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http://www.konformist.com/911/modern-day-maccabees.htm
Killing Modern-Day Maccabees
By Diana Ralph
dianar@magma.ca
As I light the Chanukah candles, I am struck by the parallels between
the Maccabees and the Taliban. Both of them organized to overthrow
brutal, corrupt, and sacriligious governments. For both, their
unwavering goal was to defend what they interpreted as the holy
character of their countries. Both armies started with only a few
untrained, almost weaponless pious men (taliban means Islamic
students) who won impressive battles against overwhelming odds. Both
believed those victories reflected God's support for their cause.
Both inspired thousands of young, idealistic men to join them.
Mullah Mohammed Omar is the Judah Maccabeus of Afghanistan. Omar was
chosen as Taliban leader, not for his political or military ability,
but for his piety. Some even believe he was chosen by God. Like
Mattatias, Omar's father was a religious activist who died when Omar
was a young man. And like Judah, Omar chose to interrupt his
religious studies to fight for religious integrity (first against the
Soviets, then against the corrupt Mujaheddin, and most recently
against the US). He was a courageous soldier, wounded four times. In
the words of the old Chanukah song, he has been "strong, and brave
and bold."
I realize that you may well react with outrage at any such
musings. "How dare you compare the Maccabees to brutal, sexist,
terrorists like the Taliban?" you're probably saying. Please bear
with me. I'm writing this piece precisely because I believe the
lynch-mob, anti-terrorist rhetoric makes it hard to see the
commonalities among us, and to challenge our media-driven
assumptions.
The Taliban have been cast in the role of ultimate villains. But only
a couple of years ago they were hailed as heroes. The war against
the Soviet Union had left 1.5 million Afghanis dead, the country's
economy shattered, and millions of people starving and terrorized by
corrupt warlords. Mujahaddin routinely kidnapped and raped women,
girls and boys. So, many Afhanis welcomed the Taliban as pious
rescuers from decades of chaos.
Pakistan and Saudia Arabia also strongly supported the Taliban, both
out of Islamic solidarity and for their own self-serving political
motives. Even the United States and Britain supported the Taliban,
courting them for rights to construct oil and gas pipelines through
their territory, and seeing them as bringing enough peace to allow
corporate investment in the region.
As we now know, these "heroes" immediately established the most
rigidly fundamentalist Islamic regime in the world, virtually
imprisoning all its women, closing schools, destroying Buddahs,
attacking Buddists and Christians, publicly executing homosexuals,
cutting off the hands of thieves, and so on. I don't in any way
condone those activities.
But it was not for those crimes that the US turned against the
Taliban in 1998 and, this fall, declared a war of extermination
against them. Officially it was because of Taliban support for Osama
bin Laden after the September 11 attacks. However, this rationale
is suspect. It was the US who created and funded the terrorist
training camps where bin Laden learned his skills and forged the
roots of Al Quaeda. In 1996, the US refused a Saudi offer to
extradite bin Laden, and instead suggested that he be deported to
Afghanistan. Once there, bin Laden's forces grew stronger than the
Taliban's. The US knew they had little control over him. Last
August, five weeks before the September 11 attacks, President Bush
announced he was building "an international alliance to strangle the
Taliban leadership." And after September 11, the US rejected out of
hand the Taliban offer to turn bin Laden over to a neutral country
for trial. In other words, the bin Laden excuse for the attack on the
Taliban doesn't hold water.
Neither does the "terrorist" label. The Taliban, though brutal
warriors, were more concerned with restoring Islam in Afghanistan and
with getting recognition from the US as the legitimate government of
Afghanistan, than with promoting terrorism abroad. Their association
with bin Laden was largely based on his unfulfilled promises to
finance significant infrastracture projects in Afghanistan-roads,
hospitals, and the like.
Most Taliban members are uneducated, barely literate boys, mostly 14
to 24 year olds, many of whom grew up in refugee camps. They were
drawn by the invitation to do something meaningful at great personal
risk. The Taliban's extreme fundamentalist policies, their brutal
massacres of Uzbeks and Tajiks, and their lack of connections with
the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan had already generated a great
deal of domestic opposition to them. They were on their way out, but
the US wanted to assure they left on US terms.
The US war on the Taliban has far more to do with its own greed for
oil and power. For at least the last four years, the US has been
maneuvering for control of the Central Asian region. As Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Bush Senior's Secretary of State, wrote in 1997, "For
America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. ...America's global
primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its
preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained". The Taliban
had grown increasingly anti-American, and "unreasonable" because they
were not giving the US Unocal oil company free access to construct a
gas pipeline through Afghanistan. "At one moment during the
negotiations, the US representatives told the Taliban, `either you
accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet
of bombs." And so, from the US perspective, they had to die.
