Was Osama Bin Laden Dead All Along?

Political commentators, academics and some terror experts are now speaking out that Osama has been dead since 13 December 2001. Bin Laden tapes made since that date are fakes concocted by Bush and Blair's secret agents to offer oxygen for the wars on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan. Some videos show him with a Semitic, aquiline nose, others show him with a shorter, broad nose. On one video, Bin Laden wears golden rings on his fingers, an adornment banned among Wahhabis. According to the UK Daily Mail, former US foreign intelligence officer, Angelo M Codevilla, a professor of international relations at Boston University, had said before the recent news:

All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? by political analyst and philosopher Professor David Ray Griffin, former emeritus professor at California's Claremont School of Theology, says Bin Laden died of kidney failure, or a linked complaint, on 13 December, 2001, while living in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains close to the border with Waziristan. He was buried in an unmarked grave, a Wahhabi custom, within 24 hours, according to Muslim tradition.

Bin Laden had already insisted four times in official Al Qaeda statements made to the Arab press that he played no role in 9/11. On September 28, a fortnight after the atrocity, he declared emphatically:

I have already said I am not involved. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge… nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act.

Then on 13 December, 2001, the date Bin Laden really died, the US Government released a new Bin Laden video in which he contradicted his previous denials, admitting his involvement in 9/11. Moreover, in this film, Bin Laden looks quite different. Previously he had looked pale, thin and ill because he had a serious kidney condition and had been in a hospital in Dubai for treatment only weeks before 9/11. Now he was a weighty man with a black beard, not a grey one, with dark skin not pale skin, and with a different shaped nose. His original slender fingers had become those of a boxer. He also looked healthy. Lastly, he was writing with his right hand—he was left handed. Griffin adds:

A reason to suspect that all of the post-2001 Bin Laden tapes are fabrications is that they often appeared at times that boosted the Bush presidency or supported a claim by its chief “war on terror” ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

News of Bin Laden's kidney failure, or death, appeared on 19 January, 2002, four months after 9/11. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf told CNN:

I think now, frankly, he is dead for the reason he is a kidney patient. The images of him show he is extremely weak.

Benazir Bhutto also remarked in an Al Jazeera interview with Frost before she was killed that Bin laden was dead. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Wafd reported a prominent official of the Afghan Taliban as saying that Osama Bin Laden had been buried on or about 13 December:

He suffered serious complications and died a natural, quiet death. He was buried in Tora Bora, a funeral attended by 30 Al Qaeda fighters, close members of his family and friends from the Taliban. By the Wahhabi tradition, no mark was left on the grave.

His last will and testament was carried by a London based Arab newspaper in 2001.

Blair and Bush lied to us perhaps more even than anyone suspected. Why are they not being arrested?

Osama’s Central Role in the US Propaganda “Myth”

Adam Curtis, in the UK Guardian has written an interesting and honest piece about the death of Osama Bin Laden, and the role he had in the US political world view. He explains that although bin Laden helped to kill thousands of innocent people, the west needed him!

When communism collapsed in 1989, the scare story drilled over decades into westerners—that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force—evaporated. The story was that of the good guys against the bad guys, born out of the war against the Nazis and the imperial Japanese in the second world war—a just war. Though in Europe few honest observers will deny that it was the Soviet Union that defeated Hitler’s Germany, after the war it was communism that was set up as the original evil empire, and communists became the bad guys in the cold war, first the Russians, then the Koreans and Chinese too, then the Vietnamese, and constantly all those poor countries whose people tried to get free of the grasp of US business. Then anti-Sovietism and anti-communism were academic subjects, now it is anti-Islam and anti-terrorism.

In the confusion of a global economic crisis in 1998 Bin Laden emerged as responsible for bombing US embassies in east Africa. From 2001, neoconservative politicians took what little they knew of Bin Laden to mold him in the shape of the global monster they were now missing—an evil enemy with spies and sabateurs everywhere intent on destroying western civilisation—ie the US. Al Qaida was the new Soviet Union, and Bin Laden was its evil director, a mad puppeteer pulling strings all over the world. What was a minor threat compared with US power was magnified into something meant to replace the Soviet Union in the minds of the 25 percent or so of people who will believe everything that the pro government media offers them, for the reporting of the Islamist terror threat was always distorted to reflect this propaganda narrative.

