NY Sun: U.N. Official Urged Commission to Study Neocon Role in 9/11

(This seems to be a somewhat misleading headline. What Falk actually did was make this comment on Kevin Barrett's radio show: "there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in". Mr. Falk has not used his newly-minted position as a UN official to form or suggest a new 9/11 Commission... yet. Is the NY Sun pulling a "pre-emptive strike" on any possible moves by Falk? In an echo of the Ahmadinejad report, Lake is eager to bring up past comments by Falk using the Holocaust as a metaphor for the treatment of the Palestinians. -rep.)

Reddit: http://reddit.com/info/6fb4i/comments/

THE NEW YORK SUN REPORTS:

U.N. Official Urged Commission to Study Neocon Role in 9/11

By ELI LAKE, STAFF REPORTER OF THE SUN | April 9, 2008

WASHINGTON — A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk’s specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the “9-11 official version.”

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, “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.”

Mr. Barrett, who is the co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, said in an interview yesterday of Mr. Falk, “I would put him on a list of scholars who are sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement.”

He added, “Unlike most public intellectuals today, he is both honest and very, very knowledgeable in that he understands the probable reality of 9/11. He understands that the evidence that it was a false flag operation is very strong.”

The narrative that the attacks from 2001 were a “false flag” operation is a recurring theme in the literature challenging the consensus that 19 Al Qaeda hijackers flew commercial jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. False flag refers to espionage or covert actions taken by one government made to seem like the work of another. The false flag thesis has it that the Bush administration is somehow responsible for the September 11 attacks as a pretext for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Falk yesterday did not return e-mails and phone calls asking for a comment. But in 2004 he wrote the foreword to the book “The New Pearl Harbor,” by David Ray Griffin. Mr. Griffin has posited that such an inside job is the likely explanation for the attacks.

In the preface, Mr. Falk writes, “There have been questions raised here and there and allegations of official complicity made almost from the day of the attacks, especially in Europe, but no one until Griffin has had the patience, the fortitude, the courage, and the intelligence to put the pieces together in a single coherent account.”

When asked for a comment about the appointment of Mr. Falk, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton said, “This is exactly why we voted against the new human rights council.” A spokesman for the American embassy at the United Nations offered no comment yesterday when asked.

A spokeswoman at the United Nations, Nancy Groves, yesterday also declined to comment. “I would not make a comment on how the member states vote on appointments. It is their council, they make their decisions,” she said.

Mr. Falk’s selection to the post as rapporteur has already prompted the government of Israel formally to request that Mr. Falk not be sent to their country. The Israeli press has reported that he may even be barred from entering the country.

The deputy permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations in New York, Daniel Carmon said, “We are asking the U.N. not to send him. We cannot agree to Mr. Falk’s entrance into Israel in his capacity as the rapporteur.”

One reason the Israelis are concerned about his appointment is that Mr. Falk has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Arabs to the Nazi treatment of Jews in the holocaust. In an April 8 BBC interview, Mr. Falk said he stood by the Israel-Nazi comparison.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, issued a statement yesterday saying, “This was clearly a singularly inappropriate choice for this position. Falk’s startling record of anti-Israel prejudice should have been enough to preclude him from a position where an unbiased observer is needed to report on the status of human rights in the territories.”

In a February 16, 1979, op-ed for the New York Times, Mr. Falk praised Ayatollah Khomeini and bemoaned his ill treatment in the American press. He wrote, “The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.” Nearly nine months later, student followers of Khomeini invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 diplomats hostage for the following 444 days.

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MP3 Audio Clip - Kevin Barrett & Richard Falk

Monday March 24, 2008
Kevin Barrett speaks with Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, about 9/11 Truth, the Nation Magazine (left of center media) and the possibility of another false flag attack on America

* source = http://www.gcnlive.com
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More MP3 Audio Clips >

bbruhwiler8

Sorry for injecting myself into the blog, but the NY Sun headline strikes me as misleading. Perhaps this is an attempt to stop Falk from causing any trouble. Note how the article itself lists a bunch of interesting ideas, like False Flag, but then closes with a nice Holocaust turd in the punchbowl.

I'm not sure that a comment on a relatively small radio show equals "calling for an official commission". If Mr. Falk stood up in the UN and "called for an official commission", then Lake would be accurate.

