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Tuesday, May 10, 2011

[ALOCHONA] Why the Planes Were Not Intercepted on 9/11



Why the Planes Were Not Intercepted on 9/11

The Wall Street Lawyer and the Special Ops Hijack Coordinator

by Kevin Ryan

Of the many unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11, one of the most important is: Why were none of the four planes intercepted?  A rough answer is that the failure of the US air defenses can be traced to a number of factors and people.  There were policy changes, facility changes, and personnel changes that had recently been made, and there were highly coincidental military exercises that were occurring on that day.  But some of the most startling facts about the air defense failures have to do with the utter failure of communications between the agencies responsible for protecting the nation.  At the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), two people stood out in this failed chain of communications.  One was a lawyer on his first day at the job, and another was a Special Operations Commander who was never held responsible for his critical role, or even questioned about it.

The 9/11 Commission wrote in its report that "On 9/11, the defense of U.S. airspace depended on close interaction between two federal agencies: the FAA and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)."[1]

According to the Commission, this interaction began with air traffic controllers (ATCs) at the relevant regional FAA control centers, which on 9/11 included Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Indianapolis.  In the event of a hijacking, these ATCs were expected to "notify their supervisors, who in turn would inform management all the way up to FAA headquarters.  Headquarters had a hijack coordinator, who was the director of the FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security or his or her designate. "

The hijack coordinator would then "contact the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC)" and "the NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance.  If approval was given, the orders would be transmitted down NORAD's chain of command [to the interceptor pilots]."[2]

The 9/11 Commission report (hereafter, "the report") indicated that the military was eventually notified about all the hijackings, but none of those notifications were made in time to intercept the hijacked aircraft.  The report also contradicted a good deal of testimony given on the subject by suggesting that earlier statements made by military leaders, in testimony to the Commission, were "incorrect."  The corrections to these statements led to a reassessment of how much time the military actually had to respond to requests for interception from the FAA.  Ultimately, the report stated that "NEADS air defenders had nine minutes' notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third, and no advance notice on the fourth."[3]

The report does not place blame for the failure to intercept on any specific people in the chain of communications, but it specifically exonerates "NEADS commanders and officers" and "[i]ndividual FAA controllers, facility managers and Command Center managers."  In fact, the report goes so far as to praise these people for how well they did.[4]  Curiously, the hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters was not mentioned in the list of those who were exonerated.

The ATCs did notify their management as required, but further notification to FAA headquarters (FAA HQ) was apparently riddled with delays.  FAA HQ got plenty of notice of the four hijacked planes, but failed to do its job.  One of the most glaring examples was demonstrated by the failure of FAA HQ to request military assistance for the fourth hijacking, that of Flight 93.

On page 28, the report says, "By 9:34, word of the hijacking had reached FAA headquarters."  Despite this advance notice, Flight 93 "crashed" in Pennsylvania sometime between 10:03 and 10:07.

To put this in perspective, at 9:34 it had been over 30 minutes since a second airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center (WTC).  It was known that a third plane was hijacked, and it was about to crash into the Pentagon.  Everyone in the country knew we were under a coordinated terrorist attack via hijacked aircraft because, as of 9:03, mainstream news stations including CNN had already been televising it.

That was the situation when FAA HQ was notified about a fourth hijacking.  Given those circumstances, an objective observer would expect the highest level of urgency throughout all levels of government in response to that fourth hijacking.  But FAA management did not follow the protocol to ask for military assistance.  The 9/11 Commission contends that FAA HQ gave air defenders no notice whatsoever of the hijacking of Flight 93 until after the plane had been destroyed.  For whatever reasons, the FAA's Command Center (located in Herndon, VA) did not request military assistance, either.  In fact, neither the Command Center nor FAA HQ contacted NMCC to request military assistance for any of the hijacked planes.

Therefore it seems reasonable to look at the people whose roles were most important in this failed chain of communications.  Once the entire country was aware that we were under attack and that planes were being hijacked and used as weapons, the two people who were most important to the FAA's response were: 1) the person running the FAA's national Command Center and 2) the hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters.

It turns out that these two people were both new to their jobs.  In fact, it was the first day on the job for Benedict Leo Sliney, the national operations manager at FAA's Command Center.

Benedict Sliney

Benedict Sliney was an ATC in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War and, after that, worked at the FAA for the first half of his professional career.  In the 1980s, Sliney went on from the FAA to work as an attorney and continued in that career throughout the 1990s.  He worked for several law firms during this time, handling various kinds of cases, and he was a partner in some of those firms.

Sliney's clients included financial investors who were accused of Securities and Exchange violations.  In one 1998 case, he represented Steven K. Gourlay, Jr., an employee of Sterling Foster.  It was reported that Sterling Foster was "secretly controlled" by Randolph Pace and was at the center of "one of the most notorious scams ever."[5] Sliney got Gourlay's charges dropped in 1998, but, in a related 2002 case, Gourlay pled guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud, and was sentenced to six months in prison.[6,7]

In the summer of 2000, Sliney represented Merrill Lynch in a case in which the delay of the transfer of clients' funds to Smith Barney was said to have "caused their investments with Merrill, Lynch to lose some $638,000 in value."  Sliney was able to get Merrill Lynch off the hook.[8]

For whatever reasons, Sliney decided to leave his lucrative law career behind just months before 9/11 in order to return to the FAA.  It was reported that Jack Kies, FAA's manager of tactical operations, offered Sliney the job of Command Center national operations manager.  Instead, Sliney asked to work as a specialist and he started in that role.  Kies offered Sliney the national operations manager position again six months later, and Sliney accepted.[9] His first day on the job was 9/11/01.

On 9/11, others present at the FAA's Command Center outranked Sliney.  Interviews of those others, however, including Linda Schuessler and John White, confirm that Ben Sliney was given the lead in the Command Center's response to the hijackings that day.  Despite that critical role, Sliney is mentioned only one time in the narrative of the 9/11 Commission report.

According to the summary of his interview for the investigation, Sliney was first notified of "a hijack in progress" sometime between 8:15 and 8:20 EDT.  This was about the same time as communications were lost with American Airlines Flight 11, the first of the planes to be hijacked, and it was about 30 minutes before that plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC).  It was nearly two hours before Flight 93 was destroyed in Pennsylvania.  Incredibly, according to Sliney's interview, it was not until after a second confirmed hijacking occurred and two planes had crashed into the WTC (nearly an hour after he learned about the first hijacking) that Sliney "realized that the hijackers were piloting the aircraft."[10]

After the second tower was hit, Sliney responded by asking for a military response via the special military outfit assigned to the FAA's Command Center,  the Air Traffic Services Cell (ATSC).  This was at approximately 9:06 am.  At the time, one of the three military officers in the ATSC called the NMCC and that officer was told that "senior leaders" at the NMCC were "in a meeting to determine their response" to the attacks, and would call back.[11] As this example shows, there are at least as many unanswered questions about what went on at the NMCC that morning as there are about what happened at the FAA.[12]

Several of the FAA's top people confirmed that the military was engaged and knew about the hijackings early on.  This included Jeff Griffith at the Command Center and Monte Belger, the FAA's acting Deputy Administrator, who was present at FAA Headquarters.  Belger stated that "[T]here were military people on duty at the FAA Command Center, as Mr. Sliney said. They were participating in what was going on. There were military people in the FAA's Air Traffic Organization in a situation room. They were participating in what was going on."[13]

Sliney's interview summary is full of phrases like he "did not recall" and "was not aware," although he did recall "being informed" that interceptors were eventually launched (too late).  Apparently, Sliney didn't even know what the fighters would do if they were launched.  He recalled thinking: "Well, what are they going to do?"  Additionally, in an apparent defensive posture, Sliney claimed "definitively that he did not receive a request to authorize a request to the military for assistance."[14]

One might think that the national operations manager for the FAA's Command Center would not need a "request to authorize a request for military assistance" and that he might know what military assistance would entail.  But Sliney's interview summary suggests that he did not even know what the protocol was for requesting military assistance in the event of a hijacking.  Sliney's understanding on 9/11 "and today" (two years later, when the interview was conducted) was that an FAA request for military assistance "emanates from the effected Center…directly to the military."  That is, Sliney supposedly was not aware of any role that the FAAs' Command Center or FAA HQ might have had in the request for interception of hijacked aircraft.  This appears to be in contradiction to the protocol given by the 9/11 Commission report and it is definitely in contradiction to the concept of a "hijack coordinator."

