“E’ tempo che Obama ci parli”. Dal suo blog, Teymoor Nabili (anchorman di Al Jazeera) invita il Presidente a usare la rete araba per raggiungere direttamente “le 10 milioni di persone” che si fidano solo di lei.
Obama, se ci sei, batti un colpo. 

from muslimmatters.org

Thaliban menguasai Nuristan

Koresponden Al-Jazeera di Kabul, samir Allawi mengatakan bahwa para pejuang Taliban berhasil menguasai persenjataan made in Amerika dalam jumlah yang besar. Hal ini meningkatkan kemampuan mereka untuk melanjutkan perlawanan yang sengit terhadap pasukan penjajah.

Di dalam siarannya al-Jazeera ditayangkan rekaman exclusive yang menunjukkan keberhasilan Taliban dalam menguasai provinsi Nuristan, Afghanistan Timur. Selain itu gerakan itu juga mengatakan bahwa mereka merencanakan untuk memperluas operasinya ke luar wilayah timur Afghanistan, pasca hengkangnya pasukan AS bulan lalu. Pada waktu yang bersamaan, dilaporkan bahwa tiga tentara asing tewas dalam insiden terpisah.

Al-Jazeera juga menayangkan gambar yang menunjukkan pejuang Taliban mengangkat bendera gerakan Taliban di markaz polisi dan lembaga pemerintah di provinsi tersebut. Salah satu pejuang Taliban mengatakan
“Kami telah mengalahkan pasukan Amerika, al-hamdulillah dan wilayah Nuristan Timur telah bebas dari kekuatan penjajah.”

Al-Jazeera dari Nuristan menegaskan, benteng Camdc telah direbut oleh Taliban setelah ditarik mundurnya pasukan Amerika. Dan ditampilkan pula gambar yang menunjukkan kontrol penuh Taliban terhadap benteng tersebut beserta senjata dan amunisinya.

Para pejuang Taliban, yang telah merasakan ancaman kematian dari Tentara Salib mereka bertemu dalam persatuan dan mempersatukan mereka dan perjuangan mereka di bawah kepemimpinan Amirul Mukminin Mula Muhammad Umar ath-Thalibani al-Pashtooni

Silakan menyaksikan…

• Yemen conflict raises Gulf Tensions [Al Jazeera]
• Obama tells Thein Sein to release Suu Kyi [Irrawaddy Times]
• France should mediate Israel-Syria Talks [Jerusalem Post]
• Libya to put Swiss businessmen on trial [AFP]
• Ukraine presidential campaign undermined by mud-sligging [Unian]

Assalamualaikum wr wb

Berikut ini adalah wawancara al-Jazeera dengan shabab al-Mujahidin [subtitle Inggris], sangat informatif dan menunjukkan Aqidah yang benar dan manhaj dari as-Shabab al-Mujahidin Somalia.

Semoga Allah melindungi mereka dan meneguhkan mereka di negeri itu

Tunggu beberapa detik setelah play agar klip bisa dilihat -insya Allah-

klik disini

I am on a difficult mission today. I am attempting a brief and dispassionate observation and analysis of American Muslim responses to the Fort Hood mass murder. I want very much to do it in a way that hinders my fellow conservatives from yielding to blind anti-Muslim sentiment. I have to do all this without regard to political correctness, of course. I have to do it also without lying, the way the main, liberal media are dissembling right and left about the Fort Hood massacre. (The ineffable Chris Matthew of MSNBC said recently that trying to contact Al Qaida was “not a crime.” I don’t know if it is. That’s a technical question. It was sure a reason to tell Major Hasan’ s superiors, up and down the chain of command. They might have kept a better eye on him. But, this is an unfair representation of the media, perhaps: Matthew is the guy who confessed on air that he felt a tingle run up his leg when he thought of candidate Obama!)

First, personal considerations, because they matter. I have known Muslims all my life, from kindergarten. I spent a significant amount of time in Muslims countries (Senegal, Turkey, Morocco). I like many aspects of the cultures of some Muslim countries, especially the music. There are Muslims in the favorite branch of my family. I have Muslims friends currently. No, I did not say, like the racists of old, “Some of my best friends are Muslims.” I am simply claiming that my numerous personal contacts, however “anecdotal,” matter a little. The long and the short of it is that I find Muslims easy to like and even to love. There is usually a personal warmth among them that is fairly rare in the US and among Hindus in India, and absent in Western Europe and in Japan, I think. The point is that if I found the company of Muslims detestable, many people would agree that it is useful information.

