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| Anthony Lawson |
Interview by: Kourosh Ziabari
Without any redundant exaggeration, Anthony Lawson is an inimitable, conscientious and unique man. What he does can be described as professional and committed video-journalism. Lawson is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He calls himself as a “stickler for accuracy” and his record demonstrates the rightfulness of this description. His articles and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 9/11 attacks and U.S. foreign policy have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Sabbah Report, Veterans Today, Salem News, Intifada Palestine, Media With Conscience, Rense.com and Ramllah Online.
“Suppressing free and open discussion on any subject is as bad as telling lies, and knowingly suppressing the truth is the biggest lie of all, because it is based, not on a mistake or a genuine error, but on a deliberate intention to deceive,” writes Anthony Lawson in one of his articles.
YouTube has recently removed two of Mr. Lawson’s most impressive video files about Holocaust and 9/11 attacks under the pretext that these video files have violated the copyright law; however, even a seven-year-old child can effortlessly recognize that the sensitive truths which Anthony Lawson has touched upon in his videos caused their removal from the pro-Zionist website.
What follows is the complete text of my in-depth interview with Anthony Lawson in which we discussed a variety of issues including the concealed realities of 9/11, the Zionist influence over the U.S. administration and the freedom of mass media in the West.
Kourosh Ziabari: in one of your articles, you have written that “the NTSB has confirmed that-apparently for the first time from its inception, in 1967, since when it has investigated more than 124,000 other aviation accidents-it took no part in investigating any of the air crashes which occurred on September 11, 2001.” Do you mean that the National Transportation Safety Board refused to investigate the 9/11 air crashes? Was it ordered by a superior authority to do so? What does the fact that NTSB didn’t investigate the 9/11 air crashes imply? You have mentioned that FBI similarly refused to release any information about any debris recovered from the crash sites under the Freedom of Information Act. Do you want to imply that the U.S. administrative organizations such as FBI and NTSB have been complicit in the 9/11 attacks?
Anthony Lawson: That is correct. The NTSB did not take part in the painstaking procedure of examining what was left of the four aircraft to determine that they were indeed the same aircraft which were allegedly hijacked that morning. Two of the allegedly hijacked aircraft: American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were claimed, by the Bush administration, to have been the planes which impacted the North Tower and South Tower, respectively, each flown by Arabs who, it later transpired, had never flown a wide-bodied commercial jet before. Aircraft debris, including parts of an undercarriage and fuselage of the North Tower plane were certainly photographed, and the still-smoking core of what must have been the right engine of the South Tower plane can be seen, in several videos, arcing its way down towards Murray and Church streets, were it was videoed and photographed. Later, an identifiable photograph of this same engine core was released, by a former FEMA official photographer, as it was about to be buried in a landfill on Staten Island. This was an important section of a murder weapon, as were the aircraft parts found in or near the North Tower; the debris from the alleged crash site of United Flight 93 and that of American Airlines 77 which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon.
As to the second part of the question, I very much doubt that the NTSB would have been in a position to refuse to investigate the crashes. I should say that were dissuaded from doing so. The FBI, backed up by the Justice Department has refused to release any details about the aircraft parts or the serial numbers of the Black Boxes that may or may not have been found at the crash sites, although the contents of one of them—the Cockpit Voice Recorder from alleged United 93—formed the basis of several documentaries and an Academy-Award-winning movie, yet the transcript of the recording did not carry the serial number of the device on which it was, allegedly, recorded.
I try not to imply things that I have no proof about, because I think that it is up to the reader or viewer to make up their own mind about such things, but I will state, categorically, that the FBI must have been involved in the subsequent cover-up of important information about 9/11, and it is disappointing, but somewhat understandable, considering the power that the perpetrators must possess, that someone from the NTSB has not come forward with the reasons why these plane crashes, out of so many thousands, were not investigated by a government agency with such an outstanding success record.
(See my video: 9/11: The Unidentified Murder Weapons) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT28hCyXsLs
KZ: In your articles, you have alluded to the fact that the U.S. mainstream media evaded and downplayed the truth about 9/11 and tried to cover up the reality behind it. Meanwhile, they laid the groundwork for the military expedition of the United States and its cronies to two independent, sovereign states. Why do the mainstream media in the United States, which you may admit that are mostly run by well-off Zionists, refused to investigate and analyse the 9/11 attacks objectively and impartially? Does it indicate that the U.S. media, contrary to the accepted wisdom of the public opinion, are not absolutely free to publish whatever they want?
