Transition period

                                                  
After the Geneva Conference of 1954 Vietnam was temporarily partitioned at the 17th parallel and under the Geneva Accords all civilians were to be given the oportunity to move freely between North and South Vietnam for a 300 day period. Elections throughout Vietnam were to be held in 1956 to establish a unified government for the country. There was around 1 million northeners, maily minority Catholics that fled south because of the fear of persecution by the communists in North Vietnam, following an American propoganda campaign  that was using slogans like "The Virgin Mary is heading south" and aided by a United States funded $93 million relocation program that included ferrying refugees from the north with the Seventh Fleet. It has been estimated that as many as 2 million more would have left North Vietnam if they had not been stoped by the Viet Minh. The northern mostly Catholic refugees were supposed to give the later Ngô Đình Diệm regime a strong anti communist body of voters. Diệm later went on to fill his administrations key posts with mostly northern and central Catholics, Diệm was also a Catholic himself.

As well as the Catholics flowing south up to 130,000 "Revolutionary Regroupees" went to North Vietnam for "regroupment", they expected to return to South Vietnam within two years. The Viet Minh left about 5,000 to 10,000 cadres in the South as a "politico-military substructure within the object of its irredentism". The last French soldiers were to leave Vietnam in April 1956 and the PRC compleated its withdrawl of soldiers from North Vietnam at around the same time. Around 52,000 vietamese civilians moved from the South to the North.

In the North of Vietnam the Viet Minh ruled as the Democratic Republic of Vietmam, they engaged in a drastic land reform program in wich 100,000 percieved "class enemies" were executed. Some estimates from people range from 200,000 to 900,000 deaths from things like executions, camps, and famine. leaders in Hanoi admitted to "excesses" in implementing this program so they restored a large amount of land to the original owners in 1956.

The South of Vietnam meanwhile constituted the State of Vietnam with Bảo Đại who was the last emperor of the Nguyễn dynasty as Emperor and Ngô Đình Diệm as his Prime Minister. In June 1955, Diem announced that the scheduled 1956 elections would not be held, he claimed that South Vietnam had rejected the Geneva Accords from the start and was therefore not bound by them. He asked  "How can we expect 'free elections' to be held in the Communist North?". United States president Eisenhower agreed with senior U.S. experts when he wrote than in 1954 "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh over Emperor Bảo Đại".

In 1955 from April to June Diem (against U.S. advice) eliminated any political oposition to him in the south by launching military operations against the religious sect Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao sect of Ba Cut and the Binh Xuyen organised crime group. As broard-based oposition to what people considerd his harsh tactics grew grater, Diem increasingly sought to blame the communists.

On the 23rd of October 1955 there was a referendum on the future of the state of Vietnam, Diem rigged the poll that was supervised by his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, he was credited with 98.2% of the vote, this included 133% in Saigon. Three days later on 26th of October 1955 Diem declared South Vietnam to be an independent state known as the Republic of Vietnam (ROV) with himself as president.

Exit of the French, 1950-1954

                      

During January 1950 the communist countries who were led by the People's Republic of China (PRC) recognised the Viet Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)  based in the city of Hanoi as the rightful government of Vietnam and the non-communist countries recognised the French backed State of Vietnam led by the former Emperor of Vietnam Bảo Đại based in the city of Saigon now called Ho Chi Minh City as the rightful government of Vietnam the following month, because of the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 Washington policy makers were convinced that the war that was currently going on in Indochina was an example of communist expansionism directed by the Kremlin in the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). Military advisor's from the People's Republic of China started assisting the Viet Minh in July 1950, because of the PRC weapons, expertise and labourers the Viet Minh were transformed from a guerilla force into a regular army. And in September that year the United States created a Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) to screen French requests for aid, advise on strategy and to train Vietnamese soldiers, by 1954 the United States had supplied the French with 300,000 small arms and had spent $1 billion U.S.  in support of the French military effort in Indochina, this was 80% of the cost of the war. There had also been talks between the French and the Americans about the possible use of three tactical nuclear weapons, one version of this plan was called Operation Vulture which envisioned sending 60 Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bombers from the U.S. bases that were in that region, these bombers were to be supported by 150 fighters launched from U.S. Seventh Fleet carriers, the B-29's were to bomb Viet Minh commander Võ Nguyên Giáp's positions, Admiral Arthur William Radford who was the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff gave this nuclear option his backing. During the negotiations U.S. aircraft carriers sailed to the Gulf of Tonkin and reconnaissance flights were conducted over Dien Bien Phu. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made American support contingent on British support, but London was against such a venture. Eventually Eisenhower got convinced that the political risks outweighed the possible benefits of intervening so he decided against it.

