U.S. Government, State Media Upset That Peasants Allowed to Read, Censor bin Laden Letter
Let’s get this caveat out of the way for the “but muh terrorism” mouth-breathers: Osama bin Laden was a Wahhabist fundamentalist spawned from the ultra-theocratic ruling class in Saudi Arabia — not my cup of tea, and not my ideological kindred.
Unlike most other Westerners, I have lived in Saudi Arabia — an experience I chronicle in my recently released memoir, Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile — and have seen Islamic fundamentalism as a governing ideology up close. Not super pretty.
That caveat aside, here’s the forbidden truth one is not meant to utter: bin Laden was an evidently thoughtful man who had a profound impact on world history. And he wrote a letter that can be read in a matter of minutes elaborating upon his and his comrades’ motivations for the 9/11 attack and their broader geopolitical objectives.
The proper question is not why would anyone want to read it; it’s why wouldn’t anyone interested in the subject of global jihadist terrorism want to read about their motivations straight from the horse’s mouth?
What benefit is conferred by wallowing in ignorance and repeating the knuckle-dragging “they hate us because of our freedom” line pushed by American neocons? That’s a rhetorical question; it’s obviously immensely beneficial for the government’s propagandistic efforts when no information that runs contrary to their stupid bumper sticker slogans is allowed to be seen or heard.
“TikTok has stripped [bin Laden’s] #LettertoAmerica from its search function. But more than 13 million people had already viewed it!” a histrionic Andrea Mitchell pearl-clutched on MSNBC.
She was then joined for the censorship-fest segment by “retired” CIA spook Marc Polymeropoulos who now poses as a journalist of sorts to lament that the peasants should be permitted to read literature forbidden by the state.
“CNN analyst explains disturbing Osama Bin Laden TikTok trend,” reads the CNN headline. CNN's Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst — a fancy title for “spook whisperer” — John Miller calls the TikTok republications of, and videos about, the letter a “digital crime scene.”
Like TikTok, presumably also under threat by the multinational corporate state, British outlet The Guardian recently removed the letter from its website.
Now, when you visit the URL where the letter was previously housed by the outlet, all you get is a page that reads “Removed: document”.
Plantation owners, similarly, barred their slaves from reading for fear they might get a little uppity and start wondering whether masta really had their best intentions at heart.
These tyrannical dinosaurs still apparently haven’t figured out how the Streisand Effect works; the harder they try to hide information, the more alluring it becomes.
The letter is still widely available online, and I would encourage everyone — if for no other reason than as a “fuck you” to the governing authorities who wish for totalitarian control over what you see and hear — to read it who wants to understand what the Islamic fundamentalist mindset is as it relates to the West and what it views as Western imperialism.
Lastly, the central lesson here is that the corporate state media has once again demonstrated that it is undeniably the enemy of every American citizen; it wants to shutter your mind in darkness so that the only ideas allowed to reverberate off of the walls of the Plato’s cave that is your curated worldview are the ones pre-approved by the CIA and filtered through the “free press.”
For now, these institutions are allowed to muzzle Americans’ speech with relatively impunity.
One fine day, though, the cleansing rain will fall…
Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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My parents raised me not to be afraid to see/hear/read anything. I read “Valley of the Dolls” when I was in 5th grade, having enjoyed the movie the previous year. I didn’t understand most of it, but I was a curious child and it was what all the ladies playing Canasta with my mother were talking about. My mother was proud that I could read at an adult level.
I did not believe 911 was an inside job at the time, but I never tried to silence those who tried to convince me otherwise. I asked questions. I have never tried to prevent those with whom I disagree from speaking. After the Lockdowns and J6 I am convinced the US government and corporate media have sold out to global elites at every opportunity. Our institutions are all rotten to the core.
There have been many curious parts to the OBL story, not least of which was his burial at sea. We can never know what really goes on behind the curtain but we can rest assured we have been consistently lied to by the people who serve us.
If the electorate are the largest possible jury, then the media are the prosecutors trying to limit what evidence can be adduced at trial, the the government is the crooked judge working in cahoots with the prosecution to railroad the defendant.
That said, and while it is vital that we the jury be allowed to see all the evidence, OBL and his ilk are a manufactured enemy, created and supported to have an enemy which the State can use to justify ever more egregious authoritarianism, a la Orwell's Goldstein. If - this is a big conditional - OBL had anything to do with 9/11, then it was purely as a front man for the nefarious agents who pull the strings of Western governments.
Recall that the 'hijackers" were all Saudi citizens (according to miraculous passports), yet the US and its criminal cabal invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation. Recall also that the PATRIOT ACT is an verbatim translation of the Enabling Act that handed Hitler the reins, and that the huge document was already on the shelf, waiting for the moment it could be dusted off and shoved down CONgress' eager throats.
I drove by the bin Laden family residence at the corner of Memorial Drive and Beltway 8 in Houston, the night of 9/11 and saw the coterie of police protecting the family. I witnessed the midnight motorcade of Saudi royals and entourage beating a hasty exit to the airport and boarding flights that all the rest of America could not have. I know first-hand of the Bush crime family's ties to the Saudis, Taliban and Saddam. The entire kabuki theatre 9/11 and Desert Storm.. was nothing but smoke and shadows for public consumption and manipulation, and the American jury fell for it without so much as a moment of introspection.
The informed mind must absolutely read anything the prosecutors and corrupt judges wish to hide from We the Jury, but we must also weigh the evidence in context of a much larger game. Nothing occurs without an historical framework.