Editor's Note: As is inevitable with a figure as complex and mysterious as Osama
bin Laden, deeply embedded in the truth about the "War on Terror", and the  9/11 attacks,
all sorts of notions circulate as to his true nature, doings, and
impact on contemporary events. This is likely to continue for an indefinite time.
The  author of this piece, Jason Burke, seems to differ profoundly from some of most widely
accepted versions of Osama's life.
The reasons for this he outlines below, albeit without much subtantiation.
However, given his  status as well-regarded British journalist, we think it's editorially worthwhile
to publish his viewpoint and let our readers 
ponder the question as more facts begin to emerge.

BY JASON BURKE, The London Guardian

J. Burke

1. Osama bin Laden was ‘created’ by the CIA

He did not receive any direct funding or training from the US during the 1980s. Nor did his followers. The Afghan mujahideen, via Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, received large amounts of both. Some bled to the Arabs fighting the Soviets but nothing significant.

2. He had a huge personal fortune

Bin Laden was forced to leave any cash he had when he in effect fled Saudi Arabia in 1991 for Pakistan and then Sudan. His family cut him off. Nor would the inheritance from his hugely wealthy father have been divided into equal parts anyway. What Bin Laden did have was contacts, which allowed him to raise money with ease.

3. He was responsible for 1993 bombing of World Trade Centre

Ramzi Yousef, who was the main perpetrator of the attack, was probably working for Khaled Sheikh Mohammed who was an independent operator at the time. Mohammed only started working with al-Qaida in 1996 and even then kept his distance from Bin Laden.

4. He got money from drug running

No evidence for this whatsoever despite repeated claims – such as in the post 9/11 British government dossier on al-Qaida.

5. He never exposed himself to any danger

He did not single-handedly seize a short-barrelled AK-47 from a dying Soviet general as he sometimes claimed but numerous witnesses report that he was in the thick of fighting in Jaji in 1987 and again at the battle of Jalalabad in 1989.

6. He spent a lot of time in caves

In the late 1990s, for propaganda purposes, Bin Laden invited select journalists to meet him in caves near Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. However he lived in a much more comfortable compound a short drive away, near the former Soviet collective farm of Hadda owned by a local warlord. By 1999 he had moved to a complex of houses near Kandahar. When he was killed, he was living in a relatively comfortable detached house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In between, there is no evidence that he spent any time living in caves. The rest of al-Qaida’s senior militants appear to have lived in the semi-fortified houses that are common in the tribal zones.

7. He was a tearaway teenager who partied in Beirut before becoming religious.

There is no evidence for this either. Bin Laden appears to have been an intense, shy and pious youth who married young and spent an inordinate amount of time studying scripture.

8. He was near to dying of a kidney disease.

There are some reports – not least in the Guantánamo files – of renal problems but certainly not serious enough to kill him. It is more likely he had back problems caused by his height (around 6ft 5in) and relatively sedentary lifestyle.

9. He hid in Kashmir, was the leader of Chechen groups, was responsible for violence in the Philippines and in Indonesia, organised the Madrid 2004 attack and had an extensive network in Paraguay, sub-Saharan Africa and South Africa.

All these claims, made by various governments or intelligence services over the last decade have proved totally without foundation.

10. Bin Laden was an Arsenal fan

Despite fans reportedly chanting “Osama, woah-woah, Osama, woah-waoh, he’s hiding in Kabul, he loves the Arsenal”, Bin Laden was not a faithful of the north London club.

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on May 3, 2011

T H E   R E C E S S I O N has hurt the whole country, but not equally. For example, the unemployment rate in North Dakota, a state with its own bank, which helped insulate it from the financial crash, stands at just 3.6 percent, while Nevada’s rate last month was 13.2 percent.

Obviously, it’s much harder to find a job in places where unemployment is high and there are lots of other people vying for open positions than it is in a tight job market. But looking at the top-line unemployment rate alone doesn’t tell the full story of what it’s like to be jobless in any given part of the country. While being unemployed sucks for everyone, the benefits available to keep the unemployed afloat vary significantly from state to state.

We decided to dig into state-level data and try to flesh out which are the very worst states in which to lose one’s job. We looked at several factors.

