 
unwavering goal was to defend what they interpreted as the holy 
character of their countries.  Both armies started with only a few 
untrained, almost weaponless pious men (taliban means Islamic 
students) who won impressive battles against overwhelming odds.  Both 
believed those victories reflected God's support for their cause.  
Both inspired thousands of young, idealistic men to join them.  

Mullah Mohammed Omar is the Judah Maccabeus of Afghanistan. Omar was 
chosen as Taliban leader, not for his political or military ability, 
but for his piety.  Some even believe he was chosen by God.  Like 
Mattatias, Omar's father was a religious activist who died when Omar 
was a young man.  And like Judah, Omar chose to interrupt his 
religious studies to fight for religious integrity (first against the 
Soviets, then against the corrupt Mujaheddin, and most recently 
against the US). He was a courageous soldier, wounded four times.  In 
the words of the old Chanukah song, he has been "strong, and brave 
and bold."  

I realize that you may well react with outrage at any such 
musings.  "How dare you compare the Maccabees to brutal, sexist, 
terrorists like the Taliban?" you're probably saying.  Please bear 
with me.   I'm writing this piece precisely because I believe the 
lynch-mob, anti-terrorist rhetoric makes it hard to see the 
commonalities among us, and to challenge our media-driven 
assumptions. 

The Taliban have been cast in the role of ultimate villains. But only 
a couple of years ago they were hailed as heroes.  The war against 
the Soviet Union had left 1.5 million Afghanis dead, the country's 
economy shattered, and millions of people starving and terrorized by  
corrupt warlords. Mujahaddin  routinely kidnapped and raped women,  
girls and boys.  So, many Afhanis welcomed the Taliban as pious 
rescuers from decades of chaos.
 
Pakistan and Saudia Arabia also strongly supported the Taliban, both 
out of Islamic solidarity and for their own self-serving political 
motives.  Even the United States and Britain supported the Taliban, 
courting them for rights to construct oil and gas pipelines through 
their territory, and seeing them as bringing enough peace to allow 
corporate investment in the region.

As we now know, these "heroes" immediately established the most 
rigidly fundamentalist Islamic regime in the world, virtually 
imprisoning all its women, closing schools, destroying Buddahs,  
attacking Buddists and Christians,  publicly executing homosexuals, 
cutting off the hands of thieves, and so on.  I don't in any way 
condone those activities. 

But it was not for those crimes that the US turned against the 
Taliban in 1998 and, this fall, declared a war of extermination 
against them.  Officially it was because of Taliban support for Osama 
bin Laden after the September 11 attacks.  However, this rationale 
is suspect.  It was the US who created and funded the terrorist 
training camps where bin Laden learned his skills and forged the 
roots of Al Quaeda. In 1996, the US  refused a Saudi offer to 
extradite bin Laden, and instead suggested that he be deported to 
Afghanistan.  Once there, bin Laden's forces grew stronger than the 
Taliban's.  The US knew they had little control over him. Last 
August, five weeks before the September 11 attacks, President Bush 
announced he was building "an international alliance to strangle the 
Taliban leadership."  And after September 11, the US rejected out of 
hand the Taliban offer to turn bin Laden over to a neutral country 
for trial. In other words, the bin Laden excuse for the attack on the 
Taliban doesn't hold water.  

Neither does the "terrorist" label.  The Taliban, though brutal 
warriors, were more concerned with restoring Islam in Afghanistan and 
with getting recognition from the US  as the legitimate government of 
Afghanistan, than with promoting terrorism abroad. Their association 
with bin Laden was largely based on his unfulfilled promises to 
finance significant infrastracture projects in Afghanistan-roads, 
hospitals, and the like.  

Most Taliban members are uneducated, barely literate boys, mostly 14 
to 24 year olds, many of whom  grew up in refugee camps. They were 
drawn by the invitation to do something meaningful at great personal 
risk.  The Taliban's extreme  fundamentalist policies, their brutal 
massacres of Uzbeks and Tajiks,  and their lack of connections with 
the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan had already generated a great 
deal of domestic opposition to them.  They were on their way out, but 
the US wanted to assure they left on US terms.  

