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Gold9472
07-08-2005, 08:53 PM
The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means
The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such atrocities

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html

CONFIRMED: Origins Of Al-Qaeda not what you were led to believe

Robin Cook
Friday July 8, 2005

I have rarely seen the Commons so full and so silent as when it met yesterday to hear of the London bombings. A forum that often is raucous and rowdy was solemn and grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of partisan emotions was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley made a humane plea to the press not to repeat the offence that occurred in Northern Ireland when journalists demanded comment from relatives before they were informed that their loved ones were dead.

The immediate response to such human tragedy must be empathy with the pain of those injured and the grief of those bereaved. We recoil more deeply from loss of life in such an atrocity because we know the unexpected disappearance of partners, children and parents must be even harder to bear than a natural death. It is sudden, and therefore there is no farewell or preparation for the blow. Across London today there are relatives whose pain may be more acute because they never had the chance to offer or hear last words of affection.

It is arbitrary and therefore an event that changes whole lives, which turn on the accident of momentary decisions. How many people this morning ask themselves how different it might have been if their partner had taken the next bus or caught an earlier tube?

But perhaps the loss is hardest to bear because it is so difficult to answer the question why it should have happened. This weekend we will salute the heroism of the generation that defended Britain in the last war. In advance of the commemoration there have been many stories told of the courage of those who risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives to defeat fascism. They provide moving, humbling examples of what the human spirit is capable, but at least the relatives of the men and women who died then knew what they were fighting for. What purpose is there to yesterday's senseless murders? Who could possibly imagine that they have a cause that might profit from such pointless carnage?

At the time of writing, no group has surfaced even to explain why they launched the assault. Sometime over the next few days we may be offered a website entry or a video message attempting to justify the impossible, but there is no language that can supply a rational basis for such arbitrary slaughter. The explanation, when it is offered, is likely to rely not on reason but on the declaration of an obsessive fundamentalist identity that leaves no room for pity for victims who do not share that identity.

Yesterday the prime minister described the bombings as an attack on our values as a society. In the next few days we should remember that among those values are tolerance and mutual respect for those from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Only the day before, London was celebrating its coup in winning the Olympic Games, partly through demonstrating to the world the success of our multicultural credentials. Nothing would please better those who planted yesterday's bombs than for the atrocity to breed suspicion and hostility to minorities in our own community. Defeating the terrorists also means defeating their poisonous belief that peoples of different faiths and ethnic origins cannot coexist.

In the absence of anyone else owning up to yesterday's crimes, we will be subjected to a spate of articles analysing the threat of militant Islam. Ironically they will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, when the powerful nations of Europe failed to protect 8,000 Muslims from being annihilated in the worst terrorist act in Europe of the past generation.

Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we might understand each other.

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.

The G8 summit is not the best-designed forum in which to launch such a dialogue with Muslim countries, as none of them is included in the core membership. Nor do any of them make up the outer circle of select emerging economies, such as China, Brazil and India, which are also invited to Gleneagles. We are not going to address the sense of marginalisation among Muslim countries if we do not make more of an effort to be inclusive of them in the architecture of global governance.

But the G8 does have the opportunity in its communique today to give a forceful response to the latest terrorist attack. That should include a statement of their joint resolve to hunt down those who bear responsibility for yesterday's crimes. But it must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of terrorism.

In particular, it would be perverse if the focus of the G8 on making poverty history was now obscured by yesterday's bombings. The breeding grounds of terrorism are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young men who feel denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for themselves. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war on terror.

And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.

Gold9472
07-08-2005, 09:31 PM
What Wayne Madsen Had To Say About This

My Question: If it was a CIA file... what does that mean?

It means that they had the names and identities of thousands of so called Al Qaeda and failed to keep track of them. But it does explain why the Al Qaeda suspect list surfaced so quickly after 911. They already knew who these guys were. I'm not even sure it was a CIA file at that time but certainly one that was still in the possession of somebody in this sordid administration and my guess is Cheney and his bunch.

Remember that as Foreign Secy, Cook was in charge of MI 6 and GCHQ -- he had access to almost everything that was classified in Britain (including stuff shared by the CIA). I think he's trying to tell us something in that piece. That there were U.S. and Saudi levels of control over these Jihadist groups from the beginning. Now, the Italians are discovering those levels of control still exist. These dots are not difficult to connect.

