[ Thursday, March 27, 2008 ]
The Smiling Suicide BomberBy Matthias Gebauer in Kabul
Cüneyt Ciftci, a young man from Bavaria, blew himself up outside a government building in Afghanistan, killing two US soldiers and two Afghanis. SPIEGEL ONLINE has obtained a video documenting the final minutes in the life of the first German-born suicide bomber.
It's the perpetual grin that is most disturbing. The young man looks directly into the camera. He seems cheerful in his small cap and white shalwar kameez, the traditional Afghan dress. He smiles as he hoists the heavy bags of chemicals on to his shoulders. Grinning, he points skyward to Allah.
His permanent smile comes despite his knowledge -- or perhaps precisely because of it -- that he will soon die. It's impossible to hear what he is saying. Flowery suras from the Koran are dubbed over his voice. "How lucky you are, that death brings you the sunrise," sings a man's voice. "That you go to the front, that you burn in the name of Islam." Then the young man says goodbye to his companions. Before he drives off, he kneels down in the dust and prays one last time.
The man is the 28-year-old German-born Turkish citizen Cüneyt Ciftci (more...), who was born in the Bavarian town of Freising. Until April 2, 2007 he lived together with his family in Ansbach. The images come from a 45-minute DVD which SPIEGEL ONLINE obtained this week in Afghanistan from the media wing of the Taliban. SPIEGEL ONLINE was first offered the film, "Source of the Jihad," in Pakistan. A middleman with contacts to the Taliban wanted to sell it for a five-figure US dollar sum.
The actual makers of the video, however, were not interested in money. All they wanted was the price of a courier to Kabul. The only important thing was the message, namely that Cüneyt Ciftci blew himself up on March 3 in front of the Sabari District Center in the eastern Afghanistan province of Khost. And that it was a jihadi from Germany who claimed the lives of the 23-year-old US soldier Stephen Koch, his 22-year-old comrade Robert Rapp and two Afghans.
The filmmakers recorded the attack. They positioned themselves with two cameras around the District Center and waited for the blue Toyota Dyna light truck with Ciftci at the wheel. Calmly, without the wild zooms and wobbles common to terrorist videos, they waited for the big bang. When the huge cloud of smoke finally rose and the explosion was heard, they yelled: "Allahu Akbar -- God is great!"
Anyone who views the pictures can see why the bombers could not yet be identified from their body parts or DNA. The explosion was enormous. The editors of the Web site of the radical Islamist group Islamic Jihad Union, who first reported the suicide attack on March 6, bragged about 4.5 tons of explosives. That amount seems excessive. Nevertheless, the video images show that the US military actually escaped relatively lightly. The mushroom cloud from the explosion rose a good 80 meters into the sky.
But the Taliban's propaganda experts weren't just interested in the March 3 explosion in Khost. The three days immediately prior to the attack were documented as well. In one scene, a painstakingly accurate sketch of the American building to be targeted lies on the floor. Huddled around it are a number of men whispering inaudibly, their faces turned away from the camera. A line was drawn indicating the route to be taken by the truck bomb -- a perfectly planned act of terror.
Later, one sees the white sacks of chemicals used to manufacture the bomb, along with a trigger mechanism, including a long black cable that comes to an end right next to the driver's seat. And once again, there is an image of Ciftci smiling into the camera, this time sitting behind the wheel of the truck. Just a short time later, he would push the button -- and, at four minutes past four on that Monday afternoon, the target would lie in ruins.
The images show the last mission of an Islamist from the German state of Bavaria -- the end of a journey which took him from the quiet village of Ansbach to the front in Afghanistan. Cüneyt Ciftci found his way into Islamist circles in Germany via mosques in both Bavaria and the Baden-Württemberg town of Ulm before joining the jihad with the Taliban. Now, the smiling jihadi has become a recent entry into the eternal list of martyrs.
But the video is more than just a flowery farewell. It appears that the Taliban deliberately hand-picked the Turkish youth from Germany to appear in a recruiting video. Terrorist investigators already suspect that Ciftci was intended to be an example for a new generation of jihadis.
Although a number of Islamist terror plots have been hatched in Germany -- the most famous of which being the 9/11 attacks, which were partly planned by a terror cell led by Mohamed Atta in Hamburg -- Ciftci is the first suicide bomber to have been born and raised in Germany. That fact is making German security and intelligence authorities very worried. The DVD shows exactly what young radical Islamists, of which hundreds are known in Germany, can become within a short period of time.
Ciftci was already under suspicion due to his contacts to the Sauerland terror cell (more...), whose three members were arrested in September 2007. He tried again and again to get German papers, something the police found suspicious. When the authorities asked him to come in for questioning in early April 2007, he feared he would be arrested and took off with his family. It was presumably Adem Y., also a member of the Sauerland cell, who told him at the time how to travel through Syria and Iran to Pakistan, where his destination was an Islamic Jihad Union terror camp.
From Pakistan, Ciftci must have at some point made it to the Taliban in Afghanistan. The propaganda DVD also features a recent speech by the Taliban legend Jalaluddin Haqqani. For years, it was unclear what had happened to Haqqani, a top Taliban commander.
The video marks something of a comeback for him. "With God's help, the United States will leave Afghanistan with their heads hung in shame," a confident Haqqani announces. He leaves no doubt as to the determination of jihadis like Ciftci. "One should not hurry in war," he says. "We have a lot of patience."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,543768,00.html
art [11:51 PM] |
[ Thursday, April 19, 2007 ]
SENATOR John McCain Sings 'Bomb, Bomb Iran'
John McCain at a recent engagement responds to a question by singing 'Bomb Iran' to the Beach Boys song 'Barbara Ann.'
Disgusting Behavior for a U.S Senator. But expected of a Hawk.
art [3:00 PM] |
[ Saturday, January 27, 2007 ]
Focus Group
art [12:08 PM] |
[ Wednesday, January 24, 2007 ]
| The story of what does not get reported in Iraq by the mainstream media. | |
art [11:23 PM] |
[ Tuesday, January 23, 2007 ]
In The Olden Days, An Anti-Semite Was Someone Who Hated Jews; These Days it’s Someone Whom The Jews Hate.Accusing an opponent of anti-Semitism is probably the most powerful political weapon that exists in Western society. Its destructiveness equals – if not surpasses - the label of paedophilia. The whole topic has developed over time to such a powerful taboo, that there is hardly an open discussion of anti-Semitism, without the participants scrambling to uncritically condemn it as utterly evil. Anybody suspected – or worse - publicly accused of anti-Semitic views or activities, becomes automatically – without trial and conviction – a societal leper. He can kiss his job and career good-bye, and will loose, more often than not, most of his friends and family, in many cases even his freedom.[1]
art [10:39 PM] |
A Look Inside The Atomic Bomb
art [10:30 PM] |
[ Saturday, January 13, 2007 ]
CBC Interviews Jimmy Carter: Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid Pt 2
art [4:48 PM] |
CBC Interviews Jimmy Carter: Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid Pt 1
art [4:46 PM] |
If Americans Knew...