It’s not just the rate of unemployment that matters, but the length of time people are unemployed – long-term unemployment comes with unique problems that people who are jobless for a brief period don’t experience.

Nationwide, the average length of unemployment stands at 39 weeks, shattering the previous record of 23 weeks set in the early 1980s. Unfortunately, on the state level, the most recent data are from 2009. But we used the median length of joblessness that year to give a relative sense of how long it takes to find a job in various states.

We also looked at underemployment – people who aren’t counted in the headline numbers. These include those who are working a part-time job because they can’t find a full-time gig, and others who have been out of work for so long that they’ve given up the search.

On the benefits side, states have a lot of leeway in how they administer their unemployment insurance programs. The policies set in state houses determine who is eligible for unemployment insurance, how much of their salaries are covered and how long they’re eligible to receive benefits.

We looked at the following info:

• The percentage of unemployed workers receiving benefits provides a rough measure of how restrictive a state’s eligibility requirements are. This measure isn’t perfect, because there are various reasons people don’t receive benefits for which they’re eligible, but it gives us a good sense of how restrictive the requirements are. In the United States (in the second quarter of 2008), 37 percent of jobless workers received unemployment benefits – so we looked at how states stacked up against the national average.
• The average weekly check received by unemployed people varies from state to state, as does the share of their working incomes those benefits represent. Among developed countries, the US offers some of the stingiest unemployment benefits around, which is why conservative spin that the jobless are living it up on their unemployment insurance instead of trying to find work is so ludicrous (though there is evidence that this is actually true in places like Scandinavia, where people who lose their jobs still take in 70 percent or more of their income). In 2008, those unemployed Americans who qualified for benefits got $293 per week, or about 35 percent of their lost income. We looked at how states compared with those nationwide numbers.
• Congress has authorized extended unemployment benefits – totaling up to 99 weeks – during this recession. That’s why people who have seen their benefits expire before finding a job have come to be known as “99ers.” But not every state with high unemployment offers 99 weeks of benefits. We looked at which ones don’t.
• The federal COBRA law offers laid off workers the ability to stay in their group medical plan for up to 36 months, but it only applies to companies with 20 or more employees. That doesn’t help people who lost jobs at smaller companies, and many states have stepped in to fill the gap by enacting “mini-COBRA” laws for smaller firms. Not all have done so, and the details of those plans vary. We looked at these laws as well.

In considering all these factors, we get a better picture, beyond what the unemployment rate tells us, of what it’s like to lose one’s job in a given state. For example, we considered including California because of its 12 percent rate of joblessness and long duration of unemployment, but ultimately rejected it because its programs cover more people than the national average, offer above average benefits and feature mini-COBRA coverage for a full 36 months. Tennessee is included, despite having a lower unemployment rate, because its benefits are stingy and don’t cover a lot of its jobless citizens.

This isn’t a scientific study, so you can have fun arguing over which states you think should have been included or excluded!

Mississippi

Unemployment rate: 10.2 percent

Underemployment: 17 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 79 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 13.1 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 25 percent

Average weekly check: $177.73 (29.4 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 12 months

 

Arizona

Unemployment rate: 9.5 percent

Underemployment: 18.7 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 14.5 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 29 percent

Average weekly check: $211.19 (27.4 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: None

 

Florida

Unemployment rate: 11.1 percent

Underemployment: 18.8 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 18.1 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 25 percent

Average weekly check: $177.73 (29.4 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 18 months

 

Georgia

Unemployment rate: 10 percent

Underemployment: 17 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 16.2 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 25 percent

Average weekly check: $267.04 (34 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 3 months

Kentucky

Unemployment rate: 10.2 percent

Underemployment: 16.3 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 16.2 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 30 percent

Average weekly check: $291.49 (42.9 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 18 months

 

Nevada

Unemployment rate: 13.2 percent

Underemployment: 23.7 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 15.2 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 41 percent

Average weekly check: $288.49 (35.9 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 18 months

 

Michigan

Unemployment rate: 10.3 percent

Underemployment: 20.3 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 19.4 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment insurance: 39 percent

Average weekly check: $296.35 (36.3 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: Only for children