Second, some facts. Consider all the unarmed people intentionally murdered, assassinated by strangers and near-strangers. Consider only the unambiguous cases, such as shooting people and detonating bombs. Since the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka were destroyed last year, 99% and more of the victims of terrorism were killed by criminals who called themselves “Muslims.” I know there are still ETA Basque terrorists but they kill mostly inadvertently. They are mostly old guys who should have retired from handling explosives. As for the IRA terrorists, they have not killed anyone for years. So, my back-of the envelop estimate is correct. If you don’t like it, make it 95%, or even 90%; it does not affect my argument.

As I have said before repeatedly, the terrorists who call themselves Muslims have killed many more Muslims than Christians, or any other category of non-Muslims. This undisputed fact does not alter my question in the least: Is there a Muslim propensity to slaughter those with whom Muslims disagree and /or don’t like for some other reason?

Confronted with these raw facts, the good people I know who are Muslims go into denial, I think. Their denial takes two forms. First, they seem to say, there are bad apples everywhere. Second, they deny that the assassins can’t possibly be good Muslims because good Muslims don’t do this sort of things – which are explicitly condemned by their religion. My view is that there are too many bad apples and that the public ethical vagueness of contemporary Islam has something to do with this high number. (I say “public” because I don’t know what Muslim preachers say to the faithful in the mosques, obviously.)

I like to check my perceptions in ways that go beyond, I think, what the average reasonably educated working person my be expected to do. Accordingly, on the 11th of November, and on the 12^th of November (a week to the day after the Fort Hood massacre), I visited the websites of four important organizations. My selection may be arbitrary but it’s not biased. It’s the product of limited time and of ordinary but not pronounced laziness. And that’s my first point: If responsible American Muslims want me to understand their perspective better, they are not trying hard enough.

The first organization I consulted was the English website of the mostly Arabic-language news channel Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has earned my respect for two reasons. First, every tyrant in the Middle-East has tried to get it shut down. Second, it’s the only organization worldwide that consistently supplies in depth news of the Middle-East (and much beyond). I went to Al Jazeera because Hasan was identified as an Arab-American.

What I read on Al Jazeera was a straightforward news report of the Fort Hood massacre, of the kind that you could have got from United Press in the good old days when that news agency was still doing straight reporting. No analysis, no editorial view.

My second visit was to the Arab-American Institute. I went there because I have always liked its director, James Zogby. He often comments on Middle-East affairs on television. I have always found him a fair-minded and rational man. In particular, he does a better job than anyone at presenting the Palestinian viewpoint, in the American media. (And, yes, I know that not all Muslims are Arabs and I know that some Arabs are not Muslims. Don’t be boring!) Zogby learned of the the massacre while traveling overseas. Here is an excerpt from his column on Nov 10, five days after the bloodbath:

Though I wanted to be with them [ his staff at the Institute], to provide whatever guidance I could, as I continued to read their emails, I found that, for the most part, they had the complex demands of this situation well in hand. Since some had sent questions to me (not knowing when I would get them, or whether I would be able to respond in time), I used my wait in the airport lounge to give my best advice on next steps: what a follow-up statement might include; what messages to avoid (I noted that among the emails I had received were statements for some other groups with headlines condemning the killings and warning against anti-Arab or anti-Muslim backlash. My advice was “don’t go there”. This is not about us right now, it’s about the victims and the pain of their families. (My bolding – JD) If it were to be about anyone or anything else, it shouldn’t be about the potential this horrible act poses to Arab or Muslim American groups. Rather concern should be shown for the challenges all this will pose for the thousands of patriotic Arab Americans currently serving with distinction in the US military, some of whom, may now unfairly be targets of suspicion.; how to log and deal with threats should they come, and who should do what before I return.

Zogby’s sentiment is understandable and fair but it lacks any causal analysis. Perhaps it was too early. I shall be watching the Arab-American Institute.

Then, I consulted the Islamic Center in Washington DC. I don’t know what the reality is but the Islamic Center often seems to style itself as the official representative of Islam in America. I found nothing there. The Islamic Center apparently considers that the Fort Hood event is none of its concern. I can’t help but think that sometimes, silence speaks louder than words.