Neoconservatives, the news media, and Bin Laden were partners in pumping up the threat of a new evil empire. It gave the neocons a perfect myth, in the pseudo Platonic jargon invented by Leo Strauss, the neofascist godfather of neoconservatism—useful lies, in truth—to feed fear to the masses that would distract them from the shenanigans going on in reality. It served the propaganda function of the media while selling plenty of hair raising copy, and it suited Bin Laden who was desperate to seem to be important to his frustrated Islamist followers. The Moslem Brotherhood, a conservative Islamic organization reject Bin Laden as ever representing Moslem views. In his announcement of the death, Obama agreed—he did not.

In Afghanistan, the neoconservative myth has led to fantasies that justify the activity there of western military, and nothing else. The good against evil myth suits the US political desire to be free to intervene anywhere they choose, but the world is no more just black and white in nature for imagining it to be so. Reality has shades of grey and even different hues. Neglect of them prevents a proper critical framework to judge the whole situation and to tailor responses accordingly.

Of course, Bin Laden’s death was immediately presented as we are conditioned to expect—cowardly, as bullies are meant to be. He was reported as dying while shooting at his assailants, sheltering behind one of his wives, who consequently had to die so that the evil master could be shot twice—blam, blam—in the head. A day later, Bin Laden turned out to unarmed and so unable to get off any shots. Why, then, he had to be shot is unclear, but he was shot in the chest then straight into his left eye. His wife was not killed but wounded in the leg, and it seems she was not shielding him. Another woman was also killed, and one of his sons, whose identity changed also. As the whole thing was reportedly videoed, the confusion seems strange.

Bin Laden’s death is actually a serious blow to the US’s propaganda paradigm. Immediately, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, hurried to assure anyone delerious with relief, that the end of Bin Laden was not the end of terrorism. They need to preserve the myth, and if it fails, they need to find a new one. What will it be? Who will be the next bad guy? The myths are written by those in power, to suit their own interests, and their interests are not necessarily, or even often, those of the ordinary American. America is run for its super rich class. When enough of them realize it, the new myth will be of a monstrous Joker ruling Gotham City from within, and every yankee will be suspect. The stage is set for it already.

Church’s Koran Burning will Endanger US Troops

Afghans demonstrate against US Koran burning

Reuters, the BBC, Voice of America and thousands of other media sources reveal that the commander of the 150,000 strong US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, says an obscure American church’s plan to burn Korans on September 11 could put the lives of US troops in Afghanistan in danger, and damage the overall war effort in that country. The US embassy in Kabul issued a statement condemning the plans. It said it was deeply concerned about the deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups, and condemned the plan as an “act of disrespect” toward Islam. General Petraeus said in a statement to US media:

It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort. It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world, we are engaged with the Islamic community.

The planned burning of the Moslem holy book could be used to stoke sentiment against the US, not only in Afghanistan, but across the Moslem world. The White House and Nato have also expressed concern over the plan. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said:

Any type of activity like that that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration.

The Nato chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, attacked the church’s plans, telling reporters that burning Korans violated the Nato alliance’s values. AFP quoted him as saying:

There is a risk that it may also have a negative impact on security for our troops.

Pastor Terry Jones, of the Gainsville, Florida, Dove World Outreach Center, a small evangelical church, plans to put copies of the holy book in a bonfire to mark this week’s anniversary of the 9/11, 2001 attacks. The church has a right to do so under the US constitution’s First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech. Authorities in Gainesville are preparing special security measures to prevent trouble at the event by the church, which has about 30 members and calls itself a “New Testament, Charismatic, Non-Denominational Church”. The city’s mayor and police department repeated appeals to Jones call off the Koran burning. They warned that while his First Amendment constitutional rights guaranteed freedom of speech, assembly and religion, he would violate city ordinances if he went ahead without proper authorization. Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe condemned what he called the church’s “offensive behavior”. Mayor Lowe said on his Facebook site:

The Dove World Outreach Center is a tiny, fringe group and an embarrassment to our community. They are opposed to the true character of Gainesville.

City officials ahave denied his request for a burn permit.

Mr Jones said he takes General Petraeus’ warning seriously. He said the church was praying on the matter but they had “firmly made up our minds”, adding:

How long do we back down?