art [4:43 PM] |
U.S.-Israel Empire TV
art [4:40 PM] |
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy
art [4:31 PM] |
[ Sunday, December 17, 2006 ]
Roger Waters - Leaving Beirut 2006art [12:54 AM] | George Galloway
art [12:38 AM] |
[ Saturday, December 16, 2006 ]
amiri barakaFlashback!
art [11:34 PM] |
[ Thursday, December 14, 2006 ]
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12269198/ISRAEL
Israel's officially unacknowledged nuclear arsenal is the worst-kept secret in the Middle East, and that is no accident. No potential foe can discount it. Recent revelations suggest Israel has about 100 nuclear weapons in a mix of gravity bombs and missiles. The Israeli air force would rely on U.S.-supplied aircraft such as the F-4E and F-15 to deliver them.
art [8:05 PM] | http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=E66C7367-2937-45EB-A17F-4CBD11E1F127&f=00&fg=copy
DUKE ON MSNBC VIDEO
art [7:33 PM] |
David Duke Blitzes Blitzer On CNN: Here is the transcript! See for Yourself!
CNN LINK (Duke vs. Blitzer) Titled David Duke on Zionism
Commentary by David Duke on www.DavidDuke.com
The video of the program posted on CNN as well as on YOUtube does not include the two minute bashing of me that immediately preceded the live interview. But the use of the term Ku Klux Klan about a dozen times backfired on Blitzer when I simply refused to just sit there and take it. It afforded me an opportunity to expose Blitzer’s extreme Zionist background, and show how the Jewish extremist media portrays me in this biased way because they have a Jewish extremist agenda. In his interviews with Ariel Sharon, did he ever introduce him with pictures of the thousands of victims of Sabre and Chatila, murders that even an Israeli commission found him responsible for? Blitzer of course is a Jewish extremist employee of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the extremist Israel lobby that threatens and bribes thousands of politicians across America. Two officers of AIPAC are now on trial for espionage against the United States of America.
The lighting for my shot was horrendous. With bad lighting it is easy to make one seem sinister. Blitzer of course was bathed in nice soft light like an angel.
I have received about 5000 emails and they still pour in from all over America, and from the playing of the videos, from all over the world. Over 90 percent are effusively positive while the critical ones are almost all nothing but obscene epithets and physical threats of murder and assassination. (more…)
art [7:21 PM] | Prohibition: A Crippling Habit
There is only one way to end the misery of addiction revealed by the investigation into the Ipswich murders: legalise the drugs.
Nick Davies
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nick_davies/2006/12/post_796.html
Everybody knows, of course, why those women sell themselves out on the streets of Ipswich - because they are heroin addicts. As the front page of the Guardian put it yesterday: "Pock-marked and painfully thin, they all bore the obvious signs of heroin and crack addiction ... selling their bodies to feed their crippling habit."
All of that happens to be untrue. Neither of those drugs makes you pock-marked or thin, nor is a drug habit crippling. Nor does it require you to sell your body. All of those things become true only if addicts have the misfortune to live in a society which insists on prohibiting those drugs.
In the case of heroin, all of the side effects which are associated with the drug - all of the disease and death and misery and depravity are the effects not of the drug itself but of the black market on which the government insists that it is sold. So, we have dirty heroin polluted with all kinds of dangerous crap; dirty needles which spread hepatitis and HIV; desperate users who can't afford to eat or look after themselves; and a never-ending tidal wave of property crime and prostitution.
Pure heroin properly used is a benign drug. It's worst physical side-effect is constipation. Other drugs, like cannabis and cocaine do have some bad side-effects, but always and everywhere it is true that no drug becomes safer when its production and distribution are handed over to criminals. Water would become dangerous if we banned it and were forced to drink ditchwater from blackmarket dealers. Alcohol did become far more dangerous, when it was prohibited in the United States and brewed with methylated spirits which attacks the optical nerve (which is why so many of the old blues singers were blind.)
In Holland and Switzerland, where they have been supplying their most prolific addicts with clean heroin, they have proved the virtues of legalisation. The average age of addicts in Holland has been rising for years, because they have taken away the blackmarket which sucks in new users as each user deals to his or friends to find funds for
their own habit. The Swiss have published detailed results about the addicts on their scheme, which show them improving in health, employment, family relations, housing, crime - and abstention.
There are really only two kinds of people who support the prohibition of drugs: those who know the truth and, for some political reason, refuse to admit it; and those who genuinely have no idea what they are talking about. Both of them should look at the lives of those women on the pavements of Ipswich and of every other major town in this country; they should look at the lives of the estimated 300,000 chaotic drug users in this country; they should look at the crime boom around them and consider the misery for the drug users themselves and for the communities around them; and they should get on and support legalisation of all blackmarket drugs.
art [7:10 PM] |
[ Tuesday, December 12, 2006 ]
WHY THEY HATE US?
art [10:26 PM] |
US Military Bombing Iraqis
art [10:23 PM] |
Bombing Fallujah and OH DUDE!
art [10:21 PM] |
History - Israeli airstrike on Iraqi nuclear reactor (1981)
art [10:19 PM] |
ISRAELS NUCLEAR BOMB
art [10:16 PM] |
[ Monday, October 30, 2006 ]
653 VIDEOSfrom http://WhatReallyHappened.com
Bookmark....Forward.
art [3:18 PM] |
[ Thursday, October 19, 2006 ]
TheBlueState.com) Steven Colbert interviews Chris Matthews
art [3:58 AM] |
Chris Matthews & Jay Leno Talk about Bush Lies & Iraq
art [3:14 AM] | Words Of Wisdom
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Explaining the unknown by means of the unobservable is always a perilous business.
If god doesn't like the way I live,
Let him tell me, not you.
If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!
[Clark Adams]
If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?
If god really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. [Mikhail Bakunin]
To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.
[Cardinal Bellarmine 1615, during the trial of Galileo]
Scriptures: The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. [Ambrose Bierce]
Why has a religious turn of mind always a tendency to narrow and harden the heart? [Robert Burns]
A one sentence definition of mythology?
'Mythology' is what we call someone else's religion. [Joseph Campbell]
I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose. [Clarence Darrow]
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. [Philip K. Dick]
I do not believe in the immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. [Einstein]
The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. [Einstein]
It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible.