How to get the US public to agree to this power grab? As Brzezinski
points out: "the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands
popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge
to the public's sense of domestic well-being." There is growing
evidence that the September 11 attacks may well have been engineered
by the US to create just such a crisis. (For example, the US got
advance notice of a plan to hijack commercial airlines and target the
World Trade Center. But the National Command Authority failed to
scramble aircraft to counter the attacks until over an hour after the
first attack. And Pakistani ISI Chief, General Mahmud (with strong
CIA links) ordered an aide to wire transfer $100,000 to Mohammed
Atta, the lead terrorist in the suicide hijackings. ) If this
shocking news is so, there is absolutely no justification for the
genocidal war on the Taliban.
I raise these parallels between the Maccabees and the Taliban to
highlight the need for clear thinking in this post-September 11 era.
This past week's headlines cheered the US victories in killing people
associated with the Taliban, including their wives and children. (Is
this how we protect the women of Afghanistan?) Far more serious is
the threatened death by starvation, freezing, land mines,
and "collateral damage" of many millions of Afghani people, most of
whom have nothing to do with the Taliban.
It seems to me that the parallels between the Maccabees and the
Taliban raise several important questions. First of all, we need to
challenge our own assumptions about who is a divinely appointed hero
and who a terrorist. The Maccabee victory was one of the few Jews
ever had. As a people, we have far too much experience with genocidal
attacks by power-hungry people eager for scapegoats. As we celebrate
Chanukah, we should also stand up against the genocidal assault on
the Taliban, a group much like the Maccabees.
That doesn't mean that we passively condone their zealous excesses.
But UN and international sanctions, as well as internal Afghani
opposition to the Taliban's policies would have reversed them with
far less destitution than Bush's brutal war. I pray that this week,
we commit to remember the humanity, courage, and godliness of all
Muslim people, including the Taliban.
http://www.konformist.com/911/us-v-them.htm
US Good Guys vs. Them Bad Guys
Confused? Having difficulty telling the good guys from the bad guys?
Use this handy guide to differences between Terrorists and the U.S.
Government:
TERRORISTS: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader is the spoiled son of a powerful
politician, from extremely wealthy oil family
TERRORISTS: Leader has declared a holy war ('Jihad') against
his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him;
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.
US GOVERNMENT: Leader has declared a holy war ('Crusade') against
his 'enemies'; believes any nation not with him is against him;
believes god is on his side, and that any means are justified.
TERRORISTS: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders who
preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution of
non-believers
US GOVERNMENT: Supported by extreme fundamentalist religious leaders
who preach hatred, intolerance, subjugation of women, and persecution
of non-believers
TERRORISTS: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people in
a free and fair democratic election
US GOVERNMENT: Leadership was not elected by a majority of the people
in a free and fair democratic election
TERRORISTS: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them
children, in cold blooded bombings
US GOVERNMENT: Kills thousands of innocent civilians, some of them
children, in cold blooded bombings
TERRORISTS: Operates through clandestine organization (al Qaeda) with
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other
terrorist tactics
US GOVERNMENT: Operates through clandestine organization (CIA) with
agents in many countries; uses bombing, assassination, other
terrorist tactics
TERRORISTS: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to Supposed
leader of US GOVERNMENT
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader has extensive financial ties to
Supposed leader of TERRORIST
TERRORISTS: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical
companies
US GOVERNMENT: Supposed leader invested heavily in US bio-chemical
companies
TERRORISTS: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and
undermine civil liberties
US GOVERNMENT: Using war as pretext to clamp down on dissent and
undermine civil liberties
Okay - I know there are differences, but ........
http://www.konformist.com/911/ok-jihad.htm
10/16/01
Adam Parfrey
ap@feralhouse.com
THE OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING JIHAD
"The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror" by David
Hoffman, published in 1998 and put out of print as the means of
settling a two million dollar libel suit against Feral House from
Oliver "Buck" Revell, who had just retired from the FBI as its Deputy
Chief. Feral House did not carry legal insurance at time of the suit;
First Amendment organizations, and PEN and ACLU "regretted" not being
able to assist Feral House. Lawyers competent in publishing law
required retainer fee down payment far higher than Feral House had in
its bank account.