In addition to the confusion about the Command Center's role in requesting military assistance, it seems there was only one person at FAA headquarters who was authorized to request military assistance.  On 9/11, Ben Sliney was told that no one could find that one person.  Sliney later recounted his experience learning of that fact in this way:

I said something like, "That's incredible. There's only one person. There must be someone designated or someone who will assume the responsibility of issuing an order, you know." We were becoming frustrated in our attempts to get some information. What was the military response?[15]

Michael Canavan

The hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters, Lt. Gen. Michael A. Canavan, had been in his position for only nine months, and would leave the job within a month of 9/11.  Surprisingly, although Mike Canavan was mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report, he was not cited for his role as the FAA's hijack coordinator, a role that was at the center of the failure to intercept the planes on 9/11.

Instead of being mentioned as the hijack coordinator, Canavan was in the report because he had been the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which ran the military's counterterrorism operations and covert missions.  The report described Canavan's part in the failure to follow-through on a carefully laid-out 1998 CIA plan to capture Osama bin Laden (OBL) in Afghanistan.  Canavan was quoted as saying that the plan put tribal Afghanis at too much risk and that the "operation was too complicated for the CIA."[16]

Nearly the entirety of Canavan's career was in military special operations.  He was a Special Forces soldier for many years, and before he was JSOC Commander, he was Special Operations Commander for the US European Command (SOCEUR), which included operations throughout Africa as well.  Canavan was SOCEUR from 1994 to 1996 and JSOC Commander from 1996 to 1998.

JSOC is a successor organization to the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which was a secret government-funded organization authorized by the National Security Council in 1948. The OPC was led by CIA director Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner, a State Department official who wielded unprecedented power due to his position in New York law and financial circles.  The JSOC was created in 1980 by the Pentagon and run by Ted Shackley's OPC colleague, Richard Stillwell.  According to author Joseph Trento, JSOC quickly became "one of the most secret operations of the US government."[17]

Creation of the JSOC was, ostensibly, a response to the failed 1980 hostage rescue attempt in Iran called Operation Eagle Claw.  JSOC immediately went on to engage in an "array of highly covert activities" by way of "black budgets."[18] This included operations in Honduras and El Salvador which supported the illegal wars associated with the Nicaraguan rebels called the Contras.

In 1987, JSOC was assigned to a new military command called the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) that came about through the work of Senator William S. Cohen.  Senator Cohen went on to become the Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001, and it was he who led the Quadrennial Defense Review of 1997 that reduced the number of fighters actively protecting the continental US from 100 to 14.[19] Cohen is now chairman of The Cohen group, where he works with his Vice Chairman, Marc Grossman, whom FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds says figures prominently in the information she has been trying to provide.

Interestingly, Hugh Shelton was the commander of SOCOM during the same years that Canavan was the commander of JSOC.  Shelton went on to become the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), which is the highest position in the US military.  He was in that position on September 11th and was, like Canavan, curiously absent for just the morning hours on that day.[20]

In any case, it seems odd that Michael Canavan occupied what turned out to be the most important position relative to the failure to intercept the hijacked planes on 9/11 and was also involved in evaluating plans to capture OBL just three years earlier.  Apart from the coincidence that he was selected as the most qualified person for both of those very different positions, he was also a central figure in these two different reasons why the 9/11 attacks were said to have succeeded.

When he first started the job as FAA's hijack coordinator, just nine months before the attacks, Canavan was in charge of running training exercises that were "pretty damn close to [the] 9/11 plot," according to John Hawley, an employee in the FAA's intelligence division.[21] In his comments to the 9/11 Commission, Canavan denied having participated in any such exercises and the Commission apparently didn't think to reconcile the conflicting comments it had received from Hawley and Canavan on this important issue.

That's not surprising in light of the fact that Canavan's treatment by the 9/11 Commission was one of uncritical deference.  Reading through the transcript of the related hearing gives the impression that the Commission members were not only trying to avoid asking the General any difficult questions, but they were fawning over him.

Lee Hamilton began his questioning of Canavan by saying "You're pretty tough on the airlines, aren't you?"[22] As with many of the statements and reports made by Hamilton, however, the evidence suggests that the opposite is true.

In May 2001, Canavan wrote an internal FAA memorandum that initiated a new policy of more lax fines for airlines and airports that had security problems.  The memo suggested that, if the airlines or airports had a written plan to fix the problem, fines were not needed.  For whatever reason, the memo was also taken to mean that FAA agents didn't even have to enforce corrections as long as the airline or airport said they were working on it. Canavan's memo was repeatedly cited as a cause of failure to fix security problems in the months leading up to 9/11.[23,24]

Canavan's job as hijack coordinator was clearly the most important link in the communications chain between the FAA and the military.  But the 9/11 Commission did not address this hijack coordinator position in terms of how it was fulfilled on 9/11, and did not mention the alarming fact that we don't know who actually handled the job of hijack coordinator on the day of 9/11.  We don't know because Canavan said he was in Puerto Rico that morning and claimed to have missed out on "everything that happened that day."[25]

Here is Canavan's exact statement to the Commission, in response to a question from Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, whose questions were, like Hamilton's, rather submissive:

Here's my answer — and it's not to duck the question. Number one, I was visiting the airport in San Juan that day when this happened. That was a CADEX airport, and I was down there also to remove someone down there that was in a key position. So when 9/11 happened, that's where I was. I was able to get back to Washington that evening on a special flight from the Army back from San Juan, back to Washington.  So everything that transpired that day in terms of times, I have to — and I have no information on that now, because when I got back we weren't — that wasn't the issue at the time. We were — when I got back it was, What are we going to do over the next 48 hours to strengthen what just happened?[26]

One might think that the Commissioners would have expressed surprise at Canavan's rambling, somewhat incoherent claim that he was just not available during the events of 9/11.  We would certainly expect the Commissioners to have followed up with detailed questions about who was in charge that day with respect to the most important role related to the failed national response.  But that was not the case.  Instead, Ben-Veniste redirected the discussion while "putting aside the issue."  None of the other Commissioners said a word about Canavan being missing that day or even asked who was filling in for him as the primary contact between the FAA and the military with regard to hijackings.  And, of course, the 9/11 Commission report did not mention any of it at all.

In the interest of finding out what happened, we should return to the failure of FAA HQ to request military assistance for Flight 93.  We should ask: What was FAA HQ doing with this information for those 30 minutes in the absence of the one person who was charged to do something about it?  Apparently, for fifteen minutes, nothing was done.  But after fifteen minutes, according to the 9/11 Commission report, the conversations were going nowhere.

At 9:49, according to the report, this was the exchange between the FAA Command Center and FAA HQ.

