Is it racist for us to give credibility to HiJackers legend?

[Keith Mothersson]

I wrote this orginally as a discussion paper for the recent Leeds 911 weekend, and after talking with people I found no one to really stand up for the Hi-jacker story.

However there is nervousness by some that it might appear 'intolerant' to exclude people from the 911 TRUTH movement on the grounds that what they believe in is either untrue or clearly not substantiated (innocent until proven guilty) and mostly attested to by proven liars and moreover extremely damaging to Muslims in the UK and around the world (blood libel).

After all the 'hi-jacker' bit is hardly an insignificant add-on to the 'main' 911 story, it is the whole crux of it, designed in from the start and the hinge on which a Crusade on and against the Oil-lands would soon be swung.

So I do feel that it may be time to conclude that we have a reviewable and rebuttable presumption against the truth of the 911 hi-jackers story. So please, if you think you have clear evidence that there were any Arab hijackers on the day please let us know, fight your corner.

The truth matters, and it would matter a lot if we got this wrong or became unduly intolerant - as opposed to unduly tolerant at present?? (After all why - other than perhaps our imperial racism - is the proposed no-hijackers position more shocking to us/others than the idea that Islamic or merely Arab radicals actually flew planes and caused the deaths on 911?!)

Then I posted this on this site,
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=72569#72569
but I posted it in the articles about 911 section, as I wanted to find out what researchers like Ian Henshall make of my line of argument. However the way the argument developed responded to the issue of how we explain the planes issue (various theories including no planes) so was removed to the controversial theories netherworld by our good moderator, John White.

So now I would like to post this here where I arguably should have posted it initially because it relates to a clear political issue for the 'Western' Truth movement generally - have we inadvertently developed a version of 911 truth which leaves Muslims in the Sh*t? - and for the 911 Truth Campaign (Britain and Ireland) specifically - namely:

If in dealing with the public, media etc we and our speakers are supposed to 'stick to the basics', what are they??

Can we please agree that however we argue Inside Job [physics of Manhattan building demolitions, etc, which shows them bang to rights] and other Smoking Guns [e.g. put-options] we should definitely not any longer do so in conjunction with explicit formulations about hijackers or use other formulations which imply hijackers (e.g. the 'Attack on America', or 'US administration 'complicity' in 911').

Please join in the discussion, but no need to argue here the issue of what kind of planes, if any, hit the Manhattand buildings and other sites. Go to the Controversial Theories section posting mentioned above if you wouold like to contribute on those lines. This side should carry forward the argument about the hi-jackers directly - evidence for/against and political implications for our campaign.

[size=24]Is the official story of 911 inherently a racist tale?

or
If there is no good evidence for the hi-jacker story, then is it racism which leads people to assume Muslim guilt, in which case please can we call a racist spade a racist spade?

The other day I was speaking with a comrade in the SWP and he said that instead of diverting energies into 911 we should concentrate on helping counter Islamophobia and racism. I answered that I felt that if the Left and StoptheWar want to be of maximum help to the Muslim and Asian/Arab etc communities in the UK or round the world, then set piece battles with the BNP were less relevant than researching and speaking the truth about 911 which would be the most 'upstream' and relevant form of anti-racist solidarity which they could offer. Several Muslims I know in Scotland certainly feel this.

Some of us can remember the furore when Enoch Powell told a story (which he couldn't corroborate when challenged) about some white family in Wolverhampton being persecuted by blacks pushing * through their letter box. My point here is that it was unconscious racism in many 'white' people (pink earthlings actually) which led them/us to give credence to this story and repeat it as gospel, even though there was no good evidence for it.

So my question is : in the absence - arguably {*} - and I do argue - of credible evidence ('Innocent until proven Muslim'?) about Arab/Muslim hijackers killing people on 911, isn't it time we 'called' time on the official story as the same sort of racist urban folk-myth? {* at any rate I think the onus is very much on those who believe in hijackers on the day to come up with credible evidence}.

Actually, 'racism' is quite a heavy charge the way the left throws it around at each other, and many others of us besides. So let me share my sense that almost of all us growing up in the belly of the Imperial Beast should assume

a) we have some racist assumptions knocking around, and

b) that we should try to become aware of these as an ongoing process of awakening to our common humanity, and that

c) a normal part of responsible mutual socio-political education is to question each other's assumptions as we all grow together as a society, which is not the same thing as 'othering' each other with sudden hatred for some 'politically-incorrect' remark or position.

