First Lady Laura Bush later chimed in to enlighten us with her claim that the core ideology of the Taliban was misogyny when she ridiculously asserted "The brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists."

While these sorts of fictitious explanations often work to sway public beliefs because most people get their ideas from what the media and politicians tell them to think, they are completely detached from reality, internally inconsistent, and deliberately offer no insight into the real motivations behind terrorist attacks against the United States. As the U.S. efforts aspire to mask truth, they offer only vapid propaganda as an alternative.

Foreign Policy Comes Home
Some people argue that political lobbies should be banned because they favor special interests over general interests. Despite that objection, lobbies remain a highly effective means for select political causes to gain power. Among these, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is considered the second most powerful lobby in Washington. As a result of their work the United States gives 3 to 5 billion dollars a year to Israel which is used primarily to support the Palestinian occupation, Israel's nuclear weapons program, and other Israeli military objectives.

In addition to rewarding Israel every year with approximately $1000 of U.S. taxpayer money for every Israeli citizen, the Israeli lobby also encourages the U.S. to fight Israel's enemies, even though they pose no threat to others. This approach has increased foreign conflicts in the last ten years as Israel's enemies now fight back not only against Israel, but also against the United States for providing Israel with financial and military support. By supporting Israel, the United States has made itself a worldwide target for terrorist retaliation.

When the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 by Ramsi Yousef, U.S. investigators openly admitted that the purpose was to punish the United States for its support of Israel. Though the bombing attempt was unable to achieve the objective of toppling the towers, the airplane hijacking of 2001 was successful in that regard. The fact that the actual motivation for the World Trade Center attack was admitted in the first attack and then later replaced by fictional motivations in the second attack, such as those offered by the Bush family, says a great deal about how the political climate has shifted so drastically that truth cannot be openly spoken.

In June 2002 CNN reported that Yousef's original plan involved attacking Brooklyn neighborhoods, telling his alleged accomplice Abdul Rahman Yasin that "I want to blow up Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn." He eventually decided it would be more effective to blow up the twin towers because "the majority of people who work in the World Trade Center are Jews." So far no official report has been released to verify the statistical accuracy of that statement, though anti-Semites claim that few Jews were killed in the attacks.

A video tape released in May 2002 repeats identical sentiments. In it, bin Laden directly states that "The war is between us and the Jews... Any country that steps into the same trench as the Jews has only herself to blame." He has been making these statements for more than five years though the media pretends to be unaware of their contents despite reporting them.

Perhaps the worst aspect of our support for Israel is that they are not a particularly good ally. In addition to bringing attacks of retaliation against U.S. targets, their history as an ally includes being an arms dealer for countries such as China, Iran, and Nicaragua -- all against U.S. interests, spying on the US (most famously Jonathan Pollard), and initiating an attack against the U.S.S. Liberty that they tried to blame on Egypt to draw the United States into the war on Israel's side.

The cause of Middle Eastern terrorism against the United States is a direct result of supporting Israel and could be immediately stopped if we stopped supporting Israel. Even Mullah Omar offered benevolent advice when he said "There were reasons behind these great deeds. America should seek to remove these reasons -- and it knows them well -- so that such accidents do not reoccur." The alternative is to let the United States become a battleground for Middle Eastern conflicts while continuing to fund Israeli interests.

Why Terrorism?
Though held in low regard throughout the world, terrorism is the last resort available to effectively represent interests that are outside of traditional political systems. The public effect and inconvenience of terrorism means that traditional political systems are forced to acknowledge terrorists, even though terrorists rarely have the funding or voter support needed to participate in democratically organized movements.

The motivation for terrorism is not egocentricity or personal gain, so it is typically misunderstood by the modern Western tradition where only multicultural capitalistic democracy is permitted. As Mullah Omar explained, it is the importance of the act and not the personal consequences that forms the motivation.

"Those who carried out the operation ... had a clear goal and this goal was dearer to them than their lives, and they achieved it. Asking about them, who they are, is not important."

Terrorists have no other means to further their political movements so they are forced to resort to violence. Sometimes they are disparaged as "cowards" for using violence despite their willingness to give their lives for their cause, while politicians living safely thousands of miles from the battlefield ordering naive soldiers to drop bombs from 30,000 feet in the sky are called brave. These emotional but illogical characterizations only serve to foster greater misunderstandings of what is really happening.

Some people are unwilling to consider the ideological motivations of terrorists because of their methods. This choice of willful ignorance not only restricts awareness of the current government regime's policies, but also ensures a frustrated lack of understanding for the acts that result. In addition, history tells us that today's act of terrorism might be the seed of tomorrow's revolution. Though active dissention is unpopular today, the founding fathers of the United States fit today's definition of terrorists, but their guerrilla conspiracy of rebellion was necessary to gain the freedom of the American people, even though their actions were treasonous and were performed despite the death penalty promised by their British occupiers. In the case of America, the terrorist rebellion ultimately resulted in a new, independent nation, thus proving that terrorism can be effective and useful.