The US war on the Taliban has far more to do with its own greed for 
oil and power. For at least the last four years, the US has been 
maneuvering for control of the Central Asian region.  As Zbigniew 
Brzezinski, Bush Senior's Secretary of State, wrote in 1997, "For 
America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. ...America's global 
primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its 
preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained". The Taliban 
had grown increasingly anti-American, and "unreasonable" because they 
were not giving the US Unocal oil company free access to construct a 
gas pipeline through Afghanistan.  "At one moment during the 
negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, `either you 
accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet 
of bombs." And so, from the US  perspective, they had to die.

 How to get the US public to agree to this power grab?  As Brzezinski 
points out:  "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands 
popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge 
to the public's sense of domestic well-being."  There is growing 
evidence that the September 11 attacks may well have been engineered 
by the US to create just such a crisis.  (For example, the US got 
advance notice of a plan to hijack commercial airlines and target the 
World Trade Center. But the National Command Authority failed to 
scramble aircraft to counter the attacks until over an hour after the 
first attack. And Pakistani ISI Chief, General Mahmud (with strong 
CIA links) ordered an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed 
Atta, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. )    If this 
shocking news is so, there is absolutely no justification for the 
genocidal war on the Taliban. 

I raise these parallels between the Maccabees and the Taliban to 
highlight the need for clear thinking in this post-September 11 era. 
This past week's headlines cheered the US victories in killing people 
associated with the Taliban, including their wives and children. (Is 
this how we protect the women of Afghanistan?) Far more serious is 
the threatened death by starvation, freezing, land mines, 
and "collateral damage" of many millions of Afghani people, most of 
whom have nothing to do with the Taliban. 

It seems to me that the parallels between the Maccabees and the 
Taliban raise several important questions. First of all, we need to 
challenge our own assumptions about who is a divinely appointed hero 
and who a terrorist.  The Maccabee victory was one of the few Jews 
ever had. As a people, we have far too much experience with genocidal 
attacks by power-hungry people eager for scapegoats. As we celebrate 
Chanukah, we should also stand up against the genocidal assault on 
the Taliban, a group much like the Maccabees. 

That doesn't mean that we passively condone their zealous excesses.  
But UN and international sanctions, as well as internal Afghani 
opposition to the Taliban's policies would have reversed them with 
far less destitution than Bush's brutal war.  I pray that this week, 
we commit to remember the humanity, courage, and godliness of all 
Muslim people, including the Taliban.  


http://www.konformist.com/911/us-v-them.htm

US Good Guys vs. Them Bad Guys

Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys? 
Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S. 
Government: 

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful 
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family 
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful 
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family 

TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against 
his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; 
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified. 
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against 
his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him; 
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified. 

TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who 
preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of 
non-believers 
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders 
who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution 
of non-believers 

TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in 
a free and fair democratic election 
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people 
in a free and fair democratic election 

TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them 
children, in cold blooded bombings 
US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them 
children, in cold blooded bombings 

TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with 
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other 
terrorist tactics 
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with 
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other 
terrorist tactics 

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed 
leader of US GOVERNMENT 
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to 
Supposed leader of TERRORIST 

TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical 
companies 
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical 
companies 

TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and 
undermine civil liberties 
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and 
undermine civil liberties 

Okay - I know there are differences, but ........ 


http://www.konformist.com/911/ok-jihad.htm

10/16/01
Adam Parfrey
ap@feralhouse.com

THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING JIHAD

"The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror" by David 
Hoffman, published in 1998 and put out of print as the means of 
settling a two million dollar libel suit against Feral House from 
Oliver "Buck" Revell, who had just retired from the FBI as its Deputy 
Chief. Feral House did not carry legal insurance at time of the suit; 
First Amendment organizations, and PEN and ACLU "regretted" not being 
able to assist Feral House. Lawyers competent in publishing law 
required retainer fee down payment far higher than Feral House had in 
its bank account.

A year after Feral House was forced to settle, "Buck" Revell moved on 
to sue author David Hoffman and former Pentagon CID investigator Gene 
Wheaton, who was quoted in the OKC bombing book about Revell's 
connections to Oliver North and death squads. Hoffman's defense 
received funding by a wealthy midwest conspiracy nut, and Revell's 
suit was thrown out of court as baseless.