AL: It is no secret that today’s mainstream media and the major Hollywood production companies are owned or controlled by Jews, many of them Zionists, and that many if not most are almost certainly biased towards the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel. Of course there will be loud cries of “foul”, if one relates these factors to the obvious areas which should have been reported or looked into by the mainstream media, but were not. There are so many areas of obvious discrepancy, relating to the ongoing coverage of 9/11, two prime examples being the non-identification of the murder weapons, as explained above, and the fact that the strange collapse of WTC 7 was glossed over by the media and not even mentioned in the Commission’s report. This brought to light the virtual disappearance of what used to be called investigative journalism, while calls from independent researchers and public-opinion polls for a more thorough investigation of the obvious anomalies in the 9/11 Commission’s report have fallen on stony ground, because the mainstream media, quite clearly, will the not address these issues with any seriousness.
Once again, I can’t really give you a clear answer to the last part of question two, because I have no evidence that there is outside pressure on the media, but I’m inclined to think that, given AIPAC’s power and who owns the media, very little pressure would be required to prevent reports which may be detrimental to Israel from surfacing in the press or on T.V.
KZ: on several occasions, you criticized the U.S. Congress for its overabundant loyalty and commitment to the Apartheid Regime of Israel. You have stated that “a majority of the curren membership of the United States congress are, in fact, traitors to their own nation, because they have indicated, time and time again, a desire to put the protection of the Apartheid State of Israel ahead of considerations for the safety and security of the realm to which they have been pledged their allegiance: The United States of America.” Is there any certain mechanism within the political structure of the United States which promotes pro-Israel politicians to Congress, Senate and other sensitive governmental positions? In an exclusive interview with me, the American political scientist Prof. Naseer Aruri expressed an interesting statement. He said that no politician with an anti-Zionist mindset could ever dream of living in the White House. Do you agree? Why is it so?
AL: I totally agree with Professor Aruri. I cannot see anyone being voted in as Dog Catcher, if that is an elective position in any of the United States, were they are not prepared to show that they support Israel, 100%. The way that so many members of the House and Senate have signed letters which actually pledge their allegiance to Israel—even in the face of conflicting policies being stated by their own president—is evidence of their treason. Sure, some people will argue about the exact conditions which must apply for such pledges to amount to treason, but the U.S. is still engaged in two wars, if you count the war on terror, and the Libyan conflict could easily escalate into another war, whether declared or not, and Israel will be looking to further its own best interests in the region, which will almost certainly not coincide with America’s best interests—by which I mean the best interests of American citizens, not their administrators—and the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, in 1967, that killed 34 American servicemen, should be warning enough that Israel is not to be trusted, when it feels threatened by anyone. So what would these pledges of allegiance or solidarity towards Israel mean, if a similar incident took place?
KZ: Putting aside its militaristic and imperialistic face, United States is deemed by many nations of the world as a superpower which can benefit them in terms of economy and diplomacy. The United States maintains strong relations with so many countries in the world. Canada, China, Mexico, Japan and Germany are the top 5 trade partners of the United States. However, among the countries with which the U.S. maintains strong diplomatic, economic and cultural relations, Israel occupies a special berth. The United States has regularly vetoed any UNSC resolution critical of Israel, justified Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, helped Israel extend its umbrella of occupation over the Palestinian nation and prevented the international community from investigating Israel’s illegal nuclear program. What has created such a strong and unbreakable linkage between Tel Aviv and Washington? What causes the United States to present itself as the unconditional supporter and patron of the Israeli regime?
Anthony: As I have indicated in my video, Friends of Israel — Enemies Inside the Gates, there seem to be two basic reasons for the strong and unbreakable linkage between Tel Aviv and Washington: arcane beliefs and money. If a person is a Zionist, and believes that Israel really was promised to the Jews, in perpetuity, by their God, several thousand years ago, whether they are Jews or Zionists Christians, that would be reason enough to support Israel, come Hell or high water. But, I suspect the stronger reason is more likely to be money and power, which are pretty much the same thing or, at least, interchangeable. Referring back to Professor Aruri’s statement, I would broaden it to: “No politician with an anti-Zionist mindset could ever dream of living in the White House or of sitting in the House of Representatives or the Senate for any significant length of time.” The reason being that they could never buck the big bucks that AIPAC would put up to defeat them at the next election. And the magic of it all is that it doesn’t cost Israel a shekel, because the U.S. pays Israel $3.1 billion plus in aid, every year, so it can afford to back candidates from both parties. As long as they pledge to keep that “aid” money rolling towards Tel Aviv, it can be rolled right back into their own campaign funds at election time. This is a mind-boggling feed-back system that would have had the Founding Fathers foaming at their mouths, had they considered that such a thing might be a possibility. Democracy didn’t even exist in Ancient Greece, which was a slave state, and it certainly doesn’t exist in the United States, although so many U.S. presidents claim that it is an exportable commodity, if only at the point of an M16 carbine I guess the short answer is: Tel Aviv controls the U.S., not Washington.