Much of what the founding fathers wrote would today be dismissed as the "ramblings" of radicals, but their ideological quest for freedom remains undeniable.

"God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed... what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
- Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith on Nov. 13, 1787. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 12, p. 356 (1955).

Islamic Warriors
It is always reasonable to consider the ideas of the rare people who take action instead of merely spouting rhetoric, even if their cause is unpopular. You don't have to agree with them, but it is to your advantage to understand them instead of accepting the media's marginalization and dismissal of their ideology because they are concerned with difficult topics that the media would rather not be considered in the public consciousness.

The American government, we think, is an agent that represents the Israel inside America. If we look at sensitive departments in the present government like the defense department or the state department, or sensitive security departments like the CIA and others, we find that Jews have the first word in the American government, which is how they use America to carry out their plans in the world and especially the Muslim world.       The presence of Americans in the Holy Land supports the Jews and gives them a safe back. The American government, in a time where there are millions of Americans living on the street and those living below the standard of living and below the poverty line, we find the American government turning toward helping Israel in occupying our land and building settlements in the Holy Land.       The American government is throwing away the lives of Americans in Saudi Arabia for the interests of the Jews. The Jews are a people who Allah cited in his holy book the Koran as those who attacked prophets with lies and killings, and attacked Mary and accused her of a great sin. They are a people who killed Allah's prophets - would they not kill, rape and steal from humans?       They believe that all humans are created for their use, and found that the Americans are the best-created beings for that use. The American Government is driving America to destruction and those same ones have no doubts about America being a superpower in the next decade.       So, we tell the American as a people, and we tell the mothers of soldiers, and American mothers in general, if they value their lives and those of their children, find a nationalistic government that will look after their interests and not the interest of the Jews. - Osama Bin Laden, 1998

You keep talking also about collective punishment and killing innocent people to force governments to change their policies; you call this terrorism when someone would kill innocent people or civilians in order to force the government to change its policies. Well, when you were the first one who invented this terrorism.       You were the first one who killed innocent people, and you are the first one who introduced this type of terrorism to the history of mankind when you dropped an atomic bomb which killed tens of thousands of women and children in Japan and when you killed over a hundred thousand people, most of them civilians, in Tokyo with fire bombings. You killed them by burning them to death. And you killed civilians in Vietnam with chemicals as with the so- called Orange agent. You killed civilians and innocent people, not soldiers, innocent people every single war you went. You went to wars more than any other country in this century, and then you have the nerve to talk about killing innocent people.       And now you have invented new ways to kill innocent people. You have so- called economic embargo which kills nobody other than children and elderly people, and which other than Iraq you have been placing the economic embargo on Cuba and other countries for over 35 years...       The government in its summations and opening said that I was a terrorist. Yes, I am a terrorist and I am proud of it. And I support terrorism so long as it was against the United States Government and against Israel, because you are more than terrorists; you are the one who invented terrorism and using it every day. You are butchers, liars and hypocrites. - Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, 1998

Starting Nuclear War
In early March, the Bush administration released a document to the press outlining its plans to consider using nuclear weapons in attacks against seven countries that it considers its enemies. The purpose of this was to show that it no longer acknowledges the taboo against using nuclear weapons and that it is willing to use any level of force in order to maintain control over countries that do not comply with the demands of the US and its allies.

This type of thinking emphatically demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the consequences of nuclear war but is not a new problem that can be ascribed to the general stupidity of the current president. In 1976, George Bush Sr. made the remarkable claim that nuclear war is winnable. This same line of thinking continued with the election of Ronald Reagan who pursued a particularly radical line of Judeo-Christian mythology in his hope to make Biblical prophecies come true by destroying the world. Though this would be an appropriate demonstration of the outcome of that type of thinking, his concept of a "limited nuclear war" would have forced the disastrous consequences of anti-natural values that imagine a world that is not composed of waterways, ground soil, and air that are all subject to the effects of nuclear war.

With the widespread availability of unaccounted nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union, it is probable that a nuclear attack by the United States would result in a major U.S. city being nuked in retaliation. Even the threat of a U.S. attack might result in a preemptive nuclear attack against the U.S. to show that targeted countries will not turn the other cheek when destructive intentions are declared against them. This is especially likely when tensions between the United States and the Middle East remain high as a result of U.S. support for Israel's occupation of Palestine and for United Nations sanctions that have killed over 1.6 million Iraqi citizens.

It has also been suggested that if Iraq were attacked by the United States, Iraq would retaliate against Israel because the U.S. is too far away to be harmed by conventional means and Israeli interests are the cause of the United States aggression. This is what happened in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, when Scud missiles were launched at Israel though Israel was not directly involved in the United States attack.