Command Center:  Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?

FAA Headquarters:  Oh, God, I don't know.

Command Center:  Uh, that's a decision somebody's gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.

FAA Headquarters:  Uh, ya know everybody just left the room.

The Commission report says that ineffectual discussions about scrambling aircraft were still occurring at FAA HQ twenty minutes after it had received notification of the fourth hijacking.

At 9:53 am, "FAA headquarters informed the Command Center that the deputy director for air traffic services was talking to Monte Belger about scrambling aircraft."

Apart from contradicting Benedict Sliney's testimony that an FAA request for military assistance "emanates from the effected Center … directly to the military," this part of the 9/11 Commission report never mentions who the "deputy director for air traffic services" was.  Tape recordings suggest that it was someone named Peter.  This might have been Peter  H. Challan, an engineer who had worked for the FAA since 1969 and had been Deputy Associate Administrator for Air Traffic Services since July 1999.  But the Deputy Director of Air Traffic Services that day was Jeff Griffith.  Monte Belger was the Deputy Administrator for the FAA, second in command to the FAA Administrator, Jane Garvey.  Belger and Griffith later denied they ever had a conversation about scrambling aircraft, despite the 9/11 Commission stating this as fact.

Jane Garvey was also present during the failed response at FAA HQ.  She was the FAA Administrator from 1997 to 2002 and, coincidentally, in the years before that, had been the director of Logan International Airport in Boston, where two of the flights took off on 9/11.  Apparently Garvey's record as director for the Logan airport, which had for many years the worst security record of any major airport, was not a problem for her nomination to the top job at FAA.  It was Garvey who appointed Canavan to his role as Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security and, therefore, as hijack coordinator.

In any case, in the absence of the hijack coordinator, the FAA was completely incompetent in terms of communicating the need to intercept the hijacked planes on 9/11.  Officially, the only notice of the hijackings to the military came directly from the FAA centers, bypassing both the Command Center and FAA HQ.   Boston Center reached the North East Air Defense Sector (NEADS) at 8:37 to request help with the first hijacking, and New York Center notified the military of the second hijacking at 9:03.  NEADS only found out about the third hijacking at 9:34 by calling the Washington center to ask about Flight 11, and the military was said to have first learned about the hijacking of Flight 93 from Cleveland Center at 10:07. Still, none of the planes were intercepted.

9/11 and special operations

Although Michael Canavan was unavailable to perform his critical job function on 9/11, he was fully involved in the response to the attacks.  Just two days later, he attended a "Principals Committee Meeting" chaired by Condoleezza Rice that included all of Bush's "war cabinet."[27] This meeting set the stage for how the new War on Terror would be conducted.

Canavan later cashed in on the windfalls of the resulting wars and the privatization of military operations when he was hired on at Anteon International Corporation as president of its Information Systems Group.  In doing so, he joined a number of prominent defense department alumni, including his former special operations colleague, SOCOM commander and JCS chairman Hugh Shelton, who was on the board of directors at Anteon.

Since 9/11, covert activities have been encouraged at a much higher level, but, prior to 9/11, SOCOM was not supposed to conduct covert operations.  Therefore, JSOC worked intimately with the CIA's clandestine division called the Special Activities Division (SAD). Canavan led those kinds of operations in northern Iraq, Liberia and Bosnia. He ran special operations in Croatia in 1996 and, according to President Clinton, was the one who identified Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown's body after Brown's plane crashed there.[28]

JSOC regularly works with foreign intelligence agencies, including the Mossad.[29] It has been involved with hijackings, for example that of the Achille Lauro and TWA Flight 847.  It has also operated from bases in foreign countries, such as Saudi Arabia, for many years.[30] Presidential Decision Directive PDD-25 gave JSOC one of the rare exemptions from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which means that JSOC can legally conduct its missions within the US.[31]

In the "War on Terror", the special mission units of JSOC have been given the authority to pursue secret operations around the world.  JSOC effectively operates outside the law, capturing and killing people with or without the knowledge of the host countries in which it operates.  JSOC missions are always low-profile, and the US government will not acknowledge any specifics about them.

Reporter Seymour Hersh has reported that the JSOC was under the command of Vice President Dick Cheney after the attacks.[32] Hersh also claimed that the leaders of JSOC "are all members of, or at least supporters of, the Knights of Malta" and that "many of them are members of Opus Dei."[33] The ties between the Knights of Malta and high-level US intelligence personnel, including William Casey and William Donovan, have been well-documented.[34] Such accusations have also been made of Louis Freeh, who headed the FBI from 1993 to June 2001 and would have worked closely with Canavan and Shelton in the pursuit of special operations targets.

Other special operations leaders who were involved in the lack of response on 9/11 included Richard Armitage, who was present on the Secure Video Teleconference (SVTS) during the attacks.[35] This was the White House meeting chaired by Richard Clarke, which the 9/11 Commission said convened at 9:25 and included leaders of the CIA, the FBI, the FAA, as well as the departments of State, Defense and Justice.   Even with all those leaders in on the call, nothing was done to stop Flight 93 from "crashing" that morning, approximately 40 minutes after the call began.  Instead, we were left completely undefended.

Like Canavan and Shelton, Armitage was involved in special operations in Vietnam and later was reportedly involved in several of the most well-known covert operations in US history, including the Phoenix Program and the Iran-Contra crimes.[36] Although he had spent many years in the Defense department, he was Deputy Secretary of State on 9/11.  After the invasion of Iraq, he was identified as the one who betrayed CIA agent Valerie Plame by revealing her identity, apparently in retaliation for her husband's attempt to set the record straight on weapons of mass destruction.  Armitage admitted he revealed Plame's identity, but claimed it was done inadvertently.[37]

Another special operations soldier who testified to the 9/11 Commission and played a significant role with regard to the airlines and facilities prior to 9/11 was Brian Michael Jenkins.  While Shelton and Canavan were running SOCOM and JSOC, Jenkins was the deputy chairman of Kroll when that company was designing the security system for the World Trade Center (WTC) complex.[38]

Jenkins was appointed by President Clinton to be a member of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, where he collaborated with James Abrahamson of WTC security company Stratesec, and FBI director (and alleged Opus Dei member) Louis Freeh.  In 1999 and 2000, Jenkins served as an advisor to the National Commission on Terrorism, led by L. Paul Bremer, who went on to be an executive of WTC impact zone tenant, Marsh & McLennan, and then the Iraq occupation governor.  Jenkins returned to the RAND Corporation, where he had previously worked with Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Frank Carlucci of The Carlyle Group, and Paul Kaminski of Anteon.

Lieutenant Colonel John Blitch was yet another special operations soldier who played a big part in the events immediately following 9/11.  Blitch spent his career in the US Army's Special Forces and was said to have retired just the day before 9/11 to become an employee of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).   Immediately following the attacks, he was put in charge of the team of robotic machine operators that explored the pile at Ground Zero, using devices that had previously been used for elimination of unexploded ordnance.

Conclusions

Despite being given plenty of notice about the four planes hijacked on 9/11, FAA management did not request military assistance to ensure the planes were intercepted before they crashed.  The 9/11 Commission attributes this to a string of gross failures in communication between the FAA and the military on 9/11.  However, the report places no blame on any of the people who were involved and doesn't even mention the one person who was most important to this chain of communications.

One of the most important people involved was Benedict Sliney, who had, just before 9/11, left a lucrative law career defending Wall Street financiers to return to work as a specialist at the FAA.  It was his first day on the job.  With regard to ensuring military interception of the hijacked planes, he said he did not receive a "request to authorize a request."  Sliney also claimed to not know that FAA management at the Command Center, where he was in charge, or FAA HQ, had any role in requests for military assistance.   This is in contradiction to the stated protocol in the 9/11 Commission report and also the idea of an FAA "hijack coordinator."

