Global Research

This article was first published on March 31, 2017. An earlier version was published in 2015

Lest we forget, one day before the 9/11 attacks, as well as on the morning of 9/11, the dad of the sitting President of the United States of America, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting none other than Shafiq bin Laden, the brother of the alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.

It was a routine business meeting on September 10-11, no conflict of interest, no relationship to the 9/11 attacks which allegedly were carried out on the orders of Shafiq’s brother Osama, no FBI investigation into the links between the Bush and bin Laden families. 

What is presented below is a factual account. Confirmed by the Washington Post, “fellow investors” of the Carlyle Group including Osama’s brother Shafiq bin Laden and GWB’s dad former President George H. W. Bush (and former CIA director) met in the plush surroundings of New York’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel on September 10-11, 2001.  Their business encounter under the auspices of the Carlyle Group was unfortunately interrupted on September 11 by the 9/11 attacks.

It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)

screenshot Washington Post, March 16, 2003

A timely business meeting on September 10-11 at the Ritz Carlton with Osama’s brother disrupted by the 9/11 attacks: pure coincidence, totally unrelated to the 9/11 attacks.

What was GWB’s Dad “Poppy” doing with Osama’s brother Shafiq on September 10?

Media coverup:  the WP report came out 18 months later in March 2003. There was no media coverage of the Shafiq bin Laden – G. Herbert W. Bush meeting in September 2001. The event was known, yet mainstream media editors decided not to provide coverage of this timely 9/11 encounter at the Ritz Carleton.

A day later, on the evening of September 11, 2001, president George W. Bush pronounced a historic speech in which he defined the relationship between “terrorists’ and “state sponsors of terrorism”:

The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts. I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. (emphasis added)

Let’s be clear as to what happened: the Dad of the sitting president of the US was “harboring” (to use GWB’s expression) the brother of  the alleged terror mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Should the President have not  instructed the “law enforcement communities” to at least question his Dad?

Click to order Michel Chossudovsky’s International Best Seller directly from Global Research 

Why was Poppy Bush’s meeting with Osama bin Laden’s brother Shafiq not subject to the normal rules of  police investigation:

Question: “What were you doing with Osama’s brother”?

Why was this not the object of investigative media reporting or US Congressional enquiry?

Also in attendance at the Ritz Carlton meetings were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and other unnamed members of the bin Laden family.

The bin Laden – Bush Carlyle Group meeting was also confirmed by The Economist in a June 2003 article entitled C- for Capitalism (see screenshot below):

“ON the day Osama bin Laden’s men attacked America, Shafiq bin Laden, described as an estranged brother of the terrorist, was at an investment conference in Washington, DC, along with two people who are close to President George Bush: his father, the first President Bush, and James Baker, the former secretary of state who masterminded the legal campaign that secured Dubya’s move to the White House. The conference was hosted by the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm that manages billions of dollars, including, at the time, some bin Laden family wealth. It also employs Messrs Bush and Baker.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, when no one was being allowed in or out of the United States, many members of the bin Laden family in America were spirited home to Saudi Arabia. The revival of defence spending that followed greatly increased the value of the Carlyle Group’s investments in defence companies.

The Carlyle Group is embroiled with the defense and intelligence establishment. “It is widely regarded as an extension of the US government, or at least the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the Pentagon.” (The Economist June 26, 2003, emphasis added)

‘

screenshot of Economist report

• Double standards in anti-terrorism legislation?
• Double standards in police and law enforcement?
• Double standards in media coverage.
• No questions asked.
• No police investigation or interrogation of Osama’s brother Shafiq.

Normally, under established rules of police investigation, both Shafiq bin Laden and the president’s Dad George Herbert Walker Bush would have been remanded in custody for police questioning and in all likelihood, Shafiq bin Laden would have been arrested as a potential suspect. But that did not happen.

In 2003, the CBC brought out a carefully investigated report which focusses on the bin Laden-Bush family connections:

Video 

No Travel Ban for the Bin Ladens

The presence of members of the bin Laden family meeting up with the father of the president of the United States was hushed up and 13 members of the bin Ladens including Shafiq were flown out of the US on September 19, 2001 in a plane chartered by the White House.

Meanwhile, suspected Muslims are routinelyarrested on a mere suspicion, –e.g. [author’s paraphrase] that they have an old school friend, who’s cousin’s 86 year old grandmother is an alleged sympathizer of the “jihad”.

The Global War on Terrorism is Born

On the day following the departure of the bin Ladens, President Bush delivered an address to a joint session of the House and the Senate (September 20, 2001), in which he stated unequivocally his administration’s intent to “pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism”, with no exceptions (e.g. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan)

“We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make.

Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.)

From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime [state sponsor of terrorism]. President George W. Bush, 20 September 2001 (emphasis added)

The Bushes and the bin Ladens, they’re with us and with the terrorists.

An earlier version of this article was published in 2015.

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Click image to order Michel Chossudovsky’s book 

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”. Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

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First published by Global Research on August 26, 2023

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Introduction

It can be indicated from a historical viewpoint that the USA emerged on the stage of global (world) politics in 1867 (four years before Germany did the same in 1871 after the Franco−Prussian War of 1870−1871). Both these imperial states at the same time exerted extremely influential politics in the process of radical transformation of the modern world both in Europe and outside of the Old Continent. In 1867, Washington purchased Alaska from Russia (regardless of the claims that Russia just rented Alaska for 99 years), and in April 1917, the USA entered the Great War on the side of France and the UK (after the Russian February/March Revolution in 1917) and brought about a decisive defeat of the German Second Empire on the Western Front in the Autumn of 1918 making at the same time as a direct consequence itself the global greatest power.

The historical time from 1867 to 1917, was a period of extraordinary (up to that time) rivalries in international relations and global affairs. The point of global politics was, in fact, that Washington took full advantage of the time and global geopolitical situation. It has to be noticed that the USA’s wider geopolitical ambitions were manifested since the end of the 18^th century. However, the political and economic strife between northern and southern US states which went to the US 1861−1865 Civil War simply postponed further US geopolitical expansion. Nevertheless, after 1865, the geopolitical forward policy of Washington became re-driven, and industrialization and finance capitalism became superior factors compared to older types of the process of building global empires founded on commerce and territory acquisition.

Such a new type of US global imperialism practically started in the 1898 war against Spain (in fact, Spanish colonies). Many experts in US history and global politics will say that the year 1898 was, actually, a turning point year in US foreign policy when Washington started to push toward the creation of the global empire of the USA. Nonetheless, meanwhile, Washington was making more powerful its navy followed by occupation strategies of certain outposts before diplomatically claiming military supremacy in both the Pacific Ocean and Central America with the Caribbean Sea.

The US Expansion in the Pacific Ocean

The US colonial expansion in the area of the Pacific Ocean was attracted by the explorations of the British Captain James Cook. Therefore, the US sailors started navigation in 1784 via Cape Horn (Chile).

In 1867, it was the first clear move by Washington to resume its imperial policy after the Civil War when the USA acquired Alaska from Russia. It has to be understood that for the American geostrategic policy, Alaska was both the corridor to Canada (as a part of the USA) and the back door to Asia (in fact, Japan and China). The Washington administration, in fact, believed that North America, which was controlled by the UK (Canada), as encircled in such a way was going to be finally forced to join the USA.

Consequently, Canadian membership in the Union would realize the geopolitical dream of the USA as a continent-wide empire. The only practical obstacle, however, to the final implementation of such a design was that the Canadians themselves opposed such dreams: first by the federation in 1867 and second by the purchase of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1869. The final end of the US imperial dream concerning Canada was in 1870 when Canada attracted Manitoba followed by British Columbia in 1871 (exactly during the 1870−1871 Franco-Prussian War) into the new Dominion (under the UK patronage) and therefore stopping the US northward geopolitical ambitions. The US−UK geopolitical tensions in (Anglo−Saxon−French) North America from the time of the US Civil War have been fixed by the 1871 Washington Treaty. After that, the US geopolitical ambitions could be directed elsewhere.

For Washington, Alaska was an appropriate bridge for the American penetration to the northeastern portion of Asia (Siberia) especially taking into consideration the chain of Aleutian Islands stretching out toward Japan. Between British Canada and the USA, it was at the turn of the 20^th century the so-called Alaska border dispute. In other words, the rush to the Kiondike gold fields in 1897 brought this dispute near the stage of war. During the conflict, Canada feared the loss of its north-west territories to the USA. However, an anti-Canadian politically oriented tribunal with the UK judge holding the most decisive vote, favored the border line demanded by Washington in 1903. That was how US Alaska received the “appendix” up to Dixon Entrance.

However, since the mid-19^th century, Hawaiian Islands have been playing the focal springboard to Asia (Korea, Japan, China). There was a rivalry between the UK, France, and the USA which was kept until the end of the 19^th century American relations with the native Hawaiian Kingdom to be unsettled. Nevertheless, when the USA annexed Midway Island in 1867 (in the same year when purchased Alaska) Washington seriously moved ahead toward influence in the Orient of France and the UK.

The Hawaiian Islands were the next on the imperialistic list of Uncle Sam. The US geopolitical and economic interests controlled Hawaii by 1842, and Washington shared in the concessions exported from China by Britain.

It was a commercial treaty signed in 1875 which, in fact, made the Hawaiian Kingdom a virtual US protectorate (colony). Further, in 1887, Washington obtined Hawaiian Pearl Harbor as a coaling station and future naval base (the biggest in the Pacific Ocean). The annexation of the Hawaiian Islands entered its ultimate phase in 1893 when a certain group of sugar planters together with Honolulu business peoples supported by the US administration, overthrew the native Hawaiian monarchy (putsch) and established instead a puppet republic that served American national interests in the Pacific area.

The islands were formally annexed by the USA in 1898 with the start of the 1898 Spanish-American War (provoked by Washington). As a consequence of the war which Spain lost to America, Pacific Wake Island was annexed while Pacific Guam Island together with the Philippines was ceded to the USA. Therefore, a direct colonial transpacific line from California to the Philippines was established. Some years earlier, in 1878, the American foothold in the South Pacific was founded at Pago Pago in the Samoan group where the UK and Germany as well as have been present. Friction was solved by the 1899 treaty which partitioned the group of Samoan Islands into German Western Samoa and American Eastern Samoa. However, the Germans lost their part of the Samoan group in 1914 when the Great War started (neighboring Fiji Islands were in British possession since 1874).

The US Navy forcibly “opened” the Japanese Islands in 1854 and the Korean Peninsula in 1882 for economic (trade) relations with the USA followed by the US political, economic, financial, and cultural influence in the region. Washington obtained Pago Pago Bay (Samoa) in 1878 and then in 1898 followed the great annexation which enabled Washington to complete its “lifeline” to China.

It has to be stressed that concerning the Pacific Ocean, the focal achievement of the American expansion occurred as the consequence of the 1898 Spanish-American War: the Philippines and the Islands of Wake and Guam, which opened a direct penetration way to China and Southeast Asia, already the focus of international friction as the area for capital investment and consequent economic-financial exploitation. The US bankers and businessmen have been directly supported by the US administration in their struggle for business in the region. It was a phrase that they would secure the “Open Door” to China for the purpose of securing great entrepreneurial (profit) opportunities both China and Southeast Asia were supposed to offer. It was a secret American policy in the year 1900 with the aim of getting a lease over Samsah Bay in the Fukien province of China (just opposite Formosa/Taiwan), but it became unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, the American colonial expansionism in Asia-Pacific at the turn of the 20^th century outpaced the Western European great powers in the scramble for imperialistic influence in the region. However, the American prime attention was focused on the region of Manchuria. There were US officials, like Willard Straight, who was consul-general in Mukden, who promoted the province of Manchuria as the “New West” of the USA (the “Old West” was a territory from Mt. Appalachian to California/Pacific). The “New West” in China had to be covered by railways owned and managed by the US entrepreneurs and government. Nonetheless, such and similar American colonial plans concerning Manchuria were blocked by both Japan and Russia as they divided the region between themselves by the two treaties in 1907 and 1910.

The US Imperial Policy in Central America and the Caribbean Sea   

Another crucial area of the colonial expansion of the USA since the mid-19^th century was Central America (primarily Mexico) and the islands of the Caribbean Sea.

The US intervention in a Cuban insurrection against the Spanish colonial authorities led Washington to war with Spain in 1898 and to a protectorate over Puerto Rico in 1898 and Cuba in 1903. The Caribbean Sea and Central America experienced a series of US interventions from 1906 to 1934 (the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua). Under US diplomatic pressure, Denmark was pressed to sell the Virgin Islands to the US in 1917. Meanwhile, the US expansionist policy southward of Rio Grande resulted in two abortive military interventions in Mexico in 1914 and 1916.

It has to be clearly understood that the US administration wrested the Mexican provinces of Texas, New Mexico, and California between 1846 and 1848. The rest of the Mexican provinces became annexed up to 1912. Consequently, around 60% of Mexican land was incorporated into the USA leaving only 40% as today’s independent state of Mexico (the United States of Mexico).

In Mexico, there were American land, mining, and oil companies that had been competing with West European geopolitical and financial-economic interests in the region, penetrating the country in the 1880s. However, all of them became checked by the 1911 Mexican Revolution, which promulgated a far-reaching program of anti-colonial nationalization of the Mexican economy. In order to protect American expansionist interests in Mexico, the 28^th US President Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1913−1921) ordered two military interventions against Mexico. The first was an occupation army sent to Tampico and Veracruz in 1914. The second was a punitive expedition across the Rio Grande in 1916 entering the territories of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo León. However, both of these military actions of aggression stimulated more profound resistance from the Mexican people and helped the start of a German political influence in Mexico which reached its peak in 1917.

As a consequence of the 1898 Spanish-American War, Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the USA followed by the conversion of Cuba into the US protectorate in 1903. The UK, like other West European powers, was very much interested in the affairs concerning the islands in the Caribbean Sea. However, London recognized the changed geopolitical situation in the area by the 1901 Hay-Paunceforte Treaty which gave the US a free hand of expansionism within both Central America and the Caribbean Sea. The essence of the agreement was, in fact, that the Panama Canal was built (functioning from 1914) but under the sole ownership and control of the USA (before the building of the canal, Washington detracted Panama from Colombia following the same pattern of the previous Hawaiian pro-American “colored” revolution).

Concerning the US colonial expansionist policy in both Central America and the Caribbean Sea, the ideological foundation for such imperial hegemony was the same: the 1823 Monroe Doctrine which clearly under the moto “America to Americans” promulgated the US imperialism in the area of Latin America (without West European interference) as implied an intention to treat Latin America as the exclusive US area of influence. Nevertheless, the 1861−1865 American Civil War temporarily postponed Washington’s imperial-expansionist policy in Latin America but the 1823 Monroe Doctrine was by no means put aside and forgotten.

It was the French geopolitical attempt to establish a colonial state (empire) in Mexico within the years of 1862−1867 which offered, in essence, starting work on the building of the Panama Canal but the French engineer, Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, faced serious objections from the US. The point was that the Panama Canal was understood by Washington as “virtually a part of the coastline of the United States” as was stated in 1879 by the US 19^thPresident Rutherford B. Hayes (1877−1881). Nevertheless, under the treaty with Panama (separated from Colombia) in 1903, the US leases the Panama Canal Zone in perpetuity. The zone is 10 miles wide and is bisected by the Canal which, unlike the Suez Canal, has locks.

In 1895, Washington interfered in the UK dispute with Venezuela over the border question and declared the USA “practically sovereign on this continent” (the words of the US Secretary of State Olney). The UK, however, dropped the argument. It was the policy of Colombia to meet the US expansionistic demands to build and exploit the Panama Canal (still on the territory of Colombia) that led to an insurrection in 1903 (inspired and supported by Washington like in the case of the Hawaiian Islands) that resulted in the forcible separation of Panama from Colombia. The US administration after the putsch guaranteed formal political independence of Panama but, in fact, the territory became an American colonial protectorate.

The historical period of the US dominance in the Caribbean Sea (since 1898) survived under several political difficulties until the end of WWII. During this time, Mexican resistance from 1934 to 1938 forced the US administration to imply a tactic to appease Latin America in order to struggle against the activities of Nazi Germany. At the same time, there were many US colonial interventionists in the affairs of Latin America including the Caribbean Sea area being covert or at least indirect, but working on the line of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. However, for tactical reasons, they altered the original doctrine into the more flexible policy of “Good Neighbourhood”. However, after 1945, new political actors in Latin America and the Caribbean Sea came into force resulting in the receding of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine by the US administration.

Final Words

The Times of London predicted, after the US’s decisive military victory over the Spanish overseas empire in 1898, that the USA would consequently play a prominent role in global politics and world affairs primarily at the expense of the UK.

It was the 1898 Spanish-American War after which the US became a great global power. The war was rooted in the struggle for independence of the island of Cuba followed by Washington to realize the American global economic and imperial ambitions at the expense of the Spanish colonial possessions. Sympathetic to Cuban rebels whose second war of independence against the Spanish rule started in 1895, Washington (mis)used the very mysterious blowing up of the American battleship (false-flag), Maine, in Havana harbor as a formal pretext for the declaration of the war to Spain. The Spanish Navy suffered serious defeats in both Cuba and the Phillippines. It was followed by the US expeditionary force (in which future US President Theodore Roosevelt served) defeated Spanish ground forces on the territory of the island of Cuba and in Puerto Rico. Spain finally surrendered at the end of 1898. Consequently, Puerto Rico was ceded to the US while Cuba became put under the American protectorate. Guam (the Pacific island) was as well as ceded to Washington while the Phillippines were bought by the US for $20 million. In essence, this war signified the emergence of the USA as one of the most powerful players in international relations of the time but at the same time the American dominant influence in the area of the Caribbean Sea.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

Cinquant’anni fa, l’11 Settembre 1973, avveniva il colpo di stato in Cile. Anche se è passato mezzo secolo, esso conserva una drammatica attualità. Questa, in sintesi, è la storia.

Nel novembre 1970 diviene Presidente del Cile Salvador Allende, eletto da una coalizione di forze democratiche con un programma di progresso sociale e sovranità nazionale. Due mesi prima, in settembre, il presidente Nixon ordina alla CIA di preparare un piano per impedire che Allende realizzi il suo programma. Il primo obiettivo di Washington è quello di “far saltare l’economia cilena”.

Quando il presidente Allende nazionalizza le miniere cilene di rame, fino a quel momento in mano a multinazionali statunitensi, Washington crea una task force federale che, operando sui mercati finanziari, fa crollare il prezzo mondiale del rame per colpire l’economia cilena. Mentre viene privato della principale fonte di reddito del suo export, il Cile viene sottoposto dagli USA a un ferreo embargo che gli impedisce di importare generi essenziali di prima necessità. Contemporaneamente la CIA blocca per 40 giorni i trasporti interni, finanziando con milioni di dollari uno sciopero dei camionisti.

Viene così preparato il terreno al colpo di stato organizzato dalla CIA e attuato dalla giunta militare capeggiata da Augusto Pinochet. L’11 settembre 1973 il golpe inizia con l’attacco al palazzo presidenziale, l’uccisione di Salvador Allende e degli uomini della sua scorta che decidono di rimanere con lui fino all’ultimo. Decine di migliaia di cileni vengono rinchiusi negli stadi e altri luoghi di detenzione, torturati nei modi più atroci e assassinati. Le tecniche del golpe, delle torture e uccisioni sono quelle della “Scuola delle Americhe” creata dal Pentagono per addestrare i militari latinoamericani sotto il suo comando.

Con la connivenza di Washington, il regime di Pinochet, “presidente” del Cile dal 1974 al 1990, prosegue la sua catena di crimini, assassinando gli oppositori sia all’interno che all’estero e reprimendo nel sangue le manifestazioni popolari. Ciò non impedisce a Giovanni Paolo II, in visita ufficiale in Cile il 2 aprile 1987, di affacciarsi di fronte alla folla plaudente, dal balcone del palazzo della Moneda, a fianco del Augusto Pinochet, colui che quattordici anni prima aveva assassinato a La Moneda il Presidente Salvador Allende.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO :

Published on July 1, 2023. Updated on July 6, 2023

I have just read an important article by Dr. Emanuel Garcia focussing on how many deaths are associated with the Covid mRNA vaccine since the outset of the Vaccine program in mid-December 2020.

Emanuel Garcia rightfully says that the “evidence is there. It is overwhelming”.

But that evidence is by no means complete. It is fragmented. It does not provide a broader picture of what is happening at the level of the entire planet. 

Scientists and medical doctors have documented the tragic circumstances of vaccine related deaths of numerous people in all walks of life and age groups, including children and new born.

Emanuel begs the question  “So IS the truth getting out? Or isn’t it?”

Numerous individual cases of Covid-19 vaccine related mortality are carefully documented on a daily basis: Musicians, Singers, Pilots, Athletes, High School Children, Children from 5 to 12 Years Old, Newly Born babies, Vaccinated Pregnant Women, the list is long. 

See the outstanding analysis of Dr. William Makis. Below is a selection of recent articles: 

Musicians and Singers Dying Suddenly in May and June 2023. The Trend Is Accelerating.

By Dr. William Makis, June 30, 2023

Nursing Students, Pharmacy Students, Medical Students Are Dying Suddenly. Ongoing Consequences of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Mandates

By Dr. William Makis, June 28, 2023

Young Drivers (COVID-19 mRNA Vaccinated) Are Having Medical Emergencies and Crashing While Driving

By Dr. William Makis, June 26, 2023

The Broader Picture

What is documented (individual cases) by Dr. William Makis is happening at the level of the entire planet.

We must address the broader picture: Millions of people are affected by the Covid-19 vaccine all over the World. The Covid-19 Vaccine is affecting humanity in its entirety.

We require “to get the truth out” . In the words of Emanuel Garcia:

“Judging from the normies I know, it’s not. Anti-vaxxers are nut-jobs and pariahs who are to be shunned by members of the Church of Vaccinology.

The point I wish to make here, psychologically speaking, is that the jab campaign and the propaganda behind it – which has been decades in the marinating – has created a mindset that truth cannot enlighten.”

We have to inform our fellow citizens and apply common sense. 

What is the Impact of the Covid-19 “Vaccine” at the Level of the Entire Planet?

How does it affect humanity’s population of 8 billion people including new born children as well as the unborn?

I have examined the data at a World level. It boggles the mind.

Over a two year period starting in mid-December 2020, more than 12.9 billion vaccine doses were administered across 184 countries (Bloomberg, September 21, 2022, see graph below). 

 

Recorded September 21, 2022: 12.9 Million doses administered (mid December 2020- September 21, 2022)

At the time of writing (July 1, 2023), almost 13.5 billion vaccine doses have been administered to a Worldwide population of 8 billion people, i.e. an average of 1.7 doses per person.

The data compiled by the WHO (June 27, 2023) is as follows (see WHO table):

• 13,461,751,619 vaccine doses administered
• 5,579,548,776 persons vaccinated with at least one dose
• 5,137,861,772 persons vaccinated with a complete primary series (CPS)

The figures above confirm that approximately 70% ( 5.138 billion people) of the World’s population has been vaccinated with “a complete primary series” which normally consists  of at least two vaccine doses.

The WHO map below should be carefully analyzed. 13,5 billion doses have been administered. 

In most countries, including the most populated countries on the planet, the total number of vaccine doses administered per 100 population is well in excess of 100 (dark green in map below).

The only region of the World which so far has escaped the “Killer Vaccine” is Africa, with barely 25% of its 1.4 billion population fully vaccinated (Africa CDC) (see map below). In recent developments, the African Union, Africa CDC in liaison with the WHO is to establish local vaccine manufacturing facilities in Africa. This  target is to fully vaccinate 70% of Africa’s impoverished population. We call upon the people of Africa, who are already the victims of an unprecedented food crisis to firmly oppose this insidious agenda, which in a bitter irony is fully endorsed by the IMF, as part of their  “shock and awe” reforms which over the years have contributed to impoverishing an entire continent. 

Whereas national governments and the WHO publish fake statistics  pertaining to alleged SARS-CoV2 related mortality (see Chapter III of Michel Chossudovsky’s book), they fail to inform the public regarding the deadly impacts of the Covid-19 Vaccine, (i.e. the tabulation of country-level Covid-19 Vaccine related mortality and morbidity).

Media Disinformation and “Fake Science”: Fear Campaign. “The Virus is more Dangerous than the Vaccine” 

A sensationalist BBC report under the title: Why is the Virus such a Threat” … Quoting “scientific opinion” the virus’ has a “hit and run killer evolutionary tactic” to spread the Covid-19 infection far and wide. 

Timely report published two weeks prior to the launching of the mRNA vaccine in November 2020. The objective of this insiduous BBC report was to generate fear throughout the UK as well as acceptance of the mRNA vaccine.

Global Implications 

From our knowledge of country level mortality as well as from carefully documented studies and sample surveys, the global implications of the “killer vaccine” on humanity are beyond description. 

The evidence is scattered Worldwide. Multiply those documented cases by the thousands of millions of people on the planet who have already been vaccinated. It’s the future of humanity which is at stake.

What has been imposed on 184 countries is a Depopulation Agenda, a criminal undertaking (accepted by corrupt national governments) which is unprecedented in the history of humanity. 

Aggregation, Extrapolation, “Order of Magnitude”, Loss of Life Worldwide?  

What should be addressed is detailed epidemiological and statistical analysis requiring a perspective of “aggregation” pertaining to the documented individual cases, the examination of country-level data where available with a view to “extrapolating” and establishing the “order of magnitude” of the loss of life at the level of the entire planet, humanity’s 8 billion population.  

This study would be based on country level vaccine related data pertaining to deaths and adverse events, excess mortality studies, numerous sample surveys not to mention Pfizers controversial “Confidential Report” which acknowledges from the “Horse’s Mouth” that #Yes, It’s “A Killer Vaccine. 

Pfizer Criminality Revealed

In early 2021, Pfizer was fully aware that the mRNA Pfizer-BionTech vaccine –which in the meantime has been marketed Worldwide– has resulted in an unprecedented wave of mortality and morbidity.

By acknowledging the number of vaccine doses which have already been administered Worldwide, namely 13,5 billion for a World population of 8 billion, we cannot come to any other conclusion. 

This is tantamount to a crime against humanity on the part of Big Pharma. It is also a  Mea Culpa and Treason on the part of corrupt national governments which have obfuscated what is best described as a criminal process of depopulation, namely genocide. 

We Call for the Reinstatement of  “Responsible Government”. Those responsible for imposing the vaccine are “criminals”.

To Save Lives, the Covid-19 Vaccine Must be Cancelled, Discontinued Worldwide, Without Delay.

Killer Vaccine: The Global Picture has to be Revealed

Scientists, Medical Doctors, Social Scientists, Statisticians must  Address the Global Picture 

“Another needless death” says Emanuel Garcia. Imagine what it is at the level of 8 billion people.

We must also acknowledge the unthinkable:

There is A Worldwide “Tide of Depopulation”.  Can This Tendency be Reversed?

The Answer is through the urgent development of Health Procedures and/or Effective Medication which contribute to reversing the devastating health impacts (e.g spike protein) of the Covid-19 Vaccine.

Preliminary research is underway: See Dr. William Makis’ article entitled: 

“Covid Vaccine Injury Treatment: Fasting for 48-72 Hours Creates Autophagy”

The focus is on “The Body’s Detox Process That Kills COVID-19 Vaccine Spike Protein Damaged Cells and Reboots the Immune System”

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First published on August 24, 2022

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In March 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned of a “hurricane of hunger and a meltdown of the global food system” in the wake of the crisis in Ukraine. 

Guterres said food, fuel and fertiliser prices were skyrocketing with supply chains being disrupted and added this is hitting the poorest the hardest and planting the seeds for political instability and unrest around the globe.

According to the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, there is currently sufficient food and no risk of global food supply shortages.

We see an abundance of food but skyrocketing prices. The issue is not food shortage but speculation on food commodities and the manipulation of an inherently flawed global food system that serves the interests of corporate agribusiness traders and suppliers of inputs at the expense of people’s needs and genuine food security.

The war in Ukraine is a geopolitical trade and energy conflict. It is largely about the US engaging in a proxy war against Russia and Europe by attempting to separate Europe from Russia and imposing sanctions on Russia to harm Europe and make it further dependent on the US.

Economist Professor Michael Hudson recently stated that ultimately the war is against Europe and Germany. The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent Europe and other allies from increasing their trade and investment with Russia and China.

Neoliberal policies since the 1980s have hollowed out the US economy. With its productive base severely weakened, the only way for the US to maintain hegemony is to undermine China and Russia and weaken Europe.

Hudson says that, beginning a year ago, Biden and the US neocons attempted to block Nord Stream 2 and all (energy) trade with Russia so that the US could monopolise it itself.

Despite the ‘green agenda’ currently being pushed, the US still relies on fossil fuel-based energy to project its power abroad. Even as Russia and China move away from the dollar, the control and pricing of oil and gas (and resulting debt) in dollars remains key to US attempts to retain hegemony.

The US knew beforehand how sanctions on Russia would play out. They would serve to divide the world into two blocks and fuel a new cold war with the US and Europe on one side with China and Russia being the two main countries on the other.

US policy makers knew Europe would be devastated by higher energy and food prices and food importing countries in the Global South would suffer due to rising costs.

It is not the first time the US has engineered a major crisis to maintain global hegemony and a spike in key commodity prices that effectively trap countries into dependency and debt.

In 2009, Andrew Gavin Marshall described how in 1973 – not long after coming off the gold standard – Henry Kissinger was integral to manipulating events in the Middle East (the Arab-Israeli war and the ‘energy crisis’). This served to continue global hegemony for the US, which had virtually bankrupted itself due to its war in Vietnam and had been threatened by the economic rise of Germany and Japan.

Kissinger helped secure huge OPEC oil price rises and thus sufficient profits for Anglo-American oil companies that had over-leveraged themselves in North Sea oil. He also cemented the petrodollar system with the Saudis and subsequently placed African nations, which had embarked on a path of (oil-based) industrialisation, on a treadmill of dependency and debt due to the spike in oil prices.

It is widely believed that the high-priced oil policy was aimed at hurting Europe, Japan and the developing world.

Today, the US is again waging a war on vast swathes of humanity, whose impoverishment is intended to ensure they remain dependent on the US and the financial institutions it uses to create dependency and indebtedness – the World Bank and IMF.

Hundreds of millions will experience (are experiencing) poverty and hunger due to US policy. These people (the ones that the US and Pfizer et al supposedly cared so much about and wanted to get a jab into each of their arms) are regarded with contempt and collateral damage in the great geopolitical game.

Contrary to what many believe, the US has not miscalculated the outcome of the sanctions placed on Russia. Michael Hudson notes energy prices are increasing, benefiting US oil companies and US balance of payments as an energy exporter. Moreover, by sanctioning Russia, the aim is to curtail Russian exports (of wheat and gas used for fertiliser production) and for agricultural commodity prices to therefore increase. This too will also benefit the US as an agricultural exporter.

This is how the US seeks to maintain dominance over other countries.

Current policies are designed to create a food and debt crisis for poorer nations especially. The US can use this debt crisis to force countries to continue privatising and selling off their public assets in order to service the debts to pay for the higher oil and food imports.

This imperialist strategy comes on the back of ‘COVID relief’ loans which have served a similar purpose. In 2021, an Oxfam review of IMF COVID-19 loans showed that 33 African countries were encouraged to pursue austerity policies. The world’s poorest countries are due to pay $43 billion in debt repayments in 2022, which could otherwise cover the costs of their food imports.

Oxfam and Development Finance International have also revealed that 43 out of 55 African Union member states face public expenditure cuts totalling $183 billion over the next five years.

The closure of the world economy in March 2020 (‘lockdown’) served to trigger an unprecedented process of global indebtedness. Conditionalities mean national governments will have to capitulate to the demands of Western financial institutions. These debts are largely dollar-denominated, helping to strengthen the US dollar and US leverage over countries.

The US is creating a new world order and needs to ensure much of the Global South remains in its orbit of influence rather than ending up in the Russian and especially Chinese camp and its belt road initiative for economic prosperity.

Post-COVID, this is what the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and the engineered food and energy crisis are really about.

Back in 2014, Michael Hudson stated that the US has been able to dominate most of the Global South through agriculture and control of the food supply. The World Bank’s geopolitical lending strategy has transformed countries into food deficit areas by convincing them to grow cash crops – plantation export crops – not to feed themselves with their own food crops.

The oil sector and agribusiness have been joined at the hip as part of US geopolitical strategy.

The dominant notion of ‘food security’ promoted by global agribusiness players like Cargill, Archer Daniel Midland, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus and supported by the World Bank is based on the ability of people and nations to purchase food. It has nothing to do with self-sufficiency and everything to do with global markets and supply chains controlled by giant agribusiness players.

Along with oil, the control of global agriculture has been a linchpin of US geopolitical strategy for many decades. The Green Revolution was exported courtesy of oil-rich interests and poorer nations adopted agri-capital’s chemical- and oil-dependent model of agriculture that required loans for inputs and related infrastructure development.

It entailed trapping nations into a globalised food system that relies on export commodity mono-cropping to earn foreign exchange linked to sovereign dollar-denominated debt repayment and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives. What we have seen has been the transformation of many countries from food self-sufficiency into food deficit areas.

And what we have also seen is countries being placed on commodity crop production treadmills. The need for foreign currency (US dollars) to buy oil and food entrenches the need to increase cash crop production for exports.

The World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) set out the trade regime necessary for this type of corporate dependency that masquerades as ‘global food security’.

This is explained in a July 2022 report by Navdanya International – Sowing Hunger, Reaping Profits – A Food Crisis by Design – which notes international trade laws and trade liberalisation has benefited large agribusiness and continue to piggyback off the implementation of the Green Revolution.

The report states that US lobby and trade negotiations were headed by former Cargill Investors Service CEO and Goldman Sachs executive – Dan Amstutz – who in 1988 was appointed chief negotiator for the Uruguay round of GATT by Ronald Reagan. This helped to enshrine the interests of US agribusiness into the new rules that would govern the global trade of commodities and subsequent waves of industrial agriculture expansion.

The AoA removed protection of farmers from global market prices and fluctuations. At the same time, exceptions were made for the US and the EU to continue subsidising their agriculture to the advantage of large agribusiness.

Navdanya notes:

“With the removal of state tariff protections and subsidies, small farmers were left destitute. The result has been a disparity in what farmers earn for what they produce, versus what consumers pay, with farmers earning less and consumers paying more as agribusiness middlemen take the biggest cut.”

‘Food security’ has led to the dismantling of food sovereignty and food self-sufficiency for the sake of global market integration and corporate power.

We need look no further than India to see this in action. The now repealed recent farm legislation in India was aimed at giving the country the ‘shock therapy’ of neoliberalism that other countries have experienced.

The ‘liberalising’ legislation was in part aimed at benefiting US agribusiness interests and trapping India into food insecurity by compelling the country to eradicate its food buffer stocks – so vital to the nation’s food security – and then bid for food on a volatile global market from agribusiness traders with its foreign reserves.

The Indian government was only prevented from following this route by the massive, year-long farmer protest that occurred.

The current crisis is also being fuelled by speculation. Navdanya cites an investigation by Lighthouse Reports and The Wire to show how speculation by investment firms, banks and hedge funds on agricultural commodities are profiting off rising food prices. Commodity future prices are no longer linked to actual supply and demand in the market but are based purely on speculation.

Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus and investment funds like Black Rock and Vanguard continue to make huge financial killings, resulting in the price of bread almost doubling in some poorer countries.

The cynical ‘solution’ promoted by global agribusiness to the current food crisis is to urge farmers to produce more and seek better yields as if the crisis is that of underproduction. It means more chemical inputs, more genetic engineering techniques and suchlike, placing more farmers in debt and trapped in dependency.

It is the same old industry lie that the world will starve without its products and requires more of them. The reality is that the world is facing hunger and rising food prices because of the system big agribusiness has instituted.

And it is the same old story – pushing out new technologies in search of a problem and then using crises as justification for their rollout while ignoring the underlying reasons for such crises.

Navdanya sets out possible solutions to the current situation based on principles of agroecology, short supply lines, food sovereignty and economic democracy – policies that have been described at length in many articles and official reports over the years.

As for fighting back against the onslaught on ordinary people’s living standards, support is gathering among the labour movement in places like the UK. Rail union leader Mick Lynch is calling for a working class movement based on solidarity and class consciousness to fight back against a billionaire class that is acutely aware of its own class interests.