Further, on November 12^th , I visited the site of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) where I found the two relevant announcements reproduced (incompletely) below:

1 (The ISNA) announced Monday, November 9, the launching of a special fund, The Ft Hood Family Fund, for the benefit of the families of the Ft Hood victims in collaboration with various national Muslim and interfaith organizations.

The fund is a collaborative effort involving national Muslim organizations and mosques. The national organizations that have already endorsed the fund include American Arab Anti Defamation Committee (ADC), American Muslim Armed Forces Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC), Freedom and Justice Foundation, Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), and Islamic Relief USA.Several Islamic centers, particularly Islamic centers based in Texas, have also endorsed the fund and agreed to raise money for the fund, including Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH) – Houston, TX., Dallas Central Mosque – Richardson, TX, Islamic Association of Carrollton – Carrollton, TX, All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) – Dulles, VA, Islamic Center of Irving – Irving, TX, Islamic Center of Southern California – Los Angeles, CA,

2 The Fiqh Council of North America – Press Release :

We, the Fiqh Council of North America, have become aware that statements by some individuals and groups around the world have been issued on the internet and elsewhere praising the brutal killings and attacks last week at Fort Hood in Texas and condemning the American Muslim community and major American Muslim organizations of “betrayal of Islam and of hypocrisy” for denouncing the massacre committed by the suspect Major Nidal Malik Hassan. These statements are shocking to us and are totally unacceptable.

We at the Fiqh Council of North America emphasize adherence to Islamic values and principles of peace, justice and fair dealing with all people in every situation. We are deeply saddened with the death and injury of many people in the Fort Hood attack. We express our sincere condolences to the families of the victims and pray for the health and well being of the injured.  We denounce such acts of violence and consider them against the teachings of Islam.

The Fiqh Council of North America as a body of Muslim jurists supports the denunciation of this violence as stated by major American Muslim organizations and considers it in keeping with the spirit and values of Islam.  Islam teaches that all Muslim wherever they live must respect the life and property of all people, whether Muslims or non-Muslims.  Muslims must also abide by their pledges. Those who serve in the army should abide by the rules that they have pledged to follow within the general principles of justice and fair dealing as ordered and mandated by God.

The first announcement is heart-warming but it does not address my concern. No one knowledgeable doubts the charitable customs and the generous inclinations of Muslims’ hearts in general.

The second announcement constitutes an unambiguous condemnation of expressions of support around the world for the massacre. (At the same time, note that it acknowledges these expressions of support as real.) This condemnation is important because it emanates from a body of jurists, and therefore, of moralists, in the tradition of Islam. Conservatives, take heed: There are, in our country, Muslims leaders with complete moral clarity on the issue of terrorism.

Yet, and as always, I worry about what’s not there. I see no attempt at analysis. The Fiqh avoids ( so far) what is to me an obvious question:

Is there anything in the teachings of Islam that could have led this very well educated, American man, to think, mistakenly, that it was acceptable to deal with his problems, personal and/or political, by murdering innocent people with great deliberateness?

My Muslim friends and acquaintances (but one) frustrate me in this connection. They tend to respond to every crime by a Muslim with a quote from the Koran to demonstrate that Islam is “a religion of peace.” That’s either disingenuous or silly. At the very least, it’s insufficient. Prophet Mohamed surely said the words they quote. At the same time, he was a celebrated war leader. I realize good Muslims would argue that his were all defensive wars, and that may be completely true. However, his successors, certainly engaged in war of outright conquest. I think Muslim tradition itself says that the Prophet married the wives of some of his defeated enemies. (If I am wrong on this, someone will correct me and if the correction is authoritative, I will immediately post it.) That’s enslavement, in my book, not happy matrimony. It’s warfare on non-combatants, although short of killing them. Many Muslims seem to confuse two things: It could be the case that Muslim soldiers fought more humanely than their pagan and/or Christian contemporaries then. But, that was in the seventh century. There are armies whose policies today include the systematic, deliberate mistreatment of non-combatants. They are considered savages by everyone else, not moral leaders. My point is this: You can’t have it both ways. Either the Prophet’s own conduct is relevant today or it’s not. You can’t simply cite his words as evidence of anything and then argue that his behavior was proper nearly fourteen hundreds years ago though it would not be now. It’s possible to make the transition between actual conduct then and the perennial nature of the Prophet’s words in a truthful way. You have to do it explicitly. Here is what happens when you don’t:

In 1099, an army of Europeans captured Jerusalem from Muslim control. The Crusaders murdered either all or most of the defenders, and nearly the whole population, Muslims mostly, but also the Jews while they were at it. Contemporary chronicles in French, by participants, report that the attackers wielded the sword shouting, “Dieu le veult.” (“It’s God’s will.”)