I'm not sure Cook knows about what the Christian Democrats and Communists are saying in Italy... but they've found some links between the Italian Fascists, Italian intelligence, and terrorist groups. The kidnapping of that Egyptian Imam in Milan was apparently done to get him off the street -- he was a key link between these neo-con crazies and the Islamic crazies. Albanian intelligence confirmed that and the Egyptians likely also discovered it during their torture sessions.

Gold9472
07-08-2005, 09:32 PM
Ok... here's the official account from the BBC...

'The Base' 1988
As Soviet Troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden and other Arab Fighters in the country form al-Qaeda, which in Arabic means "the base". The network begins looking for new jihads (holy wars).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/3618762.stm

Here's what Robin Cook stated:
"Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."

Here's what Wikipedia.org had to say:
Although "al-Qaeda" is the name of the organization used in popular culture, the organization rarely uses the name to formally refer to itself. The origin of the name "al-qaeda" is disputed; some allege it was coined by the United States government based on the name of a computer file of bin Laden's that listed the names of contacts he had made at the MAK in the Bait al-Ansar guesthouse during the late 1980s. Bin Laden himself says of the origin, saying "We used to call the training camp al Qaeda [meaning "the base" in English]. And the name stayed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda

princesskittypoo
07-08-2005, 09:38 PM
so basically they use to work for us now they are working against us.... kind of.

frindevil
07-08-2005, 09:44 PM
Some stuff about Robin Cook, not from google or wikipedia but from me =)

See Robin Cook started out not as this high powered person, he was and is the MP (member of parliament) for Livingston, Scotland. It's about 50 000 people and it's where I went to school grew up, not a huge place - it's a town.

I met Robin a few times. My 6th and 7th grade teacher is also a local politician, for the SNP (Scottish National Party) and so they are rivals of sorts but also friends and we'd see Robin Cook frequently when I was very young. I remember meeting him later on in life too, at openings and galas. I remember he was very nice to me at the opening of the local ice rink when someone called in a bomb threat and I helped him out with directions and information, he was very warm and personable.

His wife I also met and know, she works at St Johns hospital and was the one that worked with my Grandad before he died and helped him a lot, she's a very nice lady =)

I liked the guy, I liked that he has roots near me and he wasn't at all like other MP's I've met or people I've met.

Wayne, great info as always=)

- Frind

Gold9472
07-08-2005, 09:57 PM
Some stuff about Robin Cook, not from google or wikipedia but from me =)

See Robin Cook started out not as this high powered person, he was and is the MP (member of parliament) for Livingston, Scotland. It's about 50 000 people and it's where I went to school grew up, not a huge place - it's a town.

I met Robin a few times. My 6th and 7th grade teacher is also a local politician, for the SNP (Scottish National Party) and so they are rivals of sorts but also friends and we'd see Robin Cook frequently when I was very young. I remember meeting him later on in life too, at openings and galas. I remember he was very nice to me at the opening of the local ice rink when someone called in a bomb threat and I helped him out with directions and information, he was very warm and personable.

His wife I also met and know, she works at St Johns hospital and was the one that worked with my Grandad before he died and helped him a lot, she's a very nice lady =)

I liked the guy, I liked that he has roots near me and he wasn't at all like other MP's I've met or people I've met.

Wayne, great info as always=)

- Frind

Nice Post...

princesskittypoo
07-08-2005, 10:08 PM
Some stuff about Robin Cook, not from google or wikipedia but from me =)

See Robin Cook started out not as this high powered person, he was and is the MP (member of parliament) for Livingston, Scotland. It's about 50 000 people and it's where I went to school grew up, not a huge place - it's a town.

I met Robin a few times. My 6th and 7th grade teacher is also a local politician, for the SNP (Scottish National Party) and so they are rivals of sorts but also friends and we'd see Robin Cook frequently when I was very young. I remember meeting him later on in life too, at openings and galas. I remember he was very nice to me at the opening of the local ice rink when someone called in a bomb threat and I helped him out with directions and information, he was very warm and personable.