For too long, ‘class’ has been absent from mainstream political discourse. It is only through organised, united protest that ordinary people will have any chance of meaningful impact against the new world order of tyrannical authoritarianism and the devastating attacks on ordinary people’s rights, livelihoods and standards of living that we are witnessing.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal.

The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected] 

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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First published on July 23, 2023

***

Way back in the 1970s, the far-seeing genius Henry Kissinger identified food (in addition to energy) as a major mechanism that could be used to subdue recalcitrant mankind:

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

Control of money seems to be slipping out of the hands of Dr. Henry’s cabal, and their dominion over the global energy supply seems to be evaporating as well, but they are not giving up on their trump card. That is the capacity to control and, most importantly, to catastrophically diminish the world’s food resources.  

True to his word, at the 1974 World Food Conference in Rome Henry unveiled the plan how to use food to cull the world’s population and blackmail governments into doing his masters’ will. It was all circumspectly phrased, of course, and couched in the Aesopian language fully intelligible, besides the cognoscenti, only to a lesser number of alert observers, but remaining largely opaque to the serfs whose mass extermination is being contemplated.

Since then, with their characteristic persistence Henry’s friends and mentors have been hard at work to make it happen. An engineered global food crisis is in the works.

Hundreds of millions, and preferably billions, of clueless earthlings will be made to depart from this world in order meet the agendas (“Green”, in this particular case) of the wicked psychopaths who run much of it. And that is not happening owing to the operation of nature’s inexorable forces (as asserted by phony environmental narratives) but by human design.

That much is evident from the ominous Pan-European legislation proposed a few days ago by the European Commission. Details of it were reported by Brussels-based Arche Noah, which is for a change a genuine NGO, not a Soros-financed fraud. It advocates vigorously for the public interest in the most authentic and in this instance unequivocally existential sense.

The somnolent world ought to be paying attention, but sadly it is not. The lethal sting of EU’s proposed legislative package is deceptively mislabelled as concern for the “sustainable use of natural resources.” That duplicitous phrase however is no more than a code word. It stands for the sinister new “EU Seed Regulation” policy and the concomitant legislative initiative to deregulate the “New Genetic Engineering”.

“We are dismayed by this attack on our seed and crop diversity in Europe,” plaintively comments Arche Noah’s policy officer, Magdalena Prieler. And she explains: “With these proposals we run the risk of global corporations gaining complete control over our food. Agriculture Ministers and the European Parliament must act to protect farmers, consumers, and biodiversity.”

They are acting, to be sure, but in the diametrically opposite direction. There is scant chance of the proposed seed legislation not being adopted by the bought and paid for European Parliament because economically powerful and ideologically cohesive interests are arrayed behind it. One of its principal intended effects is to reclassify any transfer of natural seeds beyond a very narrow private sphere as “marketing.”

Such reclassification is not merely rhetorical. It automatically opens the door to unrestricted bureaucratic regulation for which the European Union is infamous, the permissible curvature of cucumbers that may be sold in supermarkets being just one of the more egregious examples.

But while the shape of cucumbers is a risible topic that only very sick control freaks would concern themselves with, regulation of infinitely reproducible natural seeds and their mandated substitution with single use GMO varieties is a deadly serious affair. Its ultimate effect would be to make food producers absolutely and irreversibly dependent on a half dozen transnational corporations which on the global level control this business.

Their executives, let us not forget, mingle together with fellow globalist potentates at the WEF and other similar gatherings and institutions. There, without public scrutiny or accountability, multifarious plans are being laid, including whether, how much, and what millions of human beings world-wide shall be allowed to eat.

If “whether” sounds like too brusque a word, doubts should be dispelled by Ethiopia’s recent experience in that regard.

Two examples will suffice to demonstrate the extent and totality of that control and the maniacal determination to arbitrarily restructure the living patterns of millions that inspires it. In the Netherlands, school lunchrooms are already quietly introducing mealworm and insect food for pupils, on the spurious pretext of saving the planet from global warming.

The pilot program in the Netherlands dispels the insouciant assurances (of those who should have known better) that the once comically-sounding references to the obligatory consumption of insects were no more than harmless theatrical excess, but not a firm policy objective. Now, the humourless globalists’ unrelenting resolve in this regard is corroborated also by the plans they  have unveiled for Germany. Meat is set to be abolished in the country which is that protein’s biggest consumer in Europe by rationing the permitted daily personal intake to just ten grams. Of course, Germany happens to be also Europe’s most obedient country, so it will be highly indicative to see how successfully this drastic pilot program is implemented.

But disgusting as the increasingly coercive substitution of detritus “foods” for meat may be, the crux of the agenda is to gain absolute control over and genetically reengineer the crops which are essential for both human and animal consumption.

Accordingly, under the European Commission’s draft law two parallel processes are to be set in motion. On the one hand, as pointed out earlier farmers will only be allowed to exchange their own seeds in small quantities and under tightly regulated conditions. Selling natural seeds will henceforth not be possible. Public gene banks, private collections and seed initiatives will no longer be allowed to give their seeds to farmers.

At the same time, however, genetically engineered crop varieties will be promoted and completely deregulated, putting farmers at the mercy of powerful agrochemical corporations such as Bayer, BASF, Corteva and Syngenta, which already control more than half of the global seed market. According to Arche Noah spokeswoman Magdalena Prieler: “New genetic engineering is first and foremost a tool for corporations to squeeze their competitors out of the market and to expand further their control over our food system.”

Correct, but their chief competitors, she might have added, are the aggregate of individually small-scale farmers whose economic survival is the essential precondition for every person’s food independence as well as access to healthy, chemically and biologically uncontaminated foodstuffs.

Needless to say, unlike their “lesser brethren”, under the new dispensation Bill Gates, the great proponent of synthetic beef, along with  Klaus Schwab and Yuval Hariri, his hackable animal “prophet” (Hariri’s contemptuous epithet for the rest of us which is justifiably applicable to himself) will not be eating insects for dinner.

While uncouth, flatulating Irish cows are being massively slaughtered and abundantly productive Dutch farms are shut down to potentially starve the rest of us on fraudulent rationales invented by charlatans like Greta Thunberg, they only will need to snap their fingers to be served Kobe beef or whatever exquisite delicacy (other than mealworms, of course) their delicate palates should fancy.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from OffGuardian

First published in December 2016, this article is of relevance to an understanding of the ongoing debate on Climate Change as well the Green New Deal,  largely controlled by the financial establishment. The Rockefellers also play a key role in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset Proposal.

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“Beginning in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became leading advocates of the global warming agenda. …

In their Sustainable Development Program Review, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund boasts of being one of the first major global warming activists, citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the establishment of the “U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” in Rio in 1992 (excerpt from Report)

The following text is the Executive Summary of  a full length report by The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute published in 2016.

This informative report is brought to the attention of Global Research readers. The CRG does not necessarily endorse the title nor the contents of this report.

What is important, however, is to acknowledge the role of the Rockefeller family –which historically was the architect of “Big Oil”– in supporting the Climate Change debate as well as the funding of scientists, environmentalists and NGOs involved in grassroots activism against “Big Oil” and the fossil fuel industry.

Debate on the world’s climate is of crucial importance. But who controls and FINANCES that debate?

There is an obvious contradictory relationship: Whereas “Big Oil” is the target of Global Warming activism, “Big Oil” through the Rockefeller Family and Rockefeller Brothers Trusts generously finance the Worldwide climate protest movement. Ask yourself Why?

Of  relevance to “extreme weather events”  and the current climate change debate.

Michel Chossudovsky, July 13, 2023

Read full report here.

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“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!”

–President Salvador Allende’s farewell speech (September 11, 1973) [1]

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An event taking place in the South American country of Chile 50 years ago this coming week, not only claimed the life of democratically elected President Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens, but of 2,200 other Chileans, including social activists and students. Roughly 30,000 people were tortured in the National Stadium of Chile and other makeshift detention centres. Almost 1,500 more simply disappeared. [2]

In other words, in terms of the number count of dead people in a country, Chile’s 9/11 easily equalled or exceeded America’s 9/11. [3]

Allende’s socialist government, in power since the 3rd of November 1970 came crashing down not by any democratic process but via a violent coup d’etat.

A military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet was now in charge of the Latin American country. And thanks to the diligent work of Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and director of the archive’s Chile and Cuba Documentation Projects, we now know through declassified documents that the U.S. played a role in the plot to overthrow Allende and side with Pinochet. [4]

It is one of the best counter-examples one can think of to the assumed, overstated principle that America fights for democracy and human rights!

Likewise, as the Canadian foreign policy writer Yves Engler has pointed out, there have been several examples through the years immediately before the coup that show the country’s government the more right wing government and withdrew their support when Allende was in power…

“Worried about growing support for socialism, Ottawa gave $8.6 million to Frei’s Chile, its first aid to a South American country. When Allende won the next election Canadian assistance disappeared. Export Development Canada (EDC) also refused to finance Canadian exports to Chile, which contributed to a reduction in trade between the two countries.”[5]

The purpose of this week’s Global Research News Hour radio program is just to remind the world about another great tragedy of America’s so-called altruistic endeavours in a foreign country, but to show how the Chilean people have endured and to hold aloft hope for a better society and a better future!

On the show’s first half hour, we hear from a member of the Chilean military at the time, Francisco Valenzuela, about what he witnessed at the time, and how the military transformed against Allende. Another Chilean Canadian, Bernardo Jorquera, briefly describes the 50 commemoration of the event taking place in the city of Winnipeg at 6pm local time at CCFM Centre Culturel, Franco Manitobain on 340 Provencher Blvd.

In the second half hour, York University in Toronto Emeritus Professor of Politics Liisa North breaks down the book she edited: Canada-Chile Solidarity 1973-1990: Testimonies of Civil Society Action. The book documents the ways in which Churches and unions were active in coordinating the formulation of foreign policy with regard to refugees and dealing with a military dictatorship.

Francisco Valenzuela is a 93 year old former military man working for Allende. He now lives in Winnipeg, Canada.

Bernardo Jorquera is an organizer and chair of the Winnipeg Chilean Association Committee.

Liisa L. North is Emeritus Professor of Politics at York University in Toronto. She has made many important contributions as a teacher, researcher of rural issues and reformist movements in Latin America, and social activist.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 399)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chiles-911-Coup-Salvador-Allendes-Last-Words-20190911-0006.html
2. Julian Borger (3 Sep 2023), ‘Fifty years on: the lasting tragedy of Chile’s coup’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/03/fifty-years-on-the-lasting-tragedy-of-chiles-coup
3. https://www.globalresearch.ca/chile-september-11-1973-first-911/5608471 
4. Lucia Newman (6 Sep 2023), ‘Fifty years after Chile’s coup, the search for truth continues’, Al Jazeera; https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/6/fifty-years-after-chiles-coup-the-search-for-truth-continues
5. https://yvesengler.com/2018/09/10/remembering-canadas-support-for-the-right-wing-coup-in-chile/

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Bosnia and Herzegovina is governed as a neo-colonial backwater, which is the status that Gabon, Niger, and Burkina Faso had until recently. The difference is that lately the Africans have been making concerted efforts to throw off their yoke. By contrast, in Bosnia many seem happy to be yoked, with the notable exception of the Republic of Srpska, which for quite some time has been the Niger of the Balkans.

And that is fundamentally the reason why, like Niger, it is now targeted. The recently unleashed hybrid attack against the Republic of Srpska is a sophisticated operation which is being marketed under the legal guise of restoring democracy. It would be a grave mistake however to underestimate that cunning manoeuvre and its potential for generating chaos. Its mission is not to improve but to implode the imperfect but carefully balanced constitutional system that was set up in 1995 as an integral part of the Dayton peace arrangements. At the time, all Bosnian parties had the wisdom to assent to it as the price of peace. The fully intended collateral effect of undermining the system erected in Dayton is the destruction, or at a minimum degradation, of Bosnia’s intolerable entity, the Republic of Srpska.

The focus of the current iteration of Bosnia’s chronic political crisis is the lawsuit filed before the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] by a certain Slaven Kovačević, who claims that his rights as a Bosnian citizen (and presumably as a human as well) are threatened by the ethnic representation provisions of the Bosnian Constitution.

Kovačević (who happens to be of Croat ethnicity) is allegedly upset because in his judgement current constitutional arrangements are discriminatory, since they prevent him from standing for political office on a country-wide basis.

The only avenue available to him to post his candidacy is as a citizen and resident of one of Bosnia’s two ethnically defined entities. Without delving further into the gist of this arcane objection, let it only be said that Bosnia’s complex ethnic representation system, an outgrowth of the 1995 peace treaty, with its admittedly convoluted provisions, was instituted precisely because of the demonstrated incapacity of Bosnia’s ethnicities to live side by side amicably under any other systemic arrangement. Such a solution Kovačević may now find bothersome and unsatisfactory, but certainly Montesquieu would have approved of it wholeheartedly. Be it recalled that according to Montesquieu good constitutions are not ideological constructs but practical instruments that take into account the temperament, customs, and behavioural patterns of the men they are designed to govern and serve.

But, of course, the real crux of the issue has nothing to do with whether or not citizen Slaven Kovačević was subjected to insufferable discrimination due to the fact that he is barred from participating in Bosnian elections on a country-wide basis but only through facilities provided by the entity he happens to reside in. In his case that is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the other being the Republic of Srpska).

Elections in Bosnia, all pretence aside, carry about as much political weight as similar exercises did in Gabon under the recently deposed President Bongo. As we explained at length in a number of previous posts, Bosnia can at best be described as a protectorate, and at worst as a colony which is not effectively ruled by its citizens anyway – whatever ethnicity they may fancy to identify with. It is ruled by the High Representative selected by a consortium of foreign powers. With the vast executive prerogatives claimed by that office, from the standpoint of democratic governance Bosnia’s de facto ruler is in any event inherently illegitimate. And in large measure that would still be the case even if, unlike the current office holder, he were to be properly confirmed by the Security Council of the United Nations. So for a credible explanation of this particular Bosnian crisis we must look elsewhere, away from the demagogic smokescreen of alleged electoral grievances.

The purpose of the current crisis, contrived with the generous assistance of the European Court of Human Rights, is to place a powerful charge of dynamite underneath the foundation of Bosnia’s constitutional order, such as it is. It is the culmination of an intention of long standing. Recall that no sooner was the Dayton Peace Agreement signed in 1995 than Bosnia’s Western curators declared that adjustments to the constitution that was an integral part of the Agreement just reached had urgently to be made, to reflect the “Spirit of Dayton,” never mind the letter. Naturally, they envisioned themselves as the sovereign, self- appointed interpreters of that elusive spirit, with which they alone had the capacity to communicate.

That perfidy revealed plainly and from the start their corrupt intent. They viewed the multilateral Dayton treaty that ended the war, which textually includes Bosnia’s Constitution as its Annex IV, as merely a temporary, transitional device that would be tolerated only as long as it had to be, until a unitary Bosnian satrapy corresponding to their geopolitical designs could be set up to replace it. It foreshadowed by decades the corrupt Minsk Agreements, and their equally deceitful “spirit”.

Practical colonisers are known to select from amongst the natives the constituency they judge to be the most suitable instrument for the perpetration of their rule. In Ireland, the British chose Protestants and empowered them to play the colonial overseers’ role, in much of the Balkans the Ottomans employed Albanians to do their dirty work and keep other subject nations in line, in Rwanda the Belgians appointed the Tutsi to lord it over the Hutu, and so forth. In Bosnia, the winners of this dishonourable contest for imperial favour are the local Muslims, or Bosniaks as they misleadingly call themselves. They naturally have no special place in the hearts of the Western hegemons. However, a practical assessment of their qualities has been made and it indicates that from amongst all the local ethnic constituencies they would be the most compliant.

The required transition in Bosnia from “letter” to “spirit” has been meandering inconclusively for decades, opposition to it in the Republic of Srpska has been fierce, and after snapping his fingers innumerable times without obtaining the desired results the hegemon is losing his patience and becoming greatly annoyed. Hence this new variant of the  old agenda to deconstruct Bosnia’s confederal state and bring down its ethnically based entities, the pesky Republic of Srpska in particular, to clear the decks for a centralised government that would be more easily controlled. Based on a pseudo-democratic rationale validated by an international court decision, democratically plausible groundwork is being laid for the demolition of the fundamental principle upon which the Dayton Peace Agreement rests.

All concerned, including the leading powers of the collective West, are working in concert to accomplish a common purpose. They have jointly concocted this destabilising campaign to destroy constitutional mechanisms that may not have worked brilliantly but have kept at least a semblance of peace in Bosnia over the last quarter century. They are perfectly aware of the destructive consequences of their actions and Bosnia’s foreign overlords will it to be done. By demanding the implementation of the European Human Rights Court’s decision they are creating deliberately a pretext for a new and extraordinarily invasive intervention in Bosnia’s affairs, with unforeseeable consequences. In light of the ECHR decision they will declare Dayton unworkable and obsolete and will order a new, centralistic constitution to be written up for Bosnia and Herzegovina, formulated to empower their designated local minions, through whom they intend to rule. And, of course, they will be the ones to write it and their High Representative will interpret it. As mandated by the Human Rights Court, country-wide electoral engineering will ensure permanent numerical domination for their ethnic protégés and their local colonial elite pawns of all ethnic shades will cheerfully assent to the manipulated outcome. How the plebes will react, that remains to be seen.

In order to fully appreciate the havoc the ECHR ruling is bound to produce, it is enough to imagine the impact of a similar verdict upon constitutional arrangements in other ethnically complex societies, such as Belgium, Lebanon, or Switzerland. The last of the aforementioned governments could not possibly survive in its present form the application of RCHR’s verdict, just as Bosnia and Herzegovina will not. Of the total population of Switzerland, 62% are German speakers, 22% are French speakers, the remainder being Italian and Romansh. Clearly, if the ECHR’s “one man, one vote” formula were to be imposed on Switzerland, abolishing or emasculating cantonal autonomy and doing away altogether with the safeguards of ethnically based representation, harmoniously functioning Switzerland as we know it today would cease to exist. It would be transformed into a German-dominated country seething with the resentment of subservient ethnicities. For Switzerland, that may not quite be the desired outcome, but for Bosnia and Herzegovina it definitely is the plan. Just substitute “Bosniaks” for Germans and a clear picture emerges.

It goes without saying that Montesquieu has nothing useful to say to the shallow modern hegemons, whose power is waning but whose potential for destruction remains immense. Insistence on upsetting the carefully calibrated constitutional balance which since 1995 has served Bosnia and Herzegovina well, regardless of its miserable position in most other respects, is bound to produce an inordinate amount of additional trouble in that dark and unhappy land. But that precisely will relentlessly be insisted upon, with a vengeance and using the full range of coercive instruments still at the disposal of the malicious globalist cabal, before they finally fade away.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image: President Slobodan Milosevic of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, President Alija Izetbegovic of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and President Franjo Tudjman of the Republic of Croatia initial the draft of the Dayton Peace Accords. The Balkan Proximity Peace Talks were conducted at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Nov. 1-21, 1995. The talks ended the conflict arising from the breakup of the Republic of Yugoslavia. The Dayton Accords paved the way for the signing of the final “General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina” on Dec. 14 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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Global Research Editor’s Note

This is an important study, carefully documented.

What it does not address is that cocaine trafficking is supported by powerful financial interests. The so-called Narco-State plays a key role, namely the criminalization of politics, in Colombia but also in Peru during the Fujimori Era as well as in its aftermath.

The smuggling groups are also covertly supported. The government officials mentioned in this report are often complicit in the conduct of the drug trade. 

M.Ch. Global Research, September 2023

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The Amazon forest and watershed shared by Peru, Colombia, and Brazil provide ideal cover for coca cultivation and processing. As a result, a cocaine trafficking chain has emerged there — one that begins with coca grown in Peru. The criminal infrastructure created to feed this trade also protects and promotes environmental crimes, such as illegal deforestation, timber trafficking, and illegal gold mining. The remote areas have little state presence, and the dense forest canopy makes illicit activities and armed groups largely invisible.

The tri-border where Colombia, Brazil, and Venezuela meet has continued to maintain its longstanding role as a transit corridor for cocaine. Though it’s not known as a drug production hub, the Venezuelan side may be seeing new coca cultivation.

A pilot in Puerto Ayacucho, a city in Venezuela’s Amazonas state, said he had observed coca cultivation in the northwestern municipalities of Autana and Maroa.

While the pilot could not provide more specifics about coca growing in that region, coca has been cropping up more and more along Venezuela’s border with Colombia, a 2022 InSight Crime investigation found.

A Burst of Coca Crops in Peru’s Amazon

Until just a few years ago, Peru’s tri-border region had been relatively free of coca. But now, criminals are clearing rich, verdant rainforest along the Amazon River to make way for the illicit crop.

Coca growing in Peru’s Amazon first took hold further south of the tri-border, in the Upper Huallaga Valley, which extends for 322 kilometers along the Huallaga River in central Peru. In the early 2010s, mass cultivation for the cocaine trade shifted southward to the Valley of Apurímac, Ene, and Mantaro River Valley, a mountainous jungle region slightly larger than Puerto Rico that is known by its Spanish acronym, VRAEM.

The [corrupt] government has, at times, tried to eradicate coca in the VRAEM with little success, yet the military presence appears to have pushed coca cultivation to other parts of the country — most dramatically, the Amazon wilderness along Peru’s tri-border with Colombia and Brazil. Previously, coca growing had been minimal there.

Loreto, the massive northeastern department that encompasses more than half of the country’s Amazon, registered just 12% of the coca cultivated in Peru in 2004. The department’s Mariscal Ramón Castilla province, whose easternmost limits touch both Colombia and Brazil, registered only 440 hectares of coca in 2012. By 2020, the area occupied by coca crops in Loreto’s Bajo Amazonas region — comprising Mariscal Ramón Castilla as well as neighboring Maynas and Requena provinces — expanded to 4,247 hectares, according to a 2021 report by the Peruvian Drug Observatory. The number increased more than 50% to 6,472 hectares in 2021, according to the observatory’s 2022 report.

Security officials in both Colombia and Peru agreed that coca cultivation is increasing in Peru’s border region. Juan Mojica and Santos Mojica, leaders of the Colombian Indigenous community of Nazareth, about an hour up the Amazon River from Leticia, said that crops being grown on the Peruvian side of the river have become a problem for their community.

People, including school-aged adolescents, are crossing the river to work as raspachines, or day laborers hired to pick and process coca leaves, they said.

Poor Indigenous and rural communities in Peru’s Mariscal Ramón Castilla province are being paid to sow coca, according to an investigation by Peruvian newspaper La República.

Traffickers also pay communities for sacks of coca leaves, known as arrobas. In some cases, they negotiate with community leaders to set up monthly payments for access to their territories. Ledgers kept by community assemblies even contain line items for land rents from traffickers and projects financed by them, according to the La República report.

Gunmen linked to traffickers have also invaded Indigenous communities’ lands to install coca farms.

An official from Mariscal Ramón Castilla’s municipality mayor’s office, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, said he feared that the Amazon province has become another VRAEM for traffickers. Coca cultivation has doubled there over the past four years, and its 6,362 hectares of coca accounted for nearly all the illicit crops in Bajo Amazonas in 2021, according to the latest drug report. Bajo Amazonas was the third-largest area for cultivation in the country.

“We are in an area that for the state is not a priority,” he said. “That is one of the reasons behind the increase in coca crops. We are on our own here.”

For years Peruvian authorities [which are complicit] have focused their [alleged] counternarcotics efforts in the VRAEM. Meanwhile, authorities have ignored the tri-border while criminal networks have taken advantage of the area’s natural infrastructure. Its numerous river arteries and thick jungle connect Colombia and Peru, the main drug-producing countries, with one of the major international cocaine exit points, Brazil.

Raids on primitive jungle laboratories in the Peruvian provinces of Putumayo and Mariscal Ramón Castilla reveal that coca is not only being grown but also processed there.

Authorities have announced seizures of gasoline drums, cement, and calc, all of which are used in the production of cocaine base.

For example, a March 2020 raid ended in the destruction of two laboratories near the Orosa River, halfway up the Amazon River from Leticia. The camp held half a dozen 2,000-liter tanks, which are used to mix coca leaves with solvents. In February 2021, 600 kilograms of processed cocaine were discovered at a camp on the Atucari River, along the Colombia-Peru border.

Drug and environmental crime also appear to be occurring in tandem. For example, a 2019 operation carried out in Mariscal Ramón Castillo led to the dismantling of wooden buildings for storing coca leaves, cocaine, and illegal timber.

It is unclear who controls coca cultivation and processing labs in Peru’s northeastern Amazon region.

Colombian law enforcement officials mentioned a group called Clan Chuquizuta. The Indigenous and rural communities in Mariscal Ramón Castilla described the traffickers who are paying them in general terms as “narco-benefactors.”

The most likely scenario is that the Peruvian traffickers in this region are freelancers who supply Brazilian and Colombian groups.

Santa Rosa is a small island on the Amazon belonging to Peru that sits adjacent Colombia’s Leticia and the Brazil border city of Tabatinga. Long motorboats with plastic canopies carry locals to and from the island’s port, which is nothing more than a wooden dock.

Along stretches of Peru’s Amazon River, coca is being grown. Santa Rosa de Yavarí, Perú, August 2022. Photograph by: Seth Robbins

A soldier standing guard at the port said smugglers mostly avoid the island. Instead, they pass at night, using smaller waterways to evade controls, he said.

Just north of the island on a wide stretch of river are the communities of Gamboa and Chinería. A senior Peru military official who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak said he had heard of coca cultivation occurring there.

Armed Groups, Drug Routes, and Environmental Crime

The Amazon River and its vast network of tributaries and streams provide smuggling routes from Peru into Colombia and Brazil.

Groups’ names change in this fluid criminal landscape. National and political allegiances are largely irrelevant. Alliances and enemies are made easily. Reaching deeper into this corner of the Amazon to control drug corridors, these armed groups have broadened into environmental crimes, particularly illegal gold mining.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Colombian government’s security operations dropped by half, according to a report by the Ideas for Peace Foundation (Fundación Ideas para la Paz – FIP). With state authorities increasingly absent, Colombia’s Amazonas department began to see a heavy presence of armed groups, particularly around the Putumayo River area, according to Jhon Fredy Valencia, agricultural and environmental secretary for the department.

Gunmen shut down villages, confining people to their homes, said an Indigenous leader who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals. At night, boats of all sizes, likely carrying drugs, can be heard along the waterways of Tarapacá.

“There are drugs, there is coca,” said the Indigenous leader. “They are in our territory, cutting down forest. There is the invasion of our rivers for mining.”

The Indigenous leader said the gunmen who threatened her community called themselves the Sinaloa. Human rights officials and the representative of the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, said they had also taken declarations from people who had been threatened by representatives of the so-called Sinaloa group.

The name Sinaloa doesn’t appear to have any connection to the notorious Mexican cartel. Instead, it has been used at times by members of the Border Command, a confluence of ex-FARC cells and remnants of the Colombian drug trafficking organization La Constru. The Border Command emerged in 2017 in the wake of the dissolution of the FARC’s Southern Bloc. Members have described themselves as opposed to injustices committed by FARC commanders, including not sharing wealth with the rank and file.

According to a report by think tank A la Orilla del Río, which studies Colombia’s Amazon region, the Border Command accepts “all types of combatants, regardless of their origin and armed history.” Its foot soldiers are paid a monthly stipend of 2 million pesos (about $450), double the Colombian minimum wage.

“Nobody knew what they did with all that money,” the member told investigators. “Here we decided that those resources go to those who are in the fight.”

The Border Command, which the Colombian military has dubbed “residual structure 48,” controls much of the corridor along the Putumayo River, according to officials. The group’s sway stretches to the western Colombian department of Nariño, a key cocaine production and trafficking center, via Putumayo.

At some 300-strong, the extent of the Border Command’s influence in the deep recesses of Colombia’s Amazonas department is unclear.

The human rights official who works with communities in Amazonas said the group operates more like a paramilitary drug clan, extending its reach by recruiting smaller groups and making alliances with Brazilian groups. Social control and youth recruitment are part of its modus operandi.

“They make every decision about these communities,” the human rights official said.

Brazilian Gangs Enter the Rainforest

Weak cross-border cooperation and a lack of customs and migration controls in the tri-border of Colombia, Peru, and Brazil has made it a magnet for Brazil’s drug gangs, which feed Latin’s America’s biggest domestic narcotics market and a cocaine pipeline to Europe.

In Tabatinga, Brazil, graffiti offers some insight into which gangs are dominant. A building at the city’s river port is scrawled “Os Crias” and “Voz Da Morte” (Voice of Death). The Crias appear to be a brazen new gang of which little is known. A July 2020 report in A Crítica, a news outlet focused on Brazil’s Amazonas state, claims that the group is a faction of the Northern Family (Familia do Norte – FDN), and that it is allied with Brazil’s powerful PCC gang.

Graffiti of “Os Crias,” or “the Crias,” at river port in Tabatinga. Tabatinga, Brazil, August 2022. Photograph by: Seth Robbins

Officials in Colombia confirmed that the Crias splintered from the FDN, but made no mention of the gang’s connection to the PCC.

The Crias appear to have displaced the FDN in Tabatinga over the past three years. The group is believed to control street-level drug sales in the tri-border. The gang is also said to be behind an armed assault of the lone bank on Peru’s island of Santa Rosa, and a spate of killings in both Brazil and Colombia.

The gang’s wider involvement in the drug trade is unclear. The A Crítica report claims that the Crias have made alliances with Colombian and Peruvian groups to control trafficking in the region and to sideline the Red Command, the PCC’s main rival. Renato Sérgio Lima, president of non-governmental organization Brazilian Forum on Public Security (Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública), said in a June 6, 2022 tweet that the Crias are seeking to control Brazil’s Javari Valley, a large swath of rainforest that lies along the Peruvian border.

While the upstart gang would only be able to control the critical drug corridor by forming alliances with powerful traffickers and larger criminal groups, its possible spread into the Javari Valley should raise alarm.

Fish poaching, drug running, illegal logging, mining, and ranching have proliferated in the Javari Valley, the second-largest reserve in Brazil and home to several isolated Indigenous groups. A surge in piracy attacking boats moving drugs in the region there has added a dangerous transnational dimension to these environmental crimes.

For example, the Javari Valley is where British journalist Dom Phillips and the Indigenous advocate Bruno Araújo Pereira were murdered in June 2022 while working on a report. Three fisherman were arrested and charged in the crime, including one who confessed and led police to their bodies.

A fourth man, Rubens Villar Coelho, who has admitted to having a commercial relationship with the fishermen, is also under investigation. Arrested on charges of possession of false documents, Coelho — who goes by the alias “Colômbia” but is from Peru — is suspected of running an illegal fishing operation, prosecutors say.

The federal police chief for Brazilian Amazonas state, Alexandre Fontes, said at a press conference in Manaus, the state capital, that investigators had concluded Colômbia had ordered the murders.

“I have no doubt that Colômbia was the mastermind,” Fontes said.

Prior to the killings, Pereira had been investigating illegal fishing and had been seen photographing the poaching of pirarucu, a massive freshwater fish, and tracajá, a river turtle whose meat and eggs are commonly eaten. Both are protected species in the Javari Valley reserve.

According to an associate of Pereira’s who knew of his investigation, one of the fishermen charged in the killings, Amarildo da Costa Oliveira, provided a steady supply of poached fish and turtles to Coelho, who sent them to fish markets across the border in Leticia. News outlets have reported that residents and investigators suspect Coelho’s involvement in drug trafficking as well.

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The premier professional membership organization for obstetricians and gynecologists accepted $11.8 million from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to promote COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women, despite the exclusion of pregnant women from clinical trials and regulatory data showing the vaccine had not been tested for safety during pregnancy.

To learn more about COVID-19 funding received by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) during the pandemic and what prompted the organization’s guidance on COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women, Maggie Thorp, JD, told The Epoch Times she made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2022 to HHS.

The request sought to obtain documents involving the three grants HHS/CDC made to ACOG during the pandemic, one of which was for $11.8 million, listed on a publicly accessible open data source for federal spending.

Documents obtained by Ms. Thorp show that ACOG, on Feb. 1, 2021, was awarded the first of three cooperative agreement grants by HHS and the CDC. The receipt of COVID-19 grant money was contingent upon ACOG yielding substantial control over projects funded by the CDC to the agency and ACOG’s full compliance with CDC guidance on COVID-19 infection and control.

“This is a cooperative agreement, and CDC will have substantial programmatic involvement after the award is made. Substantial involvement is in addition to all post-award monitoring, technical assistance, and performance reviews undertaken in the normal course of stewardship of federal funds,” the documents state.

ACOG also agreed to allow the CDC program staff to “assist, coordinate, or participate in carrying out effort under the award.”

The contracts further provided for the return of funding to the HHS if ACOG did not adhere to the federal government’s messaging that COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women and new mothers.

HHS Funds ‘Trusted Messengers’ to Increase Vaccine Confidence

HHS, on April 1, 2021, launched the “COVID-19 Community Corps,” a “nationwide, grassroots network of local voices and trusted community leaders to encourage vaccinations,” with more than 275 founding member organizations, including ACOG, that had the “ability to reach millions of Americans.” An archived HHS webpage states the program provides resources and fact-based public health information through HHS in partnership with the CDC.

As part of the multibillion-dollar program, Vice President Kamala Harris and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy met with founding members to discuss the next phase of the “public education campaign from the White House” to encourage vaccinations and increase vaccine confidence.

Members received weekly updates on the “latest scientific and medical updates, talking points about the vaccine, social media suggestions, infographics, factsheets with timely, accurate information, and tools to help people get registered for an appointment and vaccinated.”

“As part of the COVID-19 Community Corps, HHS awarded billions of federal dollars to recruit what HHS referred to as ‘trusted community leaders’ who could push vaccines within our most private relationships,” Dr. James Thorp, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine physician told The Epoch Times. “Much like modern-day trojan horses, these ‘trusted messengers’ would be unique in their ability to permeate all facets of private life.”

ACOG Encourages Members to ‘Enthusiastically Recommend Vaccination’

Former CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, on April 23, 2021, announced for the first time during a White House COVID-19 briefing the agency was recommending all pregnant women get vaccinated despite limited data on the safety of the shot, as pregnant women were not included in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials.

Dr. Walensky said her decision was based on preliminary findings published in The New England Journal of Medicine on the use of COVID-19 vaccines during the first 11 weeks of the vaccine rollout.

“We know that this is a deeply personal decision, and I encourage people to talk to their doctors and their primary care providers to determine what is best for them and for their baby,” Dr. Walensky said.

ACOG, on July 30, 2021, along with the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM), began recommending COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy.

ACOG, founded in 1951, is the leading organization representing physicians and specialists in obstetrical care, with over 60,000 members. ACOG sets the standard of care for pregnant women and obstetrician–gynecologists generally follow the recommendations made by ACOG, just as pediatricians follow the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The SMFM represents more than 5,500 individuals with additional years of formal training in maternal-fetal medicine, making them “highly qualified experts and leaders in the care of complicated pregnancies.”

ACOG’s former president, Dr. J. Martin Tucker, in a statement on the organization’s website, encouraged members to “enthusiastically recommend vaccination” to their pregnant patients and to emphasize the “known safety of the vaccines and the increased risks of severe complications associated with COVID-19 infection, including death, during pregnancy.”

“It is clear that pregnant people need to feel confident in the decision to choose vaccination, and a strong recommendation from their obstetrician–gynecologist could make a meaningful difference for many pregnant people,” Tucker added. “Pregnant individuals should feel confident that choosing COVID-19 vaccination not only protects them but also protects their families and communities,” he added.

Dr. William Grobman, president of SMFM, said experts in high-risk pregnancy should “strongly recommend” pregnant women get vaccinated and that vaccination is “safe before, during, or after pregnancy,” despite the absence of clinical trial data.

“I think it’s very obvious that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists entered into a quid pro quo arrangement in the early months of 2021, taking large sums of money from HHS and CDC, and in return, they signed a contract stating that they were not allowed to deviate from any of the CDC and HHS COVID policy narratives,” Dr. Thorp said. “This is firmly established in the 1,400 pages of FOIA documents—50 percent of which, or more, were redacted.”

Dr. Thorp told The Epoch Times that shortly after exposing the financial incentives ACOG received to promote COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women, he was fired from his position with SSM Health, a not-for-profit health care system.

ACOG Recommends New Bivalent Boosters With No Safety Data

ACOG now recommends pregnant women receive their initial primary series and new bivalent COVID-19 booster vaccines that have not received full approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Vaccination may occur in any trimester, and emphasis should be on vaccine receipt as soon as possible to maximize maternal and fetal health,” ACOG’s website states. “This recommendation applies to both primary series and booster vaccination.”