Why would any rational person think if anyone argued that the Crusaders were not “real Christians” because Christ preached universal brotherhood, as the Gospels show clearly? How would any rational Muslim react if I contended that Christianity, the religion, its teachings, had nothing to do with the Jerusalem massacre, however perversely?

Muslim jurists, moralists, and intellectual have no dealt with this inherent ambiguity in the presentation of Islam, to my knowledge. I would like to be corrected if I am wrong. It’s in the interest of Muslims that this question be tackled because not doing so feeds the growing prejudice against all Muslims in this country and in the world in general.

I will post anything that attempts to answer my question in reasonably polite language. I will not post any excerpt from any sacred scriptures.

Thomas Zeitzoff is a PhD candidate at New York University. I came across his research thanks to the Ushahidi network, and am really glad I did. He wrote a really neat paper earlier this year on “The Micro-dynamics of Reciprocity in an Asymmetric Conflict: Hamas, Israel, and the 2008-2009 Gaza Conflict,” which he is revising and submitting to peer-review.

Updated: Thomas kindly sent me the most recent version of his paper which you can download here (PDF).

I’ve done some work on conflict event-data and reciprocity analysis (see this study of Afghanistan), but Thomas is really breaking new ground here with the hourly temporal resolution of the conflict analysis, which was made possible by Al-Jazeera’s War on Gaza project powered by Ushahidi.

Abstract

The Gaza Conflict (2008-2009) between Hamas and Israel was defined the participants’ strategic use of force. Critics of Israel point to the large number of Palestinian casualties compared to Israelis killed as evidence of a disproportionate Israeli response. I investigate Israeli and Hamas response patterns by constructing a unique data set of hourly conflict intensity scores from new social media and news source over the nearly 600 hours of the conflict. Using vector autoregression techniques (VAR), I find that Israel responds about twice as intensely to a Hamas escalation as Hamas responds to an Israeli escalation. Furthermore, I find that both Hamas’ and Israel’s response patterns change once the ground invasion begins and after the UN Security Council votes.

As Thomas notes, “Ushahidi worked with Al-Jazeera to track events on the ground in Gaza via SMS messages, email, or the web. Events were then sent in by reporters and civilians through the platform and put into a Twitter feed entitled AJGaza, which gave the event a time stamp. By cross-checking with other sources such as Reuters, the UN, and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, I was able see that the time stamp was usually within a few minutes of event occurrence.”

Key Highlights from the study:

• Hamas’ cumulative response intensity to an Israeli escalation decreases (by about 17 percent) after the ground invasion begins. Conversely, Israel’s cumulative response intensity after the invasion increases by about three fold.

• Both Hamas and Israel’s cumulative response drop after the UN Security Council vote on January 8th, 2009 for an immediate cease-fire, but Israel’s drops more than Hamas (about 30 percent to 20 percent decrease).

• For the period covering the whole conflict, Hamas would react (on average) to a “surprise” 1 event (15 minute interval) of Israeli misinformation/psy-ops with the equivalent of 1 extra incident of mortar re/endangering civilians.

• Before the invasion, Hamas would respond to a 1 hour shock of targeted air strikes with 3 incidents of endangering civilians. Comparatively, after the invasion, Hamas would only respond to that same Israeli shock with 3 incidents of psychological warfare.

• The results conrm my hypotheses that Israel’s reactions were more dependent upon Hamas and that these responses were contextually dependent.

• Wikipedia’s Timeline of the 2008-2009 Gaza Conflict was particularly helpful in sourcing and targeting events that might have diverging reports (i.e. controversial).

Perhaps the main question I would have for Thomas is how he thinks his analysis and findings could be used for conflict early warning and rapid response to violent conflict.

Patrick Philippe Meier

In June I published a post, Shot fired overhead; Glenn Beck shows his Operative stripes to spread the Infowars report on the blatant CIA PsyOps attempt to vilify 9/11 Truthers as domestic terrorists.  Glenn Beck demonstrated his true colors during his interview of a self-described former CIA operative when he spewed the blatant lie that 9/11 Truthers were complicit in the murderous act of James Wenneker von Brunn who shot and killed Stephen Jones, the guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

No amount of CIA propaganda will put the genie back into the bottle.  The fact remains that high-tech explosive materials were strategically planted within the towers before September 11th, 2001, some detonating in sub-basement levels just seconds before the first plane hit.  That media coverage of the international scientific study at the University of Copenhagen, that confirms the presence of nano-thermite in the WTC dust, is widespread in Europe is not the scope of this blog post.