Better get on it, Mr. Falk, it looks like they've got your number.

Many posted this article to their blogs but bbruhwiler8 was first among bloggers!

Reprehensor

Mr. Reprehensor,

I am very impressed with your interjection, and I appreciate it tremendously. You deserve a lot of credit for actually taking the time to put this article into context for everybody (including myself) by adding the 'introduction' paragraph.

With you in the struggle,
Bruno
WeAreChangeLA

beat me to the punch ;>)

i saw the punch bowl turd at the end but its also possible that the writer did this to get the information out past his editor. of course i don't know.

the headline is good

Thats true but

someone must have read his cv before he was appointed to the UN job. He was already shouting from the roof about 911, presumably before he was appointed.

As NY Sun hit pieces go, this could have been worse

The NY Sun has done a couple of anti-9/11-truth hit pieces before, including one where they quoted leading neocon military theorist Edward Luttwak, whose 1968 book Coup d'Etat seems to have provided much of the script for 9/11, as saying (regarding my teaching appointment at UW-Madison) "How come a public institution will accord any kind of job other than cleaning the bathrooms to a person who says these things?"

During my interview with Eli Lake I implored him to be fair to Richard Falk, one of the most ethical and erudite people on the planet. While this piece was obviously not conceived to be fair to Richard Falk, it seems to me that it could have been a lot worse. While it may to some degree succeed in its purpose of riling up hardcore Zionist/neocon types against Falk, it could also generate a backlash of sympathy for him among the non-9/11-truth liberal intellectual crowd, while simultaneously providing good publicity for 9/11 truth. So let's spread this news far and wide.

It definitely could have been worse.

Future interviewees with Mr. Lake should have their wits about them, though.

BBC: Israel to bar UN rights official

Wednesday, 9 April 2008: Israel has said it will not allow a UN official appointed to investigate Israeli human rights abuses to enter the country or Palestinian territories.

It said it made the decision after Richard Falk told the BBC he stood by comments he made comparing Israel's actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.

Mr Falk is due to take up his post with the UN Human Rights Council in May.

The foreign ministry said it would deny Mr Falk a visa at least until a council meeting in September.

Collective punishment

Foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel told the BBC that people in Israel were dismayed by Mr Falk's comments.

Mr Falk has been employed by the UN to investigate Israeli conduct in the occupied territories, but Israel wants his mandate changed to include Palestinian actions as well.

Mr Mekel said Israel would request the change of mandate at the September meeting, and "only then will we consider whether to let the rapporteur come here or not".

Speaking to the BBC on Tuesday, Mr Falk said he stood by his comments, made last summer.

He said he drew the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza.

He understood that it was a provocative thing to say but he had made the comments, he said, to shake the American public from its torpor.
Link

Why am I not suprised.

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The CONSTITUTION is NOT going to "collapse" into pulverized dust no matter how much thermate/explosives or planes they throw at it

The Nuremberg Principles

"These seven international war laws derived from the Nuremburg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals were adopted as universal statute war law by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950."

(snip)

VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

(b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

VII. Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

As the website says it: Zionism kills!

http://zionismkills.wordpress.com/

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Consider mass emailing truth messages. More info here: http://www.911blogger.com/node/13321

Shh...

crimethink - To even consider any thought not in line with the principles of Ingsoc. Doubting any of the principles of Ingsoc. All crimes begin with a thought. So, if you control thought, you can control crime. "Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death, Thoughtcrime is death.... The essential crime that contains all others in itself."

Shout out theTruth load and clear

Falk has connected the dots. He out foxed the fox.

What the SUN failed to say is this.:

"He (Falk) understood that it was a provocative thing to say but he had made the comments, he said, to shake the American public from its torpor."

Falk is reprehinsible to the Sun because he is anti-zionazi, enemy of the neocons because he points out their lies to wage the 911 wars. And the Sun details all the reasons. He crossed too many red lines and therefore made him look like Khomeni. But people must have read his cv, before appointing him for the job at the UN. And Israel just says they want his job to include human rights violations carried out by the victims of their military occupation.

There you have it: The American public is shaken from its torpor. The Sun says it load and clear.

I dont think Falk

I dont think Falk would have anything to do with Supemacist Theories. Not that I have read any of his books on international law.