[George W. Foote]
I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forego their use. [Galileo]
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. [Graham Greene, 1981]
We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me. [Jack Handey]
John Wesley said that if you give up the witchcraft, you must give up the Bible. He is right. The choice is easy for me. [Rupert Hughes]
The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. [David Hume]
To hate man and worship god seems to be the sum of all the creeds. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
I have little confidence in any enterprise or business or investment that promises dividends only after the death of the stockholders. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
If we should put god in the Constitution
there would be no room left for man. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
Blasphemy is an epithet bestowed by superstition upon common sense. [Ingersoll's Works]
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. [Delos McKown]
I find every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, It is a matter of faith, and above reason. [John Locke]
An atheist [...] only has to be someone who believes that the evidence on the God question is at a similar level to the evidence on the werewolf question. [John McCarthy]
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart. [H.L. Mencken]
...I was suddenly inspired to describe the Judeo-Christian god as a penis which has been endowed with cosmic significance. [Soledad de Montalvo]
Fear prophets ... and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. [Umberto Eco]
One of my favorite fantasies is that next Sunday not one woman, in any country of the world, will go to church. If women simply stop giving our time and energy to the institutions that oppress, they cease to be. [Sonia Johnson]
Koranic teaching still insists that the sun moves around the earth. How can we advance when they teach things like that? [Taslima Nasrin Time magazine, 31st Jan 1994]
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. [Bertrand Russell]
I do not need the idea of God to explain the world I live in. [Salman Rushdie, on David Frost show]
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. [Bertrand Russell]
If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color.
[Mark Schnitzius on alt.atheism]
The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation. [Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Free Thought Magazine, 1896]
The truth cannot be asserted without denouncing the falsehood. [Leslie Stephen]
Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. [Letters from the Earth, Mark Twain]
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense. [Voltaire]
I don't want to see any religious people in public office because they're working for another boss. [Frank Zappa]
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall. [Thomas Paine, Age of Reason]
Why be born again, when you can just grow up?
To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today. [Isaac Asimov]
The word heretic ought to be a term of honour...
[Charles Bradlaugh]
I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of. [Clarence Darrow]
Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
[Denis Diderot, Dithyrambe sur la fête des rois]
The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief. [Sigmund Freud]
No deity will save us, we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful.
[Humanist Manifesto II, Prometheus Books, 1973]
The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
...to argue with a man who has renounced his reason is like giving medicine to the dead.
[Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p.127]
It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
Reason should be destroyed in all Christians. [Martin Luther]
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. [H. L. Mencken]
Christian theology is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking. [H. L. Mencken]
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. [Nietzsche]
To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage [James Randi]
It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so. [Ernestine Rose]
You pronounce sentence upon me with greater fear than I receive it. [Giordano Bruno to his inquisitors]
And that inverted bowl we call the sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I. [Rubàiyàt]
Nothing fails like prayer [Annie Laurie Gaylor]
Eve was framed [Annie Laurie Gaylor]
The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making ten thousand revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set in motion to give him the ride. [H.L. Mencken]
The Church has always been willing to swap off treasures in heaven for cash down. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences. [R.G. Ingersoll]
I count religion but a childish toy,
And hold there is no sin but ignorance. [Christopher Marlowe]
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. [Blaise Pascal]
I have only a small flickering light to guide me in the darkness of a thick forest. Up comes a theologian and blows it out. [Denis Diderot]
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. [Thomas Paine]
To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler -- and less trouble. [Mark Twain]
My mind is my own church. [Thomas Paine]
The first step towards philosophy is incredulity. [Denis Diderot]
Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel. {Ambrose Bierce]
'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true. [Friedrich Nietzsche]
It was the schoolboy who said, 'Faith is believing what you know ain't so'. [Mark Twain]
Never judge a man till you have walked a mile in his shoes, 'cuz by then, he's a mile away, you've got his shoes, and you can say whatever the hell you want to.
Despite the high cost of living, it remains a popular item.
Common sense is what tells you that the world is flat.
Just say NO to religion. [Dan Barker]
My thoughts will not cater to priest or dictator;
No person can deny,
Die Gedanken Sind Frei!
[16th century German peasant song]
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky. [Imagine, John Lennon]
Our lives shall not be sweated
from birth until life closes;
hearts starve as well as bodies;
give us bread, but give us roses. [Bread & Roses]
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. [Margaret Sanger]
It is almost intrinsically impossible for ideas about how we are fooling ourselves to gain an adequate hearing. We are good enough at it to keep them nicely at bay. - Melvin Konner, Tangled Wing
You keep accusing me of blasphemy all of the time,
But I cannot be convicted of a victimless crime.
Friendly Neighborhood Atheist --[Dan Barker]
I think, therefore I am an atheist.
Cogito, ergo non credo.
Cogito, ergo atheos sum.
Jesus is a Myth.
Evolution, the Greatest Theory Ever Told!
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. - Oscar Wilde
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy. - Ambrose Bierce
While there is a lower class, I am in it;
while there is a criminal element, I am of it;
and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. - Eugene Debs
The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes
To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose.
[Kenneth Hare]
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. - H.L Mencken
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do. [Eric Hoffer]
By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.
[Gloria Steinem]
Die Gedanken sind frei!
WARNING! Literal belief in this book may endanger your health and your life.
I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it-- I don't need to believe it. -- [Carl Jung]
Eliminate the Deficit,
Tax the Churches!
For God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn the large majority of the human race. -- Robert G. Ingersoll
Jesus is not my best friend, I have real friends.
Andrew Lias on alt.atheism
Happiness is the only good.
The time to be happy is now,
The place to be happy is here --R.G. Ingersoll
I haven't rejected god, I've never met him.
Trevor Hick on alt.atheism
To rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world, is just as base as to use force. -- Hypatia (c. 370-415 CE)
... there could be talking bunny rabbits, spiders who write English messages in their webs, and for that matter, melancholy choo-choo trains. There could be, I suppose, but there aren't--so my theory doesn't have to explain them. --Daniel Dennett
Public prayer...Don't Stand for it!
...it would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme Him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Thomas Jefferson
The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. -- [Bertrand Russell]
Exploring the universe through meditation is like studying human relationships through masturbation.
A mystic is someone who wants to understand the universe, but is too lazy to study physics
I do not find in our particular superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded on fables and mythology. [Thomas Jefferson]
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. [Isaac Asimov]
God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
[Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene]
The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiry.
[Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene]
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. [Thomas Alva Edison,]
I am a demo religious meme which has been replicated here. You will be blessed if you copy me and pass me on to infect the next mind. And damned if you don't.
The church never doubts -- never inquires. To doubt is heresy -- to inquire is to admit that you do not know -- the church does neither. [R.G. Ingersoll]
If that story [Creation] was necessary to keep me out of hell and put me in heaven -- necessary for my life -- I wouldn't believe it because I couldn't believe it. [Clarence Darrow]
Fear believes -- courage doubts. Fear falls upon the earth and prays -- courage stands erect and thinks. Fear is barbarism -- courage is civilization. Fear believes in witchcraft, in devils and in ghosts. Fear is religion, courage is science. [R.G. Ingersoll]
The only terror in death is the apprehension of what lies beyond it, and that emotion is impossible to a sincere disbeliever.
