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In a significant observation many time UN contributor & international observer Professor Hans Koechler said “9/11 may have been an insider’s job” in response to a question from one of the delegates attending his lecture The 'Global War on Terror - Contradictions of an Imperial Strategy' last night at the Trades Hall in Auckland.

“I am not a boy-I am 59. There are many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the official version of events. Those who could not handle a Cessna pulled off 9/11,” he said.

But he was quick to note that the official version has to be challenged. Quoting David Ray Griffin he said these events, in terms of destruction caused, these incidents cannot have been exclusively organized by a shadowy network of Mujahedeen from the remote places of the globe.

The causes officially given for the incidents are not a sufficient explanation for what actually happened on that day, especially as regards the logistics of this highly sophisticated operation and the very advanced infrastructure required for it.

He has published more than 300 books, reports and scholarly articles in several languages. In his book The Global War on Terror and the Metaphysical Enemy he writes the atrocities of September 11, 2001- Instead of dealing with the contradictions and inconsistencies in the official version of events and the numerous gaps in terms of the factual information, a “dogma of political correctness” has been promulgated according to which 19 Islamic-inspired Arab hijackers, directed by an elusive “Al-Qaeda” (“base”), succeeded in carrying out the atrocities all by themselves.

During the course of his lecture he recalled the detailed and precise questions asked on 11 January 2008 by Yukihisa Fujita, member of Japan’s House of Councillors (Senate) and Director of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, about the 9/11 attacks as the origin of the war on terror are a rare exception.

The total silence about Mr. Fujita’s intervention before the Committee, that was broadcast live on Japan’s public NHK television channel, in the Western corporate media is a telling example of the
lack of courage in front a powerful political establishment. Thus, a rather docile and obviously opportunistic intellectual élite in the West, in tandem with client régimes in the Muslim world, has effectively silenced – or at least marginalized – critical opinion.

Against this bleak – geopolitical as well as civilizational – background we can basically identify two desiderata of international politics in the framework of the increasing alienation between Islam and the West, which accompanies the confrontation over the “global war on terror”:

The countries of the West, “assembled,” to varying degrees of intensity and loyalty, around the United States as the imperial hegemon, have to realize that they are about to embark upon an unwinnable test of wills: a conflict that cannot be ended in (conventional) military terms and that will, if not contained by means of multilateral diplomacy, completely absorb the “political energies” and exhaust, to a considerable extent, the resources even of advanced industrial societies.

At the same time, they have to correct and eventually reverse the process of “civilizational alienation” vis à- vis Islam for which they are responsible in important respects. There is a need, as then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has put it, “to unlearn the stereotypes that have become so entrenched in so many minds and so much of the media.”

Since 1972, UN Secretaries-General in their statements subsequently acknowledged Professor Köchler’s contributions to international peace. In April 2000, Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Professor Koechler as international observer at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (Lockerbie Trial).

He said “up to the present day, the government of the United Kingdom has rejected calls for a public inquiry into the circumstances of the explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1989. As international observer, appointed by the United Nations, of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands I have outlined the flaws in the proceedings and called for a revision of the court’s verdict.”

Eventually, in June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, apparently sharing the author’s original concerns, referred the case back to the appeal court.

He pointed out the sentencing of a lone intelligence officer from Libya for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which has caused the death of 270 people. While this individual most likely is not guilty as charged, i.e. is not the one who inserted the bomb onto the plane via Malta and Frankfurt (according to the “Opinion of the Court”: The High Court of Justiciary at Camp Zeist, Case No: 1475/99, 31 January 2001), no efforts have been made to date to comprehensively investigate the midair explosion and prosecute the actual perpetrators. The U.K. and U.S. governments have both rejected a public inquiry into the circumstances of this incident, thus preventing efficient measures against possible acts of terrorism against civil aviation in the future.

Prof Koechler is the Founder and President of the International Progress Organization (I.P.O.), an international non-governmental organization (NGO) in consultative status with the United Nations and with a membership in over 70 countries, representing all continents.

Through his research and international activities, Professor Koechler made major contributions to the debate on international democracy and United Nations reform, in particular reform of the Security Council. This was acknowledged by international figures such as the German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. In 1985, Professor Koechler organized the first major colloquium on "Democracy in International Relations" on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the United Nations in New York. With Irish Nobel Laureate Seán MacBride he initiated the Appeal by Lawyers against Nuclear War, which set in motion an international campaign that eventually led to a General Assembly resolution and the issuing of an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice. As President of the I.P.O., he dealt with the humanitarian issues of the exchange of prisoners of war between Iran and Iraq and with the issue of Kuwaiti POWs and missing people in Iraq.

Syed Akbar Kamal is Producer/Director for current affairs programme Darpan - The Mirror nationwide on Stratos & Triangle TV.
www.teamworkproductions.co.nz

ENDS