KZ: The critics of Israeli regime are always conveniently vilified as anti-Semitist and those who question the veracity of Holocaust accounts are offhandedly called neo-Nazis. Whoever dares criticize Israel for its crimes against humanity and brutal repression of the Palestinian nation is disrespectfully dismissed by the mainstream media. What has given the Israeli regime and the Zionist lobby around the world such an immense and enormous power to suffocate all of the critics and opponents by introducing them as the enemies of Judaism?
AL: Money and dedication to a cause is what enables the perpetuation of these absurd and unwarranted insults. If something is repeated often enough, in the media, it is believed by those who lack the power to think for themselves. And it is the Zionist-owned media that can afford to repeat them, over and over. With regard to people who are unable to think for themselves, unfortunately, I think early religious teachings must take some of the blame for the underdevelopment of young minds, in the area of free thinking, because being encouraged to blindly believe in something that cannot be seen, heard or touched must affect the ability or willingness of a young person to question other things about their lives and relationships with others. Which means that their minds are wide open to other suggestions which may appear quite reasonable, but which are not, if they only gave them some thought. Whatever the cause of this lack of awareness in so many people, most people who are able to think for themselves must realise that the accusation of anti-Semitism has long passed its sell-by date, if it ever had a legitimate one. In fact it is a total misnomer, it doesn’t mean anti-Jewish, because the word Semitic refers to a group of languages, not a belief system. I counter this with my own word combination: Anti-NastyPeopleism. This is quite an okay emotion to have, and if one of those nasty people happens to be a Jew or a Zionist, that is not my problem it is theirs.
KZ: Two of your impressive video files namely “Holocaust, Hate Speech & Were the Germans so Stupid?” and No-Fly Zone over Gaza were flagrantly removed by the YouTube in clear violation of the freedom of speech and democracy. By disabling the truth-seeking internet users to watch your insightful videos, YouTube demonstrated that it can be hardly trusted as a reliable and truthful source of information. Please explain for me and my readers about the contents of your video files and let us know about your idea regarding their removal from YouTube. Do you agree with the belief that the Western world is not that beacon of freedom and cradle of liberty which its statesmen claim?
AL: An operation like YouTube is wide open to abuse from people who have no regard for freedom of speech and expression. Ever since the first video you mention was taken down, because of a false copyright-infringement claim, which was not looked into by the YouTube “Team”—even when I pointed out that the claimant had given an incorrect telephone number and the material it was claimed I was infringing is not even available on the Internet—I’ve given up trying to fight them, because that is what such people want me to do: waste my energy fighting a corporation which doesn’t care a damn about anyone or anything, except making money. It is a world sickness: never mind the quality of our operation, feel the money it makes. These days, I never use the word “believe” in relation to my thoughts, because it has the wrong connotation. People believe things that, quite obviously, may not have any basis in fact, so I prefer the word “think”. So the answer is that I don’t think that the Western world is a beacon of freedom or cradle of liberty. Most of its elements are as corrupt and as rotten to the core as any of the regimes which have already fallen or which are teetering, in the Arab world, right now.
Here’s a question for you, rhetorical I guess: Have you ever seen anything as gross as the royal wedding and the coverage given to it by the media? How much did all that cost to prop up the idea that monarchy still has something to offer in this day and age? The world didn’t stop when Israel invaded Gaza, but it stopped, as far as the BBC and CNN were concerned, when a couple of young people of no particular noteworthiness got married I cannot look at any of those pictures or listen to the inane commentaries without thinking of the massive degradation of decency that went into the planning of that appalling display of wealth, or the mental illness that makes certain people think that the frock worn by so-and-so has any meaning at all, in the wider picture of human decency and compassion for the suffering of others. It was a disgrace.
KZ: According to the Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which was highlighted in your video, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression and there should be no exception to this rule. However, those who benefit from aggrandizing the story of Holocaust and exaggerating its extent are at odds with this inalienable freedom. Why has the Holocaust become a forbidden zone which nobody can enter? What’s your personal viewpoint regarding the accounts which have been given about Holocaust? Did the Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler exterminate 6 million Jews is gassing chambers?