[C.W. Foote Infidel Death Beds]
The enemy with whom I have to grapple is one with whom no peace can be made. Idolatry will not parley; superstition will not treat on covenant. They must be uprooted for public and individual safety. [Richard Carlisle]
Religion stills a thinking mind.
WARNING: Giving up religion now greatly increases humanity's chances for survival.
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
[Susan B. Anthony]
For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency. [Albert Ellis]
I have been looking for god for fifty years and I think if he had existed I should have discovered him. [Thomas Hardy]
It is grander to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
The inspiration of the Bible depends on the credulity of him who reads. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
The time appears to me to have come when it is the duty of all to make their dissent from religion known. [John Stuart Mill]
The whole tone of Church teaching in regard to women is, to the last degree, contemptuous and degrading. [Elizabeth Cady Stanton]
It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. [Mark Twain]
In every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty; he is always in allegiance to the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own. [Thomas Jefferson]
Every one who publishes a blasphemous libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years. Criminal Code of Canada sec. 296(1) So, arrest me!
Warning: Giving up religion now significantly improves chances of mental health.
Commonly, those who have professed the strongest motives of love of a God have demonstrated the deepest hatred toward human joy and liberty. [E. Haldeman-Julius]
After all, the principle objection which a thinking man has to religion is that religion is not true -- and is not even sane. [E. Haldeman-Julius]
A miracle is the badge and brand of fraud. ... No intelligent, honest man ever pretended to perform a miracle, and never will. {Robert G. Ingersoll]
...in every religion the priest insists on five things --
First: There is a God.
Second: He has made known his will.
Third: He has selected me to explain this message.
Fourth: We will now take up a collection; and
Fifth: Those who fail to subscribe will certainly be damned.
[Robert G. Ingersoll]
The very fact of there being more than one revelation is sufficient to raise doubts in the minds of reasoning people as to the validity of any of them. Rationalist's Manual, Aletheia, M.D.
Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed. [R.G. Ingersoll]
Intelligence is the only moral guide. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
The man who wants to be an angel is never in a hurry to begin. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
The man who gets on his knees has not learned the right use of his legs. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
Trying to find God is a good deal like looking for money one has lost in a dream. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
If there were an afterlife, Isaac Asimov would have written a book about it by now.
Ignorance is the soil of the supernatural. The foundation of Christianity has crumbled, has disappeared, and the entire fabric must fall. The natural is true. The miraculous is false. [R.G. Ingersoll]
...but I also can't prove that mushrooms could not be intergalactic spaceships spying on us.
Ä Daniel Dennett
Go around the world, and where you find the least superstition, there you will find the best men, the best women, the best children.
Ä Robert G. Ingersoll
There are some truths, however, that we should never forget: Superstition has always been the relentless enemy of science; faith has been a hater of demonstration; hypocrisy has been sincere only in its dread of truth, and all religions are inconsistent with mental freedom. R.G. Ingersoll
If God wants us to do a thing, He should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till He has done this before paying much attention to Him. [Samuel Butler]
Would you have mansions of gold in the sky,
and live in a shack, here in the back?
Would you have wings up in heaven to fly,
While you live here with rags on your back? IWW song, from The Little Red Songbook, Songs to fan the flames of discontent
While we are under the tyranny of Priests [...] it will ever be their interest, to invalidate the law of nature and reason, in order to establish systems incompatible therewith. [Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man]
We cannot hope for a society in which formal organized religion dies out. But we can stop behaving as if it was worthy of our collective respect. [A. N. Wilson, Against Religion]
Jesus - Myth or Legend?
Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ. -- Heine
They were allowed to stay there on one condition, and that is that they didn't eat of the tree of knowledge. That has been the condition of the Christian church from then until now. They haven't eaten as yet, as a rule they do not. --Clarence Darrow
A dogma is the hand of the dead on the throat of the living. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
If God exists, what objection can he have to saying so? [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
Prayer is like a pump in an empty well, it makes lots of noise, but brings no water. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
A man cannot be happy who believes in hell, any more than he can sweeten his coffee with a pickle.
[Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
If the factory pays taxes and the church does not, it follows that the church will some day own the factory. [Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays]
Everywhere in the world there are ignorance and prejudice, but the greatest complex of these, with the most extensive prestige and the most intimate entanglement with traditional institutions, is the Roman Catholic Church. [H.G. Wells]
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.
All the professors in all the religious colleges in this country rolled into one, would not equal Charles Darwin. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
Atheism has one doctrine: To Question
Atheism has one dogma: To Doubt
The Atheist Bible has but one word: THINK.
paraphrase from Emmet F. Fields
Those who believe in hell can never know truth, for they are blinded by fear. [Emmet F. Fields]
...the Bible, a book that glorifies behavior you abhor. [FFRF]
Modern societies march towards morality in proportion as they leave religion behind.-Paul Bert
'Dear friends, -- Man has created God, not God man. Yours ever, Garibaldi.' [entire text of letter]
...and when you tell me that your deity made you in his own image, I reply that he must be very ugly. [Victor Hugo, writing to clergy]
No wild beasts are as hostile to men as Christian sects in general are to one another. [Emperor Julian]
Morality becomes hypocrisy if it means accepting mothers suffering or dying in connection with unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions--and unwanted children living in misery. Gro Harlem Brundtland
'...the Bible as we have it contains elements that are scientifically incorrect or even morally repugnant. No amount of explaining away can convince us that such passages are the product of Divine Wisdom.' -- Bernard J. Bamberger, The Story of Judaism
The destroyer of weeds, thistles and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
--Robert G. Ingersoll
Re: God...
1) The emperor has no clothes.
2) There is no emperor.
Irreligion: The principal one of the great faiths of the world. [Ambrose Bierce]
I have noticed all my life that many people think they have religion when they are troubled with dyspepsia. [R.G. Ingersoll]
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. - John Buchan
Anyone who opposes methods to control the birth rate, is automatically voting in favour having the death rate go up.
Dr. Paul Erlich, on CBC's Quirks and Quarks
As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. [Woody Allen]
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness [Joseph Conrad]
Should it turn out that I am the worst man in the whole world, the story of the flood will remain just as improbable as before, and the contradictions of the Pentateuch will still demand an explanation. -- Robert G. Ingersoll
When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. -- Stephen Jay Gould
God is make believe
Consider the ignorance of the average fundamentalist. Then realize that by definition fully half of them must be even dumber than that.
A humanist is an atheist who cares.
Dr. Wendell Watters
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. -- Mark Twain
Ignorance is the mother of devotion. -- Dean Henry Cole
There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. -- Supreme Court of Wisconsin Weiss vs District Board March 18, 1890
Inspired? The Bible is not even intelligent. It is not even good craftsmanship, but is full of absurdities and contradictions.