The FAA hijack coordinator was Michael Canavan, a career special operations commander who had come to the civilian FAA job only nine months before 9/11.  According to an FAA intelligence agent, one of the first things Canavan did in that job was lead and participate in exercises that were "pretty damn close to the 9/11 plot."  He was also known within the FAA for writing a memo just a few months before 9/11 that instituted a new leniency with regard to airport and airline security.

With regard to the communication failures, Canavan offered the unsolicited excuse that he was absent during the morning hours of 9/11, in Puerto Rico.  The 9/11 Commission did not pursue this excuse, nor did it ask who was filling the critical hijack coordinator role in Canavan's absence.  In fact, the 9/11 Commission report didn't address the hijack coordinator role at all.  The report mentioned Sliney only once in the entire narrative and did not refer to Canavan in his role as hijack coordinator.

When a new, honest investigation is finally convened, it should look into why a lawyer, who knew how to handle evidence and get financiers off the hook, was experiencing his first day on the job as national operation manager at the FAA.  And If 9/11 was a "special operation" as many people now suspect, that investigation might consider that a number of special operations specialists were in place to ensure that the operation went off without a hitch and was not discovered.  Long-time special operations leaders like Michael Canavan, Hugh Shelton, Brian Michael Jenkins, and Richard Armitage played critical parts with respect to the facilities, events, and official story of 9/11.  These facts seem worth investigating.

References

[1] The 9/11 Commission Report, page 14

[2] The 9/11 Commission report, pages 17 to 18

[3] The 9/11 Commission report, page 34

[4] Ibid

[5] Matthew Goldstein, When Bad Scams Go Good, The Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2001, http://www.smartmoney.com/investing/stocks/when-bad-scams-go-good-10573/

[6] NASD Regulation, Inc. Office of Dispute Resolution, Arbitration No. 9644952

[7] Westlaw citation WL 31426028, United States District Court, S.D. New York, No. 00 CR 91-11 RWS, Oct. 28, 2002

[8] United States District Court, E.D. New York, 103 F.Supp.2d 579, Downes v. O'Connell, 103 F.Supp.2d 579 (2000)

[9]  Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11, Free Press, 2008, page 2

[10]  9/11 Commisison memorandum for the record, Interview with Benedict Sliney, May 21, 2004

[11]  History Commons 9/11 Timeline page for John Czabaranek, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=john_czabaranek_1

[12]  Matthew Everett, The Repeatedly Delayed Responses of the Pentagon Command Center on 9/11, 911blogger.com, November 7, 2010, http://911blogger.com/news/2010-11-07/repeatedly-delayed-responses-pentagon-command-center-911

[13]  History Commons 9/11 Timeline page for Monty Belger, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=monty_belger

[14]  9/11 Commisison memorandum for the record, Interview with Benedict Sliney, May 21, 2004

[15]  History Commons 9/11 Timeline page for Ben Sliney, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=ben_sliney

[16] The 9/11 Commission report, page 113

[17] Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine, Rowan & Littlefield, 2010

[18] Harvey M. Sapolsky, Benjamin H. Friedman, Brendan Rittenhouse Green, US military innovation since the Cold War: creation without destruction, Taylor & Francis Publishers, 2009

[19] History Commons 9/11 Timeline profile for William S. Cohen, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=william_s._cohen

[20] History Commons 9/11 Timeline profile for Henry Hugh Shelton, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=henry_h._shelton

[21] 9/11 Commission Memorandum for the Record (MFR) on John Hawley interview, October 8, 2003, http://media.nara.gov/9-11/MFR/t-0148-911MFR-00608.pdf

[22] Transcript of 9/11 Commission public hearing of May 23, 2003, 9/11 Commission Archive, http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm

[23] Andrew R. Thomas, Aviation Security Management: Volume 1, Greenwood Publishing Group, page 78, http://terrortalk.org/myfiles/Terrorism%20Books/Aviation%20Security%20Management.pdf

[24] Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, FAA Culture of Bureaucracy Stymies Security Reform Efforts, Critics Say, Los Angeles

[25] History Commons 9/11 Timeline profile for Mike Canavan, http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=mike_canavan#a830faahijackcoordinator

[26] Interview of Michael Canavan, 9/11 Commission Public Hearing, May 23, 2003, http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm

[27] 9/11 Commission Report, footnote 36 to Chapter 10

[28] White House press briefing by Leon Panetta, January 10, 1996

[29] Gordon Thomas, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, Thomas Dunne Books, 1995, pp 309-310

[30] John T. Carney, Benjamin F. Schemmer, No Room for Error: The Story Behind the USAF Special Tactics Unit, Presido Press, 2002, p 232

[31] Graeme C. S. Steven, Rohan Gunaratna, Counterterrorism: a reference handbook, ABC-CLIO, 2004, p 230

[32] Abbas Al Lawati, 'You can't authorise murder': Hersh, Gulf News, May 12, 2009, http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/you-can-t-authorise-murder-hersh-1.68504

[33] Blake Hounshell, Seymour Hersh unleashed, Foreign Policy, January 18, 2011, http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/18/seymour_hersh_unleashed

[34] Matthew Phelan, Pulitzer Prize Winner Seymour Hersh And The Men Who Want Him Committed, WhoWhatWhy.com, Feb 23, 2011, http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/02/23/pulitzer-prize-winner-seymour-hersh-and-the-men-who-want-him-committed/

[35] Summary of 9/11 Commission interview with John Flaherty, Chief of Staff for Secretary of Transportation, Norman Mineta, April 2004

[36] Spartacus Educational webpage for Richard Armitage, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKarmitage.htm

[37] CNN Politics, Armitage admits leaking Plame's identity, September 08, 2006, http://articles.cnn.com/2006-09-08/politics/leak.armitage_1_novak-and-other-journalists-cia-officer-valerie-plame-patrick-fitzgerald?_s=PM:POLITICS

[38] Kevin R. Ryan, Demolition Access To The WTC Towers: Part Two – Security, 911Review.com, August 22, 2009, http://911review.com/articles/ryan/demolition_access_p2.html


Kevin R. Ryan began to investigate the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 through his work as Site Manager for a division of Underwriters Laboratories (UL). He was fired by UL in 2004 for writing to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), asking about its World Trade Center investigation and UL's work to ensure the fire resistance of the buildings. He now serves as co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, and board director at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Ryan has co-authored several books and peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject. Read more articles by Kevin Ryan.

http://ultruth.wordpress.com/

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011/04/29/why-the-planes-were-not-intercepted-on-911/


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[ALOCHONA] China: The New Bin Laden



China: The New Bin Laden

Orwell Wrote The Script

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

George Orwell, the pen name by which Eric Blair is known, had the gift of prophecy, or else blind luck. In 1949 in his novel, 1984, he described the Amerika of today and, I fear, also his native Great Britain, which is no longer great and follows Washington, licking the jackboot and submitting to Washington's hegemony over England and Europe and exhausting itself financially and morally in order to support Amerikan hegemony over the rest of the world.

In Orwell's prophecy, Big Brother's government rules over unquestioning people, incapable of independent thought, who are constantly spied upon. In 1949 there was no Internet, Facebook, twitter, GPS, etc. Big Brother's spying was done through cameras and microphones in public areas, as in England today, and through television equipped with surveillance devices in homes. As everyone thought what the government intended for them to think, it was easy to identify the few who had suspicions.

