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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Jan 27 2011 - 02:56:31 EST
US fury over UN expert's 9/11 'cover-up' claims
(AFP) – 1 day ago
UNITED NATIONS — The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN
human rights expert for "noxious" comments claiming there had been a US
cover-up over the September 11 attacks.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the comments by Richard Falk, UN
special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, as "an
affront" to the victims of the 2001 Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and
Washington.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, called Falk's views
"despicable and deeply offensive" and said she had registered a protest and
called for his dismissal.
Falk wrote in his personal blog on January 11 that there are "awkward gaps
and contradictions in the official explanations" given for the attacks when
hijacked jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington.
He said there was "an apparent cover-up" by the US government over its
knowledge of the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden.
Falk said mainstream US media had been "unwilling to acknowledge the
well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda
operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."
The US ambassador said she was "appalled" and joined calls by other groups
for his dismissal.
"Mr Falk endorses the slurs of conspiracy theorists who allege that the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were perpetrated and then covered up
by the US government and media," she said in a statement.
"Mr Falk?s comments are despicable and deeply offensive, and I condemn them
in the strongest terms. I have registered a strong protest with the UN on
behalf of the United States."
"In my view, Mr Falk?s latest commentary is so noxious that it should
finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on
behalf of the UN," Rice said.
"The United States is deeply committed to the cause of human rights and
believes that cause will be better advanced without Mr Falk and the
distasteful sideshow he has chosen to create."
UN officials said that Falk is not appointed by Ban, but by the Geneva-based
UN Human Rights Council. The council must decide Falk's future, they said.
Speaking in Geneva, the UN leader expressed shock over the comments in a
speech to the UN Human Rights Council.
"I want to tell you clearly and directly. I condemn this sort of
inflammatory rhetoric. It is preposterous -- an affront to the memory of the
more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic attack," Ban said.
The US ambassador said the United States had already criticized what she
called "Mr Falk?s one-sided and politicized approach to his work for the UN,
including his failure to condemn deliberate human rights abuses by Hamas,
but these blog comments are in another category altogether.
"I would note that US and many other diplomats walked out in protest in
September 2010 when Iranian President Ahmadinejad made similarly slanderous
remarks before the UN General Assembly."
The Iranian leader also appeared to cast doubt on the causes of the
September 11 attacks in his speech to the General Assembly last year.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved
UN Human Rights Official Under Fire For Describing 9/11 As A Cover Up
<http://www.prisonplanet.com/un-human-rights-official-under-fire-for-describing-911-as-a-cover-up.html>
http://www.prisonplanet.com/un-human-rights-official-under-fire-for-describing-911-as-a-cover-up.html
- *Pro-Israel group uses comments to go after long term critic of Zionist
Israeli government’s actions in Gaza*
- *The majority of the members of the 9/11 Commission have questioned the
official account, it is not offensive to do so*
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com <http://prisonplanet.com/>
Wednesday, Jan 26th, 2011
An official working within the recently established UN Human Rights Council
is under fire from an NGO closely affiliated with Israel for suggesting that
the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks is a cover up.
*Richard Falk <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Falk>*, a former
professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, and an
expert on human rights made the comments *in a blog post last
week<http://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/interrogating-the-arizona-killings-from-a-safe-distance/>
*, noting that the mainstream media is “unwilling to acknowledge the
well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an al Qaeda
operation with no foreknowledge by government officials.”
Falk described this version of the 9/11 story as an “apparent cover up”
containing “gaps and contradictions”.
The group UN Watch, which describes itself as “an independent Geneva-based
watchdog organization”, pounced on the comments, *in a letter to UN
Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon<http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1316871&ct=9039887>
*, calling for Falk to be removed from his post immediately. The group
described Falk’s comments as an insult to the victims of the attacks and
their families and loved ones.
*Hilel Neuer, the group’s chief
executive*<http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2011/01/25/ngo-says-richard-falk-has-zero-credibility-urges-un-chief-to-fire-him/>,
described Falk as “a serial offender with zero credibility”.
*Ban Ki-Moon responded
Monday*<http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70O05O20110125?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:%2Breuters/topNews%2B%28News%2B/%2BUS%2B/%2BTop%2BNews%29>by
publicly condemning Falk’s comments, but added that he was not in a
position to fire Falk from the Human Rights Council.