 

Rhode Island

Unemployment rate: 11 percent

Underemployment: 19 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 17 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 42 percent

Average weekly check: $367.70 (46.5 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 18 months

 

South Carolina

Unemployment rate: 9.9 percent

Underemployment: 17.5 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 99 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 19.4 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 34 percent

Average weekly check: $236.08 (35.7 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 6 months

Tennessee

Unemployment rate: 9.5 percent

Underemployment: 16.2 percent

Maximum extended benefits: 79 weeks

Median duration of unemployment in 2009: 15.3 weeks

Share of jobless receiving unemployment benefits: 28 percent

Average weekly check: $211.11 (29.6 percent of lost earnings)

Mini-COBRA for health insurance: 3 months

Sources:

Unemployment rates are March figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/web/laus/lauhsthl.htm

Underemployment is averaged from the second quarter of last year through the first quarter of 2011, also from BLS: http://www.bls.gov/lau/stalt11q1.htm

Median duration of unemployment are numbers from 2009, courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute:

http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/job_searches_take_longest_in_michigan_and_south_carolina

The length of extended UI benefits are from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3164

The National Employment Law project brought us the average weekly checks sent to the unemployed in various states, what they represent in terms of replacing lost wages and the share of jobless people who are covered by the states. The data is from the second quarter of 2008. They have it broken down by region:

East: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2008.2.%20Eastern%20States.pdf

Mid-west: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2008.2%20Mid-Western%20States.pdf

South: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2008.2%20Southern%20States.pdf

West: http://www.nelp.org/page/-/UI/2008.2%20Western%20States.pdf

Mini-COBRA info from the State COBRA Law Directory: http://www.cobrahealth.com/statelawdirectory.htm

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. He is the author of The 15 Biggest Lies About the Economy (and Everything else the Right Doesn’t Want You to Know About Taxes, Jobs and Corporate America). Drop him an email or follow him on Twitter.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
You can also view this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/150776/, which is its original site.

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By Jason Leopold , TruthOut.org
Posted on on May 3, 2011

BP continues to receive tens of millions of dollars in government contracts, despite the fact that the British oil company is under federal criminal investigation over the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and twice violated its probation late last year.

Last week, the Defense Logistics Agency awarded Air BP, a division of BP Products North America, a $42 million contract to supply fuel to Dover Air Force Base for the next month and a half. BP is the biggest supplier of fuel to the Defense Department.

What makes this particular contract unique is that it is one identified as “an unusual and compelling urgency” contract, which means the government would be “seriously injured“and national security could be at risk unless the Defense Logistics Agency was permitted to “limit the number of sources from which it solicits bids or proposals.”

The Defense Logistics Agency sent out a request for proposals on March 25 and set a deadline of April 1 for offers to be returned. Included in the government’s proposal is a purchase request for 20 million gallons of jet fuel at an average price of $2.10 a gallon.

According to government contracting regulations, “an unusual and compelling urgency precludes full and open competition” and “delay in award of a contract would result in serious injury, financial or other, to the Government.”

Scott Amey, general counsel for watchdog group Project On Government Oversight (POGO), said, “unusual and compelling urgency” is often used by the government when it awards a no-bid, sole source contract.

“It’s just another way of getting around competitive bidding,” Amey said in an interview. “The military needs to justify why there was little or no competition.”

Michelle McCaskill, a spokeswoman for the Defense Logistics Agency, told Truthout a copy of the justification for “the unusual and compelling urgency” would be posted online within 30 days after the contract award.

She added that the contract awarded to Air BP “was needed to meet requirements at Dover [Air Force Base] during the period of April 15, 2011 – May 31, 2011.”

McCaskill could not obtain a timely response to questions about whether the Defense Logistics Agency received bids from other companies.