This post is intended to document on this blog site another such PsyOps effort by the CIA, again aptly reported by Infowars.com).  This time the PsyOps effort is attempting to hijack the recent Fort Hood tragic shooting rampage to make it out to be reflective of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Folks, the New World Order Police State is accelerating its attempt at takeover because WeThePeople in increasing numbers are standing up for the Truth and getting closer to the criminals within the Infowar for your mind.  Your own independent and objective research is exactly what the CIA PsyOps are desperately wanting to discourage.  It’s up to you.

Reposted from Infowars.com:

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A career Neo-Con hack with intimate ties to the CIA has shamefully exploited the tragic massacre at Fort Hood last week to smear anyone who questions the official 9/11 story as a gun-toting terrorist intent on mass murder on a par with crazed killer Nidal Malik Hasan.

In an opinion piece, UPI editor at large Arnaud De Borchgrave disgracefully claims that, “There are tens of thousands of Hasans all over the Western world — from Brussels to Berlin and from Burgos, Spain, to Birmingham, U.K.,” before making the case that anyone who dares doubt the government’s version of events on 9/11 is an extremist hell-bent on metering out “jihadi violence” like Hasan did when he gunned down scores of his colleagues.

“For them, Sept. 11, 2001, was a conspiracy cooked up by the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service,” writes Borchgrave.

Borchgrave’s bellicose hit piece harks back to the November 2007 hearing of the Homeland Security Subcommittee’s “Terrorism and the Internet,” which was broadcast on C-Span and chaired by California democrat Jane Harman, sponsor of the infamous HR 1955, “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.” During the hearing, a powerpoint demonstration from Mark Weitzman of the Simon Weisenthal Center ludicrously equated Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization consisting of professionals who are investigating the collapse of WTC 7 and the twin towers, with violent Islamic terrorists.

Borchgrave outlines his argument with the usual turd-load of ad hominem drivel and half-baked strawman claims. At no point whatsoever does he present any evidence that Hasan embraced 9/11 conspiracies, which would totally contradict separate reports that Hasan is linked with members of Al-Qaeda.

“Even though al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden and his No. 2 Ajman Al-Zawahiri have both taken credit for Sept. 11, countless millions are convinced they had nothing to do with the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon,” he writes.

If Borchgrave had bothered to do one iota of research before spewing his vitriol, he would have discovered that on numerous occasions immediately after the attacks, Bin Laden explicitly denied responsibility for 9/11.

In a statement released to the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera and reported on by CNN on September 17, 2001, Bin Laden said, “I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons. I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders’ rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.”

Asked if he carried out 9/11 by the Pakistani newspaper Ummat on September 28, 2001, Bin Laden responded, “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children and other people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.”

The only person to “take credit” for the attacks was a dubiously fat Bin Laden lookalike who appeared on a videotape that was broadcast on December 13, 2001. Freedom Of Information Act requests attempting to validate the tape’s authenticity filed with the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, and CENTCOM were met with a refusal to release any records. The FBI’s Most Wanted page still fails to list 9/11 on Bin Laden’s rap sheet because “the FBI has no hard evidence connecting bin Laden to 9/11,” according to FBI agent Rex Tomb.

The tape was allegedly found in a house in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in. It featured a fat Osama laughing and joking about how he’d carried out 9/11. The video was also mistranslated in order to manipulate viewer opinion and featured “Bin Laden” praising two of the hijackers, only he got their names wrong.

This Osama also uses the wrong hand to write with and wears gold rings, a practice considered abhorrent to the Muslim faith.

A German TV Channel One investigation found that the White House’s translation of the video was inaccurate and “manipulative”. One of the experts employed by the program to study the video concluded that the translation was “Very problematic – at the most important places where it is held to prove the guilt of Bin Laden, it is not identical with the Arabic.”

“Prof. Gernot Rotter, professor of Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Asia-Africa Institute at the University of Hamburg sums it up: “The American translators who listened to the tapes and transcribed them apparently wrote a lot of things in that they wanted to hear but that cannot be heard on the tape no matter how many times you listen to it.”