The Soviet Union as well as the PRC gave crucial support to the Viet Minh. Support from the PRC in the Border Campaign of 1950 allowed suplies from them to come from them into Vietnam, through out the conflict U.S. intelligence estimates remained doubtful of French chances of success. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of France's involvement in Indochina (Vietnam), Vo Nguyen Giap's Viet Minh gave the French a stunning military defeat and on the 7th of May 1954 the French Union garrison surrendered to them. Out of the 12,000 prisoners taken by the Viet Minh only 3,000 survived. The French negotiated a ceasfire agreement with the Viet Minh at the Geneva Conference (1954), and as a result independance from the French Union was granted to Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

The Vietnam War

                          
The Vietnam War was a military conflict that started on the 1st of November 1955 and ended on the 30th of April 1975, and on the Anti Communist side was South Vietnam, the United States of America, South Korea, Australia, Philippines, New Zealand, Thailand, the Khmer Republic, the Kingdom of Laos and they were supported by Spain and Taiwan. On the Communist side was North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, the Pathet Lao and they were supported by the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Czechoslovakia, Cuba and Bulgaria. The United states government saw involvement in the war as a way to stop a communist takeover  of South Vietnam which was democratic and not communist, the government of North Vietnam and the Viet Cong saw it as a colonial war against the French who were backed by the United States and later against South Vietnam which they thought was a puppet state of the U.S. ,  the United States sent military advisor's to what was French Indochina in 1950 and then American troop levels tripled in 1961 and again in 196, then in 1965  U.S. combat units were deployed. Operations during the war were not limited to just North and South Vietnam some spanned international borders with Laos and Cambodia, both countries were heavily bombed. After a peak of American involvement in the Vietnam War in 1968 at the time of the famous Tet Offensive, the American ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a United States government policy known as Vietnamization. Fighting continued despite the fact that all parties had signed the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. As a result of the Case–Church Amendment that was passed by the U.S. Congress U.S. military involvement ended on the 15th of August 1973.The war ended with the Fall of Saigon which is now called Ho Chi Minh City, the following year North and South Vietnam were reunified, it has been estimated by people that fewer than one million to more than three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians died during the war, it has also been estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 Cambodians died, 20,000 to 200,000 Laotians died and about 58,220 U.S. military personnel died along with 303,644 more wounded  during the war

Aftermath of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

  
Memorial

The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing claimed the following victims: Monica Smith age 35, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick, age 61, Bill Macko, age 47, Stephen Knapp, age 48, John DiGiovanni, age 45 and Wilfredo Mercado, age 37. A granite memorial fountain was set up honoring the victims of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, it was designed by Elyn Zimmerman and it was dedicated in 1995 on Austin J. Tobin Plaza, this was directly above the site of the explosion in 1993, it had on it the six names of the victims as well as an inscription that read "On February 26, 1993, a bomb set by terrorists exploded below this site. This horrible act of violence killed innocent people, injured thousands, and made victims of us all." unfortunately the fountain was destroyed  with the rest of the World Trade Center during the September 11 2001 attacks eight years later, they did recover a fragment of the fountain which said "John D", this was John DiGiovanni, it was later incorperated into a temporary memorial that was designed by architect Jacqueline Hanley from the Port Authority erected on the Liberty Street side of the site following the September 11 2001 attacks. This memorial was visible across a fence barrier but was not open to the public. The six victims of the bombing in 1993 were later memorialized on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 2001 attacks at the North Pool, on Panel N-73 of the National 9/11 Memorial.

FBI Involvement
During the trial for the attacks it was revealed by the FBI that they had an informant who was a former Egyptian Army officer called Emad Salem. Salem claims that he had informed the FBI of the plot as early as the 6th of February, 1992. He initially believed that it was going to be a sting operation and claimed that the FBI's original plan was for him to to supply Ramzi Yousef and his fellow conspirators with a harmless powder instead of actual explosive to build their bomb, but that the FBI decided to use him for other purposes instead. Salem also secretly recorded hundreds of hours of phone conversations with his FBI handelers.

U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) involvement

Diplomatic Security Service special agents actually found and arrested Ramzi Yousef eventhough the FBI received all the credit for it. Special agents Bill Miller and Jeff Riner were given a tip by one of Yousef's associates about his location. They arrested Yousef in coordination with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). As a result of this happening the New York Port Authority was to govern as the main security for the World Trade Center buildings, all packages were to be scanned at the various checkpoints and then sent up to the proper address. After Ramzi Yousef got arrested it is alleged that he said to investigators "this is only the beginning."