Fear and war were used to keep everyone in line, but not even Orwell anticipated Homeland Security feeling up the genitals of air travelers and shopping center customers. Every day in people's lives, there came over the TV the Two Minutes of Hate. An image of Emmanuel Goldstein, a propaganda creation of the Ministry of Truth, who is designated as Oceania's Number One Enemy, appeared on the screen. Goldstein was the non-existent "enemy of the state" whose non-existent organization, "The Brotherhood," was Oceania's terrorist enemy. The Goldstein Threat justified the "Homeland Security" that violated all known Rights of Englishmen and kept Oceania's subjects "safe."

Since 9/11, with some diversions into Sheik Mohammed and Mohamed Atta, the two rivals to bin Laden as the "Mastermind of 9/11," Osama bin Laden has played the 21st century roll of Emmanuel Goldstein. Now that the Obama Regime has announced the murder of the modern-day Goldstein, a new demon must be constructed before Oceania's wars run out of justifications.

Hillary Clinton, the low-grade moron who is US Secretary of State, is busy at work making China the new enemy of Oceania. China is Amerika's largest creditor, but this did not inhibit the idiot Hilary from, this week in front of high Chinese officials, denouncing China for "human rights violations" and for the absence of democracy.

While Hilary was enjoying her rant and displaying unspeakable Amerkan hypocrisy, Homeland Security thugs had organized local police and sheriffs in a small town that is the home of Western Illinois University and set upon peaceful students who were enjoying their annual street party. There was no rioting, no property damage, but the riot police or Homeland Security SWAT teams showed up with sound cannons, gassed the students and beat them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKv-5t0t4E  

Indeed, if anyone pays any attention to what is happening in Amerika today, a militarized police and Homeland Security are destroying constitutional rights of peaceful assembly, protest, and free speech.

For practical purposes, the U.S. Constitution no longer exists. The police can beat, taser, abuse, and falsely arrest American citizens and experience no adverse consequences.

The executive branch of the federal government, to whom we used to look to protect us from abuses at the state and local level, acquired the right under the Bush regime to ignore both US and international law, along with the US Constitution and the constitutional powers of Congress and the judiciary. As long as there is a "state of war," such as the open-ended "war on terror," the executive branch is higher than the law and is unaccountable to law. Amerika is not a democracy, but a country ruled by an executive branch Caesar.

Hillary, of course, like the rest of the U.S. Government, is scared by the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report that China will be the most powerful economy in five years.

Just as the military/security complex pressured President John F. Kennedy to start a war with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis while the US still had the nuclear advantage, Hillary is now moving China into the role of Emmanuel Goldstein. Hate has to be mobilized, before Washington can move the ignorant patriotic masses to war.

How can Oceania continue if the declared enemy, Osama bin Laden, is dead. Big Brother must immediately invent another "enemy of the people."

But Hillary, being a total idiot, has chosen a country that has other than military weapons. While the Amerikans support "dissidents" in China, who are sufficiently stupid to believe that democracy exists in Amerika, the insulted Chinese government sits on $2 trillion in US dollar-denominated assets that can be dumped, thus destroying the US dollar's exchange value and the dollar as reserve currency, the main source of US power.

Hillary, in an unprecedented act of hypocrisy, denounced China for "human rights violations." This from a country that has violated the human rights of millions of victims in our own time in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons dotted all over the planet, in US courts of law, and in the arrests and seizure of documents of American war protestors. There is no worst violator of human rights on the planet than the US government, and the world knows it.

The hubris and arrogance of US policymakers, and the lies that they inculcate in the American public, have exposed Washington to war with the most populous country on earth, a country that has a military alliance with Russia, which has sufficient nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on earth. The scared idiots in Washington are desperate to set up China as the new Osama bin Laden, the figure of two minutes of hate every news hour, so that the World's Only Superpower can take out the Chinese before they surpass the US as the Number One Power.

No country on earth has a less responsible government and a less accountable government than the Americans. However, Americans will defend their own oppression, and that of the world, to the bitter end.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24715


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[ALOCHONA] Indian Propaganda Warning - 'Fundamentalist Backlash'



Indian Propaganda Warning - 'Fundamentalist Backlash'

MBI Munshi
mbimunshi@gmail.com

I think this proves my earlier assertion that the Islamic opposition to the AL which led to hartals and some violence was a stage managed event to assist the government to divert attention from critical issues affecting the country.  The Indians are using the supposed Islamist backlash to warn the international community to back off from pressuring the AL government has this could lead to an Islamist resurgence. This is all nonsense as these so-called Islamists are all paid for just to create 'controllable' anarchy and then to back off when things seem to be titling too far against the government. Explain to me how Amini's son is safely returned but we still can't find Anwar Choudhury's body after 1 year? The whole thing stinks of a propaganda opportunity for the AL and the Indians.

Regards

Munshi

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fundamentalist Backlash

Sanchita Bhattacharya
Research Assistant, Institute for Conflict Management

A rash of Islamist fundamentalist violence has broken out across Bangladesh. On April 3, 2011, Railway Madrassa students took out processions in Jessore. When the Police intercepted the procession, the madrassa (seminary) students attacked the Policemen. In the retaliatory action, a madrassa student was shot dead and 30 people were injured.

On April 4, 2011, a dawn to dusk hartal (shut down) was observed across the country. The hartal was called by Mufti Rashidul Hasan Fazlul Haq Amini, leader of the Islami Ain Bastabayan Committee (IABC, Islamic Law Implementation Committee). The IABC is linked to the Islami Oikko Jote (IOJ), a political party which has openly been vocal about its support for the Islamist militants, the Taliban and the al-Qaeda. The IOJ is allied to the main opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP). The ruling Awami League's (AL) General Secretary, Syed Ashraful Islam claimed the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) sponsored the hartal and Aminee was used strategically to implement their political programme. He also alleged that BNP-JeI were on the streets during the strike. Meanwhile, Amini, on April 15, had threatened to paralyse the country, declaring, "We can create an impasse in the country by a one-hour notice as there are 20,000 madrassas which will respond to our call immediately." 

Violence erupted in Dhaka, Chittagong, Chandpur, Barbaria, Faridpur, Feni, Moulvibazar and Khulna during the April 4 hartal. While, 250 people, including 16 Policemen, were injured and another 200 people were detained, in the wake of mass attacks on vehicles, public transport and Security Forces. In a fresh wave of violence on May 1, hundreds of Islamic activists, belonging to Islami Andolan Bangladesh (IAB, Islamic Movement Bangladesh) wearing the traditional white Muslim dress and sporting copies of the Quran, marched in Dhaka, where the Police had imposed a ban on political rallies. A Police spokesperson said nearly 200 protestors were wounded during clashes with riot-Police. An estimated 150 Islamic activists were detained, whisked away in prison vans.

The apparent provocation of this unrest is the National Women's Development Policy (NWDP) 2011, declared by the Government on March 7, 2011, which includes, among others, a provision of an equal share for women in property and opportunities in employment and business. Shirin Sharmin Chowdhury, State Minister for Women and Children's Affairs, stated, "The approval of the NWDP has created a great scope for the advancement of women empowerment". Women's rights groups have also backed the Government, urging an early implementation of the policy.

Unsurprisingly, the NWDP has provoked the fundamentalists, who have rejected it as 'anti-Islamic' and 'anti-Quran' , and have orchestrated mass agitations across Bangladesh, demanding its withdrawal. An umbrella Islamist group, the Islamic Law Implementation Committee (ILIC), further threatened to paralyse the country if the Government did not scrap what it termed "anti-Islamic provisions" in the NWDP.