When reading the "Teflon Terrorist" chapter of Hoffman's book today, 
I discovered a possible reason why the ACLU refused to assist Feral 
House in a bogus lawsuit. One footnote recalled that the ACLU worked 
tirelessly on behalf of Abraham Ahmed, who the legal organization 
claimed was a victim of racist profiling. On the same day as bombing, 
Ahmed attempted to fly from Oklahoma City to Amman, Jordan, but was 
stopped at Heathrow Airport after American Airlines flight security 
notified the FBI of the Middle Easterner's suspicious behavior. Ahmed 
was cuffed and returned to the U.S. after his luggage was found to 
contain such things as two car radios (the sort used to bomb Pan Am 
103), silicon, solder, shielded and unshielded wire, a timing device, 
a photo album with pictures of weapons and missile, and a blue 
jogging suit similar to that seen worn by an Arab suspect in front of 
the Murrah building on the morning of the blast. Perhaps prompted by 
ACLU's media tirade, the FBI promptly released suspect Abraham Ahmed, 
and President Clinton apologized to the Arab-American community.

Feral House's OKC bombing tome, praised by Gore Vidal in the 
September '01 issue of Vanity Fair as the best book covering the 
terror attack, appears to have important relevance to the September 
11 tragedy.

"Teflon Terrorists" documents how McVeigh and Terry Nichols had 
continual contacts with known terrorist entities up to the day of the 
Murrah Building blast. Nichols was married to a Filipina woman, and 
took trips to Cebu City, Philippines (WITHOUT his wife) in late '92 
and early '93 to meet with such friendly folk from the Abu Sayyaf 
terrorist org as Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali Khan Amin Shah 
and several others to discuss the bombing of the OKC building.

Murad was arrested in 1995 for the initial World Trade Center 
bombing, and after viewing the Oklahoma City Bombing on a New York 
jail television set, he remarked to a guard that the "Liberation Army 
of the Philippines" -- a group connected to Abu Sayyef, was 
responsible for the blast. Later, Abu Sayyaf leader Edwin Angeles 
corrected Murad for the record: "It was the Palestine Liberation Army 
and the Islamic Jihad which Murad was referring to. This army is 
associated with Hamas and is based in Lebanon."

After the Oklahoma City Bombing, Saudi intelligence told the FBI that 
Iraq had hired Pakistanis to do the Murrah Building job. Edwin 
Angeles is a Pakistani.

David Hoffman's now-banned book also interviews Cary Gagan, who for 
years trucked cocaine for PLO-affiliated Arabs while informing for 
the DEA. Gagan, whose written immunity is reproduced in David 
Hoffman's book, was freaked one day after finding that he was not 
trucking coke but 30 duffel bags of Ammonium Nitrate explosives from 
Sandex Explosives of Las Vegas, C4 plastic explosives, and a Lely 
farm mixer, the same mixer seen with McVeigh at the Dreamland Hotel 
in Junction City by witness David King. Gagan's urgent and frequent 
calls to the DEA, and later, the FBI, were ignored.

The Neo-Nazi Middle East Connection

Members of Elohim City, the Oklahoma-based neo-Nazi/Christian 
Identity operation visited and called by Tim McVeigh -- even the day 
before the bombing -- spoke a lot about blowing up federal buildings 
and killing Jews and blacks. Carol Howe, who informed on Elohim City 
for the ATF, told of discussions of where to buy Syntex plastic 
explosive and favored areas to explode it. Howe's informant reports 
actually became discovery evidence and appendices to the Feral House 
book after the ATF arrested her for compiling lists of bomb 
ingredients and using her phone to distribute racist information -- 
all undercover activities performed on behalf of her employer -- the 
ATF. 

Carol Howe's one time boyfriend, Elohim City resident Dennis Mahon, 
even boasted to journalists that he was paid by Iraq for anti-Gulf 
War and anti-semitic mischief. But Iraq severed their ties with Mahon 
soon after the bombing. "The cut me off -- a month after the bombing! 
Bastards!"

Hatred of Jews and American government is a purpose shared by 
Christian Identity and Muslim fundamentalists. On April 19, 1995 the 
exact date the Murrah building was bombed, "Covenant, Sword and Arm 
of the Lord" (CSA) member Richard Wayne Snell "chuckled and laughed" 
as he watched television coverage of the Oklahoma City disaster, 
hours before his execution for murdering a black state trooper and a 
pawnbroker he believed was Jewish. In 1983, Snell and other CSA 
members were arrested for attempting to truck bomb the Murrah 
building.