9/11 questions essential audio links

I'm listening to a series of excellent, short radio shows from last year, by a radio host called Scott Ledger, from Tampa, Florida. Ledger devotes one show each to the key questions relating to 9/11. He begins asking Did flight 77 really hit the Pentagon? then goes on to cover questions like Why didn't the Secret Service remove the President From that school? Why didn't our air defense (jet fighters) respond? Reports of explosions at WTC and The science of the Towers collapse.

For anyone unfamiliar with the explosive controversy over 9/11 and whether individuals within the U.S. government were complicit in helping perpetrate the attacks, this is a superb introduction. Anyone already familiar with this issue would also be sure to benefit also from Ledger's evidence and his intelligent, down-to-earth discussion.

You can listen to all eleven radio shows at www.scottledger.com. There are also links at this sight to various related articles and Web sites. Check it out now!

Two years of "liberation" in Iraq

It is two years ago today that our TV screens were saturated with the footage of a statue of Saddam Hussein being toppled in the middle of Baghdad: supposedly a great day for Iraq. Yet who were this crowd of jubilant Iraqis? According to Anton Antonowicz of the Daily Mirror newspaper, "fundamentally, I think there were only about 40 or 50 Iraqis baying for Saddam's statuesque blood as it were, and then the rest were journalists." A shot of the scene from a different camera angle to that we had originally seen clearly confirmed this. ("The War We Never Saw: the True Face of War." Channel 4, June 6, 2003.) You can see a long-distance photo of the statue being pulled over, which also confirms this observation, here.

Neville Watson, an Australian peace activist also witnessed this 'historic' event. He says: "it happened at only about 300m from where I was and it was a very small crowd. The rest of the square was almost empty, and when we inquired as to where the crowd came from, it was from Saddam City. In other words, it was a rent-a-crowd." (SBS TV Australia: April 17, 2003.)

An article today in The Times assesses how life in Iraq has progressed since that day. The article describes: "The lack of progress is obvious. Two million dirt-poor Shia live in Sadr City, surrounded by rubbish and pools of sewage. Residents say that the Americans who fought a Shia militia there last summer have reneged on their promise to rebuild the area." The wife of Naim Gumar--a former political prisoner in Abu Ghraib under Saddam Hussein--says: "I never imagined things could get worse but, since the war, they have." She complains that her children are underfed and small for their age. This is unsurprising, since according to Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, the war and its aftermath have almost doubled malnutrition rates among Iraqi children. Acute malnutrition among under-fives rose late last year to 7.7 per cent from around 4 per cent in April 2003.

The Times article says that electricity in Baghdad is currently two hours on, four hours off; food prices are double their prewar level and rents have often quadrupled; in sidestreets, flocks of goats graze on piles of stinking rubbish; sewage leaks into drinking water and people cannot afford fuel to boil it clean.

If we cast our minds back two years to the day of the 'toppling' of the Saddam statue, the response of the media at the time now seems absurd. MediaLens describe how British reporters reacted:

The BBC's Nicholas Witchell declared of the US drive into central Baghdad: "It is absolutely, without a doubt, a vindication of the strategy." (BBC News at Six, April 9) The BBC's breakfast news presenter, Natasha Kaplinsky, beamed as she described how Blair "has become, again, Teflon Tony". The BBC's Mark Mardell agreed: "It +has+ been a vindication for him." (BBC1, Breakfast News, April 10) "This war has been a major success", ITN's Tom Bradby said (ITN, Evening News, April 10). ITN's John Irvine also saw vindication in the arrival of the marines: "A war of three weeks has brought an end to decades of Iraqi misery." (ITN Evening News, April 9)

Talk about poor judgement.

Bad news for fear-mongers

The Spectator, April 2, 2005: ‘We are facing the gravest threat that this nation has ever faced.’ Elizabeth I, speaking of the Spanish Armada? Winston Churchill, in the aftermath of Dunkirk? No. Home Office minister Baroness Scotland on Newsnight, justifying the new Prevention of Terrorism Act by reference to the threat from al-Qa’eda.

‘Hang on,’ I said to myself on hearing the Baroness, ‘that can’t be right.’ My mum can remember lying in bed hearing bombs drop, and she once saw a V1 go over and heard the engine cut out as she watched. As an army officer a decade ago I used to have to check under my car for IRA bombs every time I went out. Army officers don’t have to do that any more. The gravest threat ever? Surely not.

This revealing article details how "the world is safer now than ever before; and far from being an ever-growing problem, terrorism has been in sharp decline for over a decade. This is not a matter of opinion. It is provable." Both the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) and Canada’s Project Ploughshares annually track the number of armed conflicts worldwide. As the Spectator reports: "According to Sipri, there were only 19 conflicts in 2003, down from 33 in 1991. With its broader definition, Project Ploughshares reports a decline to 36 in 2003 from a peak of 44 in 1995. "

Furthermore, according to the Rand Corporation’s MIPT (Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism) database, terrorism peaked in the late 1970s and early '80s and has been steadily declining ever since. "During the 1980s, the number of international terrorist incidents worldwide averaged about 360 a year. By the year 2000, it was down to just 100. In Western Europe, the number has declined from about 200 in the mid-1980s to under 30 in 2004. Even more strikingly, in North America the number of attacks has fallen from over 40 a year in the mid-1970s to under five every year for the past ten years, with the sole exception of 2001."

The article asks, "What if we are wrong?" What if there really is this huge terrorist threat? Surely better to be safe than sorry and go around bombing these Middle Eastern countries before they get the chance to bomb us? The problem is, as the war in Iraq proves, tens of thousands of people die when we get it wrong.

But, if you think the current 'war on terror' is ludicrous, check out the quote from October 1955, when General Douglas MacArthur told the cadets of West Point: "The next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets." Perhaps we'd best start blowing up the rest of the galaxy now, just to be on the safe side.

Welcome to the Artful Blogger

Welcome to the my blog! I will be filling this blog with cutting-edge news and views relating to such issues as 9/11 & the bogus 'war on terror'; the criminal Anglo-American wars and aggression against Iraq & elsewhere; and lots of other important issues.