..

New York Sun :
Publisher : Ronald Weintraub
Editor : Seth Lipsky
managing editor (and a company vice president) : Ira Stoll.

Pretty obviously a smear-campaign ..
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"Listen carefully now : DO NOT DESTROY OIL-WELLS" Dubya

Please write to the UN Human Rights Council and the NY Sun!

This article was meant to trigger a flood of email, letters, and phone calls urging UNHRC to dump Richard Falk. Let's turn the tables on them! Write a polite, reasonable, understated letter, or make a similar phone call, supporting Richard Falk. I feel a certain responsibility here, since I got him into this ; )

editor@nysun.com
Email the United Nations: presidentga58@un.org

Most important person to contact ( I just got this from the NY office):

Cecilia Canessa, ccanessa@ohchr.org
Special Assistant to Louise Arbour
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
1211 Geneva 10
Switzerland

Other possible contacts:

Mr. Mbaidjol
Director-New York Office of the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights
ph: 212-963-1583 or 212-963-5930
fax: 212-963-3463

Philip Alston
Special Rapporteur
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Fax: 41 22 917 9006
email: urgent-action@ohchr.org

Contact us
UNHCR is based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Our address:
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
Case Postale 2500
CH-1211 Genève 2 Dépôt
Suisse.
Our telephone number:
+41 22 739 8111 (automatic switchboard).
Contact by email
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/contact?hq=y

OK

But I find it difficult to trust the UN explicitly.

Lets be Vigilant.

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The CONSTITUTION is NOT going to "collapse" into pulverized dust no matter how much thermate/explosives or planes they throw at it

Right, especially since the U.N. is set to be the seat of a NWO,

globalist dictatorship.

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Consider mass emailing truth messages. More info here: http://www.911blogger.com/node/13321

Falk's position on the UN...

...is similar to that of David Griffin and a lot of other good people who suspect that in the absence of enforceable international laws against war, the species is doomed. Gwynne Dyer's book "War" is a terrific history of mass murder as THE central human institution. Dyer's book is structured around his observation that if war continues, we won't. Technological advances in mass murder have made war obsolete, yet we keep acting as if nothing has changed.

The trouble is, the UN is a potential tyrant. How can we get an international consensus to disarm without establishing a potential tyranny to enforce that consensus? I like the approach of http://www.planetization.org. We need to overthrow the NWO and restructure governance so it's bottom-up rather than top-down.

ONLINE ACTION

I love your thinking. This is an online action that all of us can, and should, direct to those we have on our contact list. Let's make our presence known.

With you in solidarity,
Bruno
WeAreChangeLA

A global campaign!

This needs to be organized into a global campaign while trying to minimize the probable cointelpro.

Kevin Barrett <-- Radio show...

Where and when do we hear your radio show?

With you in the struggle,
Bruno
WeAreChangeLA

Barrett's radio shows

Bruno,

You can get a listing of all of Kevin Barrett's radio shows here.

http://www.mujca.com/airwaves.htm

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How did CNN and BBC have foreknowledge of the WTC7 collapse, yet six years later, the government cannot explain it?

Israel's first official reaction after Falk's UN election

Israel's first official reaction after professor Falk's election as "UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" can be read in the following UN press release:

http://domino.un.org/unispal.NSF/47d4e277b48d9d3685256ddc00612265/0da4ba56ade85249852574190058d462!OpenDocument

(copy link to your browser)
In this UN press release, also check out the first official reactions by the US and Canada, then read the one by Palestine! ;)

The first headline in the Jerusalem Post after Falk's election read: "UNHRC appointment infuriates Israel". See http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShow...

No matter what your opinion of the UN is, this is an EXCELLENT development for the 9/11 Truth Movement and its general credibility. My hope and expectation is that many more 9/11 Truthers will be elected to high public international positions in the months and years to come, thus building global momentum for a genuine international investigation into 9/11.

relevant parts of original UN press release

http://domino.un.org/unispal.NSF/47d4e277b48d9d3685256ddc00612265/0da4ba56ade85249852574190058d462!OpenDocument

UNISPAL Home

Human Rights Council 26 March 2008

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UNITED NATIONS

Press Release

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xxxxxxxxxx HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL ELECTS ADVISORY COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND APPROVES A NUMBER OF SPECIAL PROCEDURES MANDATE HOLDERS

xxxxxxxxxx
Human Rights Council
AFTERNOON 26 March 2008

The Human Rights Council this afternoon elected 18 experts to make up its new Advisory Committee. The Council also approved candidates for its Special Procedures on the right to adequate housing, the right to food, human rights of indigenous people, sale of children, effects of economic reform policies, human rights in Myanmar, human rights in the Palestinian territories, human rights and extreme poverty, contemporary forms of slavery, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, people of African descent, human rights in Somalia and human rights defenders.