In his hit piece, Borchgrave recycles a number of strawman issues that aren’t even embraced by the majority of the 9/11 truth movement in a pathetic effort to equate questioning 9/11 with Holocaust denial, which routinely serves as the last refuge of those who are losing the argument and have to resort to intimidation in an attempt to demonize the target of their attack.

Borchgrave’s motivation for smearing people who question the official version of 9/11 as crazed killers would be something of a mystery if not for the fact that, as a result of his dutiful lifelong propaganda in service of the U.S. military-industrial complex, he was tapped for recruitment by the CIA on two separate occasions and has remained in close contact with the Agency throughout his career as a journalist.

Borchgrave considered his “key, best sources of information” in the world the heads of “intelligence services in Washington, London, Tel Aviv, and Pretoria, each of which I stay in close contact with.”

Borchgrave was also affiliated with CAUSA, an “educational organization” created in New York City in 1980 by members of the Unification Church at the suggestion of Rev. Sun Myung Moon (owner of Borchgrave’s primary employers, UPI and the Washington Times), that sought to propagandize in favor of the Contra leadership during the time when they were being armed and funded by the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Borchgrave dispensed with any of the tenets of a true journalist more than 30 years ago by acting as an apologist for government deception and disinformation. In 1978, he told the Covert Action Information Bulletin that it was acceptable for authorities to oversee “management of the news” in order to “put the best face possible face” on what they were doing.

Borchgrave infamously peddled a hoax story in a crude attempt to generate support for the war in Iraq in 2003. According to SourceWatch, “Borchgrave was instrumental in laundering a story about a recanting peace-activist who “saw the light” in Iraq before the war. Although Joseph went to Iraq to protest against the impending war in 2003, while in Baghdad, he changed his mind, and now favored the war. It transpires that this was a hoax, there was no “Kenneth Joseph”, and the details can be read here.”

Borchgrave’s TV appearances are handled by Benador Associates, a public relations firm that provided enthusiastic Neo-Con cheerleaders for the war on Iraq during the now exposed Bush-Pentagon military propaganda program.

In May 2006, Benador were disgraced when it emerged that they had planted a fake story that later appeared in the National Post of Canada claiming that “Iran’s government had passed a law requiring Jewish residents to wear a yellow insignia — reminiscent of the policies of Germany’s Nazi regime.” The story was planted with the aid of Iranian exile Amir Taheri, who was later brought to the White House to consult with George W. Bush as an “expert” on the situation in Iraq.

According to the PR group’s founder Eleana Benador, planting fake stories in the media is a noble pursuit. “As much as being accurate is important, in the end it’s important to side with what’s right. What’s wrong is siding with the terrorists,” she told the Nation, who exposed the PR firm in an article entitled “Bunkum From Benador”.

As a result of his doting fealty to the U.S. war machine, some commentators have accused Borchgrave of being an outright disinformation agent, peddling his own brand of bunkum on a regular basis.

Again from SourceWatch, “William Preston and Ellen Ray wrote a history of disinformation in the U.S., and observed: “The greatest assistance in disinformation – especially during the current Administration – is always forthcoming from the Reader’s Digest. In 1977 the Times exposed Digest editor John Barron as having worked hand in glove with the CIA on a book about the KGB. Other fraudulent journalists like Robert Moss, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Daniel James, Claire Sterling, and Michael Ledeen, among others, seem to pick up disinformation themes almost automatically. In fact, coordination between the development of propaganda and disinformation themes by the covert media assets, the overt propaganda machine, and the bevy of puppet journalists is quite calculated. A theme which is floated on one level – a feature item on VOA about Cuba for example – will appear within record time as a lead article in Reader’s Digest, or a feature in a Heritage Foundation report, or a series of “exposes” by Moss and de Borchgrave or Daniel James in some reactionary tabloid like Human Events or the Washington Times or Inquirer. Then they will be called to testify by Senator Denton’s Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, repeating one another’s allegations as “expert witnesses”.

“After that they are given credibility by the “respectable” Cold War publications like the National Review, Commentary, and the New Republic. And finally, since they have repeated the theme so many times it must be true, they are given the opportunity to write Op Ed pieces for the New York Times or the Washington Post.”

The fact that the truth movement is being attacked and equated with terrorists for suggesting high-level government involvement in 9/11 by a man who has more spook connections than James Bond and less journalistic integrity than the average National Inquirer hack should serve as a badge of honor.