The FDA’s healthcare provider factsheet (pdf) for Moderna’s bivalent vaccine states:

“Available data on Moderna COVID-19 vaccine administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy. Data are not available on Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, Bivalent, administered to pregnant women.”

The FDA’s healthcare provider factsheet (pdf) for Pfizer’s bivalent vaccine states:

“No data are available regarding the use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent during pregnancy.” It further states, “Available data on Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”

ACOG also says on its website that COVID-19 vaccines may be administered simultaneously with other vaccines, including influenza and Tdap vaccines, despite the absence of clinical trials showing that coadministering multiple vaccines to pregnant women is safe.

Although pregnant women were previously included in the CDC’s v-safe pregnancy registry that collected information specific to pregnancy, the CDC announced in May it would no longer allow people to enroll later that month and would stop collecting data on June 30, 2023, because monovalent vaccines are no longer available. The CDC’s website states the agency is developing a new v-safe. Until it does, pregnant women can only report adverse events to the agency’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

The Epoch Times reached out to HHS and ACOG for comment and had not received a response at the time of publication.

Update: This article has been updated with the following response from ACOG on Sept. 7.

“ACOG partners with the CDC, through the federal funding grants process, to disseminate evidence-based information to obstetrician-gynecologists about critical public health topics related to the field of obstetrics and gynecology, including the COVID-19 and flu vaccines, fetal alcohol syndrome, and screening for hereditary cancers.”

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Megan Redshaw is an attorney and investigative journalist with a background in political science. She is also a traditional naturopath with additional certifications in nutrition and exercise science.

Featured image is from LifeSiteNews

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Discussions about Ukraine’s possible entry into NATO still seem far from over. Now, NATO’s top official has stated that Kiev is close to gaining its long-awaited access, which is surprising given that Zelensky was publicly ignored during the bloc’s last summit.

The words were spoken by the head of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, on September 7, during a meeting with members of the European Parliament. During his speech, he emphasized that the military bloc “shares the same values [and] the same challenges” with Ukraine, in addition to commenting on recent progress towards Kiev’s integration with the alliance.

“We reiterated that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, but then we added three elements which actually move them closer to membership (…) And these three things, the interoperability, the NATO-Ukraine Council and removal of the requirement for Membership Action Plan for Ukraine, demonstrates that Ukraine has never been closer to a membership in NATO than now”, he said. (emphasis added)

Recalling the Vilnius summit, Stoltenberg stated that, despite not having received a precise “roadmap” on its path to accession, Kiev was promised that some steps would be advanced in the process. The steps established were the increase in military interoperability, the creation of an official representation council for Ukraine within NATO and the process simplification, with the possibility of skipping some bureaucratic requirements that must be accomplished by other candidates. Considering that these measures have already been implemented, Stoltenberg believes that Kiev is closer to membership now than ever before.

However, Stoltenberg did not give any “roadmap” for Kiev in his latest speech either. He only said that fulfilling the three promises makes access “closer” now than it was before but did not state what will happen next in this process. No announcement was made about new discussions on the admission, with the speech being limited to simply saying that it is “close”, without concrete evidence to corroborate this conclusion.

In practice, the words sound like a mere bluff. To date, there has been no significant progress in the process and NATO does not seem interested in moving this agenda forward. However, to keep the alliance’s public image positive and avoid criticism from Kiev and the mainstream media, Stoltenberg recalls the membership pledge and tries to give new “hope” to the proxy state. The aim is to make Ukraine and its supporters, as well as Western public opinion, believe that access will actually happen, even if all evidence suggests that the project is being “frozen”.

The refusal to accept Ukraine into the alliance is the correct attitude to be taken, as the country is currently in a situation of open conflict. Considering NATO’s collective defense norms, the entry of the Kiev regime would mean the immediate start of an open global conflict. It is known that Kiev is fighting for NATO on the battlefield, obeying orders from Western leaders and working as a proxy. However, the neo-Nazi regime’s participation in the alliance’s war plans will certainly remain limited to this proxy role.

NATO wants war with Russia, but does not want to risk losing its troops in a direct confrontation with no chance of victory. For the alliance, it is more interesting to maintain a proxy war, trying to “wear down” Russia in the long term without causing so much direct damage to Western countries. Evidence of NATO’s lack of interest in a direct war can be seen in the fact that the alliance ignored Ukrainian false flag allegations about “Russian attacks” against Poland and Romania, for example. If NATO wanted a direct conflict with Russia, it would certainly adopt the Ukrainian narrative – but this is not in the West’s plans, at least for now.

Western countries know that in order to prevent the process of geopolitical transition to multipolarity it will be necessary to simultaneously neutralize Russia and China. It is impossible to win a war with both powers at the same time, so the bet is on maintaining proxy conflicts with Russia and launching an anti-Chinese military campaign in the future. In this sense, the current conflict in Ukraine must be seen as just one part of NATO’s real anti-Russian strategy.

There is nothing so “special” in Kiev to legitimize Western intervention in its favor. The military aid given by NATO is not motivated by “common values” or “defense of democracy”, as the propaganda says. It is just a way to indirectly prolong the conflict with Russia. For the West, the Ukrainians are just “cannon fodder” in this scenario. It is a shocking reality, but Ukraine agreed to participate in this war plan a long time ago, when it chose to align with the West in 2014.

So, unless new factors emerge in the near future indicating some real progress for Ukrainian membership, Stoltenberg’s words are seen as a simple bluff, as Kiev’s access does not appear to be in NATO’s interests.

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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) recently launched an effort to make computerized clothing a reality — a move critics say could result in massive biometric surveillance of citizens and an increase in people’s exposure to radiofrequency radiation.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Aug. 22 announced that the IC’s advanced research and development arm, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), would develop its computerized clothing program — Smart Electrically Powered and Networked Textile Systems, or SMART ePANTS — over the next three-and-a-half years.

The government’s SMART ePANTS program works to create clothing with “integrated audio, video, and geolocation sensor systems that feature the same stretchability, bendability, washability, and comfort of regular textiles.”

Items slated for production include shirts, pants, socks and underwear.

IARPA, in partnership with the Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific, awarded research contracts to develop and manufacture the computerized clothing totaling over $22 million to Nautilus Defense and Leidos, Inc., according to an Aug. 9 Pentagon announcement.

SRI International, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Areté received undisclosed amounts to develop the technology, according to an article in The Intercept.

Investment giants Vanguard and Black Rock — which benefited from the sale of COVID-19 vaccines and have ownership stakes in technology companies developing vaccine passports and digital wallets — are listed among Nautilus Defense’s and Leidos’ top investors.

SMART ePANTS Program Manager Dawson Cagle, Ph.D., who traced his inspiration for the program to a desire for better health-monitoring options for his diabetic father, said in the recent press release,

“IARPA is proud to lead this first-of-its-kind effort for both the IC and broader scientific community which will bring much-needed innovation to the field of ASTs [Active Smart Textiles].”

An article published in January in PubMed hyped the potential of electronic textiles as a “new age of wearable technology for healthcare and fitness solutions,” touting their uses in products as varied as diapers, masks and bedding, and for such applications as “monitoring health conditions, treating chronic diseases, rehabilitation, and improving health and social lifestyles.”

“SMART ePANTS could revolutionize the Internet of Things by collecting data to help intelligence, medical and sports commmunities,” wrote the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.

But critics — including Ted Claypoole, legal expert and cyberspace law committee chair for the American Bar Association — said IARPA’s program raises major “obvious” privacy concerns.

Claypoole told The Defender that fabrics being developed by the IC are likely “not just for keeping our people safe, but also for finding and following smart-fabric wearers who do not know they are being followed.”

The development of smart fabrics and computer wearables is not a new effort, he said.

In their book, “Privacy in the Age of Big Data: Recognizing Threats, Defending Your Rights, and Protecting Your Family,” Claypoole and Theresa Payton traced commercial efforts to create smart clothing over the past decade, including a ski jacket with earphones in the hood and input devices on the sleeve that connect to the wearer’s phone via bluetooth.

However, the fact that these smart wearables are being designed by the IC is particularly worrisome to Claypoole:

“The technology, when used by the government, opens a new level of intrusion that raises serious Constitutional concerns. Will the government need a warrant to anonymously track people using these fabrics? It should, but that determination will need to be made by courts over time.”

‘I question whether any of this is legal’

W. Scott McCollough — Children’s Health Defense (CHD)’s chief litigator for the organization’s electromagnetic radiation (EMR) cases — shared Claypoole’s concerns.

“While the person choosing to wear the computerized clothing at least has given some kind of consent, all those around that person have no say at all,” McCollough said.

“I question whether any of this is legal,” McCollough added. “The technology will gather biometric data from those nearby, as well as capture all audio and visual data. There are states where all-party consent is required for this.”

Nicole de Haay, an IARPA spokesperson, told The Intercept that IARPA programs are “designed and executed in accordance with, and adhere to, strict civil liberties and privacy protection protocols.”

“IARPA performs civil liberties and privacy protection compliance reviews throughout our research efforts,” she added.

The IARPA did not elaborate further on how it would ensure that citizens’ privacy is not breached.

Computerized Clothing Likely to Exacerbate Negative Health Impacts of EMR

Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of the CHD’s EMR work, pointed out that computerized clothing also raises potential health concerns.

“As with all new technology that is being sold as exciting and new,” she said, “there are concerns and drawbacks. We know about the negative health impacts of EMR. Having this technology so close to the body could pose additional health risks.”

Moreover, Eckenfels-Garcia added,

“SMART ePANTS is a step closer to the merger between humans and technology. This technology, with its many sensors, makes you part of the Internet of Things, which is part of the World Economic Forum’s agenda.”

Annie Jacobsen, author of “The Pentagon’s Brain,” about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, pointed out that SMART ePANTS’s developments could usher in troubling new forms of government biometric surveillance.

“They’re now in a position of serious authority over you,” Jacobsen told The Intercept. “In TSA, they can swab your hands for explosives. Now suppose SMART ePANTS detects a chemical on your skin — imagine where that can lead.”

U.S. Spy Agencies Spend Billions — And Want to Spend More

IARPA noted the “smart” clothing could “assist personnel and first responders in dangerous, high-stress environments, such as crime scenes and arms control inspections without impeding their ability to swiftly and safely operate.”

In addition to running IARPA, the ODNI also oversees the National Intelligence Program which in 2022 was given $65.7 billion of taxpayer money by Congress. For its 2023 and 2024 budgets, the program asked Congress for $67.1 and $72.4 billion, respectively. These amounts are not yet approved.

The ODNI director, appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the senate, serves as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community by advising the president, vice president, the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council on intelligence matters related to national security.

‘We need an electronic privacy bill of rights’

According to John Whitehead, a civil liberties attorney and author, we have already moved into a system of total surveillance. The government’s funding of computerized clothing that spies on its citizens is yet another example of this, he told The Defender.

Whitehead said that the FBI already collects samples of citizens’ DNA.

“Supposedly, the police say they are doing their job to collect this information and that it doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. Well, that’s a stupid argument,” he said, adding that the courts are always behind when it comes to technology.

Whitehead said:

“Most judges do not understand it. Most are so either pro-government or pro-police that they’re going to do anything to get around [saying that it is unconstitutional].

“What we need now in this government is an electronic privacy bill of rights.”

Whitehead is working with a number of law firms to develop the concept of a legal document that “really clearly” protects citizens from electronic privacy violations of this kind.

Realistically, there is no way to escape surveillance, according to Whitehead.

“The only hope we have is if enough people will get vigilant for freedom and we can establish some kind of electronic privacy bill of rights that will limit what these people can do,” he said.

“Education precedes action, so I’m telling people to get educated about what’s going on and understand this,” he added.

Watch IARPA’s program manager discuss SMART ePants:

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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The US military is devising a new system designed to field thousands of drones controlled by artificial intelligence, deputy Pentagon chief Kathleen Hicks said on Wednesday, voicing hopes the tech would help to overcome Beijing’s “advantage in mass.”

Speaking at the yearly Defense News conference in Arlington, Virginia, Hicks outlined the Pentagon’s new “Replicator Initiative,” which aims to develop a fleet of low-cost, AI-powered drones that will operate in ‘swarms’ in the air, land and sea.

“With Replicator, we’re beginning with all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2, to help us overcome the PRC’s advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces,” she said, adding that the military plans to deploy the drones “at a scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18-to-24 months.”

The official did not specify costs for the new project, but insisted the Pentagon would not draw any additional funds from Congress. Instead, she said Replicator would use “existing funding, existing programming lines, and existing authorities,” although she offered few other details.

While Hicks said conflict with China “is neither imminent nor inevitable,” she went on to stress the need for “deterrence” against the People’s Republic – including “across the Taiwan Strait,” in Beijing’s back yard.

“Our goal always is to deter, because competition does not mean conflict. We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, ‘today is not the day’ – and not just today, but every day, now and for the foreseeable future,” she continued.

The Pentagon deputy proposed several potential uses for the new drone system – including for surveillance and reconnaissance, missile defense, logistics support, and combat itself – saying the UAVs could be deployed in “constellations” or “flocks” to overwhelm enemy defenses.

Hicks first unveiled the Replicator program at another military conference in Washington, DC last month, where she told attendees the Pentagon would “counter the PLA mass with mass of our own.” At the same event, US Indo-Pacific Command head Admiral John Aquilino said the military is seeking the capability to identify and strike 1,000 targets in 24 hours, adding that the drone system would create a “hellscape” for Chinese troops in the event of a conflict.

Earlier this year, the US, UK, and Australian militaries held a “capabilities trial” to demonstrate new AI-powered drone systems, which were used as a “collaborative swarm to detect and track military targets,” the Pentagon said. While it is unclear exactly how artificial intelligence will factor into the Replicator program, the three allies have placed increasing focus on Beijing in the Indo-Pacific, repeatedly pledging to deploy new military capabilities in the region to counter China.

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Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer at RT.

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New CDC Report July 2023: Developmental disability up 17%, developmental delay up 19% and rising!

I will briefly review the following peer-reviewed literature on the effects of masks on children:

• 2021 Feb – Green et al – Face masks for babies
• 2021 May 25 – Gori et al – Masking Emotions
• 2021 June 30 – Walach et al – CO2 in inhaled air (censored!)
• 2022 Jan – Kisielinski et al – Toxicity of CO2 in children
• 2022 Feb – Carnevali L et al – Face processing in early development
• 2022 May 13 – Lalonde et al – Masks impact audiovisual consonant recognition
• 2022 Dec 15 – De bolt et al – Mask impact on infant learning of faces

I will also review the following articles:

• 2023 July 13 – CDC Report (July 2023) developmental disabilities up 17%
• 2022 Oct.12 – Mask mandates stunted babies’ development (Byrne et al)
• 2021 Nov.26 – 23% dive in children’s development (Deoni et al)

2021 Feb – Green et al – Face masks for babies

• baby brain grows rapidly
• brain growth is strongly affected by experiences with people in their world
• baby can recognize a mother’s face from faces of strangers
• only takes newborns a few days to learn how to discriminate between differing emotional facial expressions, such as happy, sad and surprised
• by 5 months of age a baby can match an emotional expression like a sad face with a corresponding sad vocal expression
• a 5 year old child has developed ability to recognize and label facial expressions with the competence of most adults.
• masking may hinder an infant’s ability to develop facial processing and orientating
• may interfere with the parent-infant bond and longer-term attachment.
• delays or impairments of an infant’s cognitive, social-emotional, and/or neurobehavioral development can also occur, leading to difficulties in learning and forming effective relationships later in life.

2021 May 25 – Gori et al – Masking Emotions

• early childhood is a critical period for development of understanding emotions and emotion processing
• face masks affect emotion understanding for all ages, but the effect is especially pronounced for toddlers
• toddlers’ performance is more impaired by a mask than older children and adults
• Around 3–5 years old toddlers focus almost exclusively on facial expressions, whereas children rely on situational cues by 8 or 9 years of age. Could explain the lower performance observed in younger children when the mask is present
• Even WHO and UNICEF discourage use of masks under age 5
• unknown if younger children exposed to face masking will have altered or delayed development of social skills later in life.

2021 June 30 – Walach et al – CO2 in inhaled air (censored!)

• study measured how much CO2 children 6 to 17 years old breathe over 3 minutes with surgical and FFP2 masks
• Children had CO2 exposure 3-6 times the allowable limit after only 3 minutes of breathing with a mask
• youngest children had the highest CO2 exposures!
• study was censored (retracted)

2022 Jan – Kisielinski et al – Toxicity of CO2 in children 

• Extensive review of animal studies
• Fresh air has 0.04% CO2
• Wearing masks (surgical or N95) more than 5 minutes: 1.4 to 3.2% CO2
• 0.3% CO2 – children – irreversible neuron damage, neuron destruction, increased anxiety, impaired learning and memory
• 0.5% CO2 – adolescents – testicular toxicity

2022 Feb – Carnevali L et al – Face processing in early development

• Faces are a predominant stimulus in an infant’s environment and constitute an important source of learning from soon after birth
• Facial expressions also have a central role in early learning; processing expressions require the use of configural information that is hindered by wearing face masks
• problem: mask wearing disrupts configural face processing – no information can be obtained about the nose, cheeks, chin, mouth, and mouth movements
• problem: processing of simultaneous changes in face features building up emotional expressions is limited due to the lower part of the face being covered.
• infants typically make use of multiple scanning strategies and pay differential attention to specific face regions and features to reach developmental milestones
• they gradually learn to analyze the eyes and gaze direction within the context of the entire face configuration—which contributes to the early face bias, identity recognition, as well as emotional expression discrimination
• Language learning – Infants rely on facial information to learn language, by means of intersensory redundancy coming from mouth movements.
  • They pay particular attention to the mouth between 4 and 8 months of ageand gradually shift it to the eye region as their language expertise increases.
  • After the first year, when entering the word acquisition phase, infants again pay selective attention to the interacting adults’ mouth to learn to articulate verbal sounds.
  • If the speaking person has her mouth covered, infants cannot take advantage of audiovisual synchrony that is relevant for speech learning.
  • A disadvantage linked to this could be particularly enhanced within multilingual environments, whereby infants rely on multisensory information to disentangle languages
  • bilingual infants make use of visual information coming from the mouth region to disambiguate between languages from 8 months of age. These infants are going to struggle more.

2022 May 13 – Lalonde et al – Masks impact auditory and audiovisual consonant recognition 

• Face masks disrupt speech understanding by concealing lip-reading cues and reducing transmission of high-frequency acoustic speech content
• the combination of a noisy environment and face masks negatively impacts speech understanding in children
• CDC guidelines suggest teachers wear a transparent mask if they interact with students with special education or healthcare needs, teach young students who are learning to read, teach English as a second language, or teach students with disabilities including hearing loss.

2022 Dec 15 – De bolt et al – Mask impact on infant learning of faces 

• studied how face masks influence face memory in 6 to 9 month old infants
• Infants showed memory for the faces if the faces were unmasked at test, regardless of whether or not the face was masked during familiarization
• infants did not show robust evidence of memory when test faces were masked, regardless of the familiarization condition

Articles: 

2023 July 13 – Face mask effect: developmental disabilities 

• CDC Report released in July 2023 shows:
• children ages 3-17: developmental disabilities are up 17% in 2021 (includes speech disorders, dyslexia, ADHD)
• children ages 3-17: developmental delays are up 19% in 2021
• boys have higher prevalence of developmental disability than girls with 10.8% for boys vs 5.3% for girls
• Boys have higher prevalence of intellectual disability than girls, with 2.3% for boys vs 1.4% for girls
• Boys (4.7%) were more than three times as likely as girls (1.5%) to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
• prevalence of intellectual disability increased with age
• prevalence of other developmental delay decreased with age

2022 Oct. 12 – Mask mandates stunted babies’ development

• (Byrne et al) – A paper led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, researchers looked at 309 babies born between March and May 2020.
• Lockdowns and mask mandates have stunted babies’ development
• Study looked at 10 developmental milestones at 1 year old
• lockdown babies were 14% less likely to have said one definite word
• lockdown babies were 9% less likely to have started pointing
• lockdown babies were 6% less likely to wave goodbye
• authors say face masks limited children’s ability to read facial expressions or see people’s mouths move — a crucial part of learning to speak. 

2021 Nov. 26 – 23% dive in Children’s development 

• Paper by Deoni et al – The COVID-19 Pandemic and Early Child Cognitive Development: A Comparison of Development in Children Born During the Pandemic
• Social distancing measures including face masks are suspected of causing young children’s development to drop by up to 23% during the COVID pandemic
• 23% drop in scores measuring kids’ IQ since the start of the pandemic
• 30% drop in verbal development quotient
• 24% drop in non-verbal development quotient
• “children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.”
• “masks worn in public settings and in school or daycare settings may impact a range of early developing skills, such as attachment, facial processing, and socio-emotional processing”

My Take…

Here in Alberta, Canada, we have far left activist PEDIATRICIANS who publicly claim that there is NO HARM inflicted on children via masking. Here is an example:

Dr. Tehseen Ladha is an Alberta, Canada pediatrician at University of Alberta, with a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins.  

Her pronouns are: she’s/corrupt.

This is the level of medical malpractice and evil we are dealing with.

Many pediatricians are willing to intentionally harm thousands of children in order to promote the fraudulent COVID-19 propaganda and narrative.

To summarize:

• “Children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.”
• “Masks worn in public settings and in school or daycare settings impact a range of early developing skills, such as attachment, facial processing, and socio-emotional processing”
• 23% drop in children’s IQ since start of pandemic (Deoni et al)
• 30% drop in verbal development quotient (Deoni et al)
• 24% drop in non-verbal development quotient (Deoni et al)
• lockdowns and mask mandates have stunted babies’ development
• 1 yo lockdown babies 14% less likely to have said one definite word (Byrne et al)
• 1 yo lockdown babies 9% less likely to have started pointing (Byrne et al)
• 1 yo lockdown babies 6% less likely to wave goodbye (Byrne et al)
• kids 3-17: developmental disabilities are up 17% in 2021 (CDC July 2023)
• kids 3-17: developmental delays are up 19% in 2021 (CDC July 2023)
• bilingual children are at a severe disadvantage and will struggle more with masking as they make use of visual information coming from the mouth region to disambiguate between languages from 8 months of age.
• face masks affect emotion understanding for all ages, but the effect is especially pronounced for toddlers
• currently unknown if younger children exposed to face masking will have altered or delayed development of social skills later in life.

When it comes to masks and children, it’s all harm and no benefit. When you put a mask on a child, the toxic CO2 exposure after only minutes of mask wearing, starts damaging and killing off their neurons. 

Younger children who are placed in an environment of unscientific and unethical mask mandates, experience developmental difficulties and delays, learning problems, speech problems and socio-emotional problems.

We have not begun to fully understand the damage that has been done to kids via masks that are ineffective in a respiratory viral outbreak and mask mandates that were implemented in schools and in society.

Parents must draw a line in the sand and not allow mask mandates of any kind ever again.

Especially now that they’re attempting to bring them back.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

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A Spanish company recruiting volunteers to fight in Ukraine claims to be in contact with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, offering contracts for up to €3,400.

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The Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that the U.S. will send depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine as part of a new $175 million military aid package, drawing outrage from progressive foreign policy advocates who have warned against such a move and noted the horrific impact such weapons have had in Iraq and elsewhere.

A byproduct of natural uranium enrichment, depleted uranium is highly dense and often used for projectiles designed to pierce tanks and other armored vehicles. On impact, depleted uranium weapons produce a cloud of particles that can be inhaled by soldiers and nearby civilians.

The Pentagon said it is sending Ukraine 120mm depleted uranium rounds that can be fired from the Abrams tanks the U.S. is also set to begin delivering.

The announcement came weeks after the U.S. shipped widely banned cluster munitions to Ukraine, ignoring human rights groups’ warnings about the potentially devastating consequences for civilians in the present and years into the future.

“It wasn’t enough for the U.S. to send cluster bombs that will kill children for generations to Ukraine,” Aída Chávez, communications director for the progressive anti-war group Just Foreign Policy, wrote on social media. “Now, the Biden admin is sending depleted uranium—which will cause babies to be born with severe deformities and cancer.”

“To this day,” Chávez added, “children in places like Fallujah are being born with gruesome birth defects due to the U.S. military’s use of depleted uranium.”

The U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 used thousands of tonnes of depleted uranium bombs and shells over just a three-week period that year.

Research suggests the lasting health effects for Iraqis have been severe.

According to a study published in the journal Environmental Pollution in 2020, proximity to a U.S. military base in Iraq was linked to “higher levels of uranium and thorium” and a greater risk of birth defects, including heart problems and missing limbs.

The study notes that thorium is “a radioactive compound and a direct depleted uranium decay product.”

A 2021 study published in BMJ Public Health also found “possible associations between exposure to depleted uranium and adverse health outcomes among the Iraqi population,” though the authors noted that “U.S. sanctions on Iraq may have played a role in limiting research and publication on the health impacts of weaponized uranium.”

“Biden’s decision to send tanks with depleted uranium to Ukraine has been made possible in large part because Britain led the way.”

The U.S. is not the first country to send depleted uranium to Ukraine as it fights invading Russian forces. The United Kingdom announced in March that it would deliver thousands of rounds of depleted uranium ammunition to the Ukrainian military.

Moscow decried the U.S. decision to arm Ukrainian forces with depleted uranium as “an indicator of inhumanity” and has threatened to use its own stockpile of depleted uranium.

Phil Miller, chief reporter for Declassified UK, said in a Democracy Now! appearance on Wednesday that “Biden’s decision to send tanks with depleted uranium to Ukraine has been made possible in large part because Britain led the way on this.”

Earlier this week, Miller reported that a U.K. tank capable of firing depleted uranium rounds was destroyed in Ukraine, prompting contamination fears.

“What we’ve seen in other conflicts, notably in Iraq, is that these tank hulls litter the battlefield for many years after the conflict,” Miller said Wednesday. “Children go and play on them, thinking they’re some kind of climbing frame, and they can become contaminated with depleted uranium, leading to very rare forms of cancer.”

“It really is quite alarming to now think that this is going to be used or is being used in Ukraine in areas where, you know, we want Ukrainian civilians to be able to live after the conflict,” Miller added. “On top of dealing with unexploded cluster munitions, they’re also going to have this huge hazard of depleted uranium to contend with, as well.”

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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In commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, we repost this article by Ted Walter and the late Prof. Graeme MacQueen, first published in 2020.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Editor’s Note

As of the publication of this article, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is awaiting a decision from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) regarding the request for correction that AE911Truth and ten family members of 9/11 victims submitted to NIST on April 15, 2020. The request seeks corrections to eight separate items of information in NIST’s 2008 report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, any of which would effectively force NIST to reverse its conclusion that fires caused the building’s destruction.

NIST informed AE911Truth on June 12, 2020, that it was unable to meet its goal of responding within 60 days. Under the procedure governing such requests, NIST must provide a decision within 120 days of the submission, which would fall on August 13, 2020. If NIST elects not to take the corrective action being sought, AE911Truth and its fellow requesters would then have 30 days to file an appeal with NIST. Should NIST fail in any way to comply with the procedure governing requests or should it fail to rectify the information quality violations documented in the request, AE911Truth and its fellow requesters are prepared to take legal action.

In the meantime, AE911Truth is taking one further step toward correcting the record on the destruction of the Twin Towers with the publication of this article. This exhaustive review of 70 hours of 9/11 news coverage reveals that the hypothesis of explosions bringing down the Twin Towers was not only prevalent among reporters covering the events in New York City on 9/11 but was, in fact, the dominant hypothesis.

The 36 reporters who brought us the Twin Towers’ explosive demolition on 9/11 include, by network, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Cynthia McFadden; CBS’s Harold Dow, Tom Flynn, Mika Brzezinski, and Carol Marin (appearing on WCBS); NBC’s Pat Dawson and Anne Thompson; CNN’s Aaron Brown, Rose Arce, Patty Sabga, and Alan Dodds Frank; Fox News’ David Lee Miller and Rick Leventhal; MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield and Rick Sanchez; CNBC’s John Bussey, Ron Insana, and Bob Pisani; WABC’s N.J. Burkett, Michelle Charlesworth, Nina Pineda, Cheryl Fiandaca, and Joe Torres; WCBS’s John Slattery, Marcella Palmer, Vince DeMentri, and Marcia Kramer; WNBC’s Walter Perez; New York 1’s Kristen Shaughnessy, Andrew Siff, John Schiumo, and Andrew Kirtzman; USA Today’s Jack Kelley; and two unidentified reporters (1 and 2) who attended a press conference with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki. Video clips of each reporter’s statements on 9/11 can be viewed below.

***

See the authors followup article (Part II) published on September 9, 2022:

The Triumph of the Official Narrative: How the TV Networks Hid the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11

By Prof. Graeme MacQueen and Ted Walter, September 09, 2022

***

The widely held belief that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires is, unbeknownst to most people, a revisionist theory. Among individuals who witnessed the event firsthand, the more prevalent hypothesis was that the Twin Towers had been brought down by massive explosions.

This observation was first made 14 years ago in the article, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers.” A review of interviews conducted with 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the weeks and months after 9/11 revealed that 118 of them described witnessing what they interpreted that day to be explosions. Only 10 FDNY members were found describing the destruction in ways supportive of the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.

The interviews of fire marshal John Coyle and firefighter Christopher Fenyo explicitly support this finding. Coyle remarked in his interview, “I thought it was exploding, actually. That’s what I thought for hours afterwards. . . . Everybody I think at that point still thought these things were blown up.” Similarly, Fenyo recalled in his interview, “At that point, a debate began to rage [about whether to continue rescue operations in the other, still-standing tower] because the perception was that the building looked like it had been taken out with charges.”

News reporters constitute another group of individuals who witnessed the event firsthand and whose accounts were publicly documented. While many people have seen a smattering of news clips on the internet in which reporters describe explosions, there has never been, as far as we know, a systematic attempt to collect these news clips and analyze them.

We decided to take on this task for two reasons. First, we wanted to know just how prevalent the explosion hypothesis was among reporters. Second, anticipating that this would be the more prevalent hypothesis, we wanted to determine exactly how it was supplanted by the hypothesis of fire-induced collapse.

In this article, we present our findings related to the first question. In a subsequent article, we will examine how the hypothesis of fire-induced collapse so quickly supplanted the originally dominant explosion hypothesis.

Television Coverage Compiled

To determine how prevalent the explosion hypothesis was among reporters, we set out to review as much continuous news coverage as we could find from the major television networks, cable news channels, and local network affiliates covering the events in New York.

Through internet searches, we found continuous news coverage from 11 different television networks, cable news channels, and local network affiliates. These included the networks ABC, CBS, and NBC; cable news channels CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNBC; and local network affiliates WABC, WCBS, and WNBC. We also incorporated coverage from New York One (NY1), a New York-based cable news channel owned by Time Warner (now Spectrum), which we grouped with the local network affiliates into a local channel category.

Unfortunately, we were not able to find coverage spanning most of the day for every channel. Thus, while the collection of news coverage we compiled is extensive, it is not comprehensive. To fill in the gaps where possible, we included excerpts of coverage that aired later in the day if we found that coverage to be relevant. We also included one excerpt from USA Today’s coverage that we found to be relevant and three excerpts from an afternoon press conference with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki that aired on almost every channel. In general, the times at which these excerpts aired are unknown, though in some cases we were able to identify an approximate time.

The news coverage we compiled and reviewed totaled approximately 70 hours.

Table 1: Television Coverage Compiled

Note: We invite anyone who has portions of the television coverage we were not able to find to send them to us at [email protected]. We will incorporate anything we receive and update this article accordingly. For anyone who wishes to replicate our work, the entire collection of footage can be downloaded here.

Criteria for Defining ‘Explosion’ Versus ‘Non-Explosion’ Reporters

We sought to answer one main question in our review of the news coverage: How many reporters described the occurrence of explosions — both the raw number of reporters and as a percentage of all reporters who covered the Twin Towers’ destruction — and what was the nature of their reporting? To answer this question, we needed to establish clear criteria for identifying what we will call “explosion reporters” and “non-explosion reporters.”

We should make clear that this article addresses the statements of reporters only and does not address the statements of anchors, except for in the case of one anchor (CNN’s Aaron Brown) who had a direct view of the Twin Towers. In our next article, we will address statements made by anchors, who were also interpreting the Twin Towers’ destruction but without having witnessed it firsthand.

Because the airplane impacts were often referred to as explosions, we were careful to exclude any instances where it was not absolutely clear that the reporter was referring only to the destruction of the Twin Towers.

As we studied the news coverage and began to recognize patterns in how the Twin Towers’ destruction was reported, we developed three separate categories of reporting that would classify someone as an “explosion reporter”: (1) eyewitness reporting, (2) narrative reporting, and (3) source-based reporting. Below we provide definitions of each.

Eyewitness Reporting

“Eyewitness reporting” is when a reporter is an eyewitness with a direct view of or in close proximity to the destruction of one or both of the Twin Towers and perceives an explosion or explosions in conjunction with the destruction — or perceives one or both of the towers as exploding, blowing up, blowing, or erupting. Although we usually excluded the word “boom,” which could apply either to an explosion or to a collapse, we included it in one case because the totality of what the reporter (Nina Pineda) described indicated that she viewed the event as being explosion-based.

We did not include reporters who described only a “shaking” or “trembling” of the ground. The perception of the ground shaking was widespread and constitutes important eyewitness evidence, but it does not necessarily reveal much about how the reporter interpreted what she or he was witnessing. Among reporters who mentioned demolition, we excluded the ones who merely compared the destruction to a demolition whenever it was clear that the reporter believed it to be a collapse caused by structural failure. We also excluded reporters who used the word “implode” or “implosion” whenever it was clear that the reporter used it to describe the building collapsing in on itself, as opposed to a demolition.

Here is an example of eyewitness reporting:

David Lee Miller, Fox News, 10:01 AM:

“Suddenly, while talking to an officer who was questioning me about my press credentials, we heard a very loud blast, an explosion. We looked up, and the building literally began to collapse before us. . . . Not clear now is why this explosion took place. Was it because of the planes that, uh, two planes, dual attacks this morning, or was there some other attack, which is — there has been talk of here on the street.”

Narrative Reporting

“Narrative reporting” is when a reporter refers to the Twin Towers’ destruction as an explosion-based event when speaking of it in the course of his or her reporting. This could be a reporter who was an eyewitness to the destruction or a reporter who otherwise understood the destruction to be an explosion-based event.

The main distinction between eyewitness reporting and narrative reporting is that eyewitness reporting involves an eyewitness describing his or her direct perceptions, often uttering them spontaneously, while narrative reporting involves interpretation and/or outside influence, either of which inform the reporter’s developing narrative of what took place. (In several cases, reporters go from engaging in eyewitness reporting around the time of the destruction to engaging in narrative reporting later on, with their direct perceptions informing their developing narrative).

This distinction is not meant to imply that one type of reporting is more valuable or reliable than another. In this analysis, eyewitness reporting tells us about what reporters perceived and immediately interpreted during, or shortly after, the event. It thus gives us more information about the actual event. Narrative reporting, by contrast, tells us how reporters interpreted the event after having more time to process their perceptions and to synthesize additional information from other sources. Narrative reporting thus tells us about the collective narrative that was developing among reporters covering the event.

Here is an example of narrative reporting:

George Stephanopoulos, ABC, 12:27 PM:

“Well, Peter, I’m going to give you kind of a pool report from several of our correspondents down here of basically what happened down here in downtown New York between 9:45 and 10:45 when the two explosions and the collapse of the World Trade Center happened. At the time, I was actually in the subway heading towards the World Trade Center right around Franklin Street. And after the first explosion the subway station started to fill with smoke. The subway cars started to fill with smoke, and the subways actually stopped. They then diverted us around the World Trade Center to Park Place, which is one stop beyond the World Trade Center. We got to that train station at around 10:35, Peter, and it was a scene unlike I’ve ever seen before in my entire life.”

Source-based Reporting

“Source-based reporting” is when a reporter reports on the possible use of explosives based on information from government officials who said they suspected that explosives were used to bring down the Twin Towers.

Source-based reporting is similar to narrative reporting in that it involves outside influence. The main distinction is that source-based reporting is based on information from government sources. Information from government sources inherently indicates how government agencies were interpreting the event and is sometimes given extra weight by reporters and viewers.