[UPDATE: On Thursday morning, McCaskill sent an email to Truthout stating the Defense Logistics Agency did receive bids for the “unusual and compelling” contract from other oil companies. Moreover, McCaskill said the fuel contract awarded to Air BP “is the third supplemental solicitation tied to the terms and conditions of the basic solicitation.” In other words, the contract awarded to Air BP last week is part of a larger fuel contract the Defense Logistics Agency awarded to several oil companies last year. The contract given to Air BP supplemented the original contract by allowing the Defense Logistics Agency to purchase additional fuel. The agency supplemented the original contract twice before, most recently in February when it issued a requests for proposals to three oil companies, which included Air BP and Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company, seeking 14 million gallons of fuel to “provide support for ongoing operations on” Dover Air Force Base for about a month. That contract, also identified as “unusal and compelling,” was awarded to ExxonMobil for $30.8 million, a bid that was more than $100,000 less than Air BP’s. It is unknown what mission the contract awarded to ExxonMobil in February supported as that information is redacted in documents released to justify the “unusual and compelling” contract.]

BP won the most recent contract even though the company’s federal probation officer petitioned a US district court judge last November to revoke the company’s probation over a 46,000 gallon oil spill that occurred at BP’s Lisburne facility on Alaska’s North Slope in November 2009.

The probation officer, Mary Frances Barnes, said in court documents that the spill amounted to “criminal negligence” under Alaska state law and the federal Clean Water Act and violated the terms of the probation agreement BP signed in November 2007 following a 212,000 gallon oil spill on the North Slope a year earlier. BP has pleaded not guilty to the probation violation charge and is fighting the case in federal court.

Furthermore, last September, BP was found to have violated the terms of a settlement agreement it entered into with government regulators six years ago to make certain safety upgrades at its Texas City refinery, where an explosion in March 2005 killed 15 people and maimed and seriously injured 170 others. The Justice Department refused to pursue a probation revocation case in that incident, opting instead to give BP another year to make the upgrades at the refinery.

Libya?

McCaskill would not say exactly what the government’s “unusual and compelling urgency” is in awarding the fuel contract to Air BP. One possibility is that the jet fuel Air BP is supplying is intended for aircraft leaving Dover Air Force Base carrying cargo to support NATO’s air war against Libya. Obama turned over control of the entire Libya operation, known as Operation Odyssey Dawn, to NATO on March 31. But over the past week, NATO has complained that it is running short of munitions.

McCaskill referred questions about whether the jet fuel Air BP is supplying over the next 46 days is being used on aircraft utilized for Libya operations to Dover Air Force Base. Brett Kangas, a spokesman for Dover, said he was unable to obtain answers to specific questions about what aircraft the fuel is being used for and what the mission is.

But a March 31 news release posted on Dover Air Force Base’s web site provides some clues. It says Dover has “four C-5M aircraft, all of which are involved in the support of the international crisis in Libya.”

“In order for the strike operations implementing the no-fly zone to continue, the ‘bullets’ have to make it to the fight and that is where Dover Air Force Base delivers,” the Dover press release states. “Delivering oversized cargo is the name of the game here at Dover [Air Force Base, Delaware].”

Last Friday, on the same day the Air BP contract was set to begin, unnamed US and NATO officials told The Washington Post NATO is running short on precision bombs and other munitions for the military action that began a little more than a month ago.

“The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months,” the Post reported.

Kangas noted, however, that there is a possibility the jet fuel could also be used for C-17 aircraft flying out of Dover for humanitarian missions to Japan.

Awarding Air BP a contract to supply fuel for aircraft supporting Libya operations, if that turns out to be the case, would be ironic. Last year, BP confirmed that it told the British government in 2007 that the company’s $900 million oil contract with Libya would be at risk unless a prisoner transfer agreement, which allegedly included Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence official convicted of the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, between the two countries was hammered out.

Too Big to Fail

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials held talks about possibly debarring or limiting BP from receiving additional government contracts several months after the deadly April 20, 2010, explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which claimed the lives of 11 workers and spilled at least five million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

But two senior EPA officials, who spoke to Truthout on condition of anonymity, said those discussions “went nowhere” largely because the federal government relies too heavily on BP to meet its needs and “arguments were raised” by “various agency officials” about the “possibility of debarment being a threat to national security.”

“But ultimately what it came down to was a lack of interest in holding this company accountable,” one EPA official said.

In an interview last year, Jeanne Pascal, the former debarment counsel at the EPA’s Seattle office who spent more than a decade working on issues related to environmental crimes BP had been convicted of, said she had to proceed with caution when she considered debarring the oil company from receiving government contracts.