E. Haldeman-Julius, The Meaning Of Atheism
Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan. --Ouida
A god's primary function is to confirm for us deeply held beliefs that we can't let go of, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. When you are totally and absolutely convinced of something fundamentally unreasonable, it helps to believe you have divine guidance
The undoubted sign of a society well under control or in decline is that language has ceased to be a means of communication and has become instead a shield for those who master it. -- John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards
The church has contributed nothing to civilization. It has progressed somewhat, and it has become a little more decent, in reflection of the movements of civilization that have taken place outside of the church and usually in the face of the strong opposition of the church. E. Haldeman-Julius The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In Social Life
The citizen's job is to be rude--to pierce the comfort of professional intercourse by boorish expressions of doubt.
--John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
With soap, baptism is a good thing. [Robert G. Ingersoll]
This sentence no verb. -- Douglas Hofstadter Metamagical Themas
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. --Ben Franklin
There is no need to search for global solutions, apart from an absolute necessity to destroy the idea that such things exist.
- - John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards
Theists have good reasons for not believing in every god but their own. Atheists make no exception for the last one. Brett Lemoine
Humanism : An exaltation of freedom, but one limited by our need to exercise it as an integral part of nature and society.
-- John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
To err is a sign of intelligence. ... A society that punishes error--as Western civilization increasingly does--discourages individual responsibility.
-- John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion
The creationists have this creator who is evil, who is small-minded, who is malevolent, and who is not very bright and can't even get his science right. Creationists have made their creator in their own image, in my view.
--Prof. Ian Plimer - The Skeptic, Vol 13, No2.
There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Bertrand Russell in Human Society in Ethics and Politics.
If I believed in a god, which I do not, I would like to communicate with him on the same intellectual level. Therefore, I would have to teach him a few things.
-- Aaron Erwin
nullifidian n. & a. (Person) having no religious faith or belief, [f. med. L nullifidius fr L nullus none + fides faith; see IAN]
freethinker n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief.
Whenever someone says, 'We can't be sentimental.' You know they're about to do something cruel. When they also say, 'We have to be realistic.' You know they're going to make money at it.
We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood; that there is nothing mysterious about them; that they are simply transparent falsehoods. Robert Ingersoll
... we ought even to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be black, if the superior authorities define it to be so. -- Ignatius de Loyola
Don't try to be happy, it will only make you miserable.dialogue from the movie Lovers and Other Strangers
Autumn wind:
gods, Buddha--
lies, lies, lies
--Shiki
Where there are humans
you'll find flies,
and Buddhas --Issa
What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice. Ursula K. LeGuinn, The Day before the Revolution
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas --uncertainty, progress, change -- into crimes. --Salman Rushdie
God tells Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If this was the only way they could understand the difference between good and evil, how could they have known that it was wrong to disobey god and eat the fruit? from laurie lynn
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control the world? [Euripedes, Hecuba]
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
[Benjamin Franklin]
The Theologian is an owl, sitting on an old dead branch in the tree of human knowledge, and hooting the same old hoots that have been hooted for hundreds and thousands of years, but he has never given a hoot for progress. [Emmet F. Fields]
Calvin founded a little theocracy, modeled after the Old Testament, and succeeded in erecting the most detestable government that ever existed, except the one from which it was copied. --Heretics and Heresies, Robert G. Ingersoll
To know that the Bible is the literature of a barbarous people, to know that it is uninspired, to be certain that the supernatural does not and cannot exist -- all this is but the beginning of wisdom.--R.G. Ingersoll
The Santa myth is one of the most effective means ever devised for intimidating children, eroding their self-esteem, twisting their behavior, warping their values, and slowing their development of critical thinking skills. --Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas
A mystic is a person who is puzzled before the obvious but who understands the nonexistent [Elbert Hubbard]
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger. [Abbie Hoffman]
He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. --Thomas Jefferson
To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits -- to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful; in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart. --Robert G. Ingersoll, The Foundations of Faith
No miracle has ever taken place under conditions which science can accept. Experience shows, without exception, that miracles occur only in times and in countries in which miracles are believed in, and in the presence of persons who are disposed to believe them. --Ernest Renan, The Life of Jesus
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored.
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
Richard Dawkins in "God's Utility Function," Scientific American, November 1995, p. 85.
A reasonable list of human qualities might include: Ethics, common sense, imagination or creativity, memory or history or experience, intuition and reason. The humanist tries to use all of these. ... The moment one quality is cut free from the others and given precedence over them, this imbalance will bring out the winner's negative aspects.
Thus ethics in power quickly turn into a religious dictatorship. Common sense couldn't help but subside into pessimistc confusion, as if wallowing in the mud. Creativity into anarchy. Memory into the worst sort of monarchical dictatorship. Intuition into the rule of base superstition. And reason, as we have seen over the last half-century, into a directionless, amoral dictatorship of structure. John Ralston Saul -- The Doubter's Companion
But why are Paul's commands not followed to-day? Why are not the words, sister, mother, daughter, wife, only names for degradation and dishonor? Because men have grown more honorable than their religion, and the strong arm of the law, supported by the stronger arm of public sentiment, demands greater justice than St. Paul ever dreamed of. Because men are growing grand enough to recongize the fact that right is not masculine only, and that justice knows no sex. And because the church no longer makes the laws. Saints have been retired from the legal profession. I can't recall the name of a single one who is practicing law now. Have any of you ever met a saint at the bar? Women are indebted to-day for their emancipation from a position of hopeless degradation, not to their religion nor to Jehovah, but to the justice and honor of the men who have defied his commands. That she does not crouch to-day where St. Paul tried to bind her, she owes to the men who are grand and brave enough to ignore St. Paul, and rise superior to his God.--Helen H. Gardener
There could hardly be a more unbearable--and more irrational-- world than one in which the most eminent specialists in each field were allowed to proceed unchecked with the realization of their ideals. --Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom
And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is especially true if we're careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody want to help Mom do the dishes. P.J. O'Rourke All The Troubles in the World
The first grand requisite to the growth of prudential habits is the perfect security of property; and the next perhaps is that respectability and importance which are given to the lower classes by equal laws, and the possession of some influence in the framing of them.
We have been miserably deficient in the instruction of the poor, perhaps the only means of really raising their condition.
Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population
The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all the evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.
Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population
They hang the man
and flog the woman
that steals the goose
from off the Common;
but let the greater
felon loose
that steals the Common
from the goose.
18th century folk commentary, reported by Adrian Vaughn in the New Internationalist letters column.
Back to HAC Home Page> NO! More Quotes! I want more quotes!
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[ Saturday, October 14, 2006 ]
WTC DEBRIS (EVIDENCE) SHIPPED TO INDIA & CHINA
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[ Friday, September 15, 2006 ]
Judicial Colonialism, The Assassination of Rafik Hariri: A Biased InvestigationInterview of Jürgen Cain Külbel
by Silvia Cattori
September 15, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
Interview of Jürgen Cain Külbel
A former criminal investigator of the GDR, who became a journalist after the reunification of Germany, Jürgen Cain Külbel is the author of a counter-investigation on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who the Voltaire Network presented to the Arab public during a widely covered conference in Damascus, May 7, 2006. In this interview, he discusses the political role of the UN Commission and the unexploited leads pointing to Israeli responsibility.