His wife I also met and know, she works at St Johns hospital and was the one that worked with my Grandad before he died and helped him a lot, she's a very nice lady =)

I liked the guy, I liked that he has roots near me and he wasn't at all like other MP's I've met or people I've met.

Wayne, great info as always=)

- Frind

:)

Gold9472
09-17-2005, 11:11 AM
bump

PhilosophyGenius
09-17-2005, 06:42 PM
I thought everybody knew this? In all documentaries about bin Laden or al-Qaeda, it talks about how they were a 'database' to keep track of fighters and were supported by the U.S. and Saidis, and Pakistanis.

Gold9472
09-17-2005, 06:50 PM
I thought everybody knew this? In all documentaries about bin Laden or al-Qaeda, it talks about how they were a 'database' to keep track of fighters and were supported by the U.S. and Saidis, and Pakistanis.

Well that's a blanket statement if I've ever seen one. Name one documentary that talks about the database please.

PhilosophyGenius
09-17-2005, 07:02 PM
Well that's a blanket statement if I've ever seen one. Name one documentary that talks about the database please.

Frontline did a documentary about bin Laden and radical Islam, both with the phrase 'database'. And pretty much any documentary you see about bin Laden or al-Qaeda shows the exact same thing.

Gold9472
09-17-2005, 07:04 PM
Frontline did a documentary about bin Laden and radical Islam, both with the phrase 'database'. And pretty much any documentary you see about bin Laden or al-Qaeda shows the exact same thing.

I've never seen it until this story. Al-Qaeda is usually defined as "The Base", not "database". Even in the "Power Of Nightmares" they referred to it as "The Base".

PhilosophyGenius
09-18-2005, 02:27 AM
I've never seen it until this story. Al-Qaeda is usually defined as "The Base", not "database". Even in the "Power Of Nightmares" they referred to it as "The Base".

I've also heard al-Qaeda being refered to as a "base of jihad" by a history channel documentary. The documentaries made by Frontline (2), History Channel (several), MSNBC, and CNN, all showed the orgins of al-Qaeda being what was refered to as a series of training camps. A way to keep track of fighters coming in and out of Afghanistan/Pakistan. And also all of these documentaries show that the U.S. supported them.

al-Qaeda isnt refered to as the "database" or anything like that anymore because that's the old version. The original al-Qaeda was soldiers fighting a guerilla war. The new version is a shadowy network. 2 differnt things

jetsetlemming
11-19-2005, 02:53 PM
I heard Al Qaeda translated as "the students" before.

Gold9472
11-19-2005, 08:06 PM
Al-Qaeda the Database Unbound
Another day in the empire

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m18005&date=19-nov-2005_23:37_ECT

Kurt Nimmo
Saturday November 19th 2005, 9:12 am

In a lengthy excerpt posted on Wayne Madsen’s site, Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence, explains the origins of the word "al-Qaeda." As previously noted by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, "al-Qaeda" has nothing to do with a terrorist organization, as the neocons and the corporate media tell us over and over, ad infinitum, but is in fact a database. "In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements," Bunel explains. "It was decided to use a part of the system’s memory to host the Islamic Conference’s database. It was possible for the countries attending to access the database by telephone: an Intranet, in modern language. The governments of the member-countries as well as some of their embassies in the world were connected to that network." Files associated to the database were called "Q eidat il-Maaloomaat" and "Q eidat i-Taaleemaat" in Arabic. "Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’ which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for 'base.’"

Because of the presence of 'rogue states,’ it became easy for terrorist groups to use the email of the database. Hence, the email of Al Qaida was used, with some interface system, providing secrecy, for the families of the mujaheddin to keep links with their children undergoing training in Afghanistan, or in Libya or in the Beqaa valley, Lebanon. Or in action anywhere in the battlefields where the extremists sponsored by all the 'rogue states’ used to fight. And the 'rogue states’ included Saudi Arabia. When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages…. Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden’s personal property.

In short, "al-Qaeda" was in essence an email designation and had nothing to do with the "American agent in Afghanistan," Osama bin Laden. In fact, "al-Qaeda," the terrorist organization, is a creation of the United States government and the corporate media.

Pierre-Henry Bunel concludes:

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil’ only in order to drive the 'TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money.

Bunel, according to Madsen, was punished for his heresy. In December, 2001, the former French military intelligence agent was "convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998…. Bunel’s character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system 'got him’ for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group."