/...

Also this afternoon, the Council approved the list of candidates for Special Procedures mandate holders proposed by the President of the Council, who chose them out of candidates proposed by the Consultative Group which the Council appointed. The list included Ms. Raquel Rolnik (Brazil), Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; Mr. Olivier de Schutter (Belgium), Special Rapporteur on the right to food; Mr. James Anaya (United States), Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people; Ms. Najat M'jid Maala (Morocco), Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; Mr. Cephas Lumina (Zambia), Independent Expert on the effects of economic reform policies and foreign debt on the full enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights; Mr. Thomas Ojea Quintana (Argentina), Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar; Mr. Richard Falk (United States), Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967; Ms. Maria Magdalenan Sepulveda (Chile), Independent Expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty; and Ms. Gulnara Shahinian (Armenia), Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences.

/...

Comments Following the Approval of the List of Special Procedure Mandate Holders

/...

ITZHAK LEVANON (Israel) said that as the list of candidates for Special Procedures mandate holders was put forward today, he was overwhelmed at the profound sense of lost opportunity. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories was hopelessly unbalanced. This mandate was redundant at best and malicious at worst. It was impossible to believe that out of a list of 184 potential candidates, the eminently wise members of the Consultative Group honestly had made the best possible choice for this post. In a recent article, the proposed candidate stated that he did not think it was "an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity". Someone who had publicly and repeatedly stated such views could not possibly be considered independent, impartial or objective, as was explicitly required in the institution building text. The Human Rights Council was rapidly moving away from its raison d'être. The members of the Council were missing an opportunity to show the world that this Human Rights Council genuinely sought improvement, the chance to make a difference, and the prospect of laying the groundwork for better cooperation with Israel.

WARREN TICHENOR (United States) said that the Special Procedures, including country mandates, allowed the Human Rights Council an opportunity to view, monitor and help certain countries develop and improve their human rights situations. The United States respected the integrity of the procedure to elect candidates but expressed its concern on the mandate holder selected for the task of assessing the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This had long since been a particularly sensitive mandate and he hoped that it would not be conducted with bias and partiality. That being said, he wished the other new mandate holders the best of luck in their new appointments.

/...

MARIUS GRINIUS (Canada) said that the appointment of this slate of Special Procedures mandate holders marked an important milestone in the development of the Council. The Special Procedures had been referred to as the crown jewels of the United Nations human rights system. The efforts which had gone into the presentation of this list were fully appreciated. Canada hoped that Members could respect the integrity of the agreed process, in which no State should have a veto over candidates. However, based on the writings of one of the candidates, the nominee for the mandate on the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Canada expressed serious concern about whether the high standards established by the Council would be met by this individual. Therefore, Canada dissociated itself from any Council decision to approve the full slate.

/...

MOHAMMAD ABU-KOASH (Palestine) said it was ironic that Israel which claimed to be representing Jews everywhere was campaigning against a Jewish professor who had been nominated for the post of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The candidate was the author of 54 books on international law. Palestine doubted that those who had campaigned against him had read that many books. The candidate's nomination was a victory for good sense and human rights, as he was a highly qualified rapporteur. If Israel was concerned about human rights it would have ended its prolonged occupation.

/...
__________

For use of the information media; not an official record

Very interesting responses

It's interesting to read the above press releases from Israel, the US and Canada.

What I don't understand is how did Falk manage to get in under the radar? Was Israel unable to stop the election of Falk or position someone else more favorable in the UN?

The Sun article seems a preliminary salvo to put Prof. Falk on his guard. They hope to make him reconsider any statements he may make critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestininans

Israel's official statements about the Gaza Strip....
...don't believe them!