Assasination of Rafik Hariri, Beirut, February 14th, 2005
Silvia Cattori: As an independent journalist working alone, it was quite an undertaking to investigate the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri while there was an investigation commission which was given enormous investigative means?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: What use are a set of highly qualified investigators, almost inexhaustible logistical, forensic and other means supporting the examination, if in the examination of the crime, all the usual principles of an investigation are deliberately broken? During the investigation of a criminal offense by unknown parties, the investigators usually follow various scenarios in order to find the leads that will enable them to uncover the perpetrators. In the Hariri case, there should have been multiple parallel directions of investigation, from the start: Mossad, CIA, business partners [of Rafik Hariri] and exiled Lebanese. That never happened. So I was following and pursuing one of those “neglected”, and in my opinion important, paths in particular and did some investigation. That’s how my first work about the Hariri murder began.
Silvia Cattori: How did you come to the decision to tackle such a big subject?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Let me be frank: Right after the murder I had a bad gut feeling that it was less an investigative setback than that the UN investigators were — and continue to — vehemently follow only the Syrian lead, but above all I had the feeling that it was a premeditated and criminal act, just like the intentional and criminal and, as of today, unpunished act of faking and fabricating “proof” by the Americans and their lackeys – white collar criminals on the highest political level - that legitimized the international attack on Iraq - contrary to international law - in the spring of 2003. In both cases it is my opinion that they were initial deceptions by perpetrators who, although they pretend to represent the United Nations and to be modern harbingers of democracy, while, however, in truth, they only want to be would-be enslavers of our globe or are working towards this goal. To finally answer your question about the Hariri case: The commission “with the enormous investigative means” seemed to me to be the means of deception, to perpetrate a fraud in the specific case of Hariri as well. It’s like a crime inside the criminal investigation. And that is what still makes hair on my neck stand up.
Silvia Cattori: Did you carry out your inquiry on the spot?
Jürgen Cain KülbelJürgen Cain Külbel: Yes, but I will discuss that in another book [1]. Let me make a remark about the material evidence the UN commission collected. Now the question arises whether the forensic element (still) has any value at all. What happened to this material during the July war in Lebanon? What did the Belgian Serge Brammertz take with him to Cyprus two days after outbreak of hostilities, when he fled from Israeli bombs? So many hands could have easily compromised it during the bombardment. Nothing of this can be reconstructed any more – it is not serious.
It is also unforgivable to forget the liaison between the impudent John Bolton, U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, and Serge Brammertz! Bolton, who once wanted the clone of Mr. Mehlis as his successor, and got it in Brammertz, has been up to now extremely pleased with the performance of the Belgian. The alarm bells should ring here because Bolton, one of the most important war criminals living, is someone who played a major role in faking the evidence for the Iraq war.
In addition, as can be read in all the reports produced so far, the UN commission couldn’t offer anything that would be useful in convicting the perpetrators. Mr. Mehlis failed miserably last year because he ignored clear warnings and, supported by the US and the United Nations, thought he could somehow force Damascus to its knees for the benefit of Bush and his cohorts. His “work”, one thinks of the rather strange examinations of the witnesses, should only find its place on top of the garbage heap of criminology or as a teaching example in seminars of prospective lawyers or criminologists of what not to do.
Silvia Cattori: On the main points, what conclusions did you reach, and on which points do your conclusions contradict those of Mr Mehlis?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Generally, my conclusions have nothing in common with the ones of Mr. Mehlis. It is a pity that my book The Hariri Murder Case [2] hasn’t been published in languages other than German and Arabic because this question just keeps popping up. I also never intended to refute the two reports of Mr. Mehlis with my work. Rather I intended to prove the absurdity of the investigations of the UN commission, which - in terms of criminological strategy – lead into a cul de sac, only by proving that there is another important lead that needs to be investigated using all possible means. It is usually out of the question for honorably working investigators to simply and completely ignore such leads as I have followed. But because of this ignorance, one can recognize that the UN commission work is very one-sided, biased so to say. Under normal circumstances, this is poison for an objective criminal investigation; however, it is the elixir of life for devoted “Chief-Investigators” who are only working to satisfy the political interests of their employers. However, that is something that all the Gentlemen concerned –obviously all dead fish that swim in the stream while keeping their mouths shut– servants of the system, have to address to their own consciences, as far as such exists.
Once again I demand the interrogation Richard Pearle or Daniel Pipes, a man who would (at least here in Germany under different circumstances) already be serving a sentence for running a hate campaign, or Abdelnour or Najjar or Kahl or the others who are mentioned in my book and who have skeletons in the closet, who had Hariri on the assassination list, who demanded a coup in Lebanon etc. They had already planned violence theoretically anyway; some had already killed Hariri with words or had put him in the cross hairs. Why it is that none of those daring, self-sacrificing Hero Chief Investigators, working in Lebanon under constant life-threatening conditions, have never even attempted to question any of those characters? At this point, the commission becomes a laughing stock because it prostituted oneself indirectly, whether it wanted to or not.
The respectable media landscape needs to put pressure on the UN commission. I am not talking about details, leads or the content of the interrogations. It is about questioning the objectivity of the investigation that is compromised as the commissioners intentionally close their eyes to important leads. Those responsible, including your President Chirac, can spit beautiful verbal husks as much as they want.
Silvia Cattori: Did you reach the conclusion that Syria was not behind Hariri’s assassination, as Mr Bush asserted?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Bush’s cohorts knew exactly what they started when they let their Fuehrer in Washington say - over the still warm corpse of Hariri - which the string-pullers of the crime sat in Damascus. The echo came instantly and was Druze’s and anti-Syrian Lebanese. The song that the first commissioner, the Irishman Peter Fitzgerald, then started in March 2005, about the sloppiness of the Lebanese authorities safeguarding the crime scene and the crime examination, was calculated and of an arrogant colonial style. The entire world knew that the Lebanese police, their secret services, lack -compared with our standards- specialized experts, technical equipment, forensic examination methods; as well as the logistics, they also lacked the criminal tactical know-how of how to handle such colossal capital crimes. How could they? Those responsible on the Potomac and in the intelligence services, which had cooked up the assassination of Hariri, precisely calculated that if the Lebanese led the first investigation, that in such a case it was one hundred per cent certain that such carelessness would happen. By the way, those kinds of mistakes and sloppiness are no rarity in criminal police investigations worldwide. And in this particular case, the assassination of Hariri, the “mistakes and sloppiness” where supposed to be used as a pretext to direct initial suspicions towards a Lebanese-Syrian conspiracy.