Allegations of Iraqi involvement

In October 2001 in a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) interview,former CIA Director James Woolsey claimed that Ramzi Yousef had been working for Iraqi intelligence, he also suggested that the grand jury investigation had turned up evidence that pointed to Iraq that the Justice department just brushed aside. Neil Herman who had headed the FBI investigation noted that and said "The one glaring connection that can't be overlooked is Yasin. We pursued that on every level, traced him to a relative and a location, and we made overtures to get him back." however he also said that Abdul Rahman Yasin's presence in Baghdad  did not mean that Iraq had sponsored the attack, Herman said "We looked at that rather extensively. There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Peter L. Bergen a CNN terrorism analyst wrote "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack."

Claims of direct Iraqi involvement also came from Laurie Mylroie of the American Enterprise Institute, these claims were rejected by other exsperts. Peter Bergen has called her a "crackpot"  who also claimed that "Saddam was not only behind the '93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decade, from the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania to the leveling of the federal building in Oklahoma City to September 11 itself." Daniel Benjamin who was a a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that "The most knowledgeable analysts and investigators at the CIA and at the FBI believe that their work conclusively disproves Mylroie's claims." Dr. Robert Leiken from the Nixon Center commented on the lack of evidence that was in her work, he said "Laurie has discovered Saddam's hand in every major attack on US interests since the Persian Gulf War, including U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and even the federal building in Oklahoma City. These allegations have all been definitively refuted by the FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and other investigatory bodies...."

In March 2008 the Pentagon released its study of 600,000 documents that were captured in Iraq  after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Pentagons study found no direct connection between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda Mylroie denied that this was proof of Saddam not being involved, she claimed that "one common purpose of such meetings was to develop cover stories for whatever Iraq sought to conceal."

Improved security

Since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the chaotic evacuation which followed it, the World Trade Center and many of the companies inside revamped their emergency procedures, especially with regard to the evacuation of the North and South Towers of the WTC, these policies helped play a role in the evacuation of the buildings during the September 11 2001 attacks which destroyed bothe the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. Also a new Siemens MXL fire alarm system was installed to replace the old outdated one.

Investigations of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

 
Eventhough the cause of the explosion was not originaly known and with some people suspecting that a main transformer had blown, agents as well as bomb technicians from the ATF, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the NYPD (New York City Police Department) all quickly responded to the scene of the explosion. Days after the explosion investigators started serveying the damage and looking for clues about what happened and who did it. A bomb technician found some internal component fragments from the vechicle that had delivered the 590kg (1,310-pound) bomb while combing through the public car park underneath the World Trade center, investigators also found a vechicle identification number (VIN) which was found on a piece of axle from the van, this was the crucial infomation that led them to a Ryder truck rental outlet in Jersey City. It was determind that the vechicle had been rented by Mohammad Salameh who was one of Ramzi Yousef's co-conspirators. The vechicle was reported stolen by Salameh who then returned on the 4th of March 1993 to get his deposit back, this was when he was arrested by the authorities. His arrest led police to the apartment of Abdul Rahman Yasin in Jersey City, New Jersey which Yasin was sharing with his mother, his apartment was in the same building as Ramzi Yousef's. Later Yasin was taken by the FBI to their Newark field office in Newark, New Jersey, he was then released. He flew back to Iraq, via Amman, Jordan. later on Yasin was indicated for the attack and in 2001 he was placed on the initial list of the FBI most wanted terrorists, he still remains on this list even in 2012.It was because of the capture of Salameh and Yasin that authorities found Ramzi Yousefs apartment in which they found bomb-making materials and a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Khalifa was arrested on the 14th of December 1994 and was then deported to Jordan by the INS on May 5, 1995. In 2002 it was made public that Yasin who was the only person involving the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 who had never been caught by U.S. authorites, was being held as a prisoner on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq , he had been there since 1994. After being interviewed by Journalest Leslie Stahl for a segment on the TV program 60 minutes on the 23rd of May 2002 Yasin was never heard from again.