“If I had debarred BP while they were supplying 80 percent of the fuel to US forces it would have been almost certain that the Defense Department would have been forced to get an exception,” Pascal said.

She had noted that the 80 percent figure was provided by her “contact,” an attorney, who works at the Defense Energy Support Center, the agency that responsible for purchasing all of the fuel for the military.

“There’s a provision in the debarment regulations that says in a time of war or extreme need exceptions can be granted to debarment so that federal agencies with critical needs can continue doing business with debarred contractors. I was in a quandary,” Pascal added. “If I moved forward with debarment we would have had a major federal contractor doing business with the federal government with no governmental oversight or audit provisions. I felt oversight terms and conditions were critical with BP, so I pursued settlement of the matter in the hopes of getting oversight and audit terms.”

Amey, POGO’s general counsel, said that “the government still turns [to BP] with goods and services and does not take into account their past performance, level of responsibility and the fact they violated laws is a perfect example of a contractor too big to fail.”

On POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, BP comes in at number 48 in a list of the top 100 government contractors. But the company ranks second, behind Lockheed Martin, as having the most instances of misconduct – 53 – since 1995, which has resulted in more than $1.6 billion in fines.

Those factors do not appear to be of concern to the federal government.

According to USAspending.gov, which tracks government contracts, BP was awarded 52 government contracts worth $56.5 million for fiscal year 2011 to supply fuel, gas, and other petroleum products to agencies such as the Defense Department and Department of Health and Human Services. From fiscal year 2006 through 2010, BP received 707 government contracts worth nearly $7 billion.

However, the federal government does want the public to believe it scrutinizes its awardees before turning over billions in taxpayer dollars to companies such as BP.

Last Friday, the government launched its answer to POGO’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database: the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS).

“In 2008, Congress passed the law that created FAPIIS, which agencies must check before awarding a contract or grant to ensure the prospective awardee is ‘responsible,'” POGO reported. As a “condition for making FAPIIS public, a few concessions had to be granted to the entities listed in it. This included making so-called ‘past performance reviews’ off-limits to the public and only posting data entered into FAPIIS on or after April 15, 2011.”

That means the public won’t be able to find any information about BP’s past misconduct. Indeed, a search for BP Products North America’s government contracts did not turn up any critical reports about the company.

Prior to the database search, a message pops up. It says: “Contracting officials should be aware that use of the information in the FAPIIS systems should not result in de facto debarment. Current procedures emphasize that certain past performance in the system may no longer be relevant to a determination of present responsibility.”

© 2011 TruthOut.org All rights reserved.

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By Shannon Jones | 2 May 2011

Directed by Robert Redford, written by James D. Solomon and Gregory Bernstein

The Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford, is a historical drama centered on a little-known aspect of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln: the trial by military commission of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), who ran the boarding house frequented by Lincoln’s assassin, the actor John Wilkes Booth. Surratt became the first woman to be executed by the US government (the next would be Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, a victim of Cold War anticommunist hysteria).

The film is an intelligent and well-acted telling of the events and generally stays close to the historical record. Screenwriter James Solomon spent some 14 years researching the story.

James McAvoy plays Union war hero Frederick Aiken, who defended Surratt at the request of her attorney, Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson). Reverdy, a border state Southerner, was accused of disloyalty to the Union by members of the tribunal. Though he was able to avoid disqualification, he felt Surratt would be better served by having a Northerner of unimpeachable loyalty argue her case.

The film opens with a scene of carnage, the aftermath of a fierce battle. Dead and wounded Union soldiers strew the field, a reminder of the enormous toll of the Civil War. Aiken, severely wounded, tells jokes to cheer up a wounded colleague while they await help.

The scene shifts forward. It is April 1865, and Washington is celebrating the fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and the surrender of the South’s foremost military leader, General Robert E Lee. President Abraham Lincoln attends a play at the Ford Theatre in downtown Washington. Meanwhile, Booth and his co-conspirators make their preparations.