The fiction was first fed by the Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who drew an incorrect picture even before the publication of the Fitzgerald report in the British daily The Independent, affirming that the investigators were convinced that proof has been covered up “in the highest ranks” of the secret services, and that the UN report will be “devastating”. Fisk didn’t mention any sources, but nevertheless he predicted that U.S. president George W. Bush would soon declare that “Syrian and perhaps Lebanese officers of the army secret service” have been involved in the murder. At that time, the White House denied it, which however should be seen as hypocrisy.
Silvia Cattori: But what were the objectives of those who killed Mr Hariri?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: A ghost roams this blue marble. Within the global restoration of the relations that previously existed - before this world was divided into communist and capitalist camps - and propelled by the geo-strategic and economic interests of capital, the exponents of the western forms of power, mistakenly described as democracies, are now reaching for the cheap version of the coup d’état, the “democratic revolution”, when bringing down unfavorable governments.
In 2003 when the emperors from the other side of the Atlantic started the war against Iraq together with their Anglo-Saxon paladins, the war criminals soon noticed that they had overstretched themselves: Iraq’s pacification didn’t happen, the domino effect to liquidate pan-Arabism by toppling other autocracies and dictatorships alongside, which would have led to the balkanization of an Arabia that would have been more easily controllable, exploitable, and would then have permitted Israel to have hegemony, didn’t happen as well.
Exasperated the younger Bush reached into the political hamster box of potential cadre and dragged out the ice cold Afro-American Condoleeza Rice, making her the Secretary of State. Since then Rice supports and finances “resistance movements” openly or in secret - like war profiteer U.S. second-in-command Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, commander-in-chief of the U.S. terror force, servant of “Big Oil” - in the former states of the Soviet Union and the Middle East, to force America-friendly regime changes. Support is also flowing into regions that are located in strategic proximity to planned pipeline routes.
Financial and logistical help is also given by the Freedom House, led by the CIA’s ex-director James Woolsey, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Open Society Institute of George Soros, one of the richest parasites in the world, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (NED) and also Tony Blair’s government.
Since the arrival of Rice, the world audience has been able to “enjoy” itself on some short-lived, “democratic”, fruit and vegetable revolutions: Oranges in the Ukraine, velvet in Georgia, tulips in Kyrgyzstan, and in spring of 2005, the Cedar revolt, unleashed after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri. This one was spear headed by the Druze king Walid Jumblat, mass-murderer in the Lebanese civil war.
Silvia Cattori: Wasn’t Hariri about to reach the end of his mandate?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Who cares, a figurehead of public and political life had to be slaughtered to attract the audience, to stir up the rage of the Lebanese soul. A dead Hariri, a massacred Mister Lebanon who ran the State like his personal property, was made to order to unleash the cedar revolution - a term from the neo-conservative storage room.
Silvia Cattori: Did you have any contact with the Mehlis Commission at the time of your inquiries?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: I regarded this as nonsensical because I had a completely different lead. Once you have forced yourself through hundreds of files, read the ten of thousands of pages that passed through the German’s hands, (Mehlis) you have the impression that Justice herself tears the bandage off of her eyes and wants to smash your skull with the scale. So one doesn’t expect to achieve anything with a contact. Nevertheless, I sought to contact Mr Mehlis on one specific point. It was about the jammers that were installed in Hariri’s car convoy and that were, according to anonymous sources, Israeli built. He referred to his pledge of secrecy at that time and forwarded my enquiry to Brammertz. But as soon as the German version of “The Hariri Murder Case” was on the market, he surprisingly broke his “oath of secrecy” -whether in agreement with Brammertz or as a private person is beyond my knowledge. He informed the Lebanese Daily Star on April 21, 2006: “The assertions made in the book, like the one that the system of the jammers used by Hariri was from an Israeli company, are completely wrongly and simply ridiculous. I and some members of the UN commission have scrutinized the matter, and the system which was used by Hariri was imported from a Western European country.” Well, imported doesn’t at all mean produced. That leads back to the key question that Gil Israeli, a former member of the secret service and chief of the Israeli company that built the jammers, never answered: “Are you saying that you cannot exclude the possibility that Hariri could have obtained a jammer, produced by your company, through detours?” Perhaps through a European dummy firm, by which, in “certain cases” and for “special customers”, the severe export regulations of the Israeli Ministry of Defense can be circumvented.
Be that as it may, one day after the statement by Mr Mehlis, I asked him in writing for clarification and precisions to resolve this discrepancy in the Arabian translation of the book. But by this point he had already sunken back into his sleep of Sleeping Beauty. An answer never came.
Silvia Cattori: On the whole, had there not been witnesses who withdrew their charges, Mr Bush would have had the pretext necessary for immediately implementing his projects for destabilizing Syria?
Jürgen Cain Külbel Sure. After Lebanon Bush clearly had the domino effect in mind and thought that Syria will become easy prey as well. A suitable man, a kind of Chalabi for Syria, was already on stand by: the US-based “Syrian Opposition Leader” Farid Ghadry. The Aleppo born businessman and president of the Reformation Party of Syria (RPS), founded quickly after September 11, is completely unknown to Syrians. At age eight he immigrated with his parents to Lebanon, later to the USA, where he studied economics and marketing, worked for the military industry and became wealthy. After September 11, 2001, he saw the time had come to help his far off homeland “with economic and political reforms in order to obtain democracy, prosperity and freedom”. That is why he joined the US-Committee on the Present Danger, with members like Newt Gingrich and the former CIA boss James Woolsey. Under the influence of the events in Lebanon, Ghadry wrote in a newspaper article in February 2005, “Democracy (in Syria) will remain an illusionary dream as long as the USA government is unwilling to publicly support and decently finance the reforms. A White House meeting with a democratic Syrian leader could send a clear message towards Damascus that changes are on their way.”
By the end of March his prayers had already been answered by Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president and the person responsible for Near East affairs at the State Department. Together with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, she at once installed the “Middle East Partnership initiative” (MEPI), which under the mask of “economic, political and educational reforms” contributes monies to opposition forces in the Arabian world. In 2003 alone, 100 million dollars flowed. The 36-year old hardliner led an “unofficial” meeting in Washington, where Farid Ghadry took part with his “Syrian opposition”. Ghadry’s crew, all US-based dissidents and united back then under the umbrella organization the “Syrian Democratic Coalition” (SDC), discussed with officials from the vice president’s office, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, how the “regime in Damascus could be weakened” and how to “prove criminal conduct by Syrian officials”. After the talks, Ghadry, who was pushing for the US president to lean on Damascus personally, summed it up by saying that the call for democracy in Syria “is being taken very seriously at the highest level of the Bush administration”. He was going to “work closely with the US administration and the EU” from his end so that “Syria’s oppressive Baath-regime” could be toppled. However, Ghadry, who was closely cooperating with Abdelnour, disappeared from the scene after he lied to the European Parliament and was dispossessed by his own party for “dubious conduct”.