I know we are a truth community and so in a sense it is inappropriate for me or any one else to try to 'dictate' a line we 'must' all follow. Please do read what follows in the light of this shared understanding. But now that there is a second website, www.911truthcampaign.net/, and a committee around the Campaign, we do now have spokespeople who do in practice and now in theory speak for something called 'the campaign' and so to that extent it is reasonable for us to discuss what they/we all should most usefully be emphasising from among the several 911 messages.

In this post I want to explore the politics of which 911 messages we highlight, and relate this to the relationship of the Campaign committee and the demand/project of an International Investigative Tribunal (IIT) vis a vis the rest of our diverse network and truth community. Here goes.

In my opinion the 911 plot goes back a long way, to the aftermath of the Gulf War when Bush 41 realised that it would be madness to occupy Iraq for lack of public support. There is a profound connection between the FBI assisted and ?CIA-egged-on attack on the WTC in Feb 1993 and the publication a few months later of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations argument in Foreign Affairs. From 1993 lots of other 'Islam is a big problem' articles began to appear in trend-setting Western journals, to be followed by suspiciously well-promoted novels. And of course we get a sequence of FFT events, including the development of the myth (and reality sometimes) of the suicide bomber.

Of course directly on the day of September 11th it was mostly 'Christians' [cultural/nominal or real] who perished (with many dead from other faiths too) but the immediate victims of big FFT events aren't necessarily the principal victims. FFT events are aimed at all civilians (on one level); and at civil society and democracy (at another level);, and - in the case of 911 it was aimed at Islam/Muslims at still another level, that is what it was for.

For this reason we non-Muslims should pay special attention to what Muslim scholars and activists have to say about 911 and the 'Clash of Civilisations'=Crusade that is the Great War on Terror/Long War. It isn't just about the numbers of Muslims worldwide and our mutual benefit from broadening coalitions, it is also that some people have had a long painful experience of certain methods. As one Palestinian said at our Scottish conference: 'we Palestianians are well acquainted with FFT ever since Abu Nidal and before, e.g. the Lavon scandal'.

As a general principle it is wise that we try to pay special attention to the oppressed not out of charitable pity, nor even solely out of solidarity, but also because they can often see things that people with closer links in with the culture of oppressors can't quite see or have the luxury of being able to keep forgetting.

Although many cries of 'political correctness gone mad' are in my eyes suspect, we should admit that (like those very cries) charges of racism or sexism or classism etc, have also at times been abused and overextended, and turned into a lazy all-purpose trump card for skilled guilt-trippers. Nevertheless I believe that understanding the dynamics of racism, sexism, classim etc are vital tools for liberation for all of us: 'Change happens when those who don't normally speak get listened to by those that don't normally listen' (John O'Neill), or 'Truth is in the eyes of the poor' (Brecht).

It seems to me that Muslims and too many nonMuslims keep taking a subtly different angle on 911 - but the latter aren't aware that this is even the case, let alone that this can cause (or fail to help allleviate) difficulties, even pain for our Muslim brothers and sisters. I recall one very eminent, well-placed and well informed Muslim activist left off working with us in no small part because most of us kept focussing on the bits of 911 of least relevance to Muslims, ignoring Jim Hoffman's demolition evidence on www.911research.wtc7.net and in our leaflets and interviews conceding the hijacker stuff by use of the word 'complicit'.

Alerted by the said very reasonable activist I was impressed by the strength of the demolition evidence and since then this is something which I have felt the need to keep going on about within our movement in 2004/05. I was even shocked on Sept 11 2006 to still hear one of our very esteemed spokespersons saying to the camera that the Bush regime was 'complict in 911'. (Was the Yorkshire Ripper 'complicit' in the murder of women?)

Back in 2004/05 some of us were pressing for us to have the confidence to push on through from Unanswered Questions and then Lihop (BushCo 'complicit') to Made It Happen On Purpose, but which I now see was merely Buildings Mihop.