The assassination of Lincoln and the stabbing by a second conspirator of Secretary of State William Seward, who survives, shock the population. There is a massive outpouring of grief. Great crowds turn out to line the route of the train carrying Lincoln’s body to Illinois for burial. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (Kevin Kline) orders a full mobilization to hunt down Booth and his associates, who also intended to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson.

After eluding capture for almost two weeks, Booth is trapped in a barn and shot dead by Union soldiers. Another seven men are arrested in connection with the plot to kill Lincoln. They, along with Surratt, are to be tried before a military commission on the grounds that Lincoln, as president, is commander in chief of the Union armies.

Initially, Aiken is reluctant to defend Surratt, since he is convinced of her guilt. Doubts gradually emerge. In the end, he accuses an overzealous Stanton of railroading Surratt to the gallows.

Historians differ on the degree of Mary Surratt’s involvement in the conspiracy. Many positively assert she knew about and participated in the assassination plot, while others take a more cautious approach. The evidence presented in court was somewhat sketchy. Members of the military commission, though voting to find her guilty, petitioned the Johnson administration for clemency on the grounds of her age and sex.

Mary’s son John Surratt, a Confederate spy who initially eluded capture, was suspected of involvement in the plot. Mary’s reluctance to incriminate her son complicates Aiken’s defense. Ironically, John Surratt later escaped the gallows.

It is known that the assassination plot against Lincoln grew out of an earlier scheme to kidnap the president and take him to Richmond with the intent of ransoming him for Confederate prisoners of war. With the fall of the Confederate capital, Booth decided to change the ransom scheme into an assassination plot.

The portrait of Stanton seems heavy-handed. Apparently in the strained interests of making an analogy to the Bush-Cheney assault on civil liberties (continued under the Obama administration), Stanton is portrayed as arrogant, overbearing and vengeful. While it is true that Stanton reacted aggressively to the murder of Lincoln, this response seems justified given the enormity of the crime and the fact that there were still Confederate armies in the field.

Asked about the similarities to contemporary events, director Robert Redford told one interviewer, “There are obvious parallels with how this country is today. We’re not making something up here to make a political point. It’s there.”

However, there are far more differences than similarities. The “war on terror” was largely concocted. The US government seized on the tragic and unexplained events of September 11, 2001, to justify a vast and open-ended expansion of executive power and the trampling of basic constitutional rights in the name of the struggle against a nebulous enemy. Hundreds were arrested and held without charges, and many tortured. Neo-colonial wars have been launched, with devastating consequences.

The assassination of Lincoln took place in the context of a Civil War, provoked by the rebellion of the southern slavocracy, that had gone on four years and cost more than 600,000 lives. While nearing a conclusion, hostilities had not formally ended. Confederate soldiers remained under arms in various parts of the South, and there was talk of the Confederate government continuing resistance in Texas, which remained largely unconquered. There was an active network of Confederate agents and sympathizers operating in the North.

Moreover, the struggle of the Northern armies to destroy slavery was a thoroughly progressive and, in fact, objectively revolutionary act. The assassination of Lincoln, which Karl Marx described as an event that had “a colossal impact throughout the world,” was a blow delivered by deeply reactionary forces.

Stanton had no way of determining, at least initially, whether or not the murder of Lincoln was part of a wider conspiracy. Though the tribunal denied certain due process—e.g., the accused were not allowed to testify in their own defense—the defendants were apprised of the charges against them, had access to legal representation and were not subject to torture.

Despite that, Mary Surratt subsequently was turned into something of a martyr by sympathizers of the defeated Confederacy. The public perception that she had been unfairly dealt with was heightened by the fact she was tried before a military commission, rather than a civilian court, as well as the murky circumstances surrounding the dismissal by the Johnson administration of the clemency petition—Johnson would later claimed he was not shown it.

The attempt to massage certain historical facts, to use this possibly unnecessary and vindictive act, in the interest of drawing a false analogy between the US Civil War and the “war on terror” seriously undermines The Conspirator and, perhaps unintentionally, provides current American government policy a legitimacy it does not deserve.

That being said, The Conspirator does not hammer the audience over the head. Its serious approach to historical questions is to be welcomed, and I hope this will not be the last such film directed by Redford.

SHANNON JONES writes for the Worldwide Socialist Website.

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