The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

    
Ramzi Yousef and his friend Eyad Ismoil from Jordan drove a yellow Ryder van that they had hired into Lower Manhattan and pulled into the public car park beneath the World Trade Center at around noon on February 26th. Yousef and Ismoil got out of the van and then Yousef lit the 20 foot fuse of the bomb and fled. Twelve minutes later at 12:17 pm the bomb exploded in the public car park beneath the World Trade Center, it opened up a 30 meter wide whole through four sublevels of concreate and initial news reports thought that a main transformer had blown. Some of the effects of the explosion was that it cut off the World Trade Centers main electrical power line wich then knocked out the emergency lighting system as well, as a result of the explosion it caused smoke to rise up to the 93rd floors of both the North and South towers of the World Trade Center, this included the stairwells as well because they had not been pressurized when the buildings had been bilt. Hundreds of people got trapped in elevators when the buildings lost power including 17 kindergartners who were on their way down from the South Tower observation deck, they were trapped between the 35th and 36th floors for five hours. All together 1042 people were injured and six people were killed, they were Monica Smith age 35, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick, age 61, Bill Macko, age 47, Stephen Knapp, age 48, John DiGiovanni, age 45 and Wilfredo Mercado, age 37. Yousef's plan was to park the van in the right place  so that when the bomb exploded  the North tower would fall on to the South tower collapsing them both, but his plan failed because it only damaged the car park underneath the World Trade Center. It is thought that if Yousef had parked the van closer to the WTC's poured concrete foundations his plan might have succeeded, Ramzi Yousef escaped to Pakistan several hours after the bomb exploded. Yousef's fellow conspirator Mahmud Abouhalima later stated that their original plan was to attack the United Nations headquarters earlier in the morning, Author Simon Reeve theorized that something must have gone wrong such as Yousef encountering to much security so then the target was changed to the World Trade Center.

Planning of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

    
Ramzi Yousef who was born as Abdul Basit Mahmoud Abdul Karim in Kuwait spent time at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before starting to plan a bombing attack within the United States of America in 1991. His uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who is now considered the principal architect of the September 11 attacks in 2001 gave him advice and tips about making the bomb over the phone, his uncle also funded him with a $1,400 wire transfer. On September 1st 1992 Ramzi Yousef arrived illegally in the United States with his co conspirator Ahmed Ajaj from Pakistan. Ajaj tried to enter the country with a fake swedish passport but failed because it had been altered and when officials at John F. Kennedy International Airport put Ajaj through secondary inspection  they found bomb making instructions and other materials in his luggage, after that they arrested him. Yousef tried to enter with a fake Iraqi passport and tried to claim political asylum, he was allowed into the United States but was given a hearing date. Yousef set up residence on Nicole Pickett Avenue in Jersey City, New Jersey after that he traveled arround New York and New Jersey, then called a a blind Sheikh called Omar Abdel Rahman via cellphone. After being introduced to his fellow conspirators by Abdel Rahman at the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn New York hec stated making the 680kg urea nitrate–hydrogen gas enhanced bomb that he would use to attack the North Tower in the hope of nocking over the South Tower killing thousands of people.

Ramzi Yousef's view of the Attack

Steve Coll a journalest said that Ramzi Yousef had mailed letters to various New York newspapers right before his attack on the world trade center, in the letter he said he was a belonged to 'Liberation Army, Fifth Battalion', he made three demands in these letters: an end to all US aid to Israel, an end to US diplomatic relations with Israel, and a pledge by the United States to end interference "with any of the Middle East countries' interior affairs." Yousef said that if his demands were not met the attack on the World Trade Center would just be the first of such attacks, he tried to justifie the attack by saying "the terrorism that Israel practices (which America supports) must be faced with a similar one."

1993 World Trade Center bombing

                                
The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing happened on Friday 26th of February. It happened when a truck bomb created by Ramzi Yousef and Abdul Rahman Yasin dentonated in a car park beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center, what the two intended was for the truck bomb to nock the North Tower into the South Tower when it exploded killing thousands of people, it failed to do that but it did manage to kill about six people and injure more than one thousand others, it also opened a thirty meter wide whole through four sublevels of the North Tower. The attack was planned by Ramzi Yousef, Mahmud Abouhalima, Mohammed A. Salameh, Nidal A. Ayyad, Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmed Ajaj. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed who was Yousef's uncle and who also helped plan the September 11 attacks in 2001 gave the group financing. Mahmud Abouhalima, Ahmed Ajaj, Nidal A. Ayyad and Mohammed A. Salameh were later convicted in March 1994 of carrying out the bombing of the World Trade Center, these charges included conspiracy, explosive destruction of property and interstate transportation of explosives. Ramzi Yousef and Eyad Ismoil were later convicted in 1997 4 years after the attacks. Some interesting facts about Eyad Ismoil is that he got sentenced to 240 years in prison, fined $250,000 and he had to pay $10,000,000 in restitution. The names of the six people that were killed are Monica Smith age 35, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick age 61, Bill Macko age 47, Stephen Knapp age 48, John DiGiovanni age 45 and Wilfredo Mercado age 37.