The NWDP is a revival of the 1997 Women's Development Policy, and is the fulfillment of an Election (2009) pledge by the AL. The 1997 Policy was formulated during the previous tenure of the Sheikh Hasina Wajed led AL Government (1996-2001). The Begum Khalida led BNP coalition Government (2001-2006), of which JeI was a part, approved another Women's Development Policy in 2004, deleting crucial provisions, such as "equal right", "equal and full participation", "right to land", "inheritance" and "property", or replacing them with "constitutional right", "preference" and "greater participation".

Meanwhile, in 2008, the then Caretaker Government had announced another Women's Development Policy, guaranteeing equal rights, including property rights for women, which was also opposed by a section of Islamic clerics. As a result, the then Government had constituted a 20-member Ulema (Islamic experts) Committee on March 27, 2008, to identify any potential "inconsistencies" in the Policy. On April 17, 2008, the Ulema Committee submitted its recommendations, strongly opposing the grant of equal rights to women, recommending deletion of six sections of the policy and amending 15 others which, the Ulema claimed, "clash" with the provisions of the Quran and Sunnah (sayings and examples from the life of the Prophet). Suggesting the inclusion of guidelines "in the light of the Quran and Sunnah" while taking any decision regarding women's rights, the Ulema Committee recommended abolishing the section that recommends steps to implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The Committee also asked the Government to cancel the initiative to reserve one-third of parliamentary seats for women and the application of comparable reservations to local elections.

Hafez Maulana Ziaul Hasan, Chairman of Sammilito Islami Jote (United Islamic Alliance), a liberal Islamic organization, on April 28, 2011, however, noted, "The review (Ulema) committee could not pinpoint any verse in the Quran that the Women's Development Policy contradicts. It also failed to show any provision of the policy that contradicted the Quran and Sunnah ."

Resistance to the hue and cry against the NWDP is significant. The leaders of Gausul Azam Maizbhandari Parishad [GAMP. Gausul Azam Maizbhandari Shah Sufi Moulana Syed Ahmadullah was a Sufi saint who started the Maizbhandari Sect. GAMP preaches his religious practices and works for the development of society], an Islamic social organization, on April 12, 2011, criticized IABC for creating an 'anarchic situation' in the country during protests against the women's development policy. Syed Saifuddin Ahmed Maizbhandari, Secretary General of the organization, stated, "Creating anarchic situation and sufferings for people are considered as the most heinous activities in Islam. Amini and his followers have done such heinous activities on the hartal day (April 4)."

However, IABC's Amini has identified the policy's Section 23.5, which speaks about opportunity and participation in employment, wealth, market and business for women, as 'un-Islamic'. Further, Section 25.2, which seeks to give women full control over the wealth they accumulate through earning, inheritance, loans and market management, is also declared 'anti-Islamic'. Amini insists that the IABC was not opposed to policies for the development of the women, but these must be formulated in the light of the holy Quran and Sunnah.

Various scholars have contested Amini's claims. Maulana Mohammad Ziaul Hasan, an Islamic academic from the Islamic Foundation argues, "Any literate person will understand that the word 'wealth' in Section 23.5 does not mean inherited wealth. Similarly, the word 'inherit' in section 25.2 does not imply equal share of property to women." Noted educationist Prof. Sirajul Islam Chowdhury declared, on April 18, "Amini's comments are very objectionable and tantamount to treason for denial of the Constitution." Professor Chowdhury asserted that Amini had taken a direct stand against the Constitution, which guarantees equal rights for all, irrespective of gender. Besides, other scholars noted, the women's development policy is not a law, but a guideline upholding the Constitution and existing laws.

Rattled by the protests, however, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina sought to appease the fundamentalists and announced, on April 20, 2011, that her Government had removed all contradictions from the NWDP to make it 'confusion-free': "After going through the Quran, especially Surah an-Nisa, we have removed contradictions from the policy." Hasina reiterated, further, that AL would never enact any law or adopt any policy which conflicted with the Quran or Sunnah. She added, further, that the Government would also append to the policy, the religious and social reservations mentioned in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. At the same time, she asserted that vested political groups were carrying out propaganda against the women and education policies in the name of religion and urged Islamic scholars to remain alert about such attempts. Again on April 26, the Prime Minister noted that a certain quarter "trading on religion" had been trying to mislead people by misinterpreting the NWDP, although Islam as a religion never approves inequality between man and woman.

Significantly, on December 7, 2010, the AL Government had approved the National Educational Policy (NEP) 2010, which prescribes a uniform curriculum and syllabus to be followed in general, madrassa and vocational education. Quami madrassa (private seminary) administrations were asked to form a commission and determine what they want to introduce in their institutions. All educational institutions were required to register with the Government to gain legality.

The Islamists, who favour the implementation of the Sharia have clubbed both NWDP and NEP together, and have opposed these measures as an unwarranted interference in their religious affairs.

The successful implementation of the NWDP and NEP could mark the beginning of a new era for Bangladesh, where Democracy has been restored and carried forward by two women Prime Ministers. Nevertheless, given the complex range of initiatives that the Sheikh Hasina Government has introduced to curb the activities of Islamist terrorists, extremists and fundamentalists, a delicate balancing act will be necessary to ensure that the system, long perverted by dogma and extremist ideologies operating at the very centre of power, is not tipped over into a fundamentalist backlash that would wipe out the gains of the past year.

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/sair/index.htm


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[ALOCHONA] Government Should Disband or Radically Reform RAB:Human Rights Watch



Continued Human Rights Abuses by Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion:Government Should Disband or Radically Reform Rapid Action Battalion

May 10, 2011

The Bangladeshi government is failing to keep its commitment to end extrajudicial killings, torture, and other abuses by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and hold those responsible accountable, Human Rights Watch said in a new report today.

The 53-page report, "'Crossfire': Continued Human Rights Abuses by Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion," documents abuses by RAB in and around Dhaka, the capital, under the current Awami League-led government. Nearly 200 people have been killed in RAB operations since January 6, 2009, when the government assumed office. While in opposition the Awami League promised to end extrajudicial killings, but since it came to office senior government officials have denied that RAB has committed abuses, and some have even justified them.

"After two years in office, the government has had more than enough time to take action to stop the RAB's murderous practices," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "A death squad is roaming the streets of Bangladesh and the government does not appear to be doing anything to stop it. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina needs to act."

The report builds on the 2006 Human Rights Watch report, "Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh's Elite Security Force." It is based on over 80 interviews with victims, witnesses, human rights defenders, journalists, law enforcement officials, lawyers, and judges.

Although the government has made many commitments to end the killings and to punish perpetrators, no RAB officer or official has ever been prosecuted for a "crossfire" killing or other human rights abuse. "Crossfire" is a blanket term used to justify most of the unit's killings.

The government should either make major steps towards RAB accountability and reform in the next six months or disband it, Human Rights Watch said. Donors such as the US, United Kingdom, and Australia should immediately withdraw all assistance and cooperation until and unless dramatic improvements take place.

RAB was formed in March 2004 as a composite force comprising members from the military -army, air force, and navy - the police, and members of Bangladesh's other law enforcement groups. Members are assigned from their parent organizations, to which they return after serving with the unit. RAB operates under the Ministry of Home Affairs and is commanded by an officer not below the rank of deputy inspector general of the police or the equivalent military rank. The unit is regarded as an elite counterterrorism force and indeed has targeted, apart from criminal suspects, alleged members of militant Islamist or left-wing groups.