Here is an example of source-based reporting:

Pat Dawson, NBC, 11:55 AM:

“Just moments ago I spoke to the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department . . . [He] told me that shortly after 9 o’clock he had roughly 10 alarms, roughly 200 men in the building trying to effect rescues of some of those civilians who were in there, and that basically he received word of a possibility of a secondary device— that is, another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said that there was another explosion which took place. And then an hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here. So obviously, according to his theory, he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. . . . But the bottom line is that, according to the Chief of Safety of the New York City Fire Department, he says that he probably lost a great many men in those secondary explosions. And he said that there were literally hundreds if not thousands of people in those two towers when the explosions took place.”

Non-Explosion Reporters

The main criterion we developed for classifying someone as a “non-explosion reporter” was that she or he reported on the destruction of one or both of the Twin Towers and did not engage in any of the types of explosion reporting defined above. To qualify as a non-explosion reporter, it was not necessary for the reporter to explicitly articulate the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. The mere absence of explosion reporting was enough to classify someone as a non-explosion reporter.

The challenge here lay not in identifying the absence of explosion reporting but in defining what constituted “reporting on the destruction.” In the end, we decided this should mean that the reporter had to describe the event of the destruction and not simply mention it in passing.

We should note that a reporter’s use of the word “collapse” did not necessarily qualify that person as a non-explosion reporter. Many explosion reporters described the occurrence of an explosion followed by collapse and they used the word “collapse” in their reporting (David Lee Miller, quoted above, is a prime example). Thus, use of the word “collapse” is not incompatible with being an explosion reporter and did not qualify someone as a non-explosion reporter.

Also, if a reporter made a statement that qualified him or her as an explosion reporter and then subsequently made a statement explicitly supporting the fire-induced collapse hypothesis (which is the case for WABC’s Joe Torres), we classified this reporter as an explosion reporter because he or she engaged in some explosion reporting at some point during the day. In this analysis, being classified as an “explosion reporter” does not imply a permanent stance. Rather, it just means that at some point in the day he or she reported the occurrence of explosions or the possible use of explosives in relation to the Twin Towers’ destruction.

Before we move on to the next section, it is important to note that because non-explosion reporters had to describe the event of the destruction and not simply mention it in passing, the only way to make a valid numerical comparison between explosion reporters and non-explosion reporters is to include only those who engaged in eyewitness reporting. According to the criteria we developed, explosion reporters who engaged in narrative reporting were not describing the event of the destruction but rather were referring to it as an explosion-based event in the course of their reporting, i.e., in passing. A comparable classification does not exist for non-explosion reporters, because we excluded those who only mentioned the event in passing (most commonly using the word “collapse”).

Numerical Analysis of ‘Explosion’ and ‘Non-Explosion’ Reporters

In total, we identified 36 explosion reporters and four non-explosion reporters in the approximately 70 hours of news coverage we reviewed. The 36 explosion reporters and their statements are listed in Appendix A. The four non-explosion reporters and their statements are listed in Appendix B. In addition, there were three borderline cases that we determined could not be clearly classified as either explosion or non-explosion reporters. Those cases are listed in Appendix C.

Of the 36 explosion reporters, 21 of them engaged in eyewitness reporting, 22 of them engaged in narrative reporting, and three of them engaged in source-based reporting. Recalling our definitions from above, this means the following:

• 21 reporters witnessed what they perceived as an explosion or explosions during the destruction of the Twin Towers or they perceived the Twin Towers as exploding, blowing up, blowing, or erupting.

• 22 reporters (eight of whom also fall into the eyewitness reporting category) referred to the Twin Towers’ destruction as an explosion or an explosion-based event when speaking of it in the course of their reporting.

• Three reporters (two of whom also fall into the narrative reporting category) reported on the possible use of explosives based on information from government officials who said they suspected that explosives were used to bring down the Twin Towers.

• Four reporters reported on the destruction of the Twin Towers and did not report explosions in any way (either having witnessed explosions, having interpreted the destruction as being an explosion-based event, or having been informed by government officials about the possible use of explosives).

In terms of the percentage of explosion and non-explosion reporters, 21 of the 25 reporters who directly witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers, or 84%, either perceived an explosion or explosions or they perceived the Twin Towers as exploding, blowing up, blowing, or erupting. In comparison, four of the 25 reporters who directly witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers, or 16%, did not report explosions in any way.

The tables below list each reporter and each instance of reporting according to the time at which each report was made.

Table 2A: Eyewitness Reporting by Explosion Reporters

Table 2B: Narrative Reporting by Explosion Reporters

*These reporters also engaged in eyewitness reporting.

Table 2C: Source-based Reporting by Explosion Reporters

*These reporters also engaged in narrative reporting.

Table 2D: Non-Explosion Reporters

How Reporters Reported the Twin Towers’ Destruction

The picture that unmistakably emerges is that the great majority of reporters who witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers either perceived an explosion or perceived the towers as exploding. This hypothesis of the Twin Towers’ destruction then continued to be prevalent among reporters covering the event, who essentially viewed the destruction of the towers as an explosion-based attack subsequent to the airplane strikes. We learn from the source-based reporting that the same hypothesis was also held by officials in the FDNY, the New York Police Department (NYPD), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — three of the most important agencies involved in the response to the attacks. In particular, with regard to the FBI, we are told the explosion hypothesis was the agency’s “working theory” as of late in the afternoon on 9/11.

Unlike members of the FDNY, most of whom provided their accounts during interviews conducted weeks or months after the event, it was the job of reporters to spontaneously communicate their perception and interpretation of events. Thus, when their reporting is compiled into one record, we are left with a rich and largely unfiltered collective account of what took place. Considered alongside the FDNY oral histories, these reporters’ statements, in our view, constitute strong corroborating evidence that explosives were used to destroy the Twin Towers.

Regarding the four non-explosion reporters, in addition to the fact that there are so few of them, we find that their individual accounts add little support to the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.

Two of the reporters were quite far away from the Twin Towers at the time of their destruction relative to most of the explosion reporters: Drew Millhon was “about 10 to 12 blocks north of the World Trade Center,” at the intersection of Varick Street and Canal Street, while Bob Bazell was at St. Vincent’s hospital on West 12th Street, approximately two miles from the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, Don Dahler, the only reporter who explicitly articulated the fire-induced collapse hypothesis, nonetheless likened the South Tower’s destruction to a controlled demolition, saying: “The entire building has just collapsed as if a demolition team set off — when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings.” The fourth non-explosion reporter, John Zito, was quite close to the South Tower when it came down. He did not describe an explosion, but he also did not attribute the destruction to a fire-induced collapse. It is worth noting that Ron Insana, whom Zito was with, vividly described seeing the building “exploding” and “blowing” and hearing a “noise associated with an implosion.”

Conclusion

Returning to the first question posed at the top of this article, we conclude that the hypothesis of explosions bringing down the Twin Towers was not only prevalent among reporters but was, in fact, the dominant hypothesis.

Furthermore, the 21 instances of eyewitness reporting, all of which contain spontaneous descriptions of the phenomena the reporters witnessed, strongly corroborate the overwhelming scientific evidence that explosives were used to destroy the Twin Towers.

In a subsequent article, we will examine how the hypothesis of fire-induced collapse so quickly supplanted the originally dominant explosion hypothesis.

***

Appendix A: Statements by 36 Explosion Reporters

These statements are organized by channel in the same order as presented in Table 1. Within each channel, they are organized chronologically based on the time of the first noted statement by each reporter.

1. George Stephanopoulos, ABC

12:27 PM, Narrative Reporting

“Well, Peter, I’m going to give you kind of a pool report from several of our correspondents down here of basically what happened down here in downtown New York between 9:45 and 10:45 when the two explosions and the collapse of the World Trade Center happened. At the time, I was actually in the subway heading towards the World Trade Center, right around Franklin Street. And after the first explosion the subway station started to fill with smoke. The subway cars started to fill with smoke, and the subways actually stopped. They then diverted us around the World Trade Center to Park Place, which is one stop beyond the World Trade Center. We got to that train station at around 10:35, Peter, and it was a scene unlike I’ve ever seen before in my entire life. As we tried to get out of the subway station and walk up into the street, it was pitch black, midnight black, snowing soot all down through downtown Manhattan. This was about two blocks from the World Trade Center. You couldn’t see a foot in front of your face at that time.”

2. Cynthia McFadden, ABC

5:56 PM, Narrative Reporting

“We’ve been told that all victims now who are taken out of the blast site are going to be taken here first. . . . Part of the problem initially was that when the first rescue workers went in — and we have talked to some of them, some of the second wave of rescue workers — the first wave of rescue workers who went in were trapped, many of them killed by the second blast. . . . There have been hundreds of people at area hospitals, as you note. But they don’t believe that anywhere near the full weight of this has yet been uncovered, that there are hundreds and thousands of people who have been injured in this blast, and that’s the people that they expect to bring here.”

3. Harold Dow, CBS

10:05 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Yes, I arrived on the scene about an hour and a half ago. Believe it or not, there was another major explosion. The building itself, literally the top of it came down, sending smoke and debris everywhere. I tried to run to get away from all of the debris. A number of other people here are trapped in the subway here in a shoe store, trying to get away from most of the debris. It’s just an incredible sight.”

4. Tom Flynn, CBS

11:03, Eyewitness Reporting

“At that time, maybe 45 minutes into the taping that we were doing, which was maybe a half hour after, there was — it was an explosion. It was way up where the fire was. And the whole building at that point bellied out in flames, and everybody ran.”

5. Mika Brzezinski, CBS

11:15 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Dan, we’re three blocks from the scene and we saw it all after the first two hits. We saw the explosion and also the collapse of the tower.”

6. Pat Dawson, NBC

11:55 AM, Source-based Reporting

“Just moments ago I spoke to the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department, who was obviously one of the first people here on the scene after those two planes were crashed into the side — we assume — of the World Trade Center towers, which used to be behind me over there. Chief Albert Turi told me that he was here just literally 10 or 15 minutes after the events that took place this morning, that is, the first crash. . . . [He] told me that shortly after 9 o’clock he had roughly 10 alarms, roughly 200 men in the building trying to effect rescues of some of those civilians who were in there, and that basically he received word of a possibility of a secondary device — that is, another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out as quickly as he could, but he said that there was another explosion which took place. And then an hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place, he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the towers here. So obviously, according to his theory, he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building. One of the secondary devices he thinks, that took place after the initial impact, he thinks may have been on the plane that crashed into one of the towers. The second device he thinks, he speculates, was probably planted in the building. So that’s what we have been told by Albert Turi, who is the Chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department. He told me that just moments ago. . . . But the bottom line is that, according to the Chief of Safety of the New York City Fire Department, he says that he probably lost a great many men in those secondary explosions. And he said that there were literally hundreds if not thousands of people in those two towers when the explosions took place.”

3:02 PM, Narrative Reporting

Dawson asks a police officer: “How would you describe your efforts to organize to the rescue effort now, given that we saw a sequence of events this morning? A sequence of crashes, then explosions, and then the collapses.”

7. Anne Thompson, NBC

12:43 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

“And I was walking on Broadway at Fulton, and suddenly we heard an explosion. It was the first tower coming down. And down Broadway you could just see this wall of debris flying at us. . . . It looked like a war zone. Debris, dust ankle deep, cars on fire, cars turned askew in the explosion. . . . Then at about 10:30 it looked like everything was all clear. I started to walk out. I walked down Broadway towards Canal. And we heard the second explosion. . . . At that point a fireman came into the building and said we all had to stay in one place. He then told us all to get out of the building because they felt if there was a third explosion that this building would be in danger.”

8. Aaron Brown, CNN

Note: Although Aaron Brown is a news anchor, we include him among the explosion reporters because he was positioned outside and witnessed the events directly, and his direct perception played a major role in his evolving interpretation of the event.

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Wow! Jamie. Jamie, I need you to stop for a second. There has just been a huge explosion. We can see a billowing smoke rising. And I can’t — I’ll tell you that I can’t see that second tower. But there was a cascade of sparks and fire and now this…it looks almost like a mushroom cloud, explosion, this huge, billowing smoke in the second tower. This was the second of the two towers hit. And I, you know, I cannot see behind that smoke obviously, as you can’t either. The first tower in front has not changed. And we see this extraordinarily (sic) and frightening scene behind us of this second tower now just encased in smoke. What is behind it…I cannot tell you. But just look at that. That is about as frightening a scene as you will ever see.”

10:02 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Again, there has been a second explosion here in Manhattan at the Trade Center. We are getting reports that a part of the tower, the second tower, the one a bit further to the south of us, has collapsed. We are checking on that. . . . What we can tell you is that just in the last several minutes here — two or three minutes — a second or third, I guess, technically, extraordinary event has happened here in lower Manhattan. You can see this extraordinary plume of smoke that is, or was at least, the second tower of the World Trade Center.”

9. Rose Arce, CNN

10:29 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“I’m about a block away. And there were several people that were hanging out the windows right below where the plane crashed, when suddenly you saw the top of the building start to shake, and people began leaping from the windows in the north side of the building. You saw two people at first plummet and then a third one, and then the entire top of the building just blew up, and splinters of debris are falling on the street.”

10:50 AM, Narrative Reporting

“It looks like a large chunk of that debris has hit a building very close by, about two blocks away next to an elementary school, causing another explosion. . . . So as people are coming up the street running from the scene of this new explosion you can see them slipping on the ash and literally having to drag each other up the street.”

Note: We include Rose Arce’s statement at 10:50 AM as narrative reporting because it indicates that she initially perceived and then continued to interpret the destruction of the Twin Towers as explosions.

12:26 PM, Narrative Reporting

“As you walk through the ash you can see debris from inside the World Trade Center itself, a very eerie scene, pieces of paper from people’s desks, office supplies many, many blocks from the site the actual explosion where they now are fearing that there may be yet another explosion because of this potential gas leak.”

10:43 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

“People were rushing to the windows. They were taking clothes — one thing looked like a blanket that they were waving — and then suddenly there was another, an explosion, and you saw folks start to jump out the front window of the building and plunge. I saw at least six people do this. Folks were pushing each other. Some people were screaming for help and then just falling out.”

10. Patty Sabga, CNN

10:57 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“About an hour ago I was on the corner of Broadway and Park Place — that’s about a thousand yards from the World Trade Center — when the first tower collapsed. It was a massive explosion. At the time the police were trying desperately to evacuate people from the area. When that explosion occurred it was like a scene out of a horror film.”

10:59 AM, Narrative Reporting

“The scene was like a ghost town in the Financial District. Very eerie. You saw people being wheeled on gurneys away from the site of the explosion. . . . Now, at the time I was back on the corner again of Broadway and Park Place. At that time, the police started running toward us telling everybody to move who was left on the street. I looked up and that’s when I heard the — [coughs] pardon me — that’s when I heard the explosion. That’s when the second tower came down.”

11. Alan Dodds Frank, CNN

11:07 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Aaron, just two or three minutes ago there was yet another collapse or explosion. . . . But at a quarter to 11:00 there was another collapse or explosion following the 10:30 collapse of the second Tower. And a firefighter who rushed by us estimated that 50 stories went down. The street filled with smoke. It was like a forest fire roaring down a canyon.”

Note: We include Alan Dodds Frank’s statement at 11:07 AM as narrative reporting because it indicates that he interpreted the destruction of the Twin Towers as possibly being an explosion-based event.

12. David Lee Miller, Fox News

10:01 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Jon, the scene is horrific. One of the two towers literally collapsed. I was making my way to the foot of the World Trade Center. Suddenly, while talking to an officer who was questioning me about my press credentials, we heard a very loud blast, an explosion. We looked up, and the building literally began to collapse before us. . . . And I am now standing in a black cloud of smoke. . . . I’m on a pay phone on the street right now and I literally cannot see more than quarter-block away. That’s how thick the smoke is. I’m on Murray Street and West Broadway for those who know Lower Manhattan. Not clear now is why this explosion took place. Was it because of the planes that, uh, two planes, dual attacks this morning, or was there some other attack which is — there has been talk of here on the street.”

10:32 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Jon, just seconds ago there was a huge explosion, and it appears right now the second World Trade tower has just collapsed.”

13. Rick Leventhal, Fox News

10:05 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

He asks a police officer: “Do you know if it was an explosion or if it was a building collapse?”

Then he asks: “How many people would you say were on the ground when the building exploded or collapsed?”

10:06 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“When the building did collapse — or whatever it was that happened — it was a huge explosion, a huge rumbling cloud of smoke and fire came a cross Church Street and started billowing this way. . . The FBI is here, as you can see. They had roped this area off. They were taking photographs and securing this area just prior to that huge explosion that we all heard and felt.”

10:12 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“And we were standing here when there was some sort of collapse or explosion and everyone started running in this direction.”

14. Ashleigh Banfield, MSNBC

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

Chris Jansing (news anchor): “It does appear that there has been a third explosion in the area of the World Trade Center. There was first one plane that hit one of the Twin Towers. A second plane, each about one hour ago. And now a third explosion. Ashleigh Banfield is in Manhattan. Ashleigh, did you see or hear anything just moments ago?”

Ashleigh Banfield: “God. Oh my god, Chris, this is incredible. I’m looking right at it.”

Jansing: “What are you seeing, Ashleigh?”

Banfield: “Well, I saw the explosion, for one.”

Jansing: “Could you feel it?”

Banfield: “I can smell it. Everyone around screamed at the time it happened. It’s just unbelievable. I can’t see that it’s another building. It looks almost in the same position as the second bomb, or second explosion. It’s unbelievable.”

Jansing: “What’s the scene around you? What are people doing?

Banfield: “Most people, as I said earlier, are absolutely aghast.

Jansing: “Are they running?”

Banfield: “No one’s running. No, I’m not close enough at this point to be seeing that. I wouldn’t be showered with debris from my position here. I’m too far north of it. But I have a bird’s eye view of what’s happening. The route that I’m on is the emergency route right now, so all of the emergency vehicles are streaming past us. But as I was looking up I saw the entire explosion. It looked exactly like the first two. Unbelievable. And everyone who watched it around me screamed. It was just a chorus of “oh my gods” from everyone standing around. I’m walking, so what I’m hearing are a lot of people whose cars are parked, who’ve got their radios tuned to local news stations and trying to catch up on just exactly what’s happening. But now I’m seeing people running. But I really don’t think they’re running from the area. We’re too far away to be in the direct line of any debris. But we certainly had the most perfect vantage point for that explosion. It was unbelievable. And the smoke now is so thick. It’s just incredible.”

10:54 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Well, we just heard another explosion go off a couple minutes ago, Chris, and saw a bunch more people sort of running this way. A woman on her bike was screaming as it went off. And there was a New York City officer who was plain-clothed walking by with a radio. I tried to stop him to ask what happened. And all he said was ‘car bomb, car bomb.’ And then I couldn’t ask him for any information. He said, ‘I have no time for this.’ We haven’t seen anything since. But the cloud of smoke is still extremely thick right around the direct vicinity of the World Trade Center. I am now about, I’d say — what do you say, we’re about five or 10 blocks north of it now? About five or 10 blocks north of it, and just unbelievably the sun has come out. There’s blue sky above us. We started with sheer blackness. When that cloud of debris and of smoke came out, when the explosion happened, we couldn’t see anything, we couldn’t breathe. We tried to make our way a few blocks up and we’ve made contact with some other NBC crew here.”

10:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

“It’s terrifying here, Chris. When that last bomb — or when that last collapse happened, and the cloud came out, it was like something out of Hollywood. . . . It’s really eerie seeing the people who got caught in that blast, because everyone looks like a ghost.”

1:35 PM, Narrative Reporting

“What did you see in the epicenter when you came out of that explosion?”

1:36 PM, Narrative Reporting

“At the very start of the day when this happened, we were right in the epicenter where the explosion was. Right now I’m covered in the debris and the dust from the explosion itself. I was hit with a cloud of debris and smoke.”

1:37 PM, Narrative Reporting

“That is 7 World Trade Center. Apparently on the south side, that’s the side that’s not facing us, about halfway way up it’s still burning pretty badly, because it was rocked with a lot of the explosion from the force of the Twin World Trade Centers, when they came down. A large concern is what’s going to happen with that brown building now, which is why we keep getting moved further and further north. You can see people down on the street moving towards us. Even media who originally were allowed to have more sort of free rein to report this story, we’re being pushed out as well as, because there was some concern that there might be additional explosions, possibly other bombs.”

15. Rick Sanchez, MSNBC

10:52 AM, Narrative Reporting

“You have to understand that when this first happened, they certainly didn’t imagine that there would be second or tertiary explosions. So they parked some of their vehicles in those areas. And many of those vehicles — people in those vehicles have lost their lives.”

11:26 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Well, we’ve been told, as matter of fact moments ago, to try and get out of this area, because they’re moving everyone out. And the fear is, of course, that there are gas leaks, natural gas in this area that either fed into or out of the buildings that have exploded. And now those lines are open and may rupture.”

12:07 PM, Source-based Reporting

“Well, I’m in that area, if you’re familiar with this area of where West Broadway and Hudson come together, right at Chambers. That would put us about a block and a half away from the site of where the explosion was. That area has just been evacuated because police have found what they describe as a suspicious device. They fear that it might be something that could lead to another explosion. Obviously, there’s a real sense of caution here on the part of police. I spoke with some police officials moments ago, Chris. And they told me that they have reason to believe that one of the explosions at the World Trade Center — aside from the ones that may have been caused by the impact of the plane with the building — may have been caused by a van that was parked in the building that may have had some type of explosive device in it. So their fear is that there may have been explosive devices planted either in the building or in the adjacent area. And that’s why they’re being so cautious in this vicinity right now.”

12:09 PM, Narrative Reporting

“This is why it’s so difficult for them in this area where we are. Imagine, they came here originally to deal with a crisis. They set up some command centers, and they had many of their chiefs and many of their supervisors in the area of the building. The second and third explosions literally have wreaked havoc on those field forces and those command centers. So they’ve had to back up. And now they’re trying to see how they can approach it again.”

16. John Bussey, CNBC Contributor, Wall Street Journal Reporter

11:52 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“I was getting ready to talk with Haines [inaudible], and the fire was raging in both buildings. I looked up at the south building, the second World Trade Center to be hit, and explosions were coming down the building. It looked as if charges had been set on each floor and they were in succession going off. Now, this is probably not what was happening. It just looked that way to me. The building just blew out floor by floor, and it probably had something to do with the structural damage that was done by the planes hitting it. When I saw the floor-by-floor explosions happening, I dove out of the office where I was because the windows looked directly over the World Trade Center. We are in the World Financial Center directly across West Street from the two Trade Centers. By the time I came up from under a desk where I sought shelter, the entire floor, the entire room where I was completely dense with cement and smoke. You could not see.”

Note: Here Bussey has started to interpret the phenomena he witnessed as the building simply collapsing. However, it is clear from this and from his other accounts of the event (Source 1, Source 2) that his initial interpretation was that explosives were destroying the building.

11:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

“We were so close to the building that you could feel it hitting your shoulder as it rained down. But we were on the safe side of the building — much, much safer than where the firefighters were on the other side of the building, exposed directly to the explosion.”

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Note: Here Bussey has started to interpret the phenomena he witnessed as the building simply collapsing. However, it is clear from this and from his other accounts of the event (Source 1, Source 2) that his initial interpretation was that explosives were destroying the building.

11:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

“We were so close to the building that you could feel it hitting your shoulder as it rained down. But we were on the safe side of the building — much, much safer than where the firefighters were on the other side of the building, exposed directly to the explosion.”

17. Ron Insana, CNBC

12:41 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Well, I was heading down after we had learned of it, about 9:00 or 8:55 this morning, I had called in to see if we should go down and aid the coverage. And I was on my way down. We got fairly close to the building, and I ran into a camera man from MSNBC and we were trying to get across town past the World Trade Center to the Westside Highway, which is on the lower southwest corner of Manhattan to hook up with our colleagues from CNBC. And as we were going across one of the restricted zones, the building started to explode, I guess the only way I could describe it. It was hard to tell if it was an actual explosion, but the building began to come down. . . . We heard, we heard — I wouldn’t call it an explosion. We did notice that the building began to blow at the top, and that material began to come down. . . . And as we turned to run, material just began to fall. And like that scene in Independence Day, where wind was just whipping down the street in the wake of an explosion, that’s exactly what we experienced. It went down the street, curved around corners, and blew with a fair degree of intensity, again, Tyler, until the sky was completely black.”

1:08 PM, Eyewitness Reporting (appearing on NBC)

“As we were moving towards the building we saw the top begin to blow out in a plume of smoke. And we heard the noise associated with an implosion.”

18. Bob Pisani, CNBC

2:42 PM, Narrative Reporting

“And the real panic, I think in my mind, occurred, Maria, I was outside when you were when the second explosion occurred, because so many people had been attracted to what was going on. The explosion threw debris on top of a lot of people. That was when the real panic began.”

19. N.J. Burkett, WABC

9:59 AM (unknown air time), Eyewitness Reporting

“And you can see the two towers — a huge explosion now raining debris on all of us! We better get out of the way!”

20. Michelle Charlesworth, WABC

10:10 AM, Eyewitness and Narrative Reporting

“I can only hope that people got out of the area on the sidewalks below the South Tower before it came tumbling down. But it literally exploded and came down as though it had been hit. Plumes of smoke moving out into the harbor. . . . To give you some idea of where I am, I’m approximately 20, 30 blocks from where this latest explosion just happened.”

21. Nina Pineda, WABC

10:17 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

Bill Ritter: “Nina, I want you to describe one more time what it felt like when that tower collapsed. What did it feel like to you on the ground there?”

Nina Pineda: “We were standing probably about three blocks away advancing toward the scene to try and gather some photos and some videotape. And it felt like the entire ground shook. It felt like what it feels like to be in an earthquake. The ground was shaking followed by plumes and plumes of overwhelming smoke and flying debris, ash, and pieces of the building. As the ground was shaking . . .”

Lori Stokes: “Was there sound?”

Pineda: “There was a tremendous booming sound, and then it just felt like a rumbling. But it didn’t sound like an explosion. It sounded like a loud rumbling. And then the next thing we saw were the streets — the way the streets looked were just overcome by smoke, just plumes and plumes of smoke like a bomb had gone off, coming up the street as people were racing to get in front of these clouds of smoke, and not doing too good of a job.”

10:18 AM, Narrative Reporting

“And what were doing when the explosion happened was shooting pieces of the plane. There are pieces of the plane on Church Street.”

10:19 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Seconds before the explosion happened there was another kind of a renewed interest in really getting people away. Because, of course, out of curiosity everyone’s trying to get pictures of the World Trade Center on fire. They started screaming, ‘Get back! Get back! There’s another explosion happening.’ I guess they were being warned on their radios that the top was going to come down, because it was burning for the better part of half an hour. And they screamed to get people back. They started screaming, ‘Leave Manhattan if possible. Everybody leave Manhattan if possible.’”

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

Pineda: “The ladies that are with me were in the World Trade Center in the first building and escaped through the lobby where they report that they believe there was a bomb in the lobby.”

Michelle Scott (witness): “And even the turnstile was burnt and it was sticking. And they just told us to run.”

Igarlow Sweezer (witness): “And we were coming out, we passed the lobby, there was no lobby. So I believe the bomb hit the lobby first, and a couple of seconds and the first plane hit.”

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

“If you can see behind me, this a moment ago you could see all the way through. But from that last explosion that Jeff Rossen was telling us about, it is now again dark. It was strangely and eerily calm here in the Financial District because everything’s been evacuated.”

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

“The only thing left in the street are people’s shoes as they ran out of their shoes to escape the fire bombs and the explosions.”

22. Cheryl Fiandaca, WABC

10:38 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“I was right next to the South Tower. I was about two blocks away. It was just a small explosion, and then rocks and debris and everything started pouring down.”

Unknown time shortly after 10:38 AM, Eyewitness and Narrative Reporting

“Right, we were about two blocks away when the second explosion hit. And all we heard was just a small explosion. And then we saw a roar of an explosion, and all kinds smoke coming billowing out, debris falling down, people running, the firefighters and police screaming at everyone to run as the debris was coming down and hitting people.”

23. Joe Torres, WABC

Unknown Air Time, Eyewitness Reporting

“Ten o’clock this morning, photographer Glenn Mayrose and I, along with FBI agents, police officers, fire officials, we all thought for sure a bomb was set to explode underneath our feetoutside 7 World Trade Center. We took off running for our lives north on Church Street. We had no idea the top of one of the Twin Towers had just exploded. . . . As others looked back in shock and horror, we started another interview with a Port Authority engineer who worked at World Trade Center and spoke to us about the strength and integrity of the skyscrapers. Then, suddenly, the second tower erupted right before our eyes.”

24. Carol Marin, CBS Reporter appearing on WCBS

10:59 AM, Narrative Reporting

Carol Marin: “After the second tower went down, I was trying to make my way to a CBS crew or to try to help CBS crews if I could. And then, I don’t know what it was, John. But another explosion, a rolling blast of fire, a rolling column of fire towards us. My respect for fire and police already knew no bounds given the danger, it now exceeds what I thought it could, because a firefighter threw me into the wall of a building, covered me with his body as the flames approached us. And another police officer in New York named Brendan Duke, wherever he is, got me through smoke that neither one of us could see more than about a foot ahead of us. There are still people in there. Excuse me, I’ve breathed a fair amount of soot. The personnel, the police and the fire working in there are doing so against really dangerous odds. And they still don’t know if there’s something left to explode, John.”

John Slattery: “Where were you at the time?

Marin: “I was — not being a New Yorker, you’ll have to help me here. I came around Stuyvesant High School, and that street at the north end. And I came up and asked if anyone had seen a CBS crew. And I was directed by a firefighter who said, ‘Walk down the middle of the road, because you don’t know what’s going to come down.’ At which point, we heard a rumble like I’ve never heard before, and a firefighter ran towards me. We ran as fast as we could. I lost my shoes. I fell down. He picked me up and slammed me into a wall and covered me with him until we could make it more to safety.” 

John Slattery: “Was this from the first rolling blast or the second?”

Carol Marin: “John, I looked at my watch. It was about 10:44, is what my watch said. So it was after the second tower, I think the second tower explosion.”

Note: The focus of Marin’s account is one of several widely corroborated explosions that occurred between 10:38 AM and 11:30 AM after both towers had come down. However, Marin’s reporting qualifies her as an explosion reporter in regard to the Twin Towers because she references “the second tower explosion,” and it is clear she interprets the towers’ destruction as an explosion-based event.

25. John Slattery, WCBS

11:44 AM, Narrative Reporting

“There were many tears. There was an awful lot of anguish. And then, with subsequent explosions, and when a portion of World Trade 1 hit the ground, there was an enormous burst, a cloud of smoke and debris that started moving north.”

26. Marcella Palmer, WCBS

Unknown time, Eyewitness Reporting

Marcella Palmer: “We heard another explosion. And I’m assuming that’s the one that came from the lower level, since there were two.”

Unidentified Anchor: “Right, because it was like 18 minutes apart?”

Palmer: “Well, this is — no, the first explosion, then there was a second explosion in the same building. There were two explosions.”

27. Vince DeMentri, WCBS

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

“Very difficult to breathe, but look around. This must have been Ground Zero where this thing blew up. Car after car after car, buses, completely burned and obliterated straight down to the steel.”

28. Walter Perez, WNBC

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“We’re not sure exactly what happened, but it was another explosion on the far side of one of the buildings from where we’re standing. The reverberation — and another explosion on the right-hand side! Another building has gone up on the right-hand side of the road. People are now running down the street. We’re not sure if that was another explosion or if that was advanced debris.”

10:00 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“At this point, as you can tell, there’s absolute pandemonium in this area because of what has just happened. Exactly what, I can’t confirm. But on the far side of the building, there seemed to be another explosion and also on the right-hand side, there was also another explosion. We’re not sure if that was extra reverberation from what happened at the World Trade Center or if that was an added explosion. At this point, there’s a lot of smoke, massive plumes of smoke falling from the building across the street. People that were running down the street or walking are now running away. We don’t have any information as far as what the most recent reverberations were. But from two blocks away you could feel what happened.”

10:27 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“As you can imagine, it was a pretty frenzied scene here. Just a few moments ago, I’d say about 20 minutes ago, we’re not sure exactly what it was, we have not confirmed it. But something either exploded or fell off the side of the one building that was attacked and caused a massive plume of smoke.”

29. Kristen Shaughnessy, NY1

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

“Oh, it is just coming down, Pat. It is just coming down. It’s exploding. It is billowing. Pat, the debris is flying. I’m going to run.”

10:42 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Good morning again, Pat. I am actually just across from City Hall, I don’t have to tell you. With that second explosion the dust did not seem as bad.”

10:43 AM, Narrative Reporting

“It’s unbelievable because you hear these explosions. In fact, I just heard another one — I don’t know if it was like an aftereffect or what not — just while you were on the phone talking about the school closings. It wasn’t as big, obviously, as the other ones. But it still sent a tremor all the way over here, and I’m obviously on the other side of the World Trade Center, on the other side of the city. And it’s just unbelievable.”

10:45 AM, Narrative Reporting

Kristen Shaughnessy: “I’m hearing another explosion, just so you know. I’m hearing another rumble. It’s not as bad as the other ones were. But, I don’t know if you have pictures.”

Sharon Dizenhuz: “We have a picture and we don’t see anything beyond the enormous billows of smoke that have been there. But no additional bursts from our vantage point.”

Shaughnessy: “Okay, didn’t mean to interrupt, Sharon. What you can feel when these tremors come is that it literally comes up under your feet. That’s what it feels like. That’s the best way I know to describe it.”

30. Andrew Siff, NY1

10:12 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

Sharon Dizenhuz: “Andrew, when you saw this happen, what did it look like to you at close range? Because to us it seemed almost like dominoes, you know, going floor by floor by floor.”

Andrew Siff: “It was a little difficult to tell at first to figure out what was happening. We heard an explosion. We heard either an explosion or the sound of something making impact. We were in the middle. I was with news assistant Jason Post, and we were walking down West Street. And when we heard the sound we whipped around and saw just a buckling of the tower. And it just looked like it collapsed within itself. You could just see the top of the tower collapse. We can’t tell what happened to the bottom half of the tower from here.”

31. John Schiumo, NY1

10:18 AM, Narrative Reporting

“There’s another explosion as we speak!”

Note: Although the phenomenon Schiumo describes occurs between the destruction of the two towers, which happened to the South Tower at 9:59 AM and the North Tower 10:28 AM, we classify him as an explosion reporter because he refers to it as “another explosion” — thus suggesting he understood the destruction of the South Tower to be an explosion-based event — and because the explosion he describes may have come from the North Tower and been related to its eventual destruction 11 minutes later.

32. Andrew Kirtzman, NY1

11:11 AM, Narrative Reporting

“Mayor Giuliani appeared about 45 minutes ago on Chambers Street near Church Street. We began walking up Church Street when the second building proceeded to collapse, and a huge plume of smoke flew up into the air, went up into the air, and the mayor and his party started running up 6th Avenue. A plainclothes detective threw his arm around Mayor Giuliani as we took off, not knowing what the repercussions of a second explosion would be.”

11:12 AM, Narrative Reporting

“And for about 10 minutes they tried to break into the fire station as the mayor stood by and the police commissioner stood by waiting to set up an operations center. That’s — kind of wanted to paint a picture of kind of the seat-of-the-pants operation that they’ve been forced to construct here because of the explosion downtown.”

33. Jack Kelley, USA Today

Unknown time apparently around 5:30 PM, Source-based Reporting

Jack Kelley: “Apparently, what appears to have happened is that at the same time two planes hit the building, that the FBI most likely thinks that there was a car or truck packed with explosives underneath the building which also exploded at the same time and brought both of them down.”

USA Today Anchor: “Now that’s the first time we’re hearing that. So two planes and explosives that were in the building, is that correct?”

Kelley: “That is the working theory at this point. That is still unconfirmed, but that is what the FBI is going on at this point.”

34. First Unidentified Reporter at Giuliani and Pataki Press Conference

2:43 PM, Narrative Reporting

“Do you know anything about the cause of the explosions that brought down the two buildings yet? Was it caused by the planes or by something else? Those second explosions.”

35. Marcia Kramer, WCBS, at Giuliani and Pataki Press Conference

2:44 PM, Narrative Reporting 

“Mr. Mayor, could you tell us, do you expect any further attacks on New York? Is there anything to indicate that there could be more bombs, more planes out there? I know originally there was a report that eight planes had been hijacked. Four have only been accounted for. What about the remaining four? And is there any possibility that there could be bombs on the ground planted by someone?”

Note: Kramer was in the studio when the destruction of the Twin Towers occurred, but later went into the field to conduct reporting, including attending the afternoon press conference with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki. While watching the destruction of the first tower from the studio in the morning, Kramer hypothesized that it was caused by an explosion or bomb, which explains the rationale for her questions during the press conference.