North Korea also responded forcefully to the U.S. nuclear threat by stating that it would retaliate against any U.S. attack with appropriate nuclear force to destroy the United States.

"If the U.S. intends to mount a nuclear attack on any part of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea just as it did on Hiroshima, it is grossly mistaken," KCNA was quoted as saying, using the formal title for North Korea.

"A nuclear war to be imposed by the U.S. nuclear fanatics upon the DPRK would mean their ruin in nuclear disaster."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/03/13/nkorea.nuclear/

Freedom Lost
Osama bin Laden told us plainly that our freedom would be suspended, but did not say who would do it.

"America will never taste security and safety unless we feel security and safety in our lands and in Palestine," he said. "They will not feel safe until the troops of the United States of America withdraw from the Muslim holy places." http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/10/07/ret.peres.attacks/index.html

The hastily passed Patriot act quickly seized an opportune moment to undermine the last of the remaining rights in the land of the once free. Almost immediately, thousands of cameras were deployed with cutting edge technology in New York City, Washington, and other major cities. The witch-hunt continued as the government began collecting previously private information such as phone records, tollbooth passes, grocery purchases, library books, and everything else stored in computer systems, all gathered without judicial oversight. Government officials simply showed up and demanded records, saying they were needed as part of their "war against terrorism". This came even after several people leading these new policies were caught actively attempting to supress press coverage of ideas unfavorable to their plans.

Leading this effort is John Ashcroft, an insane Judeo-Christian picked for the role because he was so politically inept that he lost an election to a dead man and therefore eagerly complies with the agenda assigned by his handlers. Ashcroft is the front man for Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System), a system that encourages citizens to spy on and report one another to authorities for perceived violations of law.

Privacy advocates have long warned the public that any major catastrophe could be used by the government to justify the unleashing of extreme surveilance measures. By working with the media to generate fear completely out of proportion with reality, the government has been able to easily encroach upon once untouchable freedoms. Not only are technologies such as facial scanning being accepted as normal for use in airports and other public places but even private companies are now considering deploying them. Eventually, with a large enough number of data sources collected on individuals, it will even be possible for businesses to discriminate against customers who have not been conditioned to support conventional social views. However, the danger to government and business interests caused by people who come to independent conclusions will only be addressed when the currently deployed technology increases in sophistication and becomes more widely deployed.

While advocates of government control take advantage of the generated fear to pass laws requiring biometric registration such as retinal scans and fingerprints, the concept of utopia as a police state is hardly a new one. In 1791, the revoltingly soulless Jeremy Bentham published plans for a revolutionary penitentiary called Panopticon. The idea was to perpetually observe prisoners, but never allow them to know when they were being watched. This model prison was premised on the idea of total and forced obedience through persistent visibility - an idea that has become popular in settings such as factories, schools, and office environments, all of which are modeled after this prison configuration.

It is no surprise that this concept is being adopted by governments intent on forcing people into docility. As Michel Foucault meticulously explained in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, any Utilitarian approach ultimately requires the destruction of the individual spirit so that conformity can be forced in compliance with the demands of the current ruling authority.

Despite the constant social programming originating from media and government sources, there is still a small minority of people who have retained their souls and are capable of independent thought that often reaches conclusions that are the opposite of those propagated by authorities. Because the rest of the world has more independent media coverage than exists in the United States, as well as established cultural traditions that partially repel media propaganda, there are more accurate perspectives available outside of the U.S., and often open mention of truths that are considered unacceptable for public discussion in the United States.

David Hume wrote that "[i]t is seldom that any liberty is lost all at once." This phenomenon of gradually constricted freedom is nearly imperceivable to most people, just as a lobster doesn't notice being cooked in increasingly heated water. Still, the end result is the same; perhaps even worse given the lack of general awareness for what has happened.

When yielding to Orwellian horrors isn't enough, the United States government acts out Kafkaesque story lines by holding people as prisoners without any evidence, explanation, or official oversight. Confinement occurs for no stated reason other than the usual proclamations about the essential need to protect freedom by any means necessary, even if it requires suspending the freedom of someone held without the ability to confront their accusors.

While the lemmings will continue to wave their flags and obsequiously display slogans of prostration, the spectacle of martyred patriotism is little more than another manufactured distraction to keep people from understanding the reasons for what happened and why they will continue to happen. The reasons are simple, yet the public is encouraged to turn away from comprehension.

"You American people - can you ask yourselves why [there is] all this hate against America and Israel? The answer is clear and very simple, that America has committed so many crimes against the nations of Muslims.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/10/07/ret.peres.attacks/

By carrying out a carefully orchestrated retaliation against the United States government for its support of Israel and immoral behavior in the Middle East, Osama bin Laden masterfully provoked the U.S. to destroy the supposed freedom it claims as its distinguishing factor among nations. Though not a noble or respectable act, his fulfilled prophecy demonstrates a profound understanding of how America really works.

-Jesus
August 1, 2002