Memorials For The September 11 Attacks

                                                

In the days following the September 11 attacks there were many memorials and vigils that were held by people around the world, as well as that people posted photographs of the missing and dead around Ground Zero. One witness at the time described being unable to "get away from faces of innocent victims who were killed. Their pictures are everywhere, on phone booths, street lights, walls of subway stations. Everything reminded me of a huge funeral, people quiet and sad, but also very nice. Before, New York gave me a cold feeling; now people were reaching out to help each other.” The Tribute in Light wich was an instellation of 88 search lights at the footprints of the world trade centers twin towers was one of the first memorials that were set up in New York City. Also the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was held to design a memorial  on the World Trade Center site, the winning design done by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was chosen in August 2006. It consisted of a pair of reflecting pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers  this was surrounded by a list of the victims names who had died in the September 11 attacks and the February 26th 1993 attacks that would be in an underground memorial space. There was also the Pentagon memorial that was completed  and opened to the public on the 11th of September 2008 seven years after the attacks, it was made up of a landscaped park with 184 benches facing the Pentagon. A private chapel and indoor memorial were included and were located in the spot where flight 77 crashed when the Pentagon was repaired in 2001-2002. In Shanksville, Pennsylvania they are building a permanent memorial for United Airlines Flight 93 wich is going to include a sculpted grove of trees forming a circle around the crash site, bisected by the plane's path, while wind chimes will bear the names of the victims. There is a temporary memorial located about 457 meters (500 yards) away from the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93. on every anniversary of the September 11 attacks in New York City the names of the people who died are read out against a background of sad music. The President of the United States of America attends a memorial service that is in the Pentagon where they ask Americans to observe a moment of silence on patriot day. As well as New York City and the Pentagon there are smaller services held in Shanksville, Pennsylvania which the Presidents partner usually attends.

    

   

September 11 Attacks Conspiracy Theories

                
There have been many different conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks in 2001 some people like Michael Meacher a former British Environment Minister and member of former British Prime minister Tony Blair's cabnet believe that the United States of America had foreknowledge of the attacks but knowingly failed to stop them from happening, and author David Ray Griffin claimed that the 9/11 commission report "is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true". Other conspiracy theorists claim that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued an order to stand down or scrambled Jet fighters to late so the hijacked planes from American Airlines and United Airlines could reach their targets unopposed, the website emperors-clothes.com believes that the U.S. military failed to do their job, Mark R. Elsis from StandDown.net also believed the theory that NORAD issued an order to stand down because he said "There is only one explanation for this .... Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11". Another one of the many theories was that Israeli agents had prior knowledge of the attacks, the FBI did arrest five Israelis who had been filming the aftermath from the roof of a white van that was in the parking lot of one of the apartment blocks, The Forward a Jewish magazine bassed in New York stated that the FBI had concluded that only two of the men that they arrested were Israeli agents, eventually the FBI concluded that the five Israelis that they had arrested had no prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks. Some more popular conspiracy theories are that the the world trade centers twin towers were destroyed by controlled demolitions, that United Airlines flight 93 wich crashed into a field in Pennsylvania was actually shot down by a missile, the four planes that were hijacked were actually remotely controlled, and another was that Al Qaida were not responsible for the september 11 attacks. Most if not all of these conspiracy theories have been disproved.

One World Trade Center

                                                        


The One World Trade Center formerly known as the Freedom Tower is one of the main buildings of the new World Trade Center complex in Lower Manhattan, New York City and is being built on the site of the 6 World Trade Center that was destroyed along with the North and South towers of the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks in 2001. It is estimated that when the One World Trade Center is completed in 2013 it would have cost $3.8 billion dollars.  It will be 541 meters high (1,776 feet) which will make it the tallest office building in the world surpassing the Taipei 101 building in Taiwan by 32 meters (105 feet) and the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere surpassing the Willis Tower in chicargo by 99 meters (325 feet), when its completed it will also be the third tallest skyscraper in the world behind the Abraj Al-Bait Towers in Mecca Saudi Arabia and the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the 6th tallest freestanding structure in the world. The building is mostly owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, some of the tenants in the One World Trade Center will be Government tenants from the state of New York and the the General Services Administration, a chinese company bassed in Beijing called Vantone Industrial Co will have a "China Center" in the building which will combine business and cultural facilities and will represent chinese cultural and business links to the United States of America, also it will serve American companies that want to conduct business in china. Another company called Condé Nast Publications will move its headquarters and offices of its magazines to the One World Trade Center. The One World Trade Center has been featured in the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 which is set in the year 2016, the 2012 movie called The Dictator, the movie called Men in Black 3, the new Batman movie called The Dark Knight Rises, the movie called Madagascar 3, the movie called Click, the film called Babylon A.D, and in the TV series Fringe episode called The Last Sam Weiss.