At 10:02 AM, three minutes after the destruction of the first tower, she stated, “Right now police have to determine if whether that explosion was caused from the initial impact of the plane or whether it was something that was exploded on the ground. Generally speaking, for a building to collapse in on itself like that, it would seem to indicate — obviously, this is just early speculation — but it would seem to indicate that there could have been an explosion, a bomb planted on the ground, that would make the building collapse within itself.” Then, at 10:14 AM, she stated, “Well, we have a number of updates. Number one: CNN is now reporting that there was a third explosion at the World Trade Center, probably an explosion from the ground that caused World Trade Center 1 to collapse on top of itself. Again, there was a third explosion. It is unclear what caused it, whether it was a bomb or whether the first plane that crashed into the tower had somehow been booby-trapped with a bomb that was timed to explode later after the crash had occurred. But CNN is reporting that there was a third explosion that caused World Trade Center 1 to collapse within itself and then collapse on other surrounding buildings.”

This is a brief glimpse at how CNN and one of the anchors at WCBS interpreted the destruction of the Twin Towers. In our next article, we will delve much deeper into how the anchors at each of networks interpreted destruction of the Twin Towers.

36. Second Unidentified Reporter at Giuliani and Pataki Press Conference

2:54 PM, Narrative Reporting

“So the only National Guard we’ll see will be in Lower Manhattan in the bomb site area, they won’t be patrolling the rest of Manhattan?”

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Appendix B: Statements by Four Non-Explosion Reporters

1. Don Dahler, ABC

10:00 AM

Peter Jennings: “[Don] Dahler from ABC’s Good Morning America is down in the general vicinity. [Don], can you tell us what has just happened?”

Don Dahler: “Yes, Peter. It’s Don Dahler down here. I’m four blocks north of the World Trade Center. The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed as if a demolition team set off — when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings. It folded down on itself and it is not there anymore.”

Jennings: “Thanks very much, [Don].”

Dahler: “It has completely collapsed.”

Jennings: “The whole side has collapsed?”

Dahler: “The whole building has collapsed!”

Jennings: “The whole building has collapsed?”

Dahler: “The building has collapsed.”

Jennings: “That’s the southern tower you’re talking about?”

Dahler: “Exactly. The second building that we witnessed the airplane enter has been — the top half had been fully involved in flame. It just collapsed. There is panic on the streets. Thousands of people running up Church Street, which is what I’m looking out on, trying to get away. But the entire — at least as far as I can see, the top half of the building — at least half of it, I can’t see below that — half of it just started with a gigantic rumble, folded in on itself, and collapsed in a huge plume of smoke and dust.”

10:02 AM

Jennings: “The southern tower, 10:00 eastern time this morning, just collapsing on itself. This is a place where thousands of people work. We have no idea what caused this. If you wish to bring — anybody who’s ever watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you’re going to do this you have to get at the under infrastructure of a building and bring it down.”

Dahler: “Peter?”

Jennings: “Yes, Dan.”

Dahler: “What appeared to happen from my vantage point, the top part of the building was totally involved in fire, and there appeared to be no effort possible to put that fire out. It looked like the top part of the building was so weakened by the fire the weight of it collapsed the rest of the building. That’s what appeared to happen. I did not see anything happening at the base of the building. It all appeared to start at the top and then just collapse the rest of the building by the sheer weight of it. There was no explosion or anything at the base part of it. But I did see that the top part of it started to collapse. The walls started to bulge out, glass things coming out. And then it collapsed down on itself. And then it appeared to just fold down from there, from the very top.”

Jennings: “Thanks, Don, very much.”

2. Drew Millhon, ABC

11:09 AM

“I was at the corner of Varick and Canal, which is about 10 to 12 blocks north of the World Trade Center, where roughly 300 to 400 people were gathered watching the flames and the smoke from both the World Trade Centers going through the air. And I began to cross the street and I heard a collective scream from this group of people. And I looked up and the first World Trade Center that collapsed was falling down. The shriek lasted for quite a long time. And then many of these people fell into tears, just crying and sobbing. ‘I don’t know where my mother is. I don’t know where my friends are.’ That sort of thing was heard all around this crowd.”

3. Bob Bazell, NBC

10:08 AM

“I was actually standing and saw that collapse. And everybody here [at St. Vincent’s hospital on West 12^th Street] just gasped. Even the medical workers and the ambulance attendants when they saw that, people who are used to tragedy, grabbed each other and hugged each other. And some started to cry.”

4. John Zito, MSNBC

10:36 AM

Chris Jansing: “Were you able to feel the collapse of that second tower?”

John Zito: “The second tower, no. But the first tower that went down, I was very close, I’d say about five blocks away. And CNBC’s Ron Insana and I were trying to hook up with a truck or find any NBC contact down there. And we were very close to when that tower came down. And debris came showering down, and Ron and I both ran for cover. I managed to get inside an alcove of buildings. And all the scaffolding around collapse in front of me and broke the window next to me. And I climbed inside that and stayed in there for about 10 minutes. I couldn’t get out of there. It was pitch black outside.”

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Appendix C: Borderline Cases

This appendix contains three borderline cases that we determined could not be clearly classified as explosion or non-explosion reporters.

1. Minah Kathuria, NBC

Kathuria is a borderline case because it is unclear whether she suspects the destruction of the South Tower to have been a demolition or whether she is merely likening the destruction to a demolition in its appearance. In the case of Don Dahler, who is included in Appendix B as a non-explosion reporter, it is clear that he ultimately interpreted the destruction as a fire-induced collapse even though he likened the destruction to a demolition in its appearance.

10:11 AM

“We’re on the corner of Duane and West Broadway walking down towards the Twin Towers, and it just collapsed. It looked like a — it looked sort of like the building just demolished. Smoke, clouds — I mean, clouds of smoke everywhere.”

2. Brian Palmer, CNN

Palmer is a borderline case because he is asked by CNN’s Aaron Brown if it sounded like an explosion or just the sound of the collapse itself, and he does not favor one interpretation over the other, and he describes the sound as a “boom,” which was not strong enough in our view to classify him as an explosion reporter. We view Palmer as being distinct from Alan Dodds Frank, who, although he did not commit to one interpretation over the other, readily asserted the possibility that the destruction of the towers was an explosion-based event.

10:41 AM

Aaron Brown: “Brian, did it sound like there was an explosion before the second collapse, or was the noise the collapse itself?”

Brian Palmer: “Well, from our distance, I was not able to distinguish between an explosion and the collapse. We were several hundred yards away. But we clearly saw the building come down. I heard your report of a fourth explosion: I can’t confirm that. But we heard some ‘boom’ and then the building fold in on itself.”

3. Maria Bartiromo, CNBC

Bartiromo is a borderline case because she repeatedly uses the word “explosion” and her description of what she witnessed corroborates the explosion hypothesis, but although she uses the word “explosion” to describe what she witnessed, she attributes it to the sound of the buildings collapsing.

10:14 AM

Maria Bartiromo: “Now I’m standing on the floor of the exchange. But I just came back from outside and I am covered with soot. Basically, I was outside when that third explosion occurred. . . . The whole area turned pitch black when that third explosion happened. . . . I don’t know if you can see my jacket and my shoes, but I’m completely covered in white smoke from that third explosion.”

Unidentified Anchor: “Maria, do you know what that explosion was?”

Bartiromo: “That was about 10 — I’d say 15 minutes ago.”

Unidentified Anchor: “But do you know what caused it?”

Bartiromo: “No, I don’t.”

Mark Haines: “At the moment, Maria — and for the people with you — at the moment there are eyewitnesses who feel that another plane, a third plane . . .”

Bartiromo: “Yes, some people are saying that . . .”

Haines: “. . . hit the base of the South Tower.”

Bartiromo: “I was under the impression that it was just the actual collapse of the building. But some people are speculating that. I didn’t want to say that because . . . .”

Haines: “We had — at the moment it happened — we had MSNBC’s feed up, and we could hear people shouting ‘a third plane, a third plane.’ And then there was an explosion — ‘another plane, another plane,’ and there was an explosion.”

Bartiromo: “That’s right. And I was outside during that explosion.”

10:49 AM

“The second explosion I witnessed was about 10:00 AM, and that was, in retrospect, the collapse of that tower. And again, debris came at us. The whole area turned pitch black. All we could see was smoke. We couldn’t even breathe practically. We were closing our eyes. I actually went under the building across the New York Stock Exchange.”

12:24 PM

“I walked outside a little while ago. There are dust, white dust, this thick on the floor. Debris and smoke just settling after the explosions. I mentioned to you earlier in the coverage that I myself witnessed two of the explosions. The first one that I witnessed was when the second plane went into the second tower. And truly it was out of a movie. This plane going right in, putting a hole into the second tower. The second thing that I myself witnessed, the further collapse of one of the towers. And this huge bang down on Wall Street. Everyone ran for their lives.”

1:01 PM

“I was outside a little while ago. It almost looks like there’s snow on the ground. There are piles, and really just a thick sheet of dust — white, white dust — from the explosion. . . . Then about 15 minutes later I went back outside, thinking that it was safe again. And lo and behold I witnessed the third explosion, which of course was the sound of the tower collapsing. And at that time, when I heard the tower collapsing — again, it was a huge, huge thump and explosion noise. You’re looking at the scene right now. And that’s what we were all watching. The building collapsed. We all ran for our lives. Metal and papers and debris were flying at us in the face.”

1:37 PM

“Then, 10 minutes or 15 minutes later, I walked out there again thinking that, you know, we had seen the worst. And, of course, then there was a third explosion. And that third explosion was the sound of the second tower collapsing.”

2:42 PM

“Bob and I took a walk together outside and we came back really, really covered with it earlier, when I witnessed that third explosion, the third explosion being the collapse of one of the towers.”

*

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Ted Walter is the director of strategy and development for AE911Truth. He is the author of AE911Truth’s 2015 publication Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 and its 2016 publication World Trade Center Physics: Why Constant Acceleration Disproves Progressive Collapse and co-author of AE911Truth’s 2017 preliminary assessment of the Plasco Building collapse in Tehran. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Graeme MacQueen received his Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Harvard University and taught in the Religious Studies Department of McMaster University for 30 years. While at McMaster he became founding Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster, after which he helped developed the B.A. program in Peace Studies and oversaw the development of peace-building projects in Sri Lanka, Gaza, Croatia and Afghanistan. Other works in MacQueen’s body of historical 9/11 research include: 118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers; Waiting for Seven: WTC 7 Collapse Warnings in the FDNY Oral Histories; Did the Earth Shake Before the South Tower Hit the Ground?; Eyewitness Evidence of the Twin Towers’ Explosive Destruction; and Foreknowledge of Building 7’s Collapse.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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*** 

An Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX, registration C-FSCY performing flight AC-348 (dep Aug 26th) from Vancouver, BC to Ottawa, ON (Canada), was enroute at FL370 about 50 minutes prior to estimated landing in Ottawa when one of the pilots reported he was not feeling well and was unable to continue duties.

The other pilot consulted with dispatch and medical services, a decision was made to continue to Ottawa, where the aircraft landed without further incident about 50 minutes later.

The Canadian TBS reported a PAN PAN was declared, medical services met the aircraft after arrival.

Aircraft Type: Boeing 737-800MAX

Aircraft Registration: C-FSCY

ICAO Type Designator: B38M

Pilot Incapacitations in August 2023, Three Pilot Deaths

Aug. 17, 2023 – IndiGo Flight (NAG-PNQ) Nagpur to Pune, India, pilot 40 year old Manoj Subramanium died after collapsing at the boarding gate, about to board.

Aug. 16, 2023 – Qatar Airways Flight QR579 (DEL-DOH) Delhi to Doha, Qatar, 51 year old pilot collapsed as a passenger inflight and died, plane diverted to Dubai.

Aug. 14, 2023 – LATAM Flight LA505 (MIA-SCL) Miami to Santiago, Chile – 2 hours into 8hr flight, 56 year old Captain Ivan Andaur collapsed and died in the lavatory – plane diverted to Panama City!

Aug. 9, 2023 – United Airlines UAL1309 (SRQ-EWR) Sarasota to Newark, pilot had a heart attack and lost consciousness in flight

Aug. 7, 2023 – TigerAIR Flight IT237 (CTS-TPE) Sapporo to Taipei, copilot had a medical emergency after landing plane in Taipei

Recent Pilot Incapacitations 

July 19, 2023 – Eurowings Discover Flight 4Y-1205 (HER-FRA) Heraklion to Frankfurt, pilot incapacitated, first officer took control, landed safely

Jun. 7, 2023 – Air Canada Flight ACA692 (YYZ-YYT) Toronto to St.John’s, First Officer became incapacitated, deadheading Captain assumed duties

Jun. 4, 2023 – Cessna Citation N611VG flying Tennessee to Long Island, fighter jets spotted pilot slumped over in cockpit unconscious, plane crashed and all onboard died

May 11, 2023 – HiSKy Flight H4474 (DUB-KIV) Dublin to Chisinau (Moldova), 20 min after liftoff pilot became “unable to act”, plane diverted to Manchester

May 4, 2023 – British Charter TUI Airways Flight BY-1424 (NCL-LPA) Newcastle to Las Palmas Spain pilot became ill, plane diverted back to NCL.

April 4, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2102 (BOI-SFO) – captain was incapacitated, first officer was only one in control of the aircraft.

March 25, 2023 – TAROM Flight RO-7673 TSR-HRG diverted to Bucharest as 30 yo pilot had chest pain, then collapsed

March 22, 2023 – Southwest Flight WN6013 LAS-CMH diverted as pilot collapsed shortly after take-off, replaced by non-Southwest pilot

March 18, 2023 – Air Transat Flight TS739 FDF-YUL first officer was incapacitated about 200NM south of Montreal

March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off

March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight UA2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains

March 11, 2023 – British Airways (CAI-LHR) pilot collapsed in Cairo hotel and died, was scheduled to fly Airbus A321 from Cairo to London

March 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia Flight VA-717 ADL-PER Adelaide to Perth flight was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure.

Military Pilot Incapacitations

Aug. 18, 2023 – US Army Aviation Center (Alabama) student pilot went into cardiac arrest behind the controls midflight (Aug.18, 2023), Instructor landed plane – pilot was dead for 18 minutes!

Recent Pilot Deaths

Pilot death July 16, 2023 – 2006 Piper Meridian, flying from Westchester NY, crashed at Martha’s Vineyard Airport after pilot had medical emergency upon final approach and passenger took control of the plane and attempted a landing. Pilot, 79 year old Randolph Bonnist, died later in hospital.

Pilot death – May 2023 – 4 Singapore Airlines pilots died suddenly in May 2023

Pilot death – May 9, 2023 – United Airlines and US Air Force Pilot Lt. Col. Michael Fugett, age 46, died unexpectedly at his home

Pilot death – May 3, 2023 – Air Transat and Air Canada Pilot Eddy Vorperian, age 48, died suddenly during layover in Croatia

Pilot death – April 13, 2023 – Phil Thomas, graduate of Flight Training Pilot academy in Cadiz, Spain (FTEJerez) died suddenly.

Pilot death – March 17, 2023 – 39 year old Westjet Pilot Benjamin Paul Vige died suddenly in Calgary

Pilot death – March 11, 2023 – British Airways pilot died of heart attack in crew hotel in Cairo before a Cairo to London flight (name & age not released

*

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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In commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, we repost this article by Ted Walter and the late Prof. Graeme MacQueen, first published in 2022.

*** 

This article is the second installment of a two-part research project we began in July 2020 with the article “How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11.”

In that article, our goal was to determine the prevalence, among television reporters on 9/11, of the hypothesis that explosions had brought down the Twin Towers. Through careful review of approximately 70 hours of news coverage on 11 different channels, we found that the explosion hypothesis was not only common among reporters but was, in fact, the dominant hypothesis.

Our second question, which we set aside for the present article, was to determine how, despite its prevalence, the explosion hypothesis was supplanted by the hypothesis of fire-induced collapse.

In this article, we shall concentrate not on reporters in the field, as in Part 1, but on the news anchors and their guests who were tasked with discovering and making sense of what was happening. As we trace the supplanting of the explosion hypothesis with the fire-induced collapse hypothesis, we witness the great shift toward what quickly became the Official Narrative.

We do not see our task as trying to discover whether the Official Narrative of 9/11 is true or false. In the 21 years since the attacks took place, it has been proven beyond all reasonable doubt, we believe, that the Official Narrative is false.

While we support and participate in the further accumulation of evidence for this position, as well as the presentation of this evidence to the public, we believe it is also important to look into how the triumph of the Official Narrative was accomplished. If we are able to discover this, we will greatly advance our understanding of the psychological operation conducted on September 11, 2001 — and, thus, our understanding of how other psychological operations are perpetrated on the public.

Our Argument

Our argument is that two strategies were employed to accomplish the triumph of the Official Narrative:

(a) Where news anchors were sincerely dedicated to discovering the facts of the situation, Strategy One was employed. This strategy involved directly confronting the news anchor of the relevant network with an “expert” who would explain that the destruction of the Twin Towers was caused by structural failure induced by the airplane impact and the ensuing fires. This would allay concerns about reports of explosions in the towers and would domesticate the news anchor so that he or she would stop raising problematic questions. Of course, as we can see clearly today, these experts could not possibly have known what they so confidently proclaimed. In fact, we can now see that their explanations were simply wrong. But their interviews seem to have accomplished their goals on 9/11. To illustrate this strategy, we shall choose as our chief examples CNBC and CNN, whose anchors showed the most interest in the explosion hypothesis, and we will also look at CBS and NBC.

(b) Strategy Two was used on all networks, regardless of the stance of the news anchors. This strategy involved developing two related narratives — two engaging, emotionally charged stories — that appeared to explain the day’s horrors and offered viewers a set of active responses. They were not scientific hypotheses and were not directly related to the destruction of the Twin Towers, but indirectly they appeared to favor the fire-induced collapse hypothesis more than the explosion hypothesis. By the end of the day, they had silenced the explosion hypothesis.

The first of these two stories is what we shall call the War on Terror narrative. This grand narrative, resonant with older storied events, explained how the righteous, the civilized, the United States had been subjected to an act of war from the evil, the uncivilized, the terrorists supported by nations in the Middle East and Central Asia; and how American leaders must respond to this aggression with an initiative that was warlike on many levels. This narrative was articulated early (before noon on 9/11) and was repeated throughout the day. It established the foundations of the Global War on Terror.

The second story is the Bin Laden narrative, which nested within the wider War on Terror narrative and was used to transform myth into plausible history. According to this narrative, an evil Saudi national based in Afghanistan had masterminded the attacks.

It is extremely important to grasp the relationship between these two narratives and what may seem as detailed — even esoteric — facts about the destruction of the Twin Towers. If the buildings were destroyed by pre-planted explosives — as we believe has been demonstrated through years of research — the two narratives, however rational and moral they appeared to be to many television viewers, are profoundly misleading in their political analysis and profoundly immoral in their prescriptions.

Numerical Analysis of Statements by News Anchors and Experts Articulating the Explosion Hypothesis

To understand how the explosion hypothesis was supplanted by the fire-induced collapse hypothesis, it is first important to establish whether, and to what degree, the explosion hypothesis was considered by news anchors, their guests, and others at the television networks.

As we showed in Part 1, the great majority of reporters who witnessed the destruction of the Twin Towers either perceived an explosion or perceived the towers as exploding. This hypothesis of how the Twin Towers were destroyed then continued to be prevalent among reporters on the ground, who essentially viewed the destruction of the towers as an explosion-based attack subsequent to the airplane strikes.

Given what the reporters were communicating to the rest of the world, how did their colleagues in the studios absorb this information and make sense of what had happened for the viewing public?

As in Part 1, to answer this question, we reviewed approximately 70 hours of continuous news coverage from 11 different networks, cable news channels, and local network affiliates.

Table 1 below shows the news coverage we compiled and reviewed. (For further description of our data collection, see Part 1 of the series.) Table 2 lists the mentions of the explosion hypothesis by network. Table 3 lists the mentions of the explosion hypothesis by the time they occurred.

Videos and transcripts of every mention of the explosion hypothesis are shown in Appendix A.

Table 1: Television Coverage Compiled

Table 2: Explosion Hypothesis Mentions by Network

Table 3: Explosion Hypothesis Mentions by Time

In total, when we include seven ambiguous mentions of the explosion hypothesis — which we defined as an anchor describing the occurrence of an explosion in conjunction with the collapse of either tower but not implying that the explosion necessarily caused the collapse — we found that the explosion hypothesis was mentioned 70 times across all 11 channels.

To our great interest, we found that news anchors or guest experts on every channel, with the exception of Fox News, at some point in the day believed, considered, or at least articulated the possibility that explosions had caused the Twin Towers’ destruction. In addition, several channels, including Fox News, displayed banners or captions or crawls in their lower thirds stating that explosions had caused the Twin Towers’ destruction.

The explosion hypothesis was first mentioned by several anchors on several different channels within minutes of the South Tower’s destruction at 9:59 AM and — within our pool of television coverage — was mentioned for the final time by NBC’s Tom Brokaw at 4:48 PM. It is noteworthy that more than half of the mentions of the explosion hypothesis occurred in the first 31 minutes after the South Tower’s destruction. As we shall discuss below, on some channels the explosion hypothesis was eventually explicitly discarded while on other channels it simply stopped being mentioned.

In some cases, discussion of the explosion hypothesis was driven by the anchors’ own observation and intuition while in other cases it was driven by information provided by reporters on the ground (and, in some cases, both). In a few cases, especially in the lower third captions, mention of the explosion hypothesis appears to have been driven by information circulated on the newswire.

Altogether, the data reflect that the explosion hypothesis was broadly, though in most cases fleetingly, considered by news anchors, their guests, and others at the networks.

The one notable exception was on Fox News, where the anchor, Jon Scott, assertively pushed the fire-induced collapse hypothesis while fabricating the War on Terror and Bin Laden narratives before our eyes. All the while, he seemed uniquely unsurprised and unbothered by the events, as compared to other anchors who exhibited varying degrees of shock, disbelief, and horror. Although Fox News reporters on the ground, like those of other networks, were describing explosions, Scott went out of his way to correct their impressions of what they had witnessed and make the fire-induced collapse hypothesis seem credible to viewers. Because of Scott, no experts were needed to establish the Official Narrative on Fox News. There was only one hypothesis in the foreground, and this hypothesis was so quickly solidified that by noon on 9/11, all of the major elements of the coming Global War on Terror had been set forth.

However, for the anchors who were sincerely dedicated to discovering the facts, Strategy One was employed.

Strategy One for Accomplishing the Triumph of the Official Narrative: An “Expert” Visits a News Anchor

In discussing Strategy One we shall use CNBC and CNN as our chief examples and also look briefly at CBS and NBC.

CNBC

CNBC saw, perhaps, the most notable rise and fall of the explosion hypothesis.

CNBC’s consideration of the explosion hypothesis started at 10:01 AM with news anchor Mark Haines hearing from witnesses on the street that a third airplane had crashed into the South Tower. He surmised that this third airplane impact was responsible for the South Tower’s total destruction.

In a discussion with CNBC reporter Maria Bartiromo, who was on the ground at the New York Stock Exchange, Haines’ suspicion of a third airplane causing the South Tower’s destruction was reinforced by Bartiromo’s repeated reference to “the explosion,” which Bartiromo deduced was “just the actual collapse of the building” but that Haines suggested was a third airplane impact.

After about 15 minutes, Haines was informed that the Associated Press was reporting only two airplane strikes. As Haines began to accept that there was no third airplane strike, he and another anchor (we were unable to determine this person’s name) agreed that some sort of explosion must have caused the South Tower’s destruction. At around 10:21 AM, Haines looked closely at footage of the South Tower’s destruction and began to analyze it with an accuracy and clarity that was unique among news anchors:

“But here you see an enormous explosion about midway up in the South Tower, and the entire structure collapses. It just disappears. . . . Now that’s interesting from a forensic point of view. The explosion that leveled the South Tower came, it seemed, roughly halfway up. And yet it took the entire tower out.”

Minutes later, Haines reacted in horror as he watched the destruction of the North Tower in real time, exclaiming:

“We have an enormous explosion in the remaining World Trade Tower Center!”

Haines then went on to analyze the destruction as he had done before with the following series of comments:

“It happened the same way. The explosion started high in the building and worked its way down.”

“There you see — I don’t understand, and I would be very anxious to hear in the future some, the forensics of this situation.”

“This is — there you see the building imploding. It, it — do you see what’s happening? Now, what would cause that I don’t know.”

In response to Haines’ comments, his co-anchor, Bill Griffeth, acknowledged the possibility of what Haines was suggesting, stating:

“Certainly, the structure had been weakened by the impact. But you’d have to wonder if there was something else there. But we just don’t know at this point.”

Haines responded with his opinion that the destruction of both towers could not have been accidental:

“I don’t think . . . I think we’re safe — here I think I’m on safe ground, Bill. I don’t think — This was clearly, the way the structure is collapsing, this was the result of something that was planned. This is not — it’s not accidental that the first tower just happened to collapse and then the second tower just happened to collapse in exactly the same way. How they accomplished this, we don’t know. But clearly this is what they wanted to accomplish.”

A few minutes later, at around 10:34 AM, Haines left the studio, apparently in shock, and did not return for the day. We can only wonder how aggressively Haines might have continued to pursue the explosion hypothesis had he remained in the newsroom. (Sadly, Haines died of congestive heart failure in 2011.)

At 11:07 AM, co-anchor Griffeth brought structural engineer Eric Gass into the studio for an interview, asking him “whether it would be necessary for a further attack upon the buildings before they would collapse.” Gass happened to be working on the construction of a nearby building for CNBC at the time.

Over the course of his interview, Gass extinguished any remaining suspicion Griffeth and others may have had, making a number of unfounded assertions about the inability of the buildings to withstand the airplane impacts and fires.

Bill Griffeth: “Which is something I wanna get into here, Sue, because there’s been all kinds of speculation about how that would happen, whether it would be necessary for a further attack upon the buildings before they would collapse. And as it happens we have with us in studio here is a structural engineer, Eric Gass, who happens to be in the process of building a building that we’re putting together here at CNBC down the road. And you would have some sense since you’ve been a part of the construction of buildings of this magnitude, Eric, to give us some insight of what would happen with the kind of damage that was done with the jet attacks on the buildings and whether that’s enough to bring those buildings down by themselves.”

Eric Gass: “Well, I think you’ve a got a couple of issues that are going on here. One is, these are concrete reinforced structures. And concrete is a compressive material. So as you can see, especially from the second attack, as it comes in, it appears to shear into the side of the building.”

Herrera: “The plane.”

Griffeth: “Right.”

Gass: “Absolutely. So you have a couple of issues. One, it probably has taken all the concrete away from the steel.”

Herrera: “And now you’re seeing that second plane.”

Gass: “Absolutely. So this structure, and I think as you see as it will collapse later on, it begins to tilt to that side. It has taken all of the concrete and put it into tensile property.”

Herrera: “And these are large planes.”

Gass: “Absolutely. If we’re dealing with a Boeing 767, you’re not just dealing with a large plane, you’re dealing with a large plane that’s coming in at over 500 mph. So you have all of the impact going in to those members. There is no building that I’m aware of that can take this kind of impact.”

Griffeth: “So as we watch the first of the towers collapsing there, it was enough from the initial attack by the jet to bring the tower down eventually. Is that your understanding?”

Gass: “I would say so. Especially the second thing you would have going on, of course, is the airplane’s going to have a great deal of fuel, and the fire is going to be working against that structural steel, which of course is why the fire codes are so stringent in this country. So then you’re going to have a problem with once the fire takes place it’s going to work against the structural strength of that steel and begin to collapse.”

…

Griffeth: “So you’re not surprised that these would go down just based on the jet crashing into the buildings here, Eric?

Gass: “No. As a matter of act, as we were seeing the explosion the first time, that was the first thing that occurred to us, is that there would be an immediate weakening on that side of the building. I think if you look at the second tower that collapsed, you will see that it begins to collapse straight down, which as it appears from what happened in the impact, it impacted much more into the center of the building. Again, you would have gotten rid of all of the ability for fire protection to have gotten rid of some of the fire and the flames, which apparently is why it took longer. The other point too is that you have 15 floors of extremely heavy material bearing down on this situation. It would be impossible to see why it would be able to hold up.”

…

Griffeth: “The terrorist bombing of some years ago against the World Trade Center, which occurred essentially in the parking structure below the building, why didn’t that bring that down at the time?”

Gass: “Well, I think you’re dealing with a different issue. One, you’re dealing with a static explosion, where someone pulls a small truck underneath so you have all of the concrete not only keeping both of the floors above and below. But you’re dealing with the biggest structural strength of that building is sitting underground. Of course, New York is pure bedrock. So that would have been the worst place to attack it. Clearly it did not do that much damage, enough structurally to make major structural problems with the design, as I understand it. Here, you have a much larger vehicle, with much more speed, and literally shearing any of its structural capacity in those particular areas.”

Hours later, at around 2:25 PM, Griffeth repeated Gass’s unfounded assertions.

Griffeth: “We were witness to this horrifying spectacle of the Twin Towers just disintegrating to the ground. And we had heard from this structural engineer that we interviewed earlier that once these towers had been struck by these jets — I mean, these are structures that are built mainly, of course with steel, but with concrete. The concrete essentially was liquefied. Not to that degree, but it just was very suspect in the structure. And according to him it was only a matter of time before it came down. And course that is exactly what happened after the crashes.”

To summarize, engineer Eric Gass, the “expert,” was able to put a stop to the legitimate questioning of Mark Haines and Bill Griffeth. Although we know now that Gass’s hypothesis is false, it would have seemed plausible at the time both to news anchors and the viewing public.

CNN

Shortly after 9:59 AM, news anchor Aaron Brown was standing on a roof in New York City about 30 blocks from the World Trade Center. He was looking directly at the South Tower as it was destroyed. He was, therefore, not just a journalist and not just a news anchor: He was an eyewitness.

He immediately interrupted a journalist who was reporting live on the Pentagon:

“Wow! Jamie. Jamie, I need you to stop for a second. There has just been a huge explosion…we can see a billowing smoke rising…and I can’t…I’ll tell you that I can’t see that second Tower. But there was a cascade of sparks and fire and now this…it looks almost like a mushroom cloud, explosion, this huge, billowing smoke in the second Tower…”

Having reported honestly what he saw with his own eyes, Brown next did exactly what he should have done as a responsible news anchor. He let his audience know that, while he did not know what had happened, it was clear that there were two hypotheses in play, the explosion hypothesis and the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. And then he went to his reporters on the scene, as well as to authorities, to try and sort out which hypothesis was correct.

Here are examples of his setting forth — after the first building was destroyed and again after the second was destroyed — the rival hypotheses:

At 10:03 AM: “…and then just in the last several minutes there has been a second explosion or, at least, perhaps not an explosion, perhaps part of the building simply collapsed. And that’s what we saw and that’s what we’re looking at.”

At 10:04 AM: “This is just a few minutes ago…we don’t know if…something happened, another explosion, or if the building was so weakened…it just collapsed.”

At 10:29 AM: “[W]e believe now that we can say that both, that portions of both towers of the World Trade Center, have collapsed. Whether there were second explosions, that is to say, explosions other than the planes hitting them, that caused this to happen we cannot tell you.”

At 11:17 AM: “Our reporters in the area say they heard loud noises when that happened. It is unclear to them and to us whether those were explosions going on in the building or if that was simply the sound of the collapse of the buildings as they collapsed, making these huge noises as they came down.”

Brown’s honest reporting of his perceptions was balanced repeatedly by his caution. Here is an example:

At 10:53 AM: “…it almost looks…it almost looks like one of those implosions of buildings that you see, except there is nothing controlled about this…this is devastation.”

His next move, having set forth the two hypotheses, was to ask his reporters on the scene, who were choking on pulverized debris and witnessing gruesome scenes, what they perceived.

Reporter Brian Palmer said honestly that he was not in a position to resolve the issue.

Brown at 10:41 AM: “Was there…Brian, did it sound like there was an explosion before the second collapse, or was the noise the collapse itself?”

Palmer: “Well, from our distance…I was not able to distinguish between an explosion and the collapse. We were several hundred yards away. But we clearly saw the building come down. I heard your report of a fourth explosion: I can’t confirm that. But we heard some ‘boom’ and then the building fold in on itself.”

Two other reporters were more definite about what they perceived.

Brown at 10:29 AM: “Rose, whadya got?”

Rose Arce: “I’m about a block away. And there were several people that were hanging out the windows right below where the plane crashed, when suddenly you saw the top of the building start to shake, and people began leaping from the windows in the north side of the building. You saw two people at first plummet and then a third one, and then the entire top of the building just blew up…”

…

Brown at 10:57 AM: “Who do we have on the phone, guys? Just help me out here. Patty, are you there?”

Patty Sabga: “Yes, I am here.”

Brown: “Whaddya got?”

Sabga: “About an hour ago I was on the corner of Broadway and Park Place — that’s about a thousand yards from the World Trade Center — when the first tower collapsed. It was a massive explosion. At the time the police were trying desperately to evacuate people from the area. When that explosion occurred, it was like a scene out of a horror film.”

Clearly, the explosion hypothesis was flourishing on CNN. In what is striking to read today, even the news caption at the bottom of the screen at 10:03 AM, shortly after the destruction of the South Tower, was dramatically articulating the explosion hypothesis:

“THIRD EXPLOSION SHATTERS WORLD TRADE CENTER IN NEW YORK”

After checking with his reporters, Brown continued to explore his two hypotheses, this time by consulting authorities.

First Brown consulted a political authority. He got the mayor of New York City on the line.

Brown at 12:31 PM: “Sir, do you believe that…was there another set of explosions that caused the buildings to collapse, or was it the structural damage caused by the planes?”

Giuliani: “I don’t, I don’t know, I, uh, I, uh…I, I saw the first collapse and heard the second ‘cause I was in a building when the second took place. I think it was structural but I cannot be sure.”

Later in the afternoon, Giuliani had more confidence in his script. At a press conference that aired on nearly every channel, he ruled out the explosion hypothesis when a reporter asked him, “Do you know anything about the cause of the explosions that brought down the two buildings yet?”

Finally, at 4:20 PM, Brown was visited by an engineer, Jim DeStefano, who we were told was with the National Council of Structural Engineers (the actual name of DeStefano’s organization is the National Council of Structural Engineers Associations). His brief comments put an end to Brown’s explosion hypothesis and rendered CNN’s news coverage safe for public consumption.

Brown: “Jim DeStefano is a structural engineer. He knows about big buildings and what happens in these sorts of catastrophic moments. He joins us from Deerfield, Connecticut on the phone. Jim, the plane hits…what…and I hope this isn’t a terribly oversimplified question, but what happens to the building itself?”

DeStefano: “…It’s a tremendous impact that’s applied to the building when a collision like this occurs. And it’s clear that that impact was sufficient to do damage to the columns and the bracing system supporting the building. That coupled with the fire raging and the high temperatures softening the structural steel then precipitated a destabilization of the columns and clearly the columns buckled at the lower floors causing the building to collapse.”

DeStefano, surely, had a right to make a guess, but he had no right to claim that he knew what had happened. He did not say, “Here is one hypothesis.” He said, in effect, “This is what happened.” But there had been no photographic or video analysis of the buildings’ destruction, no analysis of the physical remains, no cataloguing of eyewitnesses, no examination of seismic or thermal evidence, and so on. He was shooting in the dark, and he was silencing a journalist who was sincerely trying to discover the truth.

As we have discovered since that day, DeStefano’s confidence was misplaced and his hypothesis was wrong. But his explanation appears to have succeeded in ending Aaron Brown’s interest in the explosion hypothesis.

CBS and ABC

The deployment of Strategy One was not unique to CNBC and CNN. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw, the evening news anchors for CBS, ABC and NBC, respectively, all considered the explosion hypothesis at various points during the course of the day. Two of them, Rather and Jennings, were met with experts who apparently put an end to their curiosity.

In Rather’s case, he was visited by a government official named Jerome Hauer. On 9/11, Hauer was director of the federal Office of Public Health Preparedness and was senior advisor to the Secretary for National Security and Emergency Management. In January 2001, Hauer had been hired to run a new crisis management group at Kroll Associates, the security consulting firm that had designed the security system for the World Trade Center complex in response to the 1993 bombing. And before that, from 1996 to 2000, he was director of the New York City Office of Emergency Management (OEM), where he was chiefly — and controversially — responsible for installing the OEM’s Emergency Operations Center on the 23rd floor of World Trade Center Building 7, which would also collapse later that day.