In often standardized press statements, the unit claims that criminals were shot and killed in "crossfire" after they or their accomplices opened fire on RAB. Investigations by Human Rights Watch and Bangladeshi human rights organizations have found, however, that many victims have been executed while in the unit's custody. Bodies of those killed have often carried marks indicating that they had been tortured. Many people who survived periods in the unit's custody have alleged that they were tortured there.

In one recent case, on March 3, RAB personnel in civilian clothes picked up Rasal Ahmed Bhutto while he was minding a friend's shop in Dhaka. Bhutto's brother-in-law, Gulam Mustafa, told Human Rights Watch that one of their relatives in the army was able to contact colleagues in RAB and extract a promise that Bhutto would not be killed in "crossfire." However, on March 10, Gulam Mustafa said, Bhutto was brought to the area where he lived in a vehicle belonging to the unit and was shot and killed. RAB summoned journalists to show the body of an alleged criminal killed in crossfire.

"They brought him and committed cold-blooded murder," Mustafa told Human Rights Watch.

Members of the Awami League were victims of RAB while in opposition, and senior party officials contended that it engaged in politically motivated killings. But the impunity the unit has enjoyed since it was established continues under the Awami League government.

Echoing their predecessors in the BNP-led government, the home minister and other government representatives deny any wrongdoing by the unit and other law enforcement agencies. Instead, they cling to the fiction that all of those killed were shot by authorities acting in self defense.

In March 2009, for example, Law Minister Shafique Ahmed told Human Rights Watch that the government had no intention of investigating allegations of past human rights abuses by security forces, even though the perpetrators remained in the unit's ranks and would be likely to continue their illegal methods. Ahmed said that even though he did not condone "crossfire" killings, it should be remembered that RAB had only killed "criminals." In May 2010, despite numerous reports by human rights groups, the minister said that, "No more crossfire incidents are taking place in the country."

Home Minister Sahara Khatun, whose ministry supervises the unit, said in January 2011 in response to allegations of rising extrajudicial executions: "Many people are talking and will talk about this. But as the home minister, I am saying that the law enforcers' task is to bring the criminals to the book." When asked about allegations by Human Rights Watch on continuing extrajudicial killings, she said: "What will the law enforcers do - save themselves or die - when criminals open fire on them."

Port and Shipping Minister Shajahan Khan has said that crossfire killings are not human rights violations and that such killings have helped to bring extortion and other crimes under control.

Disappointingly, the government has not renounced any of these comments, Human Rights Watch said. Awami League officials have consistently argued that they do not need to root out abusers because they could exercise effective political control over the battalion, a claim that is belied by the evidence during the government's more than two years in office.

In a worrying development, RAB has recently begun to carry out enforced disappearances. Bangladeshi human rights groups say that it has started killing people without acknowledging any role in their deaths.

Human Rights Watch said that after seven years of widespread abuses and more than 700 deaths, if the unit's human rights record does not improve dramatically within the next six months and abusers are not prosecuted, the Bangladeshi government should disband it. In its place the government should create a new unit within the police or a new institution that puts human rights at its core to lead the fight against serious and organized crime and terrorism. Neither RAB nor any new force created should draw its forces from the military, which has a different operating culture than a civilian police force, Human Rights Watch said.

The US, UK, and Australia should insist that the Bangladesh government follow through on its commitments and ensure that there are prompt, impartial, and independent investigations into torture and deaths in the custody of the unit, Human Rights Watch said.

"Instead of an elite law enforcement unit designed to control crime and terrorism, RAB has become a deadly law breaker," said Adams. "It is now fair to ask whether the government has any intention of addressing this scourge."

Selected Testimony from the Report

"I asked them how much money they got to kill my son and told them that they could kill me in crossfire as well. One RAB officer then grabbed my neck and said, 'Get out of here, bitch. If you don't shut up, people here will kill you.' I asked him what he was doing there and if it was not his job to protect me. He then calmed down, asked me to leave and said that I could collect Pappu's body at Mitford hospital."

  • - Mother of Azad Hussein Pappu, killed by RAB on February 28, 2010

"The media was already there and RAB kept saying that Bhutto had been caught in a special operation. I started shouting at them, saying maybe Bhutto had done some bad things but where is the rule of law, how dare RAB kill Bhutto. The RAB officers just stared at me and said nothing, which frightened me. And then although some people supported me, a local Awami League leader came out and started raising slogans saying that Bhutto was a criminal anyway... RAB then took the body away for the autopsy. When I went to collect the body, I saw that there was only one bullet inside his ear. The police made me sign a blank sheet of paper. I didn't want to do it but then I just gave in."

  • - Gulam Mustafa, recounts the scene at the killing of a close relative

I was blindfolded and my hands were tied. I was forced to sit down. Four men in civilian clothes beat my legs with sugar cane stalks, while a man in RAB uniform sat on a chair watching. My legs were swollen like pillows.

  • - Baby Akhtar recounts her torture by RAB
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/05/10/bangladesh-broken-promises-government-halt-rab-killings

Full report( 53-page ): http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/bangladesh0511webwcover.pdf



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Re: [ALOCHONA] FW: World Bank Mischief with Madrassah --2009



Let me sign off with a quote from a scholar and columnist who has had to pay enough attention to the subject because he is a Pakistani. Husain Haqqani, who also happens to be the current Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, warned in an article in Foreign Policy (Nov.Dec. 2003):
"Now, with the prospect of madrassahs churning out tens of thousands of would-be militant graduates each year, calls for reform are growing. But anyone who hopes for change in the schools' curriculum, approach, or mind-set is likely to be disappointed. In some ways, Madrassahs are at the center of a civil war of ideas in the Islamic world".


>>>>>>>>>>> When Mr. Haqqani made this statement he was under payroll of an US think tank. He is smart and knows how to feel news of his master's choice. Bookings and similar think tanks spends a lot of time to confuse American people with false information.

For over 1400 years Madrassahs were never seen as a problem by Islamic communities. Traditionally it was part of solutions to many social problems. During 80's USA, ISI, Saudi Arabia, MOSAD and other parties started a violent ideology among some Pakistani and Afghan madrassahs which started a Taliban movement. Which is the heart of the problem. Bangladeshis were not part of it but some of this ideology was shared by handful of BD establishments as well.

The "Proper" solution to this issue was introduced by government of west Bengal (OF India) who introduced modern secular education along with religious education. We may follow this model, so we can have an enlightened generation.

I bet Mr. Haqqani will sing a different tune today. Since he went back to work of government of Pakistan. WB report may have some truth in it. No one should deny we have few problem madrassahs but we should not destroy this system rather improving it would be the choice for all of us.

-----Original Message-----
From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@hotmail.com>
To: Alochona Alochona <alochona@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Mon, May 9, 2011 10:57 am
Subject: [ALOCHONA] FW: World Bank Mischief with Madrassah --2009

 

 

Subject: World Bank Mischief with Madrassah
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 2009 17:25:05 -0400

WB Report on the Goodness of Qoumi Madrassahs
 
                 Farida Majid
 
 
The news of a new World Bank report on Quomi madrassahs in Bangladesh, published on 9th May, 2009 on the front page of the New Age, raised quite a few eyebrows. We learn from it that the madrassahs are normal educational venues of communities and survive under community and individual household donations. While percentages of madrassah running expenses that derive from these donations are mentioned, there is a conspicuous silence on the share of money that comes from abroad.  Though there are 5,230 Quomi madrassahs with about 14 lakh students, their uncontrolled proliferation should not cause any public alarm, the report claims. Quomis are doing a good job because all Muslim Bangladeshi parents only care about their children excelling in religious studies.
 