Aftermath of the September 11 attacks

                             
as a result of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon about 3000 people died, this included some of the rescue workers that were trying to get people out of both the North and South towers of the World Trade center. Another result was that for the first time in American history SCATANA ( Security Control of Air Traffic and Air Navigation Aids) was invoked which meant that all airspace was closed and all non-emergency civilian aircraft in the United States of America and Canada as well as several other countries through out the world so tens of thousands of passengers ended up getting stranded. one of the most major results of the September 11 attacks was the U.S. led War on Terror which started on the 7th of October 2001 and is still going on in 2012, this includes the War in Afghanistan (2001–present), Operation Enduring Freedom – Philippines that started on the 15th of January 2002 and is still ongoing, Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa which started on the 7th of October 2002 and is also still ongoing Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara which started on the 6th of February 2007 and is still ongoing, the Iraq War which started on the 20th of March 2003 and ended on the 15th of December 2011 and there has also been fighting in Pakistan, Yemen and Kashmir. Since the September 11 attacks in 2001 airport security in America and other countries around the world was made better by introducing things like bullet proof and locked cockpit doors on aircraft, another measure that was taken by airports was that most passengers were patted-down and then checked with hand held metal detectors also the security personel were starting to be better trained to perform searches. In 2003 John Gilmore sued United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft because he argued that the fact that passengers now had to show some sort of identification  before bording domestic  flights  is almost the same as having an internal passport and is therefore is unconstitutional, Gilmore lost the case and an apeal to the U.S. supreme court was denied.

Planing of the September 11 attacks on the United States

                 
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed aparently got the idea for the September 11 attacks from a similar but different  plan of hijacking a plane and then flying it into the CIA's (Central Intelligence Agency) headquarters in Langley Virginia. Khalid first proposed his plan to Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora a cave complex that is along the Afghan-Pakistan border in 1996, then in late 1998/ early 1999 bin Laden gave his approval for Khalid to go forward with organising the attacks. Mohammed Atef who was bin Ladens deputy at the time gave operational support that included selecting targets to attack and helping to provide travel for the hijackers that were going to carry out the attacks, Osama bin Laden himself provided leadership and financial support for the attacks, he was also involved in selecting who would carry out the attacks. He selected  Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar who were both experienced jihadists that had fought in Bosnia, they arrived in the United States in mid January 2000 and ended up becoming muscle hijackers instead of pilots because both spoke little english and did badly at flying lessons. Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Jarrah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh had all come from Hamburg Germany  and arrived in Afghanistan in late 1999, these four men were selected by bin Laden because they could speak english, were educated and they had experience living in the west.  Marwan arrived in the U.S. at the end of May 2000, Mohamed arrived on the 3rd of June 2000 and Ziad arrived on the 27th of June 2000. Ramzi applied several times to get a visa so he could get in to the United States of America but was denied because he was a Yemeni and the U.S. immigration department thought he would overstay his visa and stay in the United States as an illegal immigrant, so he stayed in Hamburg Germany to provide coordination. Mohamed, Marwan and Ramzi all took pilot training in South Florida. The secondary hijackers began arriving in Spring 2001, in july that year Mohamed met with Ramzi in Spain to coordinate details for the attacks, this included final target selection. Ramzi also passed along bin Ladens wish for the attacks to be carried out as soon as possible.