Borchgrave’s inane rantings have provided us with the perfect opportunity to expose him and his ilk for exactly what they are – intellectual prostitutes for the establishment with no credibility, no facts, and an agenda completely focused around lies, deception and bias.

I was interviewed on Al Jazeera TV yesterday, for a report titled “China’s Empty City.”  It centered on Ordos, Inner Mongolia, where a whole new city, constructed along central planning lines by the Chinese government, has been completed but stands entirely empty.  The reporters at Al Jazeera originally approached me because of my recent blog post on “China’s Quality of GDP.”  It’s one thing to write about massive state-sponsored construction projects that achieve GDP growth targets without necessarily creating any real value, but a couple of TV images can be worth a thousand words in illustrating the point.

You can view the report by clicking here.  

It’s worth noting, as the report says, that despite the fact nobody lives there, virtually all of Ordos’ new apartment complexes are sold out — precisely what I was talking about in “China’s Real Estate Riddle.”

Creative Commons is finally due to launch in Jordan next sunday 15th nov with a big gathering of law experts  from all across the world and the Arab Region. Ziad Maraqa and Rami Olwan, CC Jordan leads, have organised a conference at Talal Abu Ghazaleh business Forum that will frame the debate around the launch of CC Jordan in the broader context of copyright reform, and will focus on how CC could be applied to business, artistic, entrepreneurial activities in the Arab world by showcasing case studies as the CC AL Jazeera repository.

Science Commons will be introduced for the first time in the Arab world.

The conference will start at 10 am at the Talal Abu Ghazaleh Business College at the German Jordanian University, Mekka Street, Amman. Conference will be opened by Ministry of Justice Aiman Odeh, and will feature opening remaks of Joi Ito, Ceo of Creative Commons, and Talal Abu Ghazaleh. Then the Jordan team will present the work they have been doing over the past years on the translation and porting process.

Other speakers include Diane Peters (General Counsel of Creative Commons), John Wilbanks (VP of Science Commons), Prof. Brian Fitzgerald (project lead of Creative Commons Australia at Professor at Queensland University Of Technlogy, Brisbane).

On the 16th Creative Commons will celebrate the first ever CC Arab Salon. Event is due to kick off at 6pm @Al Balad Theatre in Downtown Amman.

The Salon will feature media organisations, artists, bloggers and creative people from the Arab world who have used CC licenses and would like to share the results of opening up their work.

The Amman Salon is going to be a major step going towards fostering the creation of original Arabic content and encouraging the people to share it with the entire world.  To this extent, the enthusiastic support of the Royal Film Commission who is co-organising the event under the Royal Patronage of Prince Ali bin al Hussein has been extremely key and encouraging.

A big thank to the enourmous efforts of the wide variety of passionate people and hard workers that were involved in organising this, and of course to the pioneer artists from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Qatar that are going to showcase their “CC under” works! and thanks to the Jordan Open Source Association that has designed the logo of the Salon and set up an online contest to vote the most popular option which proved to be this one:

And that’s the final programme of the Salon. It’s going to be lots of artists and lots of fun! Spread the word and join us in Amman!

CC SALON @RFC SCHEDULE

Opening greetings: HRH Prince Ali bin al Hussein, Chairman of the Royal Film Commission

Greetings and overview on CC: Joi Ito, Ceo Creative Commons

Use of CC in the Arab world. The pioneers:

CC for media:

Moeed Ahmad, Al Jazeera (Qatar)

Nora Younis, Al Masry Al Youm (Egypt)

CC for visual artists:

Naeema Zarif (Lebanon)

Ahmad Ali (Syria)

CC for comics:

Maya Zankoul (Lebanon)

CC for a creative economy

Nadine Toukan and Yusuf Mansur, Urdun Mubdi3 (Jordan)

CC for filmmakers:

Cyril Aris and Mouna Akl (Lebanon)

CC for Social Media Community Projects

Ramsey Tesdell and Lina Ejleilat 7iber.com (Jordan)

CC for user generated content and Internet start ups:

Laith Zraikat, Jeeran (Jordan)

CC for poetry:

Emad Nasser, Seejal (Jordan)

CC for geeks:

Bassel Safadi, Discover Syria (Syria)

Eman Jaradat, Jordan Open Source Association (Jordan)

Music remix and live act by Rejon (US-China)