The story has since *found its way into the mainstream
media<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8281125/UN-human-rights-official-claims-911-was-US-plot.html>
*, however there is one vital detail that you will not read in such
articles.
The *UN Watch <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_Watch>* group is closely
affiliated with the American Jewish Committee and has been described as “a
lobby group with strong ties to Israel”. The group has been after the head
of Richard Falk and others like him for years, purely because he and other
human rights experts alike continue to criticize and condemn the Israeli
government’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Falk’s appointment to the Human Rights Council, as a monitor on human rights
issues relating to the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian
Arabs, hit headlines in 2008 owing to the fact that he has previously
slammed the Israeli occupation of Palestine and compared the Zionist
government’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews in
the holocaust.
As a result, the Israeli government has routinely denied Falk a visa to
enter Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.
This legitimate criticism of the Zionist Israeli government gets boiled down
to “Richard Falk believes that Jews are Nazis” in pieces such as* this op ed
in last Friday’s New York Daily
News<http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/01/21/2011-01-21_paranoia_runs_deep.html>
*. This disgusting piece of tabloid trash suggests that Falk and his
contemporaries are “apologists for dictatorships”, ironically for
criticizing the actions of a vehemently racist government regime.
Despite this and the now customary attacks from the Anti-Defamation League,
Falk has *stood by his
criticisms<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7335875.stm>
*, previously telling the BBC: “If this kind of situation had existed for
instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese
government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to
make that comparison.”
Falk’s position on 9/11 has remained constant. Just over two years ago he
called for a fresh investigation into 9/11 in order to examine the possible
role that neoconservatives may have played in the attacks.
Indeed, two days prior to his appointment to the UN Human Rights Council in
March 2008, Falk appeared on former University of Wisconsin lecturer Kevin
Barrett’s radio show and spoke of how he was keen to see a fresh
investigation into 9/11 in order to address inconsistencies in the official
account of what happened.
Mr. Falk told Barrett, “It is possibly true that especially the
neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the
world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether
they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen
or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can
say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official
investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the
failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense
the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than
they presently possess.”
Falk previously penned the preface to Professor David Ray Griffin’s
groundbreaking 2004 book *The New Pearl Harbor, *in which the theologian
catalogued scores of unexplained facets surrounding 9/11 and inconsistencies
in the official government version of events.
Given that *the majority of those who sat on the 9/11 Investigative
Commission have themselves expressed doubts about the official
findings<http://www.prisonplanet.com/government-warned-911-commission-not-to-cross-the-line.html>
* and described their roles as participation in a cover up, it is perfectly
legitimate for anyone else in the world to ask questions about 9/11. In fact
it should be a priority of every official in Falk’s circle to ask the same
questions and raise the same doubts.
Richard Falk has continually acted as a thorn in the side of the
establishment. He has published a number of notable books and essays
analyzing the legality of the Vietnam War and other military operations,
including the Iraq invasion.
In 2007 he played a prominent role in a *Citizens’ hearing on the legality
of the Iraq War <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61WOtqddxKg>*as a tribunal
testifier. Of the Invasion he has previously written:
“inescapable that an objective observer would reach the conclusion that this
Iraq war is a war of aggression, and as such, that it amounts to a Crime
against Peace of the sort for which surviving German leaders were indicted,
prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials conducted shortly after the
Second World War.”
The UN Human Rights Council has been afforded little opportunity to function
in any meaningful way. It has met stiff opposition at every turn from the US
Congress and was recently described by the chairman of the House Committee
on Foreign Affairs as a “rogues’ gallery” for “pariah states”.
There is a clear worry within the establishment that like Falk, some of the
officials within the Human Rights Council are legal experts that recognize
war crimes and illegitimate attacks when they see them and are actually
attempting to do something about it.
This is one instance where some are attempting to work within and through
the establishment left arm of the global elite system to meter out some
justice.
In a 2008 interview, Japanese member of Parliament Yukihisa Fujita *told the
Alex Jones Show<http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2008/033108_un_investigation.htm>
* that there are numerous individuals within the UN structure that are
significantly interested in pursuing the coordination of a new 9/11
investigation in order to address unanswered questions.
However, it remains to be seen whether the Human Rights Council is composed
of enough well meaning individuals to have a significant impact, or whether,
like much of the rest of the UN, it will merely become a powerless part of
the overall establishment control mechanism.
48 Responses to “UN Human Rights Official Under Fire For Describing 9/11 As
A Cover Up”
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