Motives for the September 11 Attacks

 
Osama bin Laden's Fatawā of 1998 calling for the killing of American civilians to be killed is thought to be evidence of his motovations for the September 11 attacks on the United States, also before and after the attacks the terrorist group al-Qaeda cited three motives for their activities against countries in the west as being the fact that U.S. soldiers were in Saudi Arabia, that the American government supported Israel and their third motive was that there were sanctions against Iraq. bin Laden also interpreted  Allah's/Gods prophet Muhammad as having banned the "permanent presence of infidels in Arabia". Apart from those motives that were cited by Osama bin Laden analysts have suggested that there are other motives such as western support of non-Islamist regimes in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and northern Africa, and western troops in some of these countries, some other authors said that humiliation from the fact that the Islamic world was falling behind the western world as a motive, other people have argued that the September 11 attacks were a way to provoke the United States of America into a war that causes a pan-Islamic revolution (Pan-Islamism is a political movement advocating the unity of Muslims under one Islamic state often a Caliphate)

Attackers and their background

al-Qaeda

 

al-Qaeda came about because of the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan in 197. during this time Osama bin Laden traveled to Afghanistan  where he helped organise the Arab Mujahideen (Muslims who believe they struggle in the path of God) to resist the invading Soviet forces. Then in 1996 bin Laden issued his first Fatwā (in the Islamic faith is a juristic ruling concerning Islamic law issued by an Islamic scholar) calling for all American troops to leave Saudi Arabia. then in 1998 he issued a second Fatwā in which he outlined his oposition to American Foreign policy with respect to Israel, this was as well as the continued presence of American Troops in Saudi Arabia after the  Fist Gulf War 1990-1991. He also used islamic texts to call upon  Muslim people to attack Americans untill the grievances that he had outlined in his two Fatwā's were reversed.

Osama bin Laden

 

Osama bin Laden originaly denied any involvement in the September 11 Attacks on the twin towers, Al Jazeera  broardcasted  a statement of bin Laden saying "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation" on the 16th of September 2001. But then in 2004 he admited responsibility and said "we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours". The United States government never formaly accused bin Laden for the September 11 Attacks, but the FBI had him on their most wanted list for  the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Tanzania and in Kenya. Finaly after a 10 year long man hunt bin Laden was killed by American forces on the 1st of May 2011 in Abbottabad Pakistan.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

 
it was reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admited his involvement in the September 11 attacks in April 2002 along with his fellow al-Qaeda member Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Khalid was the main architect of the september 11 attacks. It was determind in a 9/11 Commission Report that his bitternes towards the United States came from his "violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel". Khalid was also an adviser and financier of the previous World Trade Center bombing in 1993 eight years before the September 11 attacks. He was arrested by Pakistani security officials working with the CIA ( Central Intelegence Agency) in Rawalpindi Pakistan on the 1st of March 2003. Later he was taken to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp where he was interrogated using methods like waterboarding. He admited his responsibility for the attacks again in hearings at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in March 2007.

Other al-Qaeda members

Abu Dahdah was sentenced to 27 years in prison by the spanish high court for being a member of the terrorist group al-Qaeda and conspiracy to do with the 9/11 attacks. 17 other members of al-Qaeda at the same time were sentenced to between six to eleven years in prison. In the next year the spanish high court decided to reduce Abu Dahdah's sentence to 12 years because his involvement in the 9/11 conspiracy could not be proven. Another member Moussaoui who people originally thought might have been the 20th hijacker assigned to the 9/11 attacks was convicted of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism and air piracy, he is currently serving a life sentece in prison with out parole. Mounir el-Motassadeq who was an associate of the hijackers that were based in Hamburg Germany  was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role of helping the hijackers to prepare for the September 11 attacks.

this is a bit from my new wikieducator page on the September 11 attacks in 2001, its still a work in progress.

September 11 Attacks

                               

The September 11 Attacks also known as 9/11 were a series of four suicide attacks that were carried out by 19 hijackers from the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda. these attacks took place on Tuesday the 11th of September 2001 in the United States of America. They flew American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia and they tried to fly United Airlines Flight 93 into a target in Washington D.C. but failed because some of the passengers on the flight tried to regain control of the plane, during their attempt United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. These attacks resulted in 3,000 deaths including the 19 hijackers from al-Qaeda and  the 246  people that were on the hijacked planes from American Airlines and United Airlines. Osama bin Laden the al-Qaeda leader from 1988-2011 originaly denied involvement in the attacks  but then in 2004 he claimed responsibility for them. Both  al-Qaeda and bin Laden cited that there motives for the attacks were U.S. support of Israel, U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and sanctions against Iraq. As a result of the september 11 attacks the United States launched the War on Terror which started on the 7th of October 2001 and is still ongoing 10 years and 263 days after it started. They also invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. This war like the War on Terror is still ongoing. Also many countries strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and gave their law enforcement organisations more power.