A little after 12:00 PM on 9/11, Rather and Hauer had this exchange:

Rather: “Is this massive destruction of the World Trade Center — based on what you know, and I recognize we’re dealing with so few facts — is it possible that just plane crash could have collapsed these buildings? Or would it have required the sort of prior positioning of other explosives in the building? What do you think?”

Hauer: “No, my sense is that just, one, the velocity of the plane, and the fact that you have a plane filled with fuel hitting that building that burned. The velocity of the plane certainly had an impact on the structure itself. And then the fact that it burned and you had that intense heat probably weakened the structure as well. I think it was simply the planes hitting the building and causing the collapse.”

One would expect a national security official, especially one working for a company responsible for security at the World Trade Center, to be pursuing all possibilities. Indeed, we know that officials at the FDNY, the NYPD, and the FBI suspected that explosives had brought down the towers. Hauer’s confidence that explosives had nothing to do with the towers’ destruction, less than two hours after it had happened, is at best grossly irresponsible.

In the case of Jennings, he interviewed a structural engineer by the name of Jon Magnusson, who on 9/11 was a partner at the structural engineering firm that had designed the Twin Towers. Magnusson would go on to be a member of the FEMA Building Performance Study, the first official investigation into the Twin Towers’ and Building 7’s destruction.

Earlier that morning, upon learning that the South Tower had completely collapsed, Jennings remarked:

“We have no idea what caused this. If you wish to bring — anybody who’s ever watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you’re going to do this you have to get at the under infrastructure of a building and bring it down.”

Twenty minutes later, apparently having trouble accepting NBC reporter Don Dahler’s interpretation that the building had simply collapsed from the airplane impact and fires, Jennings said:

“I’m still desperately confused, John, about what may have caused the building to collapse.”

To our knowledge, Jennings did not articulate the explosion hypothesis after that point. Nevertheless, later in the day, Magnusson was brought on to explain to Jennings and millions of viewers why the buildings had collapsed. Magnusson’s interview on ABC was preceded by a pre-recorded piece that put forth the fire-induced collapse hypothesis, basing its claims on advice from engineers at Magnusson’s firm. Once the piece ended, Jennings began his interview with Magnusson.

Jennings: “This is the second time from Robert Krulwich and also from some architect engineers we talked with a little bit earlier that say it was the heat which caused the building to collapse, because the steel at the top of the building would maybe have only been able to sustain an hour, hour-and-a-half of intense fire, and then the steel begins — as Robert points out so clearly — collapse upon itself all the way down to the bottom.

“I think we have with us, on the phone or in person, from Seattle, Jon Magnusson, who is an engineer — Jon, are you there? — Jon Mangusson, who is with the company that actually built the World Trade Center towers. Jon, have you heard our two laymen explanations tonight of what it was we think collapsed the building? And do you agree or disagree?”

Magnusson: “I agree. . . . The description of the fact that steel, when it gets up to 1,500, 1600°F, that it loses its strength is accurate. The buildings actually survived the impact of both the planes. And it was really the fire that created the disaster.”

Jennings: “And the upper floor fell on the next floor down, which fell on the next floor, and the sheer accumulation of weight just forced the whole building to collapse on itself?”

Magnusson: “Right. From the videotape — and I can only go from what I’ve seen on television — but the videotape showed that several of the upper floors fell onto the next lower floor that was still intact. And once that happens, there’s going to be an instant overload situation. And then it will fail. And then that will drop down to the next floor, into another instant overload situation. And so the floors just progressively collapsed down all the way to the bottom.”

Magnusson was somewhat more cautious in his explanation than Gass, DeStefano and Hauer. At the same time, he was arguably the most equipped to recognize that the towers had possibly been destroyed with explosives, yet he advocated solely for the fire-induced collapse hypothesis. As a partner at the very firm that had designed the Twin Towers, his early endorsement of the fire-induced collapse hypothesis was essential in supplanting the explosion hypothesis.

Was it chance that led a series of “experts” to disarm these independent-minded news anchors with one false hypothesis after another? We think that is unlikely.

Consider that many building professionals and technical experts are known to have immediately suspected that explosives were responsible for the Twin Towers’ destruction. Notable examples of experts who first suspected explosives but then quickly changed their position include Van Romero, an explosives expert from New Mexico Tech, and Ronald Hamburger, a structural engineer who went on to work on the FEMA Building Performance Study and later on the NIST World Trade Center investigation. On 9/11, Romero told the Albuquerque Journal:

“The collapse of the buildings was ‘too methodical’ to be the chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures…. ‘My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse.’”

On September 19, 2001, Hamburger told the Wall Street Journal:

“‘It appeared to me that charges had been placed in the building,’…Upon learning that no bombs had been detonated, ‘I was very surprised.’”

Much like these experts, Dr. Leroy Hulsey, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who conducted a four-year computer modeling of Building 7’s collapse, has said that he told his students the week after 9/11 that the Twin Towers could not have collapsed in the way they did due to the airplane impacts and ensuing fires. Similarly, Dr. Fadil Al-Kazily, a civil engineering professor from Sacramento State, once commented to this author (Ted Walter) that he was not aware of a single colleague of his who believed the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.

So, how is it that every “expert” who appeared on national television that day advocated the fire-induced collapse hypothesis when there were so many who favored the explosion hypothesis?

Although it cannot be proven, we suspect that intentionality, coordination, and deception are on display in these interviews. We shall see even more of this in the deployment of Strategy Two.

Strategy Two for Accomplishing the Triumph of the Official Narrative: The War on Terror and Bin Laden Narratives

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live, or to justify taking lives…tell ourselves stories that save us and stories that are the quicksand in which we thrash and the well in which we drown.” — Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby

On 9/11, the power of narrative to evoke horror, anger and a call-to-arms was drawn on by one prominent television guest after another. Genuine evidence, such as was produced early in the day by eyewitnesses, was pushed aside by the two narratives outlined below — the quasi-metaphysical War on Terror narrative and the Bin Laden narrative, which nested within the wider War on Terror narrative.

To the extent that these narratives were convincingly conveyed to viewers, no further argument against the explosion hypothesis was necessary. The foreign evildoers had crashed airplanes into the buildings and the buildings had come down, and that was all one needed to know.

The process of sowing these two narratives relied in part on a propaganda technique visible throughout the day’s coverage. It may be called “normalizing the abnormal.”

A good example of this technique can be seen later in the day. Both before and after World Trade Center Building 7 came down, the television audience was led to believe that such an event was normal. After all, the building was on fire, so of course it might come down! This was exemplified by the captions that began running on CNN around 4:10 PM — “BUILDING 7 AT WORLD TRADE CTR. ON FIRE, MAY COLLAPSE” — and on Fox News around 4:13 PM — “TRADE CENTER BLDG 7 ON FIRE, MAY COLLAPSE” — both more than an hour before the building came down. Of course, no such building had ever come down from fire in a way remotely similar to Building 7. Nevertheless, the television networks portrayed this event as perfectly normal, to the point of being utterly predictable.

In the case of the War on Terror and Bin Laden narratives that were imposed on the attacks as a whole, viewers received a large dose of “normalizing the abnormal.” This massive, complex operation was almost immediately blamed on a relatively small and poorly funded non-state organization based far away in one of the poorest countries of the world. It would have been far more “normal” for the operation to have been carried out by a well-funded military-intelligence apparatus. To exclude this more normal scenario in favor of a much more abnormal scenario required quickly setting forth the non-state terrorism hypothesis, almost immediately offering Osama bin Laden as the prime suspect, and choreographing the repetition of these ideas by various authorities.

As documented below, many claims were made about Osama bin Laden by the prominent television guests. On 9/11, these would have been seen by many as plausible, much like the statements by the building professionals brought on as experts. Many of us expected at the time that the claims made by these guests would soon be supported by actual, usable evidence. But this did not happen.

As this author (MacQueen) wrote in The 2001 Anthrax Deception (p. 31) of the period when the U.S. was making preparations for the invasion of Afghanistan:

“Secretary of State Colin Powell stated that the U.S. would soon be preparing, for the edification of the world, a document detailing evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt. When no such document was produced, the government of the United Kingdom stepped forward. The British document of October 4 [2001] was, however, astonishingly weak. The preamble noted that, ‘this document does not purport to provide a prosecutable case against Osama Bin Laden in the court of law’ even as it was purporting to provide something of much greater import: a casus belli. Indeed, the document consisted mainly of unverifiable claims from intelligence agencies, the evidence seldom rising to the level of circumstantial. Anthony Scrivener, Q.C., noted in The Times that, ‘it is a sobering thought that better evidence is required to prosecute a shoplifter than is needed to commence a world war [the War on Terror].’”

When the 9/11 Commission later produced its report in 2004, it was unable to support its central narrative with solid evidence and resorted repeatedly to using statements obtained under torture.

In other words, on 9/11, actual evidence usable in a court of law (eyewitness evidence of explosions) was defeated by claims that, however dramatically appealing, would not be admissible in a court of law.

(a) The War on Terror Narrative

The story of the War on Terror, as publicly set forth on television on 9/11, is a story of evil and aggression, a story that extends into the future as the righteous take up the sword of justice and vengeance. This very broad narrative, of mythical dimensions, includes the following eight elements. (Not all speakers include all eight elements, but by the end of the day all eight had been articulated.)

1. 1. Those who carried out the 9/11 operation were evil, a threat to all of civilization.

• 2. These “terror thugs” have carried out an act of war against the U.S., so the U.S. should recognize and accept that a state of war now exists.

1. 3. States that support the terror thugs (for example, Afghanistan, allegedly supporting Bin Laden) are as responsible as the terrorists themselves for the evil deeds done, so the condition of war must extend to such supporting states.

• 4. Not only the 9/11 terrorists and their supporters but all terrorists who have expressed evil intentions against the U.S., together with their supporters — most of whom are explicitly named — are, from 9/11 onward, to be regarded as at war with the U.S.

1. 5. This new and comprehensive war, known as the “War on Terror” or “War Against Terror,” is a metaphorical war (a vigorous striving, using all means, such as economic, political, and cultural), a spiritual war, and a literal war, waged with all military methods and technologies. The terrorists and their supporters, being evil, must be eliminated.

• 6. The righteous must not wait for the evil doers and their supporters to strike out but must take whatever actions are necessary to strike first.

1. 7. All countries in the world must commit themselves to action within this global conflict framework. They must make a choice whether they will be on the side of the righteous or the side of the evil — there will be no middle ground.

• 8. Parties at one time enemies of the righteous (Russia, China, and “moderate” Arab states) should be permitted to join in the War on Terror.

Although Bush administration officials gave voice to these principles in various public speeches and policy statements over a period of time after 9/11, the principles were articulated publicly on television on the day of 9/11 itself and in some cases before noon.

Presented below are three examples of the development of this narrative on 9/11: one on Fox News (by Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives), one on BBC (by Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel), and one on CNN (by Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. diplomat and assistant secretary of state).

Other speakers — whose words can be found in Appendix B, which contains statements setting forth the Bin Laden narrative — also articulated the elements of the War on Terror narrative.

Note: Although elsewhere in this study we have not used BBC footage, by a stroke of fortune Ehud Barak was in London on 9/11 and was able to spend time in the BBC studio. We include his remarks as useful expressions of this narrative by a very prominent political player.

Videos of the Newt Gingrich and Richard Holbrooke interviews are presented below along with their transcripts. Videos of Ehud Barak appearing on BBC can be found in the Internet Archive’s “Understanding 9/11” archive.

(i) Newt Gingrich, Fox News

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Prof. Graeme MacQueen, renowned author and distinguished professor of religious studies. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Ted Walter is the director of strategy and development for AE911Truth. He is the author of AE911Truth’s 2015 publication Beyond Misinformation: What Science Says About the Destruction of World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2, and 7 and its 2016 publication World Trade Center Physics: Why Constant Acceleration Disproves Progressive Collapse and co-author of AE911Truth’s 2017 preliminary assessment of the Plasco Building collapse in Tehran. He holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Today, the largest purveyor of misinformation and fabricated propaganda is the US government, think tanks, compromised NGOs, social media and the mainstream corporate media. Behind this web and its false narratives is a network of powerful special interest groups who fund script writers and journalists, traitors to their profession, in order to promulgate their message. This certainly seems to be the case of a hit piece targeting Robert Kennedy Jr recently printed in the Libertarian publication Reason.

Liz Wolfe’s smear job is only one among many efforts to criticize and delegitimize Kennedy as a viable presidential candidate and to associate him with conspiracy theories.

The rise in Kennedy’s popularity in the polls clearly shows he represents a very real challenge to the status quo in Washington. As the campaign season proceeds, we can expect to see many more such sullied articles, and they will increase in direct proportion to the threats Kennedy poses to those in power.

For many, Kennedy’s appearance in the presidential race is a breath of fresh air for voters across the political spectrum. He represents those higher ideals of his father and his uncle JFK.

Traditional Democrats despair at the party’s lack of substance. This segment are older, more independent yet cling to the party out of loyalty while simultaneously being fed up with the Clinton Wall Street New Democrats and their duplicity, lack of traditional liberal ideals and its growing legacy of deceit and dishonesty.

This arrives at a time when a July Gallup poll found Americans’ faith in our political institutions at an historical low, with public confidence in the presidency at 26 percent and Congress at 8 percent. The television news and prejudiced print media, which Wolfe represents, are equally at dismal lows of 14 percent and 18 percent respectively.

Therefore it is understandable that Kennedy would worry the ideologues in Washington because they are at loggerheads over what might happen to their control over national policy if he were elected.

What they can be certain of is that Kennedy will not be as compliant and manageable as Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama and Biden.

Screenshot of Liz Wolfe’s article

We therefore offer a simple rebuttal to this  journalist and challenge Reason‘s editorial board for their serious negligence in properly vetting a cheap screed that is demonstrably false. 

Wolfe’s Reason article purports to be an objective critique based upon scientific evidence, especially regarding vaccines and infectious disease.

Instead, she fails to support any of her maligned accusations with reliable evidence.

Kennedy on many occasions since announcing his presidential candidacy has been challenged about his stance on vaccine safety. Repeatedly he has retold the story about filing a complaint in the US Southern District of New York Court against the Department of Health and Human Services for its failure to provide a single documented example for any vaccine on the CDC’s children’s vaccination schedule showing that it has been properly tested against a placebo like all pharmaceutical drugs before licensure. By HHS’s own admission, Kennedy stated, no such clinical trial exists. The court document states:

“The [Department]’s searchers for records did not locate any records responsive to your request. The Department of Health and Human Services Immediate Office of the Secretary conducted a thorough search of its document tracking systems…. Also conducted a comprehensive review of all the relevant indexes… of records maintained at Federal Records Centers…”

Except for those mentally handicapped, what other proof is necessary? The federal agency’s attempts to explain away the rationale for the absence of placebo controlled studies in pre-licensure vaccine clinical trials violates all scientific standards of efficacy and safety. Here we enter the twilight zone of corporate science and encounter perhaps one of the most ludicrous declarations in the history of modern medicine.  The HHS responds,

“Inert placebo controls are not required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine and are thus not required. In some cases, inclusion of placebo control groups is considered unethical. Even in the absence of a placebo, control groups can be useful for evaluating whether the incidence of a specific observed adverse event exceeds that which would be expected without administration of the new vaccine.”

This is voodoo medicine and magical thinking; however, these are not the words of witchdoctors but rather our senior government health officials responsible for the public safety of children’s health and well-being.

Besides there is a voluminous body of peer-reviewed scientific papers showing a strong causal relationship between toxic vaccine ingredients and the rise in childhood neurological disorders.

Biology professor Brian Hooker, and a father of a vaccine-injured autistic son, recently published one of the few thorough studies to date comparing the health status between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. 

Hooker’s and his colleague Dr. Neil Miller’s results reported a statistically significant higher incidence of lower mental development, inflammatory gastrointestinal disorders (as Andrew Wakefield’s Lancet study reported), asthma and ear infections among those vaccinated. Wolfe’s argument that the high rate of delayed mental conditions, such as autism or ADHD, is simply a consequence of undiagnosed cases is at its core disingenuous. It is also stupid. Preparing for this rebuttal to put Wolfe’s wildly opinionated jeremiad into context, we have been unable to find a single robust study in the National Library of Medicine that even suggests Wolfe’s claim might be reasonable.

Moreover, Kennedy has never placed all of the blame for the rise in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders on vaccines.

As a seasoned environmental attorney for several decades, he is knowledgeable about other environmental toxins found in common everyday household products that contribute to neurodevelopmental delays. Wolfe could have at least conducted a very simple internet search to discover exposure to methylmercury, PCBs, brominated flame retardants, endocrine disruptors, organic pesticides, etc. among the top ten environmental contributors to autism and learning disabilities.  A recent study from Hebrew University in Jerusalem has reconfirmed earlier evidence that fetal phthalates in “everywhere plastic” interfere with emotional and behavioral developmental issues in 2 year old boys.

Taking a side smack at Dr. Andrew Wakefield, Wolfe has evidently fallen into the same rabbit hole as every other pro-vaccination ideologue before her to accuse the British gastroenterological specialist as the father of the anti-vaccination movement. However, what Wakefield’s retracted Lancet paper concludes makes no reference to the MMR vaccine as a cause for autism. The paper states,

“We have identified a chronic enterocolitis in children that may be related to neuropsychiatric dysfunction. In most cases, onset of symptoms was after measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. Further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome and it’s possible relation to this vaccine.”

Wakefield solely reported an association between vaccine-induced enterocolitis and neuropsychiatric dysfunction. Nor did the study make any reference to the MMR as a possible causal agent for autism. Since the Wakefield incident, later independent research has confirmed his original reporting to have been accurate.

In her accusatory potshot at Kennedy and Wakefield as the culprits who ”stoke” anti-vaccination frenzy, we can observe the utter sloppiness in her research.

Remarking on the 2015 and 2019 measles outbreaks as a result of a decline in vaccination compliance, Wolfe’s sole reference is an article published in 2010, five years before the events she reports. Furthermore, the notion of the MMR’s success in eradicating mumps has no merit whatsoever. Mumps outbreaks most often occur among the mostly heavily vaccinated populations.

This is not speculation; it was the conclusion of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation.  Moreover, in 2014, a Pennsylvania court ruled that two Merck virologists’ lawsuit against the MMR manufacturer would go to trial. The scientists’ charges are that Merck’s claims of its mumps vaccine’s effectiveness is knowingly false and was part of Merck’s business strategy to deceive health authorities for financial advantage in order to monopolize the market. At that time, Merck’s mumps vaccine earned the company $621 million. The case has now expanded into antitrust litigation against the vaccine maker for misleading the public.

Wolfe’s attempt to debunk Kennedy’s comments about the rise of polio cases in relation to the vaccine is again poorly researched. First, the World Health Organization claims about a 99 percent decline in global polio cases has been  held suspect by many.

We might remind ourselves that this is an organization that has been repeatedly wrong about many of its pandemic predictions and preventative policies including the H1N1 swine flu, Zika virus and Ebola pandemic scares, none that could even be ruled as serious epidemics.

Although the polio vaccine has been discontinued in developed nations, due to the adverse risk of “polio-like paralysis” or acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), it is still administered in poorer developed nations for one sole purpose: it is easier to manufacture and more cost effective. AFP continues to affect polio vaccinated populations in the thousands. One of the most nefarious vaccination boondoggles launched by Bill Gates occurred in rural India in 2011. Within a year following a massive vaccination campaign, with an increased dosage of the polio virus due to its failure to generate an adequate immune response, there were over 53,500 reported case of non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP), which is clinically indistinguishable from wild polio paralysis yet far more fatal. The Indian health authorities’ investigation was published in the April-June 2012 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics and a legal suit was filed against Gates.  Unsurprising, despite the evidence to the contrary,

Bill Gates and the WHO announced India was a polio-free nation in 2014, another sleight of hand performance of vaccine voodoo.

A later study reported that there have been 490,000 cases of polio-like paralysis in India between 2000-2017. In his article assessing the polio vaccine’s history and efficacy appearing in the journal Medical Veritas, Dr. Neil Miller recounts various incidences of polio outbreaks due to river and sewage contamination. Most poignant was a Japanese discovery of a new infectious polio strain found in Tokyo’s waterways. After genetic sequencing, the novel mutation was traced back to the polio vaccine.

If Bobby Kennedy is correct, and all of our federal health agencies are wrong, then millions of young children’s lives are at risk. Oddly for a new mother, whose child now faces the CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule, Wolfe seems unwilling to critically evaluate the potential risks that Kennedy has been warning about for two decades.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Once again, the treatment of the Alberta Oil Patch is at the core of a dispute testing the viability of Canada’s increasingly dysfunctional governing structures. In order to better make sense of what is going on, some might see as useful this account of history and contemporary political contention. This essay highlights from my own Albertan perspective the constitutional framework of Energy Policy and of Natural Resource law in Canada, the Western Hemisphere’s largest country.

For now, the core controversy has to do with the generation and distribution of electricity in Alberta. Will dependable natural gas fuel the power grid of Alberta? Or will Ottawa get its way and force on Canada’s oil-and-gas dynamo a dependence on the flimsy technology of wind power and solar panels. Will the Alberta government decide the future of its own domestic system for generating energy or will this matter be determined by the climate-change zealots who presently control Canada’s national government?

The current controversy is most likely a gateway to further rounds of antagonism in Canada and beyond. Suddenly it seems the world is at a cross-roads in the life-or-death quest for the most satisfactory means of producing energy safely, profitably, cheaply, and efficiently.

As so much else in the world, the politics of energy policy are in turbulent flux especially now that the fast-growing BRICS coalition is already well along the path to taking control of the lion’s share of world’s oil and gas.

The rapid rise of BRICS in the face of the US-led military machinations in oil-rich Eurasia illustrates the pace of change, seemingly near the speed of light.

These transformations in global energy production are leaving the NATO-tied Canadian government behind in the dust of WOKE ineptitude and confusion. Especially in Alberta, the impatience with federal superciliousness is coming at a time when there is a worldwide upsurge highlighting how governments continue to impose litanies of purposeful harm on their own peoples.

This understanding is leading many to the conclusion that we the people have no choice but to actively resist the extensions of the depopulation agenda which began with the jabbing of military bioweapons forced into bodies through the incessant telling of media lies buttressed by mandated infringements on bodily autonomy. Given what we have experienced since 2020, it is easy to see the makings of another Covidian-style scam with panic-promoting premonitions that the world is about to burn up unless we our trust in governments to protect us from the hellfires.

The Canadian government of Justin Trudeau is starting to generate much ridicule and contempt for its simple-minded directives that Canadians must pull together to conquer “climate change.” The abstraction that climate change represents humanity’s biggest threat is an absurdity that, when enforced, opens the door to many hideous prospects.

The authority of science has been unmasked as oftentimes a fraud to be purchased and manipulated by the highest bidder. There are very few credible arbitrators of scientific claims who have resisted trading on their credentials to receive payola. Peer review and all it represents are now widely understood as a process frequently rigged to further protect the most entrenched interests of the status quo.

There is no genuine scientific consensus to back up back up the extravagant claims of the richly-funded lobby seeking to conquer climate change by applying the nonsensical alchemy of net zero. Carbon emissions generally, and CO2 specifically, are not environmental hazards. Life thrives on carbon in the atmosphere. Thousands of credible researchers including Nobel laureats are going on record to make the point that the crusade to stop climate change is becoming increasingly dangerous.

One of these laureates, Physicist John Francis Clauser, explains

“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists….[click here] There is no real climate crisis.”

Climate-Change Fakery and Energy Policy in Canadian Federalism 

Our atmosphere is subject to many attacks from humans.

The most serious of these attacks have nothing to do with carbon emissions from industrialization. Among these menaces are many forms of military geo-engineering.

A good example of the kind of attacks we are facing from our malevolent governors are the Directed Energy Weapons used to zap Maui in order to clear the way for a 15 minute city. In the face of this military attack, to attribute the Maui disaster to climate change is nothing short of an insult to those with the capacity to think critically. See this.

Geo-engineering together with all forms of warfare menace all varieties of life on earth. Trying to stop the weather from changing is not a valid goal whereas stopping wars from being fought would be an achievement to be treasured for the ages. As we are being beset with directives of what we must do to prevent the climate from changing, we are being subjected to huge arrays of very real menaces. These menaces include the intensifying weaponization of our food, water, air, medicine, elections, Internet, intelligence agencies, courts, schools, and much much more.

The current regional split over Energy Policy in Canada replicates some of the big themes that dominated the imposition of the National Energy Program between 1980 and 1985. The former crisis and the current crisis now in 2023 were both instigated by the actions of the Trudeau dynasty’s two prime ministers, senior and junior. Both attacks have generated especially grave grievances in Alberta. Once again the machinations of a Trudeau are generating increased appetite for greater independence from Ottawa.

I believe it is necessary to dig deeper into history than the 1980s to make sense of the current phase of the dispute over Energy Policy and self-governance within the structures of Canadian federalism.

The conflict unfolding in Canada is regional even as it is also integral to international and global developments currently underway. The conflict is being articulated by two larger-than-life-characters, Justin Trudeau and Danielle Smith. Both seem to have been born for this showdown during this particular of phase of a global eruption that came in response to the campaign to jab the entire population of the world with a harmful gene-modifying concoction.

As long as Ontario and Quebec can overwhelm the rest of the country at the ballot box, there is in my view little possibility of fixing the country by voting our way out of trouble.

Nevertheless, before embarking on more ambitious and adventurous approaches to fixing what ails us, we must try to realize some level of constructive compromise through existing structures including the courts. Before entering the realm of international law and politics, we must be able to demonstrate we have exhausted existing procedures in seeking remedies for the maladies plaguing us.

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Read Part II:

Oil and Gas and “The Climate-Change Fakery”: The Constitutional Underpinnings of the Natural Resource Wars Between the Canada and Alberta Governments

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, September 14, 2023

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The evidence is in. The COVID jabs kill. Autopsies prove it. (1)

CDC VAERS records more deaths from COVID jabs than the total of all previous vaccines combined (though the mRNA jabs are not vaccines), and only a very small percentage of adverse events are reported to VAERS. (2) 

Doctors should not be blindly following ‘Public Health’ diktats, nor should they be recommending these kill jabs.

Governments, subservient to the World Health Organization (WHO), are largely indemnified because they announced a contrived Emergency and gave Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for experimental drugs that otherwise would not be authorized.

Canada declared Emergency when there were 100 so-called “cases”. That is not a pandemic — even with the WHO’s new definition of pandemic which excludes mortality rates. Governments secured EUA  because they falsely claimed therapeutics were not available.  They are available and were available. Ivermectin is an example.

Some of the impacts of these jabs are myocarditis, strokes, cardiac issues (3). Countless other ‘side-effects’ also exist. 

Big Pharma clinical experiments are corrupt. Pfizer has a criminal record. They lie. Pfizer’s own ‘Confidential Report‘, which they tried to keep secret, acknowledges 1,200 reports of jab-attributed deaths and tens of thousands of adverse events over a brief period of time.

The insert for the jabs at pharmacies are blank. None of the COVID tests are fit for purpose. None. Death Certificate coding was changed from a peer-reviewed format that worked well for about 17 years to a rigged format that falsely elevates COVID numbers (4). Hospitals receive more money for COVID diagnoses etc. In one if not most jurisdictions, people entering hospitals are labelled unvaccinated for the first two or three weeks even though most are vaccinated. The database is corrupt.

When governments introduced the Swine Flu jab, they pulled it off the market after about 50 jab-attributed deaths. The COVID jab-attributed deaths even by CDC statistics are in the tens of thousands (36,080) (5). Globally the numbers are genocidal. Actuaries put the jab-attributed excess deaths in the U.S. in the hundreds of thousands (See Ed Dowd  and Josh Stirling) (6). Life Insurance claims for deaths of working age people are sky high. Censorship, the government and mass media hide all of this. 

Over the ‘COVID” period of the military grade psychological operations imposed by governments, people have become indoctrinated to accept nonsense, and doctors who speak out against the established narrative have been persecuted for their honesty and professionalism. Masks are harmful (7), mandates do not work, jabs kill. Experts trotted out on tv and mainstream are pharma shills whether they realize it or not.

COVID propaganda was and is an unreasonable Fear campaign.

Find a doctor who does not push experimental mRNA injections on people. These jabs impair natural immunity(8) and create myriad problems, including turbo cancers. Nobody should take them. 

People should be following protocols that help neutralize the pathogens introduced by the mRNA experimental injections. Such protocols do exist. Check out Dr. McCullough.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Dr. Peter McCullough, “74% of COVID Autopsy Vaccine Autopsy Deaths Were Caused by the Vaccine.” Daily Cloudt, (74% of COVID Vaccine Autopsy Deaths Were Caused By The Vaccine/Daily Clout) Accessed 06 September, 2023.

(2) Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS) (Electronic Support for Public Health–Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (ESP:VAERS) (ahrq.gov) ) Accessed 06 September, 2023.

(3) One in Thirty-five MRNA Booster Recipients had Jab-Associated Myocardial Injury , marktaliano.net

One in Thirty-five MRNA Booster Recipients Had Jab-Associated Myocardial Injury – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization

see also:

John Leake, “Leading British Cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, and Dr. Peter McCullough Independently Come to Same Conclusion.” (Leading British Cardiologist, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, and Dr. Peter McCullough Independently Come to Same Conclusion/ By John Leake) Accessed 06 September, 2023

(4) Mark Taliano, “Invalid COVID data Drives Catastrophic Public Policies Globally.” Global Research, 20 ctober, 2022. (Invalid Covid Data Drives Catastrophic Public Policies Globally – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization ) Accessed 06 September, 2023.

(5)COVID Vaccine Data – OpenVAERS 

Accessed 06 September, 2023.

(6) Video: Shocking Findings in the CDC Data on Excess Mortality: Edward Dowd

(7) Dr. William Makis, “MASK TOXICITY – German study exposes dangers of CO2 re-breathing – neuron death & learning impairment (children), stillbirths & birth defects (pregnant women), testicular toxicity (adolescents)” Substack, 28 August, 2023. (MASK TOXICITY – German study exposes dangers of CO2 re-breathing – neuron death & learning impairment (children), stillbirths & birth defects (pregnant women), testicular toxicity (adolescents) (substack.com) Accessed 06 September, 2023 

(8) Stephanie Seneff, Greg Nigh, Anthony M. Kyriakopoulos, Peter A McCullough, ” Innate Immune Suppression by SArS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations: The roleof G-quadruplexes, exosomes and microRNAs.” authorea.com (Innate Immune Suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes and microRNAs (authorea.com))

Accessed 06 September, 2023

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Nairobi, Kenya, the commercial center for the East African region, hosted the Africa Climate Summit which attracted thousands of delegates, investors and observers to discuss the worsening plight of the continent as it relates to environmental degradation.

The meeting was scheduled from September 4-8 at the Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC) where registered delegates from governments and non-governmental organizations articulated their views on what is needed in the present period to avert an even larger climate disaster for Africa’s 1.3 billion people.

This summit was held under the theme, “Africa Climate Summit 2023: Driving Green Growth & Climate Finance Solutions for Africa and the World.” The governmental leaders met for three days while the entire week was dedicated to the current situation and potential solutions.

Outside the ACS, there were thousands more representing coalitions, traditional communities and mass groupings, many of which were critical of the gathering and the way in which western governments, multi-national corporations and international financial institutions are seeking to dominate the dialogue on Africa climate issues and economic development.

A host of delegates were present from the United States and the European Union (EU) making pledges to assist the AU member-states in halting the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.

In the language for the summit overview, it states that:

“The inaugural Africa Climate Summit, championed by HE President [William] Ruto, aims to address the increasing exposure to climate change and its associated costs, both globally and particularly in Africa. With the expectation of escalating climate crises in terms of frequency and intensity, urgent action is required to mitigate these challenges. The Summit will serve as a platform to inform, frame, and influence commitments, pledges, and outcomes, ultimately leading to the development of the Nairobi Declaration.” 

However, the previous commitments made by western states and multinational corporations have not yet been honored. The purpose of the ACS 2023 was to reach a consensus among African governments on a program to be taken to the United Nations Climate Summit (COP28) which will be held in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in December.

The adoption of the Nairobi Declaration was designed to position the AU member-states in their negotiations within the broader international community. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen how the AU can either convince or force the industrialized capitalist states to provide the necessary reforms that will turn the tide towards green and sustainable energy.

During the ACS it was acknowledged by the AU member-states and some corporations that Africa is one of the least responsible regions for the rise in global warming. Consequently, the continent requires assistance in preventing further extreme weather events, droughts and the subsequent food deficits which are plaguing various regions of East Africa.

Head of states and delegates pose for a group photo,  during the official opening of the Africa Climate Summit at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, Monday, Sept. 4, 2023. The first African Climate Summit opened with heads of state and others asserting a stronger voice on a global issue that affects the continent of 1.3 billion people the most, even though they contribute to it the least. (AP Photo/Khalil Senosi)

An article published in the French newspaper Le Monde on the ACS noted:

“The declaration called for ‘concrete action’ on reforms that lead to ‘a new financing architecture that is responsive to Africa’s needs’, including debt restructuring and relief.

Ruto said it was time to overhaul global financial systems that ‘perpetually place African nations on the backfoot. We demand a fair playing ground for our countries to access the investment needed to unlock the potential and translate it into opportunities,’ he said. Leaders also pressed the world’s wealthy polluters to honor their pledges, including to provide $100 billion a year for clean energy and to help them brace for climate disasters.” 

Defeating Climate Change Requires a Struggle Against the Current World Order

As long as the multinational corporations and banks can earn enormous profits under the existing economic system, the realization of change will require organized pressure from the AU member-states and their constituencies. This ACS gathering was not the first time that these demands have been put forward to the leading imperialist states.

When Republic of South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa paid a state visit to the U.S. nearly one year ago, he emphasized that his country along with others on the continent would need billions of dollars to address the goals set by the annual United Nations Climate Summit. Every year, the U.S., U.K. and the EU are able to veto significant resolutions at the COP meetings which would place definite responsibilities on the imperialist states.

During 2022, when the COP27 Summit was held in Egypt, a host of promises were made by the imperialist states which have yet to be fulfilled. Yet one year later, these same economic and political interests continue to pretend that they will make amends for their industrial and agricultural policies which are the main contributors to the rise in pollutants.

The New York Times wrote a report on the ACS pointing out that there are serious questions being raised by people in Kenya about the effectiveness of the Nairobi Declaration:

“Outside the halls of the convention center, Kenyans were asking tougher questions about whom the conference and its lofty goals really served. ‘The energy discussion masks our economic crisis,’ said Mordecai Ogada, an author and a leading Kenyan voice on environmental issues. ‘Yes, we get most of our electricity from renewables. But we pay foreign companies to generate that power exorbitantly in foreign currency,’ he said. ‘Manufacturing has become expensive, which drives inflation. As far as the lives of Kenyans are concerned, the source of energy is completely immaterial.’” 

In Kenya over recent months, the government of President Ruto has lifted fuel subsidies and raised taxes on essential goods. The hardships caused by these measures sparked demonstrations which were organized by the political opposition in the country. In real terms, the Kenyan national currency has lost one-third of its value over the last two years.

The overall global crisis prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences are largely to blame for the sharp rise in prices. Therefore, to insulate the people of Africa from external shocks, there must be a radical shift in the international division of labor and economic power which has reinforced the dependency inherited from the colonial system.

Africa News quoted a participant in the demonstrations involving thousands outside the ACS 2023 meeting. This activist called Babawale from the Friends of the Earth Africa said:

“We are here to demand that Africa’s energy system must be de-colonized, it must be brought out from the hands of the culprits, it is time for the African people to stand together and make a demand, that what we need now is systems change, not climate change, what we need now is that Africa’s energy systemic must be de-colonized. It should be put in the hands of people, this is not the time that we should promote carbon markets it is not going to put to an end the different climate crisis that Africa is facing.”

During the demonstrations by civil society and mass organizations surrounding the Kenyatta International Convention Center, people carried banners which read: “Stop the neo-colonial scramble for oil and gas in Africa.” In Kenya alone, the government would need approximately $US62 billion to address the necessity of reducing emissions which contribute to climate change.

AU member-states overall would require an estimated $US290 billion to $US440 billion to achieve the same objectives. These resources will not be given by the imperialist states absent a protracted campaign for climate justice and a sweeping redistribution of wealth on a global scale.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Climate activists take to the streets at the Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, urging the African Union to lead by example and protect African biodiversity, end fossil fuels driving catastrophic climate change and invest in real solutions by shifting to solar and wind energy. Signs read “Less talk more action for Climate”. 