Of course the transition by most of us to MIHOP is commonly assumed to have happened, and certainly the switch of our (primary) focus to the Triple Towers has represented a crucial advance IMO, but has it been fully accomplished yet? I recall that at the end of his great Physics lecture Prof Jones makes some remarks which show he still assumes the truth of the hijacker story! And even Willie Rodriguez thinks that he may have seen one of the 'hi-jackers' casing the North tower a few weeks earlier ??!?? - Assuming Willie's memory is accurate he should also remind journalists etc that maybe there were no Arab high-jackers, and that even if he did see one of the supposed high-jackers, then they could have been patsies told to go and hang around to pick up some drugs (though actually his handlers' true intention was getting people like Willie to remember him!) .

As I see it we make a mistake when we articulate MIHOP as Cheney/Kroll Associates/Guliani, etc orchestrated it' - which includes a strong focus on controlled demolition but somehow runs that alongside stuff about Cheney,etc 'allowing' and responding to and exploiting the vicious 'attack on America' (misleading New Pearl Harbour metaphor) by fanatical 'Islamic suicide terorists'. (Reichstag fire is a much better metaphor).

I prefer to think and speak out in 'full-MIHOP' terms and try to link 'Buildings Mihop' to 'Whole Scenario Mihop' - which includes the institutionally racist role of the corporate media from day one (relaying the boxcutter stories, then the phoney phonecalls; all the news media trying to commission 'pictures of Arabs rejoicing', some even recycling images from the intifada and passing them off as evidence of how much these Muslims/Arabs hate us all to celebrate the murder of 3000 innocent Americans, or 10,000 as the then estimates were).

To put it another way, to avoid colluding with Islamophobia - , we need to always make a point of linking INSIDE JOB (the neocon perpetrators engineered it all ) to FRAME UP (no-suicide hijackers on the day, surely, just a parade of Military-intelligence trained and CIA-linked patsies, who were probably killed some completely other way) - which is the link into War Pretext and Blood Libel, as well as a disguised Political Coup.

We are a wide truth community and loose network movement, only part of which comes into organised focus as the 911 Truth Campaign (Britain and Ireland) - and all credit to the office bearers who take responsibility for this side of our activities, and others of us who assit them. But after the inaugural 2005 gathering I had the impression and hope we were going to create a confederal co-ordinating council of regional and specialist functional representatives Now we seem to have taken a different path, in which the first part of our 911 truth community, network or 'alternative society' - apart from this website, to become organised is the 911 Truth Campaign, whose most special project is the project/demand for an Independent International Investigation.

However by its nature this project is all about reaching out to politicians, academics, media figures, organisations of responsible professionals such as lawyers or scientists, etc. 'Us in suits' we called it at one point. In this context the main message(s) will often tend to move back towards the centre ground ... Unanswered Questions plus Lihop at best, with no desire to 'alienate' supporters like Michael Meacher by asking them to disbelieve in an absolutely key ingredient of the whole 911 Myth (in a sociological sense) - the delineation and affirmation of Those Alien Bad People who Threaten Us Good People. (That is where the emotional sticking points seem to come for many people, which completely gets in the way of calmly investigating the physics of the buildings collapse.)

Please realise that I am NOT knocking the specific utilty, indeed great value, of the Tribunal project and anybody's stance of scepticism (so long as the latter isn't a cover for lack of courage to confront the truth so far as should be clear.). What does concern me is

if the rest of us feel we have to moderate our messages to fit in with Political-Establishment outreach priorities;

if nonMuslims feel it easier and comfier for them to stick with uncertainty (the experts disagree) about things we know fine well about (speed the towers fall at is known, so is height of towers, so are the laws of physics);

and if by halving and then halving the difference with the mainstream we revert to a discourse of not-knowing and 'complicity' which subtly sells out our Muslim brothers and sisters, who have the strongest interest in ensuring that the 911 movement as a whole keeping on pushing through to the demolition of the blood libel of the Islamic Suicide Hi-Jackers, for whose existence that day there is IMO mountains of bad evidence, and no good evidence, certainly no credible CCTV evidence, which I think is a dead give-away that it doesn't exist. (As per 7/7, Madrid and Diana/Dodi assassination.)