A year after Feral House was forced to settle, "Buck" Revell moved on
to sue author David Hoffman and former Pentagon CID investigator Gene
Wheaton, who was quoted in the OKC bombing book about Revell's
connections to Oliver North and death squads. Hoffman's defense
received funding by a wealthy midwest conspiracy nut, and Revell's
suit was thrown out of court as baseless.
When reading the "Teflon Terrorist" chapter of Hoffman's book today,
I discovered a possible reason why the ACLU refused to assist Feral
House in a bogus lawsuit. One footnote recalled that the ACLU worked
tirelessly on behalf of Abraham Ahmed, who the legal organization
claimed was a victim of racist profiling. On the same day as bombing,
Ahmed attempted to fly from Oklahoma City to Amman, Jordan, but was
stopped at Heathrow Airport after American Airlines flight security
notified the FBI of the Middle Easterner's suspicious behavior. Ahmed
was cuffed and returned to the U.S. after his luggage was found to
contain such things as two car radios (the sort used to bomb Pan Am
103), silicon, solder, shielded and unshielded wire, a timing device,
a photo album with pictures of weapons and missile, and a blue
jogging suit similar to that seen worn by an Arab suspect in front of
the Murrah building on the morning of the blast. Perhaps prompted by
ACLU's media tirade, the FBI promptly released suspect Abraham Ahmed,
and President Clinton apologized to the Arab-American community.
Feral House's OKC bombing tome, praised by Gore Vidal in the
September '01 issue of Vanity Fair as the best book covering the
terror attack, appears to have important relevance to the September
11 tragedy.
"Teflon Terrorists" documents how McVeigh and Terry Nichols had
continual contacts with known terrorist entities up to the day of the
Murrah Building blast. Nichols was married to a Filipina woman, and
took trips to Cebu City, Philippines (WITHOUT his wife) in late '92
and early '93 to meet with such friendly folk from the Abu Sayyaf
terrorist org as Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Hakim Murad, Wali Khan Amin Shah
and several others to discuss the bombing of the OKC building.
Murad was arrested in 1995 for the initial World Trade Center
bombing, and after viewing the Oklahoma City Bombing on a New York
jail television set, he remarked to a guard that the "Liberation Army
of the Philippines" -- a group connected to Abu Sayyef, was
responsible for the blast. Later, Abu Sayyaf leader Edwin Angeles
corrected Murad for the record: "It was the Palestine Liberation Army
and the Islamic Jihad which Murad was referring to. This army is
associated with Hamas and is based in Lebanon."
After the Oklahoma City Bombing, Saudi intelligence told the FBI that
Iraq had hired Pakistanis to do the Murrah Building job. Edwin
Angeles is a Pakistani.
David Hoffman's now-banned book also interviews Cary Gagan, who for
years trucked cocaine for PLO-affiliated Arabs while informing for
the DEA. Gagan, whose written immunity is reproduced in David
Hoffman's book, was freaked one day after finding that he was not
trucking coke but 30 duffel bags of Ammonium Nitrate explosives from
Sandex Explosives of Las Vegas, C4 plastic explosives, and a Lely
farm mixer, the same mixer seen with McVeigh at the Dreamland Hotel
in Junction City by witness David King. Gagan's urgent and frequent
calls to the DEA, and later, the FBI, were ignored.
The Neo-Nazi Middle East Connection
Members of Elohim City, the Oklahoma-based neo-Nazi/Christian
Identity operation visited and called by Tim McVeigh -- even the day
before the bombing -- spoke a lot about blowing up federal buildings
and killing Jews and blacks. Carol Howe, who informed on Elohim City
for the ATF, told of discussions of where to buy Syntex plastic
explosive and favored areas to explode it. Howe's informant reports
actually became discovery evidence and appendices to the Feral House
book after the ATF arrested her for compiling lists of bomb
ingredients and using her phone to distribute racist information --
all undercover activities performed on behalf of her employer -- the
ATF.
Carol Howe's one time boyfriend, Elohim City resident Dennis Mahon,
even boasted to journalists that he was paid by Iraq for anti-Gulf
War and anti-semitic mischief. But Iraq severed their ties with Mahon
soon after the bombing. "The cut me off -- a month after the bombing!
Bastards!"
Hatred of Jews and American government is a purpose shared by
Christian Identity and Muslim fundamentalists. On April 19, 1995 the
exact date the Murrah building was bombed, "Covenant, Sword and Arm
of the Lord" (CSA) member Richard Wayne Snell "chuckled and laughed"
as he watched television coverage of the Oklahoma City disaster,
hours before his execution for murdering a black state trooper and a
pawnbroker he believed was Jewish. In 1983, Snell and other CSA
members were arrested for attempting to truck bomb the Murrah
building.
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