And:

We must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam

Mr Jones’s Florida unknown church is reported to have 50 members. Its incendiary plans haven’t emerged out of nowhere. 53 per cent of Americans view Islam unfavourably, and only 42% favourably. American Moslems say they feel more isolated than at any time since the 2001 attacks. Its website labels Islam “violent and oppressive” and has prompted protests elsewhere. Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets in the capital, Kabul, to protest against the plan, chanting “Death to America” as they rallied outside a mosque, burning an effigy of Pastor Jones. Similar protests were earlier held outside the US embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Claims that US soldiers have desecrated the Koran in both Afghanistan and Iraq have caused bloodshed in the past, and this new controversy comes just when religious fanatics in the US are worked up over a proposal to build an Islamic cultural centre two blocks from Ground Zero, site of the 9/11 attacks, in New York. Lives were lost in Afghan riots in 2005 when Newsweek told that US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. The story was false and was retracted, after the damage was done. In 2008, protests in Afghanistan followed a US soldier deployed to Iraq shooting up a copy of the Koran.

Why Do Americans think Obama is a Moslem?

A Pew Research Center poll in August 2010 found that 18 percent of Americans believe Obama is a Moslem—up from 11 percent in March 2009—even though he’s a practicing Christian, and the poll was conducted before Obama’s recent explanation that the US constitution supports freedom of belief, and that must apply to Moslems who want to rebuild an Islamic center which includes a mosque near New York’s Ground Zero, just as there are Christian churches and Jewish synagogues nearby.

So, what motivates Americans to believe President Obama is a Moslem? Spee Kosloff, a Michigan State University visiting professor of psychology, and colleagues suggests it is not just simple ignorance, it is because other clues remind them Obama is different from them. The obvious one is that he is the first black president and he is educated, but also that his father was a Moslem, and he lived with his anthropologist mother a while in Moslem Indonesia.

Kosloff argues judgments like these do not follow and are stimulated by “irresponsible” media that perpetuate the lies for less than honorable reasons.

Careless or biased media outlets are largely responsible for the propagation of these falsehoods, which catch on like wildfire. And then social differences can motivate acceptance of these lies.

The MU scientists started their study before the 2008 US presidential election, because the candidates were constantly being smeared by their opponents. It’s the first comprehensive experimental study of the psychological factors that motivate Americans to believe lies.

In four separate experiments, three before the election and one after, the researchers looked at both conscious and unconscious acceptance of political smears by mostly white, non-Moslem college students. For the conscious trials the participants were shown a false blog report arguing that Obama is a Moslem, or a socialist, or that John McCain is senile. The unconscious trials involved gauging how rapidly subjects could identify words meant as smears such as "Moslem" or "turban" after Obama’s name was presented subliminally. They found:

1. Initially, among those who supported McCain, 56% guessed Obama was a Moslem. When they were asked to fill out a demographic card asking for their own race, the percentage jumped to 77%. So, simply thinking about a social category that differentiated participants from Obama was enough to get them to believe the smear.
2. Participants undecided about the candidates said there was a 43% chance McCain was senile—a number that increased to 73% when asked to list their own age on a card.
3. Undecided participants said there was a 25 percent chance Obama was a socialist—a number that jumped to 62 percent when they considered race, even though being a socialist has nothing to do with race, the respondents irrationally tied the two together.

The research suggests that the president’s unpopularity fuels American’s readiness to accept untrue rumors. People felt Obama is not on their side, a feeling stimulated by Republican and right wing authoritarian Christian talk show hosts in the media, and so they question his democratic stance and his religion. Kosloff said:

Unfortunately, in America, many people dislike Moslems, so they’ll label Obama as Moslem when they feel different from him.

It is the adult version of “Fatso”, “Frogface” and “Foureyes”—or more pertinently, “Nigger”—calling people names. Sadly, name calling is much more serious among political candidates who do not measure up to the authoritarian values of the Protestant moral majority. The Republicans’ childish but venomous Christian propaganda machine can make it highly uncomfortable for anyone it chooses to denigrate. They prefer their authoritarianism, which is not dissimilar to that of Hitler and the Nazis, to the tolerance the US constitution tried to enshrine. The trouble is that these right wing, so called, Christians know neither anything about Christ’s actual teaching, nor anything much about the formation of the US constitution. So, it does all boil down to ignorance in the end—wilful ignorance in the US!

Like the unwashed masses living twenty to a cellar room in nineteenth century Britain, the ignorant Christian masses of modern America consider themselves to be blessed with God’s imperial majesty—that is that their sorry personal condition is alleviated by the imperial conquests of their superior nation. It is all temporary. Once the Moslems conquered half the known world!