Some nonMuslims are blissfully unaware that some/many Muslims don't come to our meetings for fear of beng picked up for 'terrorism' and perhaps shipped off or incarcerated. For them 911 truth isn't an after work hobby, a facinating murder mystery or parlour game. Rather 911 truth is a vital lifeline and source of hope and an important part of good mental health and self-respect for their communities.

Two more examples of where we go wrong, IMO: For years we have been waiting for Michael Meacher to speak out, and have sometimes referred to him (and other Lihoppers) as being among the 'supporters' of the 911 truth movement. Well they may support an International Inquiry, but if they won't let go of hijacker mythology then what really is their relationship to the truth? Is truth just something one can leave waiting indefinitely for fear of ridicule, or jilt whenever we worry we may get a bit of heat from the snearers of the metropolitan press?

Although I salute Flamesong for initiative and execution, I was personally disappointed to receive his Sherlock Homes style flyers about a supposed Air Defense stand down. Not that that isn't, properly framed in a layered argument, a very cogent minor or initial doubt-sowing part of our case, but that we should NOT please please be arguing for it and or an International Tribunal etc in ways which basically drop Muslims in it (Blood Libel = collective guilt) by accepting the hijacker nonsense and actually represent a step backwards, which is where we will go if the (respectable) International Inquiry tail comes to wag our gloriously blunt 911 truth movement.

I know Flamesong feels hurt my my criticism of his wellmeant effort, but I hope he can forgive me if I have been too blunt (I genuinely tried to be gentle in saying why I couldn't give his leaflets out). Basically I don't believe a word the authorities told us about the times of the take-offs, hi-jacks, change of directions (two planes are supposed to have wandered off for hundreds of miles in the wrong direction), transponders off, and even hitting supposed destinations. I know that Flamesong was offering an 'imminent critique', pretending to take the authorities at their word the better to refute them, but most people reading his postcards will simply have had their (media-encouraged) belief in a key aspect of the official story reinforced, which is actually the key aspect from a political point of view, IMO.

Finally, let me deal with those who cite the huge mass of 'evidence' from the likes of Richard Clark, from the Able Danger whistle-blowers and investigations, etc - spook stuff i call it. Note firstly that Richard Clarke (a top anti-terrorism czar) doesn't tell the elementary truth about the demolition of the three (and more) Manhattan buildings, nor do the supposed 'whistle-blowers' - so why should we believe a word they tell us about 'intelligence failures' to stop Attah and co in time? Isn't that probably just legend reinforcement disinfo, whether consciously so (Clarke) or unawarely so?

Secondly it is a key aspect of the model of False Flag terrorism which Tarpley has advanced that FFT MIHOP has a Lihop dimension nested within it - as some of the honest law enforcement officers must be duped or moved off the case or their reports ignored, etc and thus prevented by in-the-know or semi-involved law officers from arresting the patsies before they have gotten themselves noticed enough prior to whatever atrocity they will then be blamed for.

As for the reports about plans to attack New York etc which many foreign intelligence services 'got wind of' and passed on to the CIA, NSA, etc this too is not necessarily proof of the truth of the 911 story, rather it could be the product of the spreading of information in certain 'radical Islamist circles' (Al-CIA-dah?) with a view to creating post-hoc plausibility for the Islamic hijacker legend. There is a mountain of spook-derived ambiguous evidence (actual future hi-jackers or loudmouth patsies?) but for me the clincher is to keep coming back to no CCTV footage of the men going through the relevant international airports that day, except the wrong airport (quite apart from the trifling difficulty of several of the miraculously listed 19 turning up alive, or have we all got that bit wrong?).

So what good evidence do we really have of the existence of murderous suicide hijackers on 911?

If none, we should as a campaign say so. Nothing would be of more relevance to building our global truth movement on anti-imperialist [/size]baselines.


Posted on May 20th; Now reposted in Campaigning section, Monday 21st.

Depending on the outcome of this consultation and the evidence presented perhaps, I may or may not call a Poll around June 6th or so, to the effect that 'those representing the 911 truth campaign, or speaking in support of the 911 truth movement more generally, are hereby asked to stop giving validity to the Hi-jacker story, either explicitly or implicitly'.

(Suggestions for exact wording of the question welcome. Of course anyone else can also post a question!)
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