AL: It would be hard to answer in a single paragraph what I took a 30 minute video to examine. During WW II, atrocities of monumental proportions were committed by both sides. The thousand-bomber raids launched on the civilian population of Germany and the droppings of two atomic bombs on civilians in Japan are prime examples. There is no doubt in my mind that English and American politicians and military staff sat and cold-bloodedly planned those atrocities. They would have been classed as war criminals had Germany won the war. On the other hand, it seems that there is no solid evidence that Germany put in train a plan to systematically murder Jews using gas chambers. I have no doubt that some Germans were as cruel as some of those bombing-raid planners, and that a lot of unnecessary deaths resulted from that cruel streak, which seems to show itself in so many humans, but I do not think that the facts support the planned systematic-extermination scenario that the ever-growing number of Holocaust museums claim was perpetrated by the Germans. And I would add that the more I hear and see of the attempts to gag open discussion on this uniquely banned historical subject, the more I am convinced that some things are being covered up and others invented in order to perpetuate some of the Holocaust stories that would not stand up to a thorough and impartial examination.
KZ: Let’s take a glance at the developments taking place in the Middle East region. Almost all of the nations in the Persian Gulf region which are experiencing revolutions or semi-revolutions, from Egypt and Tunisia to Libya, Bahrain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, have been the staunch allies of Washington. One feature is common between all of these countries and that is their repressiveness and black human rights record. Why does the United States support and uphold brutal regimes such as Bahrain, Libya and Yemen who relentlessly massacre their own people and refuse to be held accountable before the international community?
AL: I don’t claim to have anything more than a distant bystander’s knowledge of these issues, so all I can do is put two and two together from observing the diplomatic Merry-Go-Round between the various countries you mention, over the last few years. Clearly, the United States has no interest in these countries becoming democracies, or in the wellbeing of their citizens; the arming of Saudi Arabia demonstrating its blatant show of support for one of the most elitist regimes in the world. Bearing in mind the control exercised by Zionists in the U.S., I think it is almost a certainty that each potential flash-point is looked at, not from America’s point-of-view, but from Israel’s. The change of regime in Egypt, which has a common border and a long-standing peace pact with Israel, is going to be one of the most telling areas to watch, in view of the Egyptian people’s stated concerns about Gaza and the Palestinians. These recent uprisings and demonstrations of discontent must have sent tsunami-sized shock waves through whatever diplomatic damage-control systems the Washington-Tel Aviv axis had in place, so it would be a brave or foolhardy observer who would try to guess what is likely to happen, except to say that whatever does happen it is unlikely to be very pretty to watch on our TV screens or read about on the Internet.
KZ: United States and its European allies have long accused Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program. They have lethally pressured Iran to give up its nuclear program and imposed hard-hitting sanctions against the country which have paralyzed the daily life of people here. At the same time and while almost everybody knows that Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, nobody dares question Israel on its nuclear program. How should one come to terms with this exercise of double standards?
AL: I have tried to address this issue in several of my videos, the most pertinent being:
Iran and the International Bureau of Double Standards http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czDi0Koct94&feature=email
and
Double Vendetta — The Insanity of the Iran Confrontation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhp3kJv1H9I
The huge barrier to any common-sense approach to this problem is Zionist-controlled America’s and Britain’s unforgiving attitude, and, perhaps, even suppressed guilt for their imposition of the Shah on a nation struggling to achieve a working form of democracy, in 1953, while their most valuable natural resource was being plundered by foreign oil companies, and I can do no better in answering your question, than to copy some excerpts from the script of this video:
“Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 assisted [the CIA] in the coup to protect the interests of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company—now the newly-infamous British Petroleum. Under a disgracefully unbalanced agreement, the shareholders received 58% of the profits; the British collected 30%, in taxes, while Iran received a measly 12%. So the motive for overthrowing Dr. Mossadegh and Iran’s constitutionally-elected government was pure greed….”
” Perhaps to the surprise only of the tunnel-visioned British and American administrations, the Iranians decided, in 1979, that they’d had enough of the Shah and his vicious National Intelligence and Security Organization — SAVAK….”
“There followed the United States Embassy hostage crisis, destined to forever colour U.S./ Iranian relations. The Iranian regime was demanding the return of the recently-deposed Shah, to face trial, but he was allowed into the United States for medical treatment, and it was feared that this could mean that a CIA plot was being hatched to reinstate him. Approximately 90 people were taken hostage and 52 remained in captivity until the end of the crisis, four hundred and forty-four days later….”
“This incident still reverberates, within the collective American administrative psyche, as an insult. An insult yet to be expunged. Leaving what can be accurately described as: A vendetta against any Iranian regime which fails to do what it is told to do, by America.
“
Thank you for asking me to take part in your interesting series of interviews; it has been a challenge, but also a great pleasure to share my thoughts with you.
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Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian freelance journalist and media correspondent. His articles and interviews have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Tehran Times, Press TV, Global Research and Foreign Policy Journal.
Uprooted Palestinian
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