Several references are made to unfavorable "popular beliefs" about madrassahs that the World Bank report seems eager to dispel. The West's negative attitude towards 'Muslim countries' is also to be reckoned. The goodness of this staggering number (the count is according to a Bangladesh Bureau of Education Information & Statistics finding published in December 2008)  of quomi madrassahs will presumably cure the malady of West's  negative attitude towards 'Muslim countries'.
 
The report is especially troubling to those of us who have dedicated our lives to the service of education.  Curiously it does not make a single reference to the Education Ministry of Bangladesh or to any recognizable academician who is or had been connected with the education policy of the nation in any capacity.  Neither was any Islamic scholar or any representative of a respected, non-partisan Islamic institution named whose opinion supported the report's conclusions.
 
What made the World Bank decide that it is its business to study the goodness of quomi madrassahs in Bangladesh?  Since it is a fact that Madrassah system is a peculiar education system prevalent among the Muslim population of the subcontinent only and not anywhere else in the Muslim world, a pertinent question to ask would be: Has the World Bank made a similar report on the goodness of Madrassahs in Pakistan? What about the goodness of madsassahs of India?
 
We have been reading many accounts of Pakistani madrasahs for the last 15 years or so, especially since the rise of the Afghani Talibans in Pakistani refugee camps, and then, with renewed interest, after the trauma of September 11, 2001. United States Institute of Peace, whose mailings I used to receive regularly, completed a project on madrassahs in August 2005 conducted by Dr. Saleem H. Ali. It was largely descriptive with a predictable prescription for reform. Though it talked about madrassahs traditionally providing free religious education, boarding and lodging for the poor, I do not recall Dr. Ali saying anything about them 'doing a good job' for the general student population of today's Pakistan. In 2008 USIP brought out a book by C. Christine Fair titled The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan which is an extensive survey with lots of recommendations for reform.
 
"Reform" is a buzzword heard everywhere in connection with madrassah in the subcontinent. Deobandi and Barlevi Ulemas of both India and Pakistan express desire for madrassah reform in various interviews and articles I read on the internet. However, it would be a grave mistake to think the word bears the same meaning in every camp. For instance, none other than Syed Abul 'ala Moududi (1903-79) the Indian-born founder of Jamaat-e-Islami party and the father of modern Islamic fundamentalism, urged for reforming the existing madrassah system, calling for discarding "centuries old cultural heritage." Dr. Yoginder Sikand, a prolific Indian author and scholar of Islam and Muslim civilization in India, praises Moududi's  madrassah reform ideas in a review of Islami Nizam-e-Talim, a book in Urdu which was actually a document sent by Moududi to Pakistan Educational Commission in 1950, and recently re-issued by Jamaat-e-lslami Hind. [Posted on the internet by Sikand, 12/07/2007].
 
India, one should note in this context, holds the third largest Muslim population in the world, and the state of its massive number of madrassah-enrolled students should have provided the World Bank with a negative model, supposing it missed, by some miracle, any account of the Pakistani model.   Madrassah system's responsibility for the lamentable failure of providing appropriate education for the Muslim children of India is undeniable.  Hence Yogi Sikand, a sincere activist for renovating Indian madrassahs, sees good ideas emanating from Moududi's powerful polemic against the existing system. Yogi, my scholarly Indian friend, is oblivious of its political implications in Bangladesh.
 
Moududi's critique of madrassahs is, in fact, quite tricky when we delve deeper into what he wants changed and why, and what he would like to see in a revamped system that he describes as Islami Nizam-e-Talim.  This "reformed" system envisioned by Moududi aims to obliterate our local cultural identity (Bengali Muslims, Tamil Muslims, Gujarati Muslims, Punjabi Muslims, Sindhi Muslims, Pashtun Muslims, etc.), and indoctrinate the children in a Mussolini-modern type of 20th century ideology labeled "Islam." Along with our local cultural heritage he was, of course, opposed to the Western-style secular education introduced by the British Imperial rule. Moududi's educational policy, like his politics, is therefore geared to a contesting imperial form of domination in the shape of a religion-based global political system that is just as imperious in its rationalization of subjugation of human beings.
 
It is vitally important to understand this political agenda behind the proliferation of madrassahas everywhere in the Muslim world in the last two decades. Touted vigorously as "a moderate Islamic country" by the Bangladeshi Islamists, the extraordinary mushrooming of madrassahs can hardly be deemed 'moderate' by any count.  Successive governments, led by either military dictatorship or any of the two major political parties, endorsed extending the tentacles of madrassahs for fear of losing a public image of religious piety. There is an unspoken taboo against any intelligent discussion of madrassah system of education. Any objection to the politicized madrassahs of today's Bangladesh faces a counter-accusation of being a slave of the West, Zionist spy, anti-Islamic and in possession of a colonized mindset.
 
 Irony upon irony! In my opinion the madrassah system in the subcontinent, as we know it, owes its existence to the meddling of the white British colonizer sahib's education reforms of 19th century. There were more than 50,000 public schools in Bengal at the time of the pronouncements of Thomas B. Macaulay's infamous "Minutes on Indian Education" on 2nd February, 1835 in Calcutta.  Schools prior to that time were not state-sponsored in the way we now know, because there was no "State" in the European sense. There were land grants, shrine or mazaar grants or mandir/mosque-cum-pond grants from the Raja, Badshah or Sultan to sufi oganizations, or Brahmanical tols and ashramas, that would school boys in scriptural and other basic studies. Girls learned to read the Qur'an in traditional home-schools, or mosque verandas on Fridays as they still do in the villages of Bangladesh.
 
In the pre-colonial days madrassahs were ordinary schools where Muslim children were educated. Without colonial interference they would have withered on the vine, or muted into modern-day schools. Some extracurricular, mosque or orphanage affiliated schools would have remained to serve the community with religious education of the children.  Sunday schools do the same service in the Christian West.  Macaulay's "Minutes on Indian Education" initiated English-oriented curricula to the central metropolitan stage in 1835, shoving the madrassah in the shadowy margin.  That is where it remains to this day carrying on its intellectually impoverished but tenacious life.

The World Bank report on the goodness of quomi madrassahs in Bangladesh is a cruel joke considering the recent public exhibition of unruly madrassah students in ugly, violent demonstrations against freedom of artistic expression, women's development policy and Bengali cultural icon. It is utterly ridiculous for the report to suggest that Bangladeshi Muslim parents lack means to provide religious education to their children, and that thousands upon thousands of madrassahs are needed to fulfill the need.
 
Talk of structural reform is futile because these are already "reformed" from the old quomi madrassahs that used to be in Bengal some 200 years ago. Not only quomi, but I imagine all types of madrassahs in Bangladesh are already "reformed" following Moududi's poisonous prescription. It is an unexplored area of study, so I will urge all the persons involved in the education of our future generation to pay attention.
 
Let me sign off with a quote from a scholar and columnist who has had to pay enough attention to the subject because he is a Pakistani. Husain Haqqani, who also happens to be the current Pakistani Ambassador to the United States, warned in an article in Foreign Policy (Nov.Dec. 2003):
"Now, with the prospect of madrassahs churning out tens of thousands of would-be militant graduates each year, calls for reform are growing. But anyone who hopes for change in the schools' curriculum, approach, or mind-set is likely to be disappointed. In some ways, Madrassahs are at the center of a civil war of ideas in the Islamic world".
 
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©2009 Farida Majid is a scholar, former professor at CUNY, and a Board Member of Interreligious Center on Public Life, Boston, MA, U.S. A.


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