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Imagine if you and others in your group are paid a flat rate, and the members of a different group are paid the same flat rate. The employer proclaims it is equal pay.

But wait a minute! Your group works a 5-hour shift while the other group works a 3-hour shift for the same pay. Your group would be working 40% more for the same pay as the other group.

Is this equal pay?

I doubt few people would consider that they were being paid equally if this were the case they found themselves in.

In an interview on TSN, after her straight set victory over Czech player Markéta Vondroušová, the American player Madison Keys said, “Luckily for us [women], I don’t play 5 sets.” This she said noting the longer duration that male players currently endure in hot, humid, energy-sapping conditions on court compared to the women.

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Once denounced by Zelensky as a “criminal,” gun runner Serhiy Pashinksy has become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Eyewitness testimony has fingered Pashinsky as the architect of a bloody false flag operation which propelled the 2014 Maidan coup and plunged the country into civil war.

Years before emerging as Kiev’s top private weapons trafficker, ex-legislator Serhiy Pashinsky played a key role in the 2014 US-backed coup which toppled Ukraine’s democratically-elected president and set the stage for a devastating civil war. Though the notoriously corrupt former Ukrainian parliamentarian was condemned by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “criminal” as recently as 2019, a lengthy exposé by the New York Times has now identified Pashinsky as the Ukrainian government’s “biggest private arms supplier.” 

Perhaps predictably, the report makes no mention of evidence implicating Pashinsky in the 2014 massacre of 70 anti-government protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square, an incident which pro-Western forces used to consummate their coup d’etat against then-President Viktor Yanukovych.

In an August 12 report on Ukraine’s new weapons-sourcing strategy, the New York Times alleged that “out of desperation,” Kiev had no option but to adopt increasingly amoral tactics. The shift, they say, has driven up prices of lethal imports at an exponential rate, “and added layer upon layer of profit-making” for the benefit of unscrupulous speculators like Pashinsky. 

According to the Times, the strategy is simple: Pashinksy “buys and sells grenades, artillery shells and rockets through a trans-European network of middlemen,” then “sells them, then buys them again and sells them once more”:

“With each transaction, prices rise – as do the profits of Mr. Pashinsky’s associates – until the final buyer, Ukraine’s military, pays the most,” the Times explained, adding that while using multiple brokers may technically be legal, “it is a time-tested way to inflate profits.”

As the seemingly endless supply of cash from Western taxpayers provides a bonanza for arms manufacturers such as Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, it similarly benefits war profiteers like Pashinsky. His company, Ukrainian Armored Technology, “reported its best year ever last year, with sales totaling more than $350 million” — a whopping 12,500% increase from its $2.8 million in sales the year before the war.

Pashinsky is not the only racketeer benefitting from the elimination of anti-corruption measures in wartime Ukraine. Several suppliers previously placed on an official blacklist after they “ripped off the military” are now free to sell again, according to the Times investigation. The outlet downplayed this as an unfortunate, but ultimately necessary measure.

“In the name of rushing weapons to the front line, leaders have resurrected figures from Ukraine’s rough-and-tumble past and undone, at least temporarily, years of anticorruption [sic] policies,” the Times asserted, describing “the re-emergence of figures like Mr. Pashinsky” as “one reason the American and British governments are buying ammunition for Ukraine rather than simply handing over money”:

“European and American officials are loath to discuss Mr. Pashinsky, for fear of playing into Russia’s narrative that Ukraine’s government is hopelessly corrupt and must be replaced.”

However, even the seemingly critical Times report overlooks a key aspect of Pashinsky’s unsavory biography. Conspicuously absent from the coverage was any explanation of his role in carrying out the infamous massacre of anti-government activists and police officers in Kiev’s Maidan Square in late February 2014.

A defining moment in the US-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government, the death of 70 at the hands of mysterious snipers triggered an avalanche of international outrage that led directly to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych. Even today, these killings officially remain unsolved.

However, firsthand testimony by individuals who claimed to have helped carry out the false flag attack suggest Kiev’s most prolific gun runner was intimately involved in the grisly affair.

Maidan Massacre Organizer ‘Takes No Prisoners’

In November 2017, Italy’s Matrix TV channel published eyewitness accounts by three Georgians who say they were ordered to kill protesters by Mamuka Mamulashvili. Then the top-ranking military aide to Georgian president Mikhael Saakashvili, Mamulashvili later founded the infamous mercenary brigade known as the Georgian Legion, whose fighters were widely condemned after they published a gruesome video of themselves gleefully executing unarmed and bound Russian soldiers in April 2022.

The documentary, “Ukraine: The Hidden Truth,” features an Italian journalist’s interviews with three Georgian fighters allegedly sent to orchestrate the coup. All described Pashinsky as a key organizer and executor of the Maidan massacre, even alleging the corrupt arms dealers provided weapons and selected specific targets. The film also featured footage of him personally evacuating a shooter from the Square, after they had been caught with a rifle and a scope by protesters and surrounded.

One of the Georgian fighters recalled how he and his two associates arrived in Kiev in January, “to arrange provocations to push the police to charge the crowd.” For almost a month, however, “there were not many weapons around,” and “molotov [cocktails], shields and sticks were used to the maximum.”

This changed around mid-February, they said, when Mamualashvili personally visited them alongside a US soldier named Brian Christopher Boyenger, a former officer and sniper in the 101st Airborne Division, who personally gave them orders they “had to follow.”

A documentary by Italy’s Matrix channel contains eyewitness testimony implicating an American military instructor in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan massacre.

Pashinky then personally moved them along with sniper rifles and ammunition to buildings overlooking Maidan Square, they alleged. At that point, Mamualashvili reportedly insisted that “we have to start shooting, so much, to sow some chaos.”

So it was that the Georgian fighters “started shooting two or three shots at a time” into the crowd below, having been ordered to “shoot the Berkut, the police, and the demonstrators, no matter what.” Once the killing was over, Boyenger moved to the Donbas front to fight in the ranks of the Georgian Legion, which Mamulashvili commands to this day.

In the meantime, Ukrainian journalist Volodymyr Boiko, who headed the civic council of the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine after Maidan, has alleged that in order to obscure his role, Pashinsky personally hand-picked the figures leading the official investigation into the massacre, and even bribed the prosecutor who headed it.

Despite these shocking claims, Pashinsky’s involvement in the Maidan massacre has never been officially investigated, let alone punished, and his most recent experiences with the Ukrainian judicial system suggest it is unlikely to be heavily scrutinized by officials in Kiev. While a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, he was arrested for shooting and wounding a pedestrian in a traffic-related dispute, but was ultimately acquitted in 2021. 

When Israeli journalists confronted Pashinsky about his role in the Maidan massacre, the arms dealer warned that they would be tracked down in their home country, where his associates would “tear them apart.” They could be forgiven for believing it was not an idle threat; there is a troubling tendency for Pashinky’s detractors to end up viciously beaten or shot dead in the street.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

Featured image is from TG

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2022 May – Philadelphia, PA – 39 year old Yashira Cruz (pictured below) developed myositis after one dose of COVID-19 vaccine – “at one point I thought of crashing my car to end with my life.”

2023 June 4 – Julie Jo Koehler developed myositis after 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine.

2023 March – Saint Petersburg, FL – Emanuel Sferios got his COVID-19 booster shot in January. 10 days later he was in hospital for severe muscle pain and was diagnosed with myositis.

2021 Dec – 16 year old Caleb had a Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA booster shot and developed myositis and myocarditis.

Medical Literature 

2023 June 30 (Tosunoglu et al) – 21 year old woman had Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Two days later, she complained of pain in her arm and came to neurology 20 days later with difficulty in sitting and getting up, pain in her legs, difficulty climbing stairs. She was diagnosed with myositis, responded only partially to steroids and then fully with IVIG. 

2023 June (Jung Won Han et al) – 49 year old woman developed myositis and arm swelling 1 week after Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. She was treated with Celebrex.

2023 March 20 (Nushida et al) – 14 year old girl died unexpectedly 2 days after receiving 3rd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Autopsy findings showed myositis, among many other findings. 

2023 March 16 (Syrmou et al) – 67 yo Greek woman had 2nd Pfizer mRNA dose. Two days after she noticed a pruritic maculo-papular rash, left arm edema and bilateral symmetric proximal arm and leg muscle weakness. She presented to ER 20 days after Pfizer and was diagnosed with myositis, and put on steroids, methotrexate and hydroxychloroqine.

2022 Dec (Jack Pepys et al) – A rare presentation of rapidly progressing myopathy in an adolescent.

16 year old boy of British and East-Asian descent had 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. After 3 hours he developed unusual weakness and deteriorated dramatically over following few weeks. He was unable to dress himself , had shortness of breath on the slightest exertion.

He was extremely difficult to treat, didn’t respond to steroids or IVIG and stayed in the hospital 107 days.

He needed immuno-suppressive drugs used for transplant patients (mycophenolate mofetil) AND chemotherapy (cyclophosphamide) (!!)

2022 July 16 (Eli Magen et al) – 34 year old Israeli woman had 1st dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. 4 days later she presented with severe muscle weakness, pain and tenderness.

The authors did some extensive genomic testing of the patient’s blood and muscle tissue biopsy samples. They found mRNA present in the severely inflamed muscle, a full month after COVID-19 vaccine injection! In this case, the mRNA was causing the myositis.

2022 July (Gabriele De Marco et al) – A Large Cluster of New Onset Autoimmune Myositis in the Yorkshire Region Following SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination.

15 cases of myositis after COVID-19 vaccination are reported in this paper, 5 after dose #1, 7 after dose #2 and 3 after dose #3.

6 cases were from Pfizer and 9 were from AstraZeneca, so it’s clearly not just an mRNA vaccine issue.

2022 March 21 (Ji Hyoun Kim et al) – 30 year old man had 2nd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. 6 days later he presented to ER with fever, skin rash and polymyalgia. He was treated with steroids, azathioprine and tacrolimus.

2022 Feb.17 (Al-Rasbi et al) – 37 year old man in Oman, presented to ER 12 days after 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine with left upper limb swelling, paresthesia and shortness of breath.

He was diagnosed with severe myositis, also had rhabdomyolysis, acute kidney injury, myocarditis with pulmonary edema, pulmonary hemorrhage and thrombocytopenia.

He was treated with steroids and IVIG.

2022 Feb.7 (Wesam Gouda et al) – 43 year old Asian Indian woman had 2nd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. About 10 days later, she presented to ER with an itchy, erythematous rash all over her face, trunk and hands, inability to walk, difficulty rising from a chair and climbing stairs

She was treated with steroids, hydroxychloroquine, mycophenolate and physiotherapy.

2022 Jan. 30 (Vutipongsatorn et al) – Inflammatory myopathy occurring shortly after severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 vaccination: two case reports.

55 year old South East Asian woman had 1st dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA. Two days later she developed a facial and torso rash and presented to ER with worsening proximal myopathy.

72 year old Caucasian woman had 2nd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA. She developed a proximal myopathy the next day and presented to ER 2 weeks later.

Both patients didn’t respond to steroids but did respond to IVIG therapy.

2021 Dec (Ramalingam et al) – Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine – 81 year old man had 2nd dose of mRNA vaccine. The next day he noticed swelling, pain and redness in left arm. He was diagnosed with myositis and cellulitis. He was treated with steroids.

My Take…

Myositis refers to a group of conditions that share common features of muscle inflammation, resulting in muscle weakness and damage.

WHO VigiAccess reports 1729 cases of myositis after COVID-19 vaccination, however this is probably a significant under-reporting, as many cases are mis-diagnosed and very few cases are biopsied.

Clinical picture is as follows:

• Myositis begins usually within a few days of COVID-19 vaccination but could appear weeks after
• more common in women (3:2 ratio), average age is 56
• starts as an itchy maculopapular rash, usually on extremities, face, or trunk
• accompanied by swelling and pain in the extremities
• often involves proximal muscle weakness to the point where the patient has trouble getting up from sitting position, or going up the stairs.
• Diagnosis: MRI will show muscle edema but muscle biopsy is definitive, although findings will vary widely.
• Treatment usually starts with steroids and is then followed by IV immunoglobulin (IVIG) if needed
• Some cases are very difficult to treat and require very strong immuno-suppressants like those used for transplant patients

When COVID-19 mRNA vaccines cause myositis, it is an abnormal auto-immune reaction, indicative that something has gone haywire with the immune system.

This abnormal auto-immune response can occur anywhere in the body and is further evidence of immune system damage caused by COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Possible mechanisms of immune system damage:

“Immunological cross-reactivity and molecular mimicry, involving spike dominant epitopes and myositis-related auto-antigenic targets, have been considered a likely mechanism for myositis induced by COVID-19 and its relevant vaccines. Kanduc and Shoenfeld (2020) described a striking oligopeptide homology between SARSCoV-2 spike glycoprotein and human and murine peptides, providing strong evidence towards immunogenicity of the virus and its spike in humans and mice”

“mRNA vaccines can trigger immune reactions not only by coding specifc antigenic epitopes (proteins) but also themselves as nucleic acids. This mRNA is surrounded by nanoparticles or liposomes that keep it intact and help it escape cleavage by RNases. These particles transfer the mRNA in the cytosol by fusion to cellular membrane and endocytosis. However, while in the cytosol, mRNA can bind to several pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), including Toll-like receptors (TLRs), retinoic acid-inducible gene 1(RIG-1), and melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5 (MDA5) stimulating pro-infammatory cascades via type 1 interferon and transcription factor nuclear factor (NF)-kB”

COVID-19 mRNA vaccine induced myositis can be severe and potentially life-threatening. Fortunately, most cases seem to respond to steroids and IVIG. 

P. S. Special thanks to Twitter user Nashville Angela for keeping track of some of these post COVID-19 vaccine myositis cases and warning others about this severe auto-immune reaction.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

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***

This is a graphic illustration of the World System that I describe in my forthcoming book The Digital World Brain. [1]

The envisioned global control system can be summarized as follows:

• Executive Governance

The UN upgraded to a world government with a world parliament and a standing army that, supported by a scientific council, sets laws, goals, guidelines, and executively enforces them.

• Anticipatory Governance

Anticipatory governance through the collection of world citizens’ data to study reaction and compliance and to predict future events and thus provide a basis for continued decision-making.

• Multi-stakeholder Governance

Network governance with public–private partnerships to implement decisions at all levels of society.

These plans, developed through UNs Our Common Agenda, are to be signed by world leaders at the Summit of the Future in September 2024.

Singleton

This form of governance seems to be a precursor to the creation of a “Singleton”. A single decision-making agent where current governments lose their authority. Below is a screenshot from World Government Summits Technology Radar tool Digital Citizenship. WGS in Dubai is a close ally to both WEF and UN and is run by a troika of “Schwab-Jugend” (see our list of Young Global Leaders here).

A Singleton is said to “rely on ubiquitous surveillance, mind control, communication technologies, and artificial intelligence to coordinate its policies”. Resistance would be “nearly impossible”.

One of the main reasons for creating this Singleton would, according to WGS, be to defend us against the existential threats posed by an artificial superintelligence (!).

But this also includes other global risks like environmental collapse and the creation of super bacterias. Building a defense against this type of threats is a key part of the thinking behind UNs Our Common Agenda and the idea of an “Emergency Platform”.

It is also stated that “neural techniques that invalidate free will could hasten the creation of a united global force of governance”.

Is that what Elon Musk’s Neuralink is intended for?

So, in the limit, after solving a bunch of brain-related diseases, it’s mitigation of the existential threat of AI. Yeah, this is the point of it. So, creating a well-aligned future, this is the idea. (Elon Musk)

The ideas seem to be developed by a mad scientist on crack. Why on earth would we develop a technique to defend us against external threats that simultaneously could “accelerate the extinction of the human race”?

In order to protect us from the demon they are summoning the demon!

And there is more. In order to ensure our survival they are also proposing “galactic cooperation” and aligning “the values and code of ethics of the singleton with future space colonies and alien civilizations”!

As WEF-chairman Klaus Schwab said during his “State of the World Address” at World Government Summit this year:

…and who masters those technologies, in some way, will be the master of the world.

It seems obvious that the deranged “Aliens of Davos” have those ambitions.

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Note

[1] The book was released in Swedish in December 2022 https://pharosmedia.se/shop#!/products/den-digitala-varldshjarnan

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***

The Health Justice Initiative v The Minister of Health and Information Officer, Department of Health

On 22 February 2022 in Gauteng, South Africa, the HJI launched legal proceedings for the disclosure of all Covid-19 vaccine contracts and any applicable agreements with relevant companies and entities.

This follows an access to information request to the National Department of Health (NDoH) which was refused.

This case was heard by Millar J in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday, 25 July 2023.

On 17 August 2023, the Pretoria High Court ruled in our favour in our bid to compel the National Department of Health to provide access to the COVID-19 vaccine procurement contracts. The Court ordered (per Millar J) that all COVID-19 vaccine contracts must be made public, and the costs of the case were awarded in our favour.

Access the judgment and court papers:

• Access the High Court judgment here. (3MB)
• Access our press release on the judgment here. (17 August 2023)
• Access all other court papers here.
• Access our fact-sheet about the case here.

Download the Contracts here:

• Covax: 
  • COVAX Facility – Gavi Alliance – Committed Purchase Agreement. (10.4 MB)
• Janssen: 
  • Janssen Pharmaceutica – Advance Purchase Agreement. (14.9 MB)
  • Janssen Pharmaceutica – Advance Purchase Agreement – Additional Doses. (13.5 MB)
  • Janssen Pharmaceutica – Term Sheet. (2.72 MB)
• Pfizer: 
  • Pfizer – Manufacturing and Supply Agreement. (13.5 MB)
  • Pfizer – Amendment to Manufacturing and Supply Agreement. (1.14 MB)
  • Pfizer – Binding Term Sheet. (2.38 MB)
• Serum:
  • Serum Institute of India – Vaccine Purchase Agreement. (22.5 MB)
  • Serum Institute of India – Term Sheet. (2.07 MB)

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***

Newly disclosed Covid-19 vaccine procurement contracts that the South African government signed with pharmaceutical companies included “overwhelmingly one-sided” terms that favored drug companies’ bottom lines over public health, according to a review conducted by a coalition of experts and advocates.

Last month, a South African court ruled that the nation’s government must make its vaccine contracts with pharmaceutical companies public after the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) sued in an effort to shine light on the secretive agreements.

HJI has published the government’s contracts with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen, the Serum Institute of India, and Covax online, arguing that they reveal how Big Pharma “held South Africa to ransom.”

In a detailed report released Tuesday, HJI and other organizations wrote that the contracts “placed governments in the Global South, and in turn, the people living in these countries, in an unenviable position of having to secure scarce supplies in a global emergency (2020-2022) with unusually hefty demands and conditions, including secrecy, a lack of transparency, and very little leverage against late or no delivery of supplies or inflated prices, resulting in gross profiteering.”

The “most egregious example,” according to the new report, was the South African government’s deal with Johnson & Johnson, which traded “scarce or very delayed supplies for extractionist terms and conditions that undermine national sovereignty.”

The U.S.-based company charged South Africa $10 per dose for its vaccine in the agreement, which was carried out under English and Welsh law. (The European Union reportedly paid $8.50 per dose for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.)

Additionally, the deal required South Africa to make a nonrefundable down payment of $27.5 million.

According to HJI, the contracts with pharmaceutical giants made South Africa liable for at least $734 million in payments “with no guarantees of timely delivery.” The contracts, none of which were agreed to under South African legal jurisdiction, also required South Africa to “seek permission” from drug companies to “divert or donate or sell doses which have already been paid for by the [South African] public, despite the benefit to other poorer countries or buyers.”

“In a global pandemic, this is paternalistic and imperialist, harms public health programmatic planning, and deliberately reduces the autonomy of African states,” the report says. “In particular—J&J, Pfizer, and COVAX did not commit… to supply volumes and dates, making it increasingly difficult to plan and run a timely and proper vaccination program.”

BREAKING: @HealthJusticeIn has released South Africa's COVID-19 vaccine procurement contracts, after taking the government to court to force their disclosure.

Documents available here ⬇️ https://t.co/Kdh94FHL5k

— The People's Vaccine (@peoplesvaccine) September 5, 2023

Fatima Hassan, HJI’s director, said Tuesday that

“this deference to and fear of powerful pharmaceutical companies—in the middle of a crisis and in a constitutional democracy—is incredibly concerning.”

“It shows how much power was put into the hands of private sector actors and how few options governments had, when acting alone, in the middle of a pandemic,” said Hassan.

The pharmaceutical industry’s control over vaccine supply and distribution in South Africa and around the world spawned what public health advocates described as vaccine apartheid, a system under which poor nations were left with little to no access to lifesaving shots as rich countries and drugmakers prioritized upholding restrictive patents in the face of a catastrophic pandemic.

Hassan said the newly disclosed contracts “reveal the phenomenal power that pharmaceutical companies wielded in negotiations.”

“In our scramble for desperately needed vaccines, South Africa was forced to hand over unimaginable sums of money for overpriced vaccine doses,” Hassan added. “We were bullied into unfair and undemocratic terms in contracts that were totally one-sided. Put simply, pharmaceutical companies held us to ransom. And we must ask: did they do it to other countries too?”

A 2021 report by the U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen—which uncovered several unredacted Pfizer vaccine contracts—detailed how the corporation used its power in agreements with Brazil, Colombia, the European Commission, and the U.S. to “silence governments, throttle supply, shift risk, and maximize profits in the worst public health crisis in a century.”

[From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.]

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Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Chilean coup, we repost this article by Bill Van Auken, first published in 2013 by WSWS and Global Research.

***

Today marks the 40th anniversary of one of the most tragic events of the latter half of the 20th century: the September 11, 1973 coup in Chile. The seizure of power by Chile’s fascistic military represented a major defeat of the working class in Latin America and internationally, turning a situation of immense revolutionary potential into a nightmare of killing and repression.

This coup was instigated by the Nixon administration in Washington and organized in the closest collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. Not only did the US ruling establishment and its military-intelligence apparatus actively support the military coup, they were intimately involved in rounding up, torturing, and slaughtering tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and left-wing intellectuals. US officials also oversaw the murder of two US citizens, Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.

Among the chief architects of the bloodbath in Chile was Henry Kissinger, the former US national security advisor and secretary of state and one of the world’s oldest and most odious war criminals. He was praised by Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, as a “national treasure,” and by Barack Obama as a “hard-headed, tough defender of American interests and American security.”

It was Kissinger who famously declared, in relation to Chile, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people.” He oversaw a program of aggression aimed at destroying the Chilean economy, fomenting right-wing terrorism and finally orchestrating the military’s overthrow of the elected government of President Salvador Allende. Afterwards, he defended the atrocities carried out by General Augusto Pinochet’s junta.

Kissinger is today celebrated as the “grand old man” of American foreign policy, his counsel still sought by the White House. He has never been indicted, much less tried for his crimes.

Anyone gullible enough to lend credence to present day claims that Washington is uniquely equipped to uphold human rights and enforce “international norms” on the world stage should be told, “Look at Chile.”

As with every major anniversary of the 1973 coup, the media and the pseudo-left focuses its principal attention on the fate of Salvador Allende, who died in the La Moneda presidential palace as it was bombed and besieged by the Chilean military.

The attempts to beatify Allende, however, conceal the reality that the Chilean catastrophe would not have been possible without the role played by his Popular Unity government, an alliance between Allende’s Socialist Party, the Stalinist Chilean Communist Party and a section of the Christian Democrats.

Allende was not a socialist, much less a revolutionary. His essential political role was that of holding back the socialist revolution in Chile and imposing “social peace” by suppressing the powerful offensive of the Chilean working class. This was done in close collaboration with the US-trained Chilean officer corps. Its chiefs, including General Pinochet, appointed commander-in-chief of the army by Allende, were invited into the president’s cabinet to better coordinate the suppression of the mass workers movement.

Factories that were taken over by workers in the so-called industrial cordons were placed back in the hands of their right-wing owners, who then victimized the most militant workers. Gun control laws approved by the Allende government were used to carry out police-state-style raids on factories and workers neighborhoods—a dress rehearsal for the coup to come—while the military armed fascist terrorist groups.

The most slavish in their efforts to subordinate the workers’ struggles to the needs of capital and the discipline of the military was the Communist Party, which hailed the army as “the people in uniform.”

Assisting in this betrayal were a coterie of Pabloite revisionist organizations who had broken with the Trotskyist perspective of fighting for the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class in favor of the petty bourgeois nationalist guerrilla tactics of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Lionized by these political elements, Castro made a three-week trip to Chile, embracing Allende’s “Chilean road to socialism” and insisting that the revolution in Chile would be “made by Allende or no one.” The effect was to further disarm the working class politically in the run up to the 1973 coup.

The International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, warned forthrightly against the threat of a counterrevolution in Chile, calling upon the Chilean workers to place their trust not in the popular front government of the Social Democrats and Stalinists, but only in their own independent revolutionary struggle.

Many, particularly the Stalinists, dismissed such warnings, extolling Chile’s nearly 140 years of parliamentary democracy and insisting that “it can’t happen here.” Obviously, it could and it did.

The bitter lessons of Chile are today more vital than ever as the international working class enters a new period of revolutionary struggle. Within capitalist ruling circles this is well understood. In the aftermath of last July’s military coup in Egypt, following nearly two and a half years of revolutionary ferment, the Wall Street Journal expressed in an editorial its fervent hope that “the new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile’s Augusto Pinochet.”

In the United States, the Obama administration has steadily constructed the framework for a police state. It has arrogated to itself the power to throw US citizens into indefinite military detention and assassinate designated enemies of the state by drone missile strikes, while presiding over a vast NSA domestic spying operation that extends to every phone call, email and Internet search. The US government is the principal enemy of democratic rights the world over. Just as in Chile, those who believe “it can’t happen here” are only deluding themselves.

The decisive task remains today what it was in Chile four decades ago: resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the working class. The defense of democratic rights, the struggle against social inequality and the fight against war depend upon the emergence of a new socialist leadership in the working class in every country. This means building the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

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In commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attack, we repost this article by Richard Gage, first published in 2018 by AE911Truth.

***

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — which is the U.S. government agency that investigated the World Trade Center’s destruction — the Twin Towers came down “essentially in free fall.”

NIST’s theory of the collapses hinges on the idea that the upper section of each tower could continuously accelerate through the lower stories at nearly the rate of gravity, while in the process completely dismembering the steel frames and pulverizing nearly all of the concrete to a fine powder.

In this carefully research documentary, Richard Gage and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth refute the official narrative.

Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out. AE911Truth Documentary 

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In commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attack, we bring to the attention of our readers this important article by the late Award Winning Actor William C. Hurt, who passed away in Portland, Oregon in March 2023.

William Hurt is a powerful voice, committed to truth and social justice.

His legacy will live.

“Digging for truth in the rubble of the official lie, then in another heavier layer of rubble that lay in my own mind, installed there by our mass media.” (William C. Hurt)

–M. Ch., GR, September 7, 2023

***

I was born in 1950. Mom moved back to New York City with my two brothers and me in 1955, and we became New Yorkers.

I watched the South Tower “top off” in ’71. Mom had worked close to the Empire State Building during the War and would mention when we were growing up how, on a foggy July day in 1945, a B-25 had flown right into it. In ’78, I was watching the antenna being attached to the North Tower and remarked to my first-grade buddy that somebody “sure could run into those big things.”

Many veteran New Yorkers were rubbed the wrong way by their design. Manhattan is actually a small piece of real estate. Interwoven neighborhoods. People walk there. Shoulder to shoulder. I tended to stay far away from them even though I worked in a little theatre only 15 or so blocks away for 12 years.

At age 51, I permanently moved away with my younger sons two weeks before September 11, 2001. The towers were indelible reference points to me by then. To all of us.

William C. Hurt at the Toronto Film Festival in 2005 (right)

On the day of the attack, I was in Boston with my eldest in a café having breakfast, with the pickup parked and packed, ready to go to Montreal for a gig. There was a little TV hung to the molding of a wall. Someone said, “Look.”

Being a general aviation pilot, my first thought was, “That’s no small plane. And no accident.” My next thought was of family and close friends. We called and, thank goodness, they were all okay.

My third thought was about the borders. I assumed the borders would be closed immediately. I had a contract in Montreal to get to that day. I prayed that they would stay closed so that my contract wouldn’t force me to go to Canada only for the borders to be closed again, leaving me stranded from my kids.

Then the second plane hit. I started thinking about those lost. The massiveness. A completely new kind of shock entered my life. I hoped with all my heart that the first responders would be okay. Then the towers fell. And the world changed.

Unbelievably, the border did open up again the very next day. I was floored. The contract said I had to go. I hugged my kid and drove, shattered.

In my case, the journey toward understanding started with an unusual emotional experience. Ten days later, on the film set in Montreal, it seemed a nightmare that no one was stopping, even on their own, let alone as a group, to absorb this paradigm shift. Where was the ritual of mutual care when something massively terrible happens?

I felt alone. A catastrophe of infinite meaning had taken place, and we were routinely going about our professional duties, saying nothing about it. Maybe it was just too big. Moviemaking is myopic like that. But it seemed wrong. Deep emotional turmoil filled me. Worry for my children.

It was a busy scene involving over a hundred people. As I returned to what they call “start marks” for another “master shot” (of the whole scene before tighter “coverage” setups begin), I stopped. And I suddenly couldn’t remember where I was. What city was I in?

Then my body just “went” to New York. It was “there,” floating high up inside one of the imploding towers.

I was trying to catch the falling bodies in my arms. Trying to pick them from out of everything and grab them to my chest to save them, but everything was passing through me — the immense pieces of concrete and superstructure mingled with the bodies of my fellows. I couldn’t catch them. They went through my arms. Everything did. I was what they call “losing it.”

A crew member came up and said, “Mr. Hurt, we’re ready.” I had no idea what he meant. The man asked, “Are you okay?” I heard his voice and said, “I don’t think so.”

They led me to a trailer outside. Some caring people came to talk to me for a little while. The administration wanted to get the set back to work. One person, a fellow actor, seemed to understand. She recognized that I was going into deep shock.

I left the set and they sent a doctor. Someone wrote “possible TIA” (transient ischemic attack) on a piece of paper. But months later, after scans, that was completely ruled out. What happened was not a physical problem.

For me, the overriding fact was supremely simple.

It was that, to my knowledge, big buildings just couldn’t fall down that way, under any circumstances. It had never happened because, well, it couldn’t happen.

I kept finding myself saying to others, “But, look, buildings like that can’t pulverize to dust in mid-air and just fall down smack straight into their own socks.”

No building constructed anything like them in the history of the whole world had ever fallen down like those buildings fell, except for one cause. In earlier days, I’d done some light construction work. I’d seen a couple of smaller things (like big silos) brought down. It was a kick. I asked how it was done. The answer? “Very, very carefully.”

A day later I was back at work. Another week later, and by sheer coincidence, there we were, filming on location in NYC.

Prior to 9/11, a reservation had been made for us to stay at a hotel 12 blocks north of Ground Zero.

I asked the young elevator man as we first went up to the room if he’d lost anyone close. Surprised and instantly in tears, he said, “My uncle. He was the window-washing machines overseer. Never missed a day.”

Off my room, there was a patio. I could look down the avenue and see the site, smoldering in the night lights.

In horror, I knew what it was partly made of. We all did. What I didn’t know at that time: Thermite keeps burning a long time. At night, I’d go down. They let me through the barriers because I was recognized. I’d talk to and hug the first responders.

It never left me.

The discrepancy.

The difference between the story we were told to believe and its impossibility.

I felt alone until 2013.

Then I couldn’t stand it anymore, and I started digging. Digging for truth in the rubble of the official lie, then in another heavier layer of rubble that lay in my own mind, installed there by our mass media.

It took a while but, finally, I found pieces of evidence online. Mixed in among all the nonsense, there was sane and reasoned evidence.

One of the sources, the strongest one by far, a source supported by thousands of responsible, honest, honorable, grounded, normal, respectful people — professional architects and engineers all around the world — was Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. An amazing act of courage and compassion meets us there when we can bring ourselves to seek the answers.

Why did I wait so long, like so many others, to start digging?

It astonishes me, until I look at the size of what happened and also at my inability to believe that my government could have betrayed the families of those killed that day by not giving them the first thing they were owed: the truth.

It relieves me immensely to have given my name and my artistic advice as an executive producer of the new film The Unspeakable. (see below)

I also deeply respect the definitive film SEVEN about the “other” building so few know of that also, somehow, fell neatly, “smack straight into its own socks” that day. An impossibility in any way but one.

Video Seven: Documentary on Building Seven 

Video: “The Unspeakable” by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

William C. Hurt, Executive Producer of “The Unspeakable

The Unspeakable is about a horror that was committed upon innocent people and about their friends and loved ones struggling to heal while the truth is suppressed by those we are supposed to be able to trust. It’s also about the attempt to break the individual human heart and spirit — but how it cannot be broken in some.

The meaning of such evil acts can’t really be measured in numbers.

The measure is taken one mother or father or sister or friend at a time. The question is not how could anyone do this to so many, but how could anyone do this to anyone.

The human heart has been the focus of my life’s study, so it is to the cause of these families and friends and this humbly heartfelt film that I add my name.

I’m grateful and, again, very relieved to join with them in profound sorrow for their loss and to be a part of speaking their unspeakable truth.

I don’t suppose or pretend to know who or how or why this thing was done. But I feel it must begin with one step. NIST, our National Institute of Standards and Technology, must be brought to account for lying to all of us.

*

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Featured image: Rick McGinnis, taken September 11, 2005.

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In commemoration of the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 attack, we repost this article by Manlio Dinucci, first published in 2021 by Global Research.

***

Two news items published in these days by the Washington Post –

“9/11 families say Biden not welcome at memorial events unless he releases government evidence” and

“Biden signs executive order requiring review, release of some classified 9/11 documents” – open other deep cracks in the official version. The fact that, twenty years later, there are secret documents about 9/11 in Washington’s closets means that its real dynamics are still to be ascertained.

What is clear, however, is the process that set September 11 in motion.

In the previous decade, after the collapse of the Soviet “evil empire”, the US strategy had focused on “regional threats”, conducting the first two post-Cold War wars: the Gulf War and the war against Yugoslavia. Their purpose: to reinforce the US military presence and political influence in the strategic area of the Gulf and in the European region, at a time when its assets were being redesigned. At the same time, the U.S. strengthened NATO by giving it (with the consent of the Allies) the right to intervene outside the area and extending it to the East in the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.

In the meantime, however, the U.S. economy, while remaining the first in the world, had lost ground even to that of the European Union. In the Arab world, there were growing signs of impatience with the US presence and influence, while in Asia, the Russian-Chinese rapprochement raised the possibility of a coalition capable of challenging the US supremacy. Exactly at this critical moment, the attack of September 11, 2001 allowed the United States to open a new strategic fase, with the official motivation of facing the “global threat of terrorism”. It is a war of a new kind, of a permanent nature, in which there are no geographical boundaries, conducted against an enemy that can be identified from time to time not only in a terrorist, but in anyone who obstructs U.S. interests. The perfect image of an enemy, intercambiable and enduring. President Bush defined it as “a dark enemy, hiding in the dark corners of the Earth”, from which it emerges suddenly to carry out terrifying actions in the light of day, with a very strong emotional impact on public opinion.

Thus begins the “global war on terrorism”: in 2001 the United States attacked and occupied Afghanistan, with the participation since 2003 of NATO; in 2003 they attacked and occupied Iraq with the participation of NATO allies; in 2011 they attacked with NATO the Libyan State, destroying it (as they had already done with Yugoslavia); still in 2011 they started the same operation in Syria, blocked four years later by the Russian intervention in support of Damascus; in 2014, with the putsch in Maidan Square, they opened another armed conflict in Ukraine.

In the “global war on terrorism” the US finances, arms and trains (with the help in particular of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies) Islamic terrorist movements, exploiting their rivalries: in Afghanistan mujaidin and Taliban; in Libya and Syria an armed regrouping of groups that Washington had until recently branded as terrorists, from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and other countries. In May 2013, a month after founding ISIS, the “caliph” Ibrahim al-Badri meets in Syria the U.S. Senator John McCain, leader of the Republicans appointed by the Democrat Obama to carry out covert operations on behalf of the government.