Everybody thought he was out of business, but then he popped up again. Between June 16 and 18, 2006, the Beaver Creek (Colorado) World Forum of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) took place. As is commonly known, this was supposedly where the American-Israeli air strike on Iran was planned. Moreover, Cheney gave the green light to Israel’s former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present there, for the latest war of aggression against Lebanon. Included among the 64 members of the AEI conference were Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration. And at this conference Cheney also met with Farid Ghadry. That’s certainly not a good sign.
Silvia Cattori: What role did Saad Hariri, Rafik’s son, play in the development of that inquiry? Was he not on the side of those Lebanese who forced members of the secret services to charge Syria?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Let me just say this: Suleiman Franjieh, boss of the Lebanese Marada party, explained during an interview on television at the beginning of July 2006 that, when he was Secretary of the Interior, pressure had been exerted on him to say that the bomb which killed Hariri had been placed underground so that Hariri’s family could collect the insurance money. Hariri junior sued Franjieh for slander.
Silvia Cattori: What about the position of the socialist Mr Walid Jumblat and of Mr Marwan Hamadeh?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: I don’t want to talk about Jumblat, I am not a psychiatrist. Whether or not Hamadeh has thought about the possibility that he could have been a kind of test balloon for the Hariri murder? He wasn’t a suitable victim to provoke the kind of public dissent that one can then channel in a certain direction. But at least for Tel Aviv he was as an expendable living person. As Immigration Minister he once declared – when Elie Hobeika was the victim of a car bomb: “It is clear that Israel does not want to have witnesses during the historic trial in Belgium where Ariel Sharon will surely be sentenced for the massacres in the Palestine refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila. We already suffered under the crimes of Sharon in Beirut, and Palestine goes through the same today at his hand.” Strong words towards Israel. Hamadeh also felt victim to a car bomb in Beirut on October 1, 2004. He survived, but his driver died.
Silvia Cattori: What about the generals who have been arrested as a result of the Mr Mehlis inquiry?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Where are the human right organizations? Mr Brammertz drops from his report Mehlis’ summary that Hariri’s killing couldn’t have happened without the knowledge of high-profile Syrian and Lebanese secret service agents. While Mehlis was pulling “proofs” out of his hat, Brammertz displays an unusual “secretive” style and sells as new what we already know. He talks about a “highly complex terrorist action” and says that the participants acted “very professionally”, and that the crime was “planned with a high probability of success and was executed with a high level of individual and collective self-discipline”. “At least some of the participants must have had experience in such terrorist acts.”
Jumblat reassured us that everything was as usual: “Brammertz follows the work of Mehlis. The fact that the report (…) sees a connection between all the explosions which took place before and after the murder of Hariri is a clear accusation against the Syrian regime (…) that ruled Lebanon at the time of Hariri’s murder”, a “silent condemnation of the Syrian regime” so to speak, because - according to Jumblat - “Brammertz is handling things very professionally”. The future will show what’s being cooked up behind the scenes. Anyway, Brammertz didn’t have any objections to the further detention of the four high-profile Lebanese security chiefs, taken into custody in the summer of last year on the suggestion of Mehlis, even though the evidential case against the gentlemen totally fell apart in December. On the contrary, Lebanon is preparing for a tribunal together with the UN. It is naïve to think that Brammertz could steer a course on his own or even a “Syria friendly” one. The European “service axis” alone instructs against it: Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor against Milosevic, in the spring of 2005 suggested her brother of Hearts, Detlev Mehlis, for the position of chief investigator. He in turn recommends in December 2005 his friend Serge Brammertz as his successor. I mean, one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds you! It stills remains questionable if Syrian representative Mohammad Habash, who rejoiced that the Brammertz report “is bad news for the enemies of Syria”, will be proved correct. The hyenas have grabbed onto Bush’s perpetrator of choice, and they will not let go. Naji Boustani, one of the defense lawyers, said to me: “For months, every 10 days, I have been punctually addressing the examining magistrate, who followed Mehlis’ recommendation to lock up the four. He does not react. Our legal system does not provide for opposing any orders given by the examining magistrate. Mehlis knew that too. Once locked up, you stay locked up as long as it pleases the examining magistrate.”
Silvia Cattori: In your opinion, what did the suicide of the Syrian interior minister mean?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Apparently blackmail. The USA had frozen Ghazi Kanaan’s accounts in the summer of 2005. They croaked that he was involved in illegal business in Lebanon. Kanaan once had close ties to Hariri, even financial. Not only had the Lebanese media increased the psychological pressure on him after the venture of the Americans, he was considered as a “corrupt drug lord”. Then there was the talk about Mehlis questioning him. Let’s put it this way: Someone shows up, drops documents on the table without saying a word that indicate that you repeatedly took money from the victim, and then disappears for the time being. I don’t want to say more; rather let speak Walid Jumblat, that political chameleon of Lebanon, when he for once forgot to lie as he breathes: “If his pride would have suffered, due to the expectation of the UN report regarding the Hariri assassination, then that [the suicide] would have been a brave act of a brave man.”
Silvia Cattori: Mr Mehlis was quickly accused of having no professional ability to conduct such a sensitive investigation and of having relied on corrupt Lebanese politicians and on Israeli sources. Do you confirm that?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Some in Germany, who pretend to know Mr Mehlis or his methods of work, claim that he is technically incompetent, and, let’s say it in jargon, dimwitted. This was also the international opinion in December 2005. I don’t have that impression. Rather Mr Mehlis has, using the analogy of a criminal that develops his signature as to how commit the crime, developed his own prosecutorial style which runs provably through his practice like a red thread. That this style is not in sync with our ideas of righteousness and morals is a different story. I always compare this with a highly specialized top-class athlete. The “specialist” Mr Mehlis has apparently such performance features or “qualities” that permit others to describe to him a perpetrator of their choice whom he is then able to fabricate. This answers the second part of your question, as he is clearly forced to utilize such corrupt elements as you are referring to.
But let me make one remark about Israel: Ibrahim Gambari, Under Secretary General for Political Affairs at the UN, actually said at the end of August 2005 that Mr Mehlis had created “a good working relationship with Israel and Jordan”, not, however, with Syria. A real joke, given all those Mossad networks exposed this year in Lebanon, which for years had spread car bombings, murder, and terror. But nobody at the United Nations cares about this in the context of the Hariri matter. One has to ask oneself: what is this lot with headquarters in New York good for, anyway?
Silvia Cattori: From that, can we draw the conclusion that the commission of inquiry entrusted to Mr Mehlis was nothing but a tool in the hands of the neocons who wanted the assassination to be attributed to Syria?
Jürgen Cain Külbel: Of course! Let’s take for example Serge Brammertz, John Bolton’s shyster lawyer. Even if the Belgian has so far avoided blaming Damascus for the murder, as those in