this is another bit from one of my other history wikieducator pages

World War One
The First World War which was mostly called the World War or the Great War from 1914 until the start of World War 2 in 1939, was a major war centred in Europe that started on the 28th of July
1914 and ended on the 11th of November 1918. All the world's major powers at the time were involved, they were split into two groups the allies which was made up of the United Kingdom , France and Russia (until their revolution in October 1917 when the Bolsheviks who were communist took over) and then on April the 6th 1917 the USA joined World War One on the side of the allies, and the Central Powers who were made up of Germany, Austria-Hungry and later on in August with the signing of the Turco-German alliance the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers. These two groups got bigger as more nations entered the war.
During the course of the war more than 9 million soldiers were killed. This was mostly because of the great advances in firepower from previous conflicts and the lack of advances in mobility.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZVDUXPB_sTs

This is a bit from my history wikieducator page on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Background to the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Ottoman era
Because of the development of the Zionist movement the immigration of European Jews increased. This lead to tensions emerging after the 1880's between the Jews and Arabs, it also increased the size of Jewish communities in Palestine by the attainment of land from Ottoman and individual landholders who were known as effendis, also agricultural settlements were established in the historic lands of Judea and Israel which had been part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516. In 1880 it was estimated that the population of Palestine west of the Jordan River was under 590,000 people of witch 96 percent were Arabs (Muslim or Christian) and roughly 4 percent of the population were Jewish. Michael Oren the current Israeli ambassador to the United States of America has written that about 300,000 Arabs did eventually move into Palestine from other surrounding Arab countries to benefit from the economic opportunities that were created by the Zionists, who were more skilled with modern technology and at building urban institutions.
British Mandate 1920-1948
During the time of the British mandate, the Balfour Declaration which had been signed previously in 1917 before the British mandate said that the government of Great Britain supported the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine. As a result this exasperated the tensions between the Arabs who already lived in the Mandate of Palestine and the Jewish people who had moved there during the Ottoman era. The Faisal-Weizmann Agreement which was signed on the 3rd of January 1919 was done to promote Arab-Jewish cooperation on the advancement of a Jewish national homeland and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East. However this agreement between Emir Faisal and Chaim Weizmann had little to no effect on the conflict at all. Eventually tensions rose between the Palestinians and the Jews which led to the 1920 Nebi Musa riots in which five Jews and four Arabs were killed, 216 Jews and 23 Arabs were wounded. And the 1921 Jaffa riots in which 47 Jews and 48 Arabs were killed, with a further 146 Jews and 73 Arabs being wounded.
further conflicts between the Jews and Arabs happened in 1929 with the Hebron massacre where 67 Jews were killed and Jewish homes and synagogues were ransacked and in the 1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine where the British and Jewish losses were 300 Jewish people killed and 4 Jewish people executed and 262 British soldiers killed with 550 soldiers being wounded. The Arab losses were 5000 killed,15,000 wounded, 108 executed, 12,662 detained and 5 exiled.
A British Royal Commission of Inquiry was set up in 1936, this became known as the peel commission because it was led by William Robert Wellesley Peel. In 1937 the commission proposed a partition plan for Palestine. This plan gave the Arabs control over all of the Negev, most of what is the present day West Bank and Gaza and the Jews got control over the city's of Tel Aviv and Haifa, present-day Northern Israel and the surrounding area's. The British were to maintain control over the city's of Jaffa, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and there surrounding areas. The Jews accepted the partition plan however the Arabs rejected it and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and the sale of land to the Jews. They were also calling for Palestine to become an independent Arab state. As of 1947 it  was reported that the population of Israel/Palestine is 1,845,000. with 608,000 Jewish people making up 33.9% of the population at the time and 1,237,000 Arabs and others making up the other 67.05% of the population at the time.

upcoming topics

•  Aggressive forces in 1930's Europe and Asia, that lead to the outbreak of World War II. 
•  New Zealand Soldiers at War. 
•  Social Disruption and Protest.
•  Religion and Terrorism.
•   The Cold War and its Consequences.

Part 02 of 06 - Julius Caesar - Critical moment 1/6 Ancient Rome The Ris...

Did you know that a spanish soldier who was with Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Mexico tells that when the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II dined he had no other drink other than chocolate which was served in a golden goblet. this was flavoured with vanilla or other spices.

It was also reported that Moctezuma II had no fewer than 50 portions each day with a further 2000 portions consumed by all the nobles at his court in Tenochtitlan.

                                                                             

          

   Moctezuma II                                                                   Hernán Cortés                       



BBC Ancient Rome The Rise and Fall of an Empire 1of6 Caesar

Roman Timeline

My aim is to promote History in a fun and Interesting way!

Using modern media and current media trends.