It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of "Al Qaeda." We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

Riggs Bank was used for "the dubious financial machinations of Saudi diplomats and despots from Africa and South America, including Chile’s former maximum leader, Gen. Augusto Pinochet," according to Jack Shafer, writing for Slate, and citing Glenn R. Simpson of the War Street Journal. Moreover, the Riggs Bank "enjoyed a 'relationship’ with the CIA for some time." As noted by Madsen, Riggs Bank hosted the Bosnian Defense Fund and this financial assistance was tapped by "al-Qaeda" in Bosnia. On October 3, Madsen wrote:

The Muslim operation in the Balkans was largely supported by official (CIA, DIA, and Special Operations) U.S. assistance but also by unofficial help. This was mainly carried out by private military contractors like MPRI and financial support networks like the Bosnia Defense Fund, established in the mid-1990s at a Riggs Bank account in Washington, DC. The principal movers behind the Bosnian Defense Fund were Richard Perle and Douglas Feith. In fact, Feith’s law firm, Feith and Zell (FANZ) set up the Bosnia Defense Fund. According to a former Riggs legal adviser, when objections were raised about the hundreds of millions of dollars collected from such countries as Saudi Arabia, Brunei, Malaysia, the UAE, Iran, Jordan, and Egypt that were being detected by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) being sent from Washington to Sarajevo, Bosnia, and reports that there was "spillage" of these funds into the hands of Al Qaeda units in the country, Perle’s response at one contentious meeting was, "just make it fucking happen."

Indeed, Perle and the Straussian neocons just made it f-ing happen on September 11, 2001, although the money trail is studiously avoided and swept under the rug by the corporate media. It is no secret Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Bander bin Sultan, had accounts at Riggs Bank and money from these accounts allegedly found its way to two of the nine eleven hijackers. Of course, the Bush nine eleven whitewash commission denied this ever happened and thus this suspicious bit of information found its way to the memory hole (see Dr. David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie). It should be noted here that the Bushites redacted 28 pages from the Congressional Joint Inquiry Report on 9-11 and those pages are assumed to have contained information on the role of Saudi Arabia and another unnamed country (more than likely Pakistan) in financing Osama. Interestingly, however, a reference to a relationship between the supposed hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and the FBI was allowed to remain in the report (the report states that the putative hijackers "had numerous contacts with a long time FBI counterterrorism informant in California and that a third future hijacker, Hani Hanjour, apparently had more limited contact with the same informant," see Allan P. Duncan, Bush Should Cry Uncle and Release Saudi Info).

In summary, "al-Qaeda" never existed in the form now claimed by the Bushites and the corporate media, "al-Qaeda" was in fact a database of CIA recruited and trained mujahideen and an email connected to that database, Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with that database and thus all references in the corporate media claiming he is the leader of "al-Qaeda" the fantastical terrorist organization are false (if not deliberately contrived lies), terrorists falsely attributed to "al-Qaeda" were organized by the U.S. military and NATO and financed by a CIA front bank in Washington (connected to two principal Straussian neocon criminals) and unleashed in Bosnia (assisting the drug-running KLA mafia), and the CIA front bank later shared a connection with prominent Saudi Arabians who are suspected of financing the nine eleven hijackers (since the hijackers did not actually exist, this money was probably used elsewhere in the nine eleven operation). All of this information was predictably discarded by nine eleven whitewash commission.

Of course, none of this arcane information means squat to the American people, many whom believe Osama teamed up with Saddam to pull of nine eleven and "al-Qaeda" is a real terrorist organization run by the elusive "devils" (in Bush’s Manichean parlance) Bin Laden and his murderous cohort, al-Zarqawi. In fact, the official story is so embedded in the American psyche, thanks to the relentless efforts of the corporate media, it may never be possible for the truth to emerge.

Sooner or later, the neocons and their cardboard cut-out of a half-witted president will chime their Pavlovian bells—bells associated with the explosion of a "radiological device" or a series of black op suicide bombings in the American heartland—and our Emmanuel Goldstein du jour, al-Zarqawi, will be blamed and the process will start anew, with shock and awe in Syria or Iran.

Gold9472
07-16-2006, 09:34 PM
bump