The war is not only conducted with air, land and naval forces but, increasingly, with special forces and killer-drones. Their use offers the advantage of not requiring congressional approval and remaining secret, not eliciting public reaction. Special operations commandos often do not wear uniforms, but disguise themselves in local attire. The killers and the torture they carry out thus remain anonymous. The elite Navy Seals “Team Six” is so secretive that officially its existence is not even acknowledged. According to the official narrative, it was this unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, whose presumed corpse was buried in the sea. Or the killing of an already dead or captured bin Laden is staged.

For the “non-conventional war”, the US Special Operations Command employs more and more companies of contractors (mercenaries). In the area of the US Central Command, including the Middle East, the Pentagon’s contractors are over 150 thousand. In addition, there are those hired by other departments and allied armies. They are supplied by an oligo-poly of large companies, structured as true multinationals.

In this way war disappears more and more from our eyes, putting us in the condition of those who walk on an apparently safe ground, not knowing that under their feet act the forces that can cause a catastrophic earthquake.

*

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

---

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN Number: 9780973714715

List Price: $24.95

click here to order

Special Price: $18.00

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

“Empire of Drugs”: Taliban’s Eradication of Opium Reveals Harsh Reality of U.S. Occupation of Afghanistan

By The Free Thought Project, September 06, 2023

For the entirety of the 20 year US occupation, Afghanistan was the primary source for 90% of the world’s heroin. In just over a year the Taliban has nearly eradicated Afghani heroin production, raising serious questions about the US role in facilitating the global drug trade.

What Does G20 Stand for? “Counterbalance”, “Emerging NWO”, “Global Economic Architecture” …

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, September 06, 2023

At the 18th G20 leaders summit in New Delhi, India (September 9-10), there would definitely be a display of palatable words and phrases such as counterbalance, emerging new world order and the world’s new superpower, et cetera. It would be so, primarily to show the deep-seated global geopolitical tensions and muscles, and to a large extent, the apparent global economic architecture.

History: Worsening Relations in the German Empire. In the Wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1871)

By Shane Quinn, September 06, 2023

In the final years of Otto von Bismarck’s near two decade reign (1871–90) as chancellor of the German Empire, he was keeping an especially watchful eye on France, Germany’s neighbour and traditional foe.

The Criminal Insanity of Climate Change: Direct Energy Weapons (DEW) Create Forest and Bush Fires, Destroying Entire Cities and Igniting Boats in the Sea.

By Peter Koenig, September 06, 2023

Meteorologists are part of the lie-game. Often, for fear and shock effect, they are reporting ground temperatures instead of air temperatures which are usually measured 2 meters above the ground and are typically 10 or more degrees C lower than ground temps.

“Russia needs Turkey, Turkey needs Russia.” The Putin-Erdogan “Geopolitical Swing” in Sochi?

By Hasan Erel, September 06, 2023

Türkiye and Russia are two original Eurasian countries with their own unique characteristics. Russia is the largest country in the world with an area of more than 17 million square kilometers. Türkiye, on the other hand, sits in the world’s most valuable geopolitical location at the intersection of three continents.

Turbo Cancer: Teachers Are Being Decimated by Aggressive and Metastatic Cancers After COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Mandates

By Dr. William Makis, September 06, 2023

Emma who is a young teacher and soccer coach was attending a game, when she received a soccer ball kick to the head, had a seizure and was found to have a brain tumor.

Turkey and France Are Unfriendly Neighbors in the Mediterranean Region

By Steven Sahiounie, September 06, 2023

Turkey and France are not far apart on a map of the Mediterranean Sea; however, they are miles apart on political views and culture, even though both are NATO members, and Turkey’s army represents the largest, and strongest of all NATO members, (after the US).

Educating the US Imperium: Australia’s Mission for Assange

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 06, 2023

An odder political bunch you could not find, at least when it comes to pursuing a single goal. Given that the goal is the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange makes it all the more striking. Six Australian parliamentarians of various stripes will be heading to Washington ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s October visit to test the ground of empire, maybe even plant a few seeds of doubt, about why the indictment against their countryman should be dropped.

Watchdog: Cluster Bomb Deaths in Ukraine Are Highest in the World

By Connor Freeman, September 06, 2023

Cluster bombs open up in the air and scatter scores of small bomblets and submunitions across large target areas, these often kill non-combatants for decades prior to the conclusion of conflicts where the arms are used. More than 120 countries have signed on to a United Nations convention prohibiting the munitions which kill indiscriminately. However, Washington, Kiev, and Moscow are not signatories.

Three Reasons: Something Sinister with the Big Push for Electric Vehicles (EVs)

By Nick Giambruno, September 06, 2023

Congressman Thomas Massie—an electrical engineer—revealed this information while discussing with Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation, President Biden’s plan to have 50% of cars sold in the US be electric by 2030. The current and future grid in most places will not be able to support each home running 25 refrigerators—not even close. Just look at California, where the grid is already buckling under the existing load.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

This video produced by James Corbett was first published in July 2016 under the title: The EU is an Imperial Project? Is Brexit a Blow to the Oligarchs?

***

In order to understand the European Project in its full historical context, we must know about the origins and motivations for the formation of the EU and the forces that have shaped the EU bureaucracy into an arm of the IMF/World Bank-led Wall Street hegemon.

Today Professor Michel Chossudovsky joins us to expose the EU as the imperial project that it always was, and the growing movement against EU domination as an anti-imperial movement of world historical importance.

Transcript:

James Corbett (JC): Welcome friends. This is James Corbett of Corbettreport.com coming to you in a conversation that is being recorded on the 12th July 2016, and as we sit here in the second week of July 2016 the European Union is embarking on a new era in the wake of the BREXIT Referendum that was held last month in the United Kingdom, and the question mark covering over the European Union is causing a lot of people to scratch their heads, even about what the European Union is. Even people living under the European Union don’t necessarily know what it is, and very few of them know about the deep history going back not just to the Cold War era, but even preceding it that set the groundwork for this organisation and what it has become, so joining us today to help us sort through this and understand better what is really happening in Europe, we are joined once again by the Director for the Centre For Research and Globalisation at globalresearch.ca, Michel Chossudovsky. Michel, thank you very much for your time today.

Michel Chossudovsky (MC): Delighted to be on the programme.

JC: Perhaps you can begin by telling us about the real origins of the European Union, not just the origins that everyone knows about – The Treaty of Rome and the Maastricht Treaty, and things of that nature – but maybe the pre-history of the European Union that situates that in the proper context for us to understand what the objective of this union is.

MC: We first have to recall that in the immediate wake of WW2 we had what we call the Marshall Plan. It was a reconstruction programme, largely initiated by the United States, and it was also a means for the United States to establish a corporate hub within Western Europe.

While the Marshall Plan was ongoing, we also had the onset of the Cold War, which consisted essentially in isolating the Soviet Union. The ‘Iron Curtain’ was not strictly a political curtain, it was also an economic curtain, and its main objective was to prevent any kind of trade and investment relations taking place between Western Europe and the Soviet Bloc countries, and ultimately when the European Community was created under the Rome Treaty in 1957, this was essentially a Cold War structure. It was also a US initiative, indirectly, as part of a broader hegemonic project. I think this is coming to light through recent events, though wasn’t clear at the time. What happened is that the European space in the 1950s was essentially divided into three areas.

One, you had the first six members of the European Community – The Europe of the Six – and then it started to expand,

then you had the European Free Trade Agreement, which re-grouped a number of what we might call neutral countries, and these neutral countries weren’t associated with NATO: they were Scandinavia, Switzerland, Austria, and that formed a separate trade agreement, and I should mention that the European Community as it evolved essentially started to coincide with NATO (the North Atlantic Treat Organisation), which was the main instrument of Cold War geopolitics which was consistently threatening Russia. 

Now it’s interesting to note that in recent developments this week [2016], the notion of the EU and NATO more or less merging so to speak, a melding together, is a talking point of analysis and opinion. So that is the background.

The Cold War created a situation that isolated Russia and the Soviet Union, and what happened subsequently is that the Soviet Union started to establish trade with other countries, including the Non-aligned Movement, the countries of the 3rd world which had become independent, and also in a sense encroaching on traditional colonial trading relations, because these were former colonies of the West, and then eventually what happened in the wake of the Cold War is that all these structures started to tumble.

I should mention that the Soviet Bloc countries had their own trading system which was called COMECON; it was the Council of Mutual Economic Cooperation, which they developed with the countries of Eastern Europe as well as other countries like Vietnam, Cuba, and so on, and then there was also a period of trade with China.

Now, there’s another important element in all this and that is going back to the early 1920s when there was a conference in Genoa, the Genoa Conference, in which nations of Western Europe and the Soviet Union met. The Soviet Union at the time announced its principal of “peaceful co-existence between competing economic systems, and the notion of Socialism in one country.”

They expressed the desire to have trade with the West. Now that was never an option for Western Europe largely as a result of US influence, and I should mention that in the 1920s Russia had traded with Germany during the Weimar Republic, but it didn’t have trade with the western powers, which were, of course, supporting the insurrection in Southern Russia. So, that is the background.

Now we’ve reached a point of evolution. First of all, after the Cold War, we saw a large number of new countries entering the EU, and these countries were former members of the Soviet Bloc so to speak – Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and so on – and then there were other countries, which were more on the periphery of the European economy, such as Portugal, Spain, Greece, the Republic of Ireland, which joined the EU and the evolution that took place from the late 50s/early 60s to the 90s was the Maastricht Treaty in 1992.

Now, why is the Maastricht Treaty so important?

Essentially, the Maastricht Treaty embeds a neoliberal economic policy perspective within its Articles of Agreement, but specifically it refers to monetary policy, and it creates conditions whereby the individual member states are not allowed to use monetary instruments to mobilise internal resources and deal with internal debt operations.

In other words, you can’t finance your internal development without borrowing money from outside, and now eventually what happened was that the Maastricht Treaty then evolved toward the Eurozone.

Of course not all members of the European Union are members of the Euro Zone, but the Euro Zone essentially means you have a European Central Bank which then controls monetary policy in each of the member states and ultimately creates debt, and that’s the plight let’s say of Greece, it’s the plight of several countries whereby the centralised power of the European Central Bank ultimately creates conditions of economic collapse and mass indebtedness precisely because it disallows countries to use their Central Banks to mobilise resources, and also putting forth this notion of Central Bank, namely that the Central Bank operates separately from the Government, so that is a little bit the background.  Today, I would say that the European Central Bank is controlled by Wall Street, and that the same thing is true for the Bank of England: both of them are led by former employees/officials of Goldman Sachs.

JC: So does this mean in this reading that the European Union is still an economic dagger aimed at the heart of Russia, essentially, that this is a form of economic warfare that drives the wedge between Europe and Russia?

MC: I would say yes, I think it does drive a wedge because the European bureaucracy, which really takes its origin with the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 – of course it existed previously – but it provides it with a legal framework, and it prevents individual countries from really having bilateral trade agreements let’s say with other countries without going through the Brussels bureaucracy, and the dynamics today, particularly with the geopolitics, the threats directed against the Russian Federation, NATO’s expansion, what it is essentially is to restore the iron curtain, to restore the economic iron curtain, and at the same time, it is there also to preclude the ability of the Russian Federation to enter into agreements with other countries which are outside the European space such as Brazil, many countries in Africa,  and so forth, which they had during the Cold War era in the 1950s.

So essentially it is a policy to isolate Russia from an economic standpoint, and it more or less merges with NATO because NATO is the military arm of the Western Alliance, of the Atlantic Alliance, but it encompasses most of the member states of the European Union, and as a consequence now the confrontation between the West and the Russian Federation is also in the realm of trade, then there’s the issue of sanctions when in fact what is now happening is that the European Union is impoverishing the member states, and I should say there’s another element when I said the neo-liberal agenda is embedded in the European Union, well in effect it really embeds, so to speak, the IMF/World Bank perspective.

The European Union (June 2016)

The Militarization of the EU. U.S Military Bases in the EU

The ‘Washington Consensus” is embedded in the European Union’s bureaucracy and the European Commission, so that when they act in relation to individual countries, they are in effect replicating the actions of the International Monetary Fund in relation, let’s say, to 3rd World countries, except these are not 3rd World countries, and so ultimately what is happening is that the Washington Consensus of the Bretton Woods Institutions, the US Treasury, the Think Tanks – I would add of course also Wall Street – is behind all that, and ultimately what we see unfolding is the US colonisation of the European Union where ultimately this entity is indirectly part of a hegemonic project, and of course the end game is the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade & Investment Partnership). It’s the Trade and Investment Atlantic Partnership which is really contiguous to the Atlantic Alliance and military affairs and it would then merge the EU, including the former members of COMECON, into a giant trading agreement encompassing the United States – of course Canada would also be included, but there’s a separate agreement which is called SETA – and the European Union, and essentially that is an imperial project. Now, we have to see how this is going to evolve because the European countries have their own people, their own agendas and their own movements, and there’s increasing awareness of the nature of this project. So, we’ve gone from WWI Genoa Conference to the TTIP. That is the trajectory.

JC: It’s an interesting trajectory and it raises the question the BREXIT vote and the various movements in various European countries that are agitating for leaving the European Union at this moment represents in this view a type of anti-imperialist movement, an attempt to strike a blow against the imperial project, and yet it is portrayed as mindless right wing, neo-Nazi nationalists who just hate immigrants. That’s the way it’s being portrayed. Is there a discrepancy between the consciousness of the people who are involved in this anti European movement and the actual end goal of the anti-European movement?

MC: Well, there are various political cleavages that are operating simultaneously with different agendas, different ideological perspectives, so it’s very difficult to give a straightforward answer to that question. I would say on the one hand there are people within individual countries that realise that the European Union has destroyed their society and their national project. I think Greece is the most notorious example, but you might add Spain as well and Portugal possibly. People are starting to realise that the European Union is in fact a form of IMF in disguise and it’s derogating their social programs and their identity as nation states.

Now, there’s another perspective, and I think it’s also a very valid perspective, and that’s that people in Western and Eastern Europe realise their historical links and they still believe in a European project, but that European project is not going to be controlled by the Washington Consensus or the Brussels bureaucrats. It’s a union of values and people, all of which in effect have common origins. I mean Britain is really created by Scandinavian tribes that invaded the Angles and then the Saxons and then the Normans, and so on, and France is really a construct as a result of the Germanic invasions – the  Franks were Germanic.

So the European people have this identity, and I think it’s important that both the nationalism, which is required to maintain economic and social sovereignty by the member states, which would be an exit, let’s say, from the prevailing European Union, that of course is an important undertaking, and the two things are not incompatible, but at the same time is the notion that we should ultimately democratise the European Union, get rid of the bureaucrats, get rid of the Washington Consensus, and build a Western Europe which has links with other countries, with the Russian Federation, with China. and so on and so forth, and then it raises the issue of what kind of society do we really want.

Do we want global capitalism, do we want to restore some of the democracies, social democracies, which existed historically, and so on and so forth, but I think that’s the way I would see it evolving at this moment, and of course the main thing is for the European people, whatever their perspective, to oppose the TTIP, because the TTIP is ultimately an instrument of conquest which will essentially transform the European member states into territories of the US imperial project.

JC: It’s a very astute analysis and one that I think cuts a lot deeper and closer to the bone than a lot of the analyses that we see certainly in the mainstream media, even in a lot of the progressive press and other places that are simply reacting in a knee jerk fashion to what’s going on here, rather than looking at that more holistic picture, so I thank you for bringing that perspective to the table. Michel Chossudovsky of Globalresearh.ca, thank you for your time.

MC: Thank you very much and delighted to be on the program again.

*

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***

At the 18th G20 leaders summit in New Delhi, India (September 9-10), there would definitely be a display of palatable words and phrases such as counterbalance, emerging new world order and the world’s new superpower, et cetera. It would be so, primarily to show the deep-seated global geopolitical tensions and muscles, and to a large extent, the apparent global economic architecture.

Within the context of the current changes, leaders have been attempting to establish the relationship between global south and global north. The G20 leaders are also taking steps to show their level of commitment to developing nations and developing nations are crawling on the path with development aspirations. These are challenges confronting the world, while the basic question still remains extremely controversial on the standard welfare of majority of the world’s population.

“The world looks upon the G20 to ease the challenges of growth, development, economic resilience, disaster resilience, financial stability, transnational crime, corruption, terrorism, and food and energy security,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said back in February. India, currently holding its presidency, which rotates annually among the members.

Those controversies aside, Prime Minister Modi has also indicated that India’s role as the G20 host in September 2023 would focus on highlighting the concerns of the developing world, and has further proposed the African Union (AU) secures a permanent seat in the G20. With positive motives, this will become significant for the African Union, which was created in May 1963 and unites 54 African States.

In fact the AU has an impulse to make a notable historical transition unto the group, but still remains to be seen the possible impact and degree of influence it would have on Africa. At first, there is already a degree of euphoria stemming from one fundamental fact whether African Union’s ideas and voice on global issues relating to Africa’s development complaints would be heeded to, analyse and taken into consideration.

Nevertheless, arguments abound about Africa’s marginalization in relation to global development processes which, sometimes are blamed on Western and European approach to the continent. African leaders are normally excused for the primary mistakes for lack of good governance and lack of systemic efforts toward their own development. Welfare of the population are relegated to backyard, due to political egoism, self-centrism and worse, persistent ethnic conflicts.

For African leaders, it is only fashionable to sit in high-level summits and conferences. The aim is to showcase personal profiles, to represent for the sake of ceremonial representation. Africa is Africa, often times described as the a rich continent but only seen making little progress towards accelerating development, approach to critical sectors fraught with deep-seated corruption and mismanagement. Economic opportunities are grossly under-utilized.

For many developing nations, there are at least three essential areas as guidelines: to prioritize development needs and design steps to overcome the challenges; to connect the transparent regulatory and governance solutions; and scale up efforts toward sustainable financing in order to achieve results and growth. Workable solutions are also necessary from external sources, turning ideas into action and forging transformative partnerships especially being members of international organizations.

Kenya’s President William Ruto, who chaired the Heads of State Committee on Climate Change, early September for instance, argued that Africa faces unique, disproportionate and structural disadvantages that can help them achieve prosperity. Africa has committed to move quickly to develop the necessary instruments and institutions.

“We have been negatively profiled, the continent of disease, war and poverty, but we are stepping out to say that Africa is home to 60 percent of the world’s renewable energy assets important to make the necessary development growth,” he said.

Today African leaders shout the loudest of non-interference in their internal affairs, raise concerns over neo-colonialism and continue sobbing with a high level of interest for joining such organizations as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

Their vision of today’s world is that Africa should be part of multipolar, while largely failing to put first their home in a complete order. African leaders cannot simply be persuaded to engage in internal-controlled home-cleaning. Inside Africa, for instance, regional blocs have done little with regards to sustainable development.

And yet global leaders have shown unflinching support for Africa, that the African Union plays a more effective role on the international stage. According to authentic sources, European officials plan to hold a series of sideline meetings with their African colleagues because, “the 27-European nation bloc aims to show it is serious about redefining its partnership with Africa, despite the troubled legacy of colonialism.”

Sources say the EU seeks to guarantee the African Union full G20 membership, not just permanent guest invitee status. The sides will discuss the Ukrainian conflict and its consequences for global food security, as well as reforming global financial architecture, improving conditions for private investment, carrying out infrastructure projects on the African continent, and the situation in the Sahel region.

During past several months, the United States, Russia and China and many other foreign states have expressed support for African Union ascension into G20. It was also widely reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping would skip the G20 summit in New Delhi.

In spite of the fact that Delhi feels disappointed over their absence, of course, has obvious implications and different interpretations. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Chinese delegation headed by State Council Premier Li Qiang are scheduled to represent both Russia and China.

It happened, in a similar way previously, and that was during Johannesburg’s BRICS, Putin missed in-person-summit due to the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued for him. Xi skipped a key event at the BRICS where he was scheduled to make a speech. Commerce Minister Wang Wentao delivered the speech on his behalf instead.

The Foreign Ministry said China, however, hoped that the G20 meeting would focus on discussions for the recovery of the world economy.

“The downward pressure on the world economy is increasing and the difficulties of global sustainable development are increasing … the G20 should strengthen partnerships and work together to deal with outstanding challenges in the field of international economy and development, so as to promote the recovery, growth and development of the world economy and make a positive contribution to global sustainable development,” Ministry Spokeswoman Mao Ning said.

“China hopes that the New Delhi Summit will build consensus on this, convey confidence to the outside world, and jointly promote prosperity and development,” she added.

Xi’s absence did not mean China is not paying attention to the G20, which is intended as a platform to discuss international economic and financial issues.

In a report from South China Morning Post (SCMP), Zhu Feng, Dean of International Studies at Nanjing University, said Xi’s choice to skip the G20 summit was not about regressing US-China relations, but rather evidence that India-China relations were being hampered. “It’s normal that Xi chose not to attend,” Zhu said, arguing India’s ongoing military exercises on its border with China – which will continue during the G20 summit – will pressure China.

Xi’s absence from the G20 summit could be seen as a blow to India, which has chaired the G20 this year, as China and India have continued to clash on border issues. Beijing boycotted a G20 tourism event in the Kashmir region, where India has competing territorial claims with China and Pakistan.

And then China and India are tensely fighting. Both are also claiming superpower position in the Pacific. That however, China now dominates BRICS, the move is widely interpreted as another step by China towards creating its own competing world order to the United States and its allies, in which it leads a group of developing states.

Modi’s government has replaced the name India with a Sanskrit word in dinner invitations sent to guests attending the G20 summit. India has its own internal political disputes, the new disputes is now over “India” versus “Bharat” which have gained ground since opposition parties in July announced a new alliance – called INDIA – to unseat Modi and defeat his party ahead of national elections in 2024. The acronym stands for Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance.

Stephen Collinson argues in his Cable News Network (CNN) article that “India is likely to go only so far, as its historic non-aligned status evolves into a posture of trying to have a foot in both camps.” According to Collinson, New Delhi has disappointed the West by failing to forcefully condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has profited from cheap Russian oil following a boycott by US-allied nations. As a rising power that is still regarded as a developing nation, India is a leading member of both the BRICS and the G20.

That aside, the Western world is also against Russia. There are many other differences among the members of G20. The biggest risk of the forthcoming summit is persistent heightened geopolitical and economic antagonism. Developing nations are deeply frustrated with often opaque nature of their relationship with the global north.

The final document, if any, that may be adopted must necessarily reflect a new practical approach towards the Global South, despite having diametrically opposed positions among G20 members.

Bridging the development disparity, and promoting collaboration in addressing the existing shortfalls in the developing nations should be prioritized.

G20 has to continue shaping and strengthening global architecture and governance as its members represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world’s population.

*

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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*** 

This article by the late Michael C. Ruppert, former officer of LAPD, points to deliberate and erroneous pre-911 warnings. It is followed by an analysis of insider trading. Michael Rupert is the author of 

Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. (2004)

The legacy of Michael C. Ruppert will live.  

According to Ruppert: 

The Lie Won’t Stand. Bush Administration Explanations for Pre-9-11 Warnings Fail the Smell Test

***

Never in the history of scandals involving the United States government has an attempt to conceal criminal conduct by an administration been more transparently dishonest or more easily exposed.

Michael C. Ruppert image right

On May 15 [2002] White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer — while making the startling admission that President Bush received CIA and FBI intelligence briefings in August 2001 indicating Osama bin Laden might be planning hijackings — told major news sources including CBS News,

“All appropriate action was taken based on the threat information we had,” Fleischer said. “The president did not — not — receive information about the use of airplanes as missiles by suicide bombers.”

In other statements Fleischer told the press,

“The president was also provided information about bin Laden wanting to engage in hijacking in the traditional pre-9-11 sense, not for the use of suicide bombing, not for the use of an airplane as a missile.”

According to a May 16, 2002 story by the New York Times,

“Mr. Fleischer said the information given to the president in Texas [last August 2001], had prompted the administration to put law enforcement agencies on alert.”

Every major position taken by an administration in full retreat and on the defensive can be easily deconstructed and shown to be false.

For more than seven months FTW [Michael Ruppert’s Website] has been documenting specific warnings received by the U.S. government from both foreign intelligence services and, in one case, from Russian President Vladimir Putin, indicating commercial airliners were going to be used by terrorists to attack — among other things — the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. [2001]

In order for Fleischer’s statement to be credible he would have to assert then that George W. Bush either ignored or was not informed of a direct warning from a head of state and also from the German intelligence service, the BND.

As reported in the German daily Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on Sept. 14,

The BND [Germany’s Intelligence Agency] warned both the CIA and Israel in June [2001] that Middle Eastern terrorists were

“planning to hijack commercial aircraft to use as weapons to attack important symbols of American and Israeli culture.”

The story specifically referred to an electronic eavesdropping system known as Echelon, wherein a number of countries tap cell phone and electronic communications in partner countries and then pool the information. The BND warnings were also passed on to the United Kingdom.

No known denial by the BND pertaining to the accuracy of this story exists, and the FAZ report indicates the information was received directly from BND sources.

According to a Sept. 14 [2001] report in the Internet newswire online. ie, German police, monitoring the phone calls of a jailed Iranian man, learned the man was telephoning U.S. intelligence agencies last summer to warn of an imminent attack on the World Trade Center in the week of Sept. 9. German officials confirmed the calls to the U.S. government for the story but refused to discuss additional details.

According to a story in Izvestia on Sept. 12 [2001], Russian intelligence warned the U.S. last summer that as many as 25 suicide pilots were training for suicide missions involving the crashing of airliners into important targets.

In an MSNBC interview on Sept. 15, Russian President Putin stated he had ordered Russian intelligence to warn the U.S. government “in the strongest possible terms” of imminent assaults on airports and government buildings before the attacks on Sept. 11. No credible information has emerged from any source indicating that Putin omitted the above information when issuing the warning.

Many other direct warnings were received by the U.S. government and have been documented in FTW’s 9-11 timeline located at this site.

These stories give the immediate lie to Fleischer’s statements that Bush had no inkling of airliners being used as weapons.

But there is more.

In 1996 — as reported by the German paper Die Welt on Dec. 6, and by Agence France Presse on Dec. 7 — Western intelligence services, including the CIA, learned after arrests in the Philippines that Al Qaeda operatives had planned to crash commercial airliners into the Twin Towers. Details of the plan, as reported by a number of American press outlets, were found on a computer seized during the arrests. The plan was called “Operation Bojinka.” Details of the plot were disclosed publicly in 1997 in the New York trial of Ramsi Youssef for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

FBI Memos Trigger White House Backstepping

In “traditional” hijackings the hijackers have no need or desire to learn how to fly.

As reported by the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post (among others) the events leading to Fleischer’s statements were the recent disclosure of FBI memoranda originated by field agents in Arizona and Minnesota that warned of a possible hijack attempt by bin Laden’s followers. In both cases the suspects were taking flight lessons.

According to Newsweek and the New York Times, FBI agents in Phoenix submitted a classified memorandum in July naming Osama bin Laden and tracking the activities of possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects who had enrolled in local flight schools. The memo, according to the Times, stated bin Laden’s followers “could use the schools to train for terror operations.” The information in the Phoenix memo was not shared with FBI field agents in Minnesota who had uncovered other startling evidence.

Just days before the attacks in early-September, FBI agents in Minnesota wrote notes that subsequently became included in an internal FBI document warning that accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui “might be planning on flying something into the World Trade Center.”

A story from the May 20 issue of Newsweek by Michael Isikoff described how a local flight instructor had reported Moussaoui had

“showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer [and not land] large airliners…The [FBI] agents were ‘in a frenzy, absolutely convinced he was planning to so something with a plane.’”

A multitude of sources have reported the FBI agents requested a warrant to search Moussaoui’s personal computer but were denied by Attorney General John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. After the 9-11 attacks the computer was seized and found to contain information directly related to the World Trade Center attacks.

This apparent lack of support from within the administration is consistent with reports released last fall by the BBC’s Gregg Palast showing that in January 2001 the Bush Administration had issued direct orders to the FBI to curtail investigations of two of Osama bin Laden’s relatives, Omar and Abdullah bin Laden. The two bin Ladens had been connected to possible terrorist activities and were living in Falls Church, Va., near CIA headquarters.

Appropriate Warnings?

Fleischer’s statement that adequate warnings had been given to appropriate federal agencies falls flat on its face. Two of the most “appropriate” agencies would have been the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard.

As documented by researchers like Jared Israel at www.tenc.net, it has been standard FAA procedure for more than 25 years to scramble U.S. fighters to intercept — not shoot down — any errant or non-responsive aircraft under FAA control. This protocol is even more stringent in the case of a hijacking. Yet, Vice President Dick Cheney and others have stated publicly there were no fighters available in some cases, and there was no heightened state of alert on Sept. 11. For 50 minutes on 9-11, in direct contravention of established policy, no fighters were scrambled to intercept two outstanding hijacked airliners even though it was known attacks were in progress.

Given the above information, it would have been an obvious move to have placed fighter aircraft on a heightened state of alert in this time period. This unresponsiveness stands in contrast to the fact that, in October 1999 at a time when there was no heightened alert, the ill-fated Lear Jet occupied by golfer Payne Stewart had an F-16 fighter and an A-10 attack aircraft flying beside it within minutes of losing radio contact and veering off course.

Insider Trading

FTW (Michael Ruppert’s website] has spent months on this important story that proves foreknowledge of the attacks by people who also profited from them. This was a glaring warning signal, since such trades ran the risk of being detected by intelligence agencies that routinely monitor all market activity in real time.

The insider trading involves the placement of large numbers of “put” options on stocks of companies directly affected by the Sept. 11 attacks. They include United Air Lines, American Air Lines, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, AXA Reinsurance, Munich Reinsurance and Swiss Reinsurance. Put options are a leveraged bet that a stock’s price will fall dramatically.

As CBS news noted on Sept. 26 [2001], the peak of trading activity occurred just before the attacks. There was a jump in United Air Line’s put options 90 times (not 90 percent) above normal between Sept. 6 and Sept.10, and 285 times higher than average on Sept. 6. Numbers for other affected stocks were equally alarming. It is uncontested that only United and American stocks had this level of put buying before the attacks. No other airlines were affected.

A May 13 story by the Washington Times’ Insight Magazine attempted to explain the insider trading by stating higher numbers of put options had been placed on United and American stocks earlier in 2001. By relying only on the numbers of put options, Insight asserted that there was nothing unusual about the pre-9-11 trades.

However, FTW has contacted several experienced traders and reviewed existing documentation from financial experts, which indicate the alarm for insider trading is to look for any “imbalance” between the level of put options (a bet that a stock’s price will fall) and the level of call options (a bet that a stock’s price will rise). It is a significant imbalance in puts vs. calls that indicates criminal insider trading. The Insight piece did not address this point.

Several traders have stated that in a fairly flat market with high trading volumes, it has been a routine procedure for experienced traders to place roughly equal numbers of puts and calls on various stocks in order to generate a paper cash flow. They were quick to point out that by September, the market had gone into sharp decline and trading volumes were way down. Thus, lower numbers of put options did not mean that everything was normal. They stressed it was the imbalance in put-to-call ratios that signaled the insider trading. [Ed. Note: FTW has undertaken a more detailed investigation of this trading activity and hopes to have a more comprehensive report within 4-6 weeks].

Part of the problem in Insight’s research stems from the fact that since Sept. 11, there has been no transparency from either the government or the financial sector on how the trades worked or how the markets tracked them. Secrecy is everywhere. Telephone calls have not been returned, and the government refuses to divulge any information about probes it admits are still ongoing. But simplistic dismissals from sources quoted in the Insight story contradict not only other evidence, but statements made by financial experts and major news sources just after the attacks.

“This could very well be insider trading at the worst, most horrific, most evil use you’ve ever seen in your entire life…This would be one of the most extraordinary coincidences in the history of mankind if it was a coincidence,” said Dylan Ratigan of Bloomberg Business News, interviewed Sept. 20 on Good Morning Texas.

“’I saw put-call numbers higher than I’ve ever seen in 10 years of following the markets, particularly the options markets,’ said John Kinnucan, principal of Broadband Research, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle,” reported the Montreal Gazette on Sept. 19.

To quote 60 Minutes from Sept. 19, “Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.”

Assertions that the reported number of puts involved were not abnormal also failed to analyze highly intricate shell games that involve the movement of put options to markets outside the U.S. or hidden in what traders refer to as “net positions.” Serious financial experts have indicated the profits from insider trading could have been in the billions. Andreas von Bulow, a former member of the German parliament responsible for oversight of Germany’s intelligence services, estimated the worldwide amount at $15 billion, according to Tagesspiegel on Jan. 13. Other experts have estimated the amount at $12 billion. CBS News gave a conservative estimate of $100 million.

A hasty conclusion reached by many is the insider trades were placed by bin Laden and his associates. Such a notion is flatly contradicted by the now absolute certainty that such insider trades would have — and apparently did — set off alarm bells. It makes little sense to argue bin Laden et al would have risked compromising at the last minute an operation planned in total secrecy for at least four years.

Also lacking credibility is the argument that many of the trades were what some brokers described as inconsequential amounts valued at $1 million or $2 million. This does not address the possibility that U.S. intelligence officials decided in a few cases to make a quick profit from attacks they knew were going to succeed. As distasteful as it may seem, this explanation is far more credible than an assumption that bin Laden made the trades himself and risked the exposure of what the world has been led to believe was his life’s “masterpiece.”

For more information on 9-11 insider trading please visit www.copvcia.com.

The explanations offered by the Bush Administration over the last 48 hours will not withstand even the slightest scrutiny if a major press organization asks any question about the warnings received from credible foreign government sources and heads of state. Other questions must inevitably follow that will implode an oil dictatorship whose sins and crimes are exposed and just waiting for someone to pick them up and run with them.

*

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***

In the final years of Otto von Bismarck’s near two decade reign (1871–90) as chancellor of the German Empire, he was keeping an especially watchful eye on France, Germany’s neighbour and traditional foe.

This was because France was boiling over with talk of a revenge war against Germany, to rectify the defeat the French had suffered in opposition to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.

Ever since the military leader Napoleon Bonaparte led a succession of battles from the late 18th century, the French public had held particular affection for its prominent generals. Between 1886 and 1889 the idol of many French citizens was General Georges Boulanger, a former commander of French troops in the country’s overseas possessions who had returned to France in 1885 to enter politics.

On the streets of Paris, Boulanger was considered the man who wanted to lead another war against the German enemy. Boulanger rode about the Parisien boulevards on his pristine horse, struck impressive postures, and he conducted speeches promoting a conflict with the Germans. “We remember that they are waiting for us in Alsace and Lorraine”, was one of Boulanger’s favourite remarks, referring to the mainly German-speaking former French region which Bismarck had integrated to Germany in May 1871.

In January 1886, General Boulanger became the Minister of War in the cabinet of Charles de Freycinet, the prime minister. While in this post Boulanger set to work in further enlarging and modernising the French Army. In the autumn of 1887, Boulanger went so far as to initiate a partial mobilisation of the French armed forces, all with Germany in mind. Boulanger continued to attract popular support across France, and the royalists and Bonapartists lined up behind him as did a large part of the nation’s media.

Maurice Rouvier, the new French prime minister, excluded Boulanger from his cabinet in 1887 and the following year the military dismissed him for misconduct. However, in that same year, 1888, Boulanger was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, a legislative body of the French parliament; it was not long before the general resigned from his position there in protest of disagreements shown to his proposals.

After this, the adulation of the French masses for the anti-German Boulanger if anything increased. Dozens of constituencies in France chose to elect him as their deputy. By early 1889, the 51-year-old Boulanger held such influence that it was believed by his supporters he could establish himself as the country’s military dictator in Paris.

General Boulanger was probably preparing such an action but government forces posed a formidable obstacle and the general, perhaps becoming aware of the unlawful nature of his intentions, abandoned the idea. The strong emotions brought on by Boulanger in France then began to decrease. On 30 September 1891, Boulanger ended his life on the gravestone of his mistress in the Ixelles Cemetery in Brussels, by putting a revolver to his head and pulling the trigger.

The Boulanger crisis had shown once more how deep in France the hatred of Germany went, and the manner in which many Frenchmen desired a war against the Germans. Little of this escaped the attention of the politicians in Berlin. They were not too worried, as long as France remained cut adrift in her hatred. By the 1880s and 1890s, Germany had become a considerably more powerful country than France. In 1890 the German population reached 49 million compared to 38 million in France, whereas in 1860 there were 37 million French people and just under 36 million Germans.

German industry was taking off relating to important commodities like pig iron, or crude iron, used in the creation of steel and in war production. While in 1870 the Germans produced 1.4 million tons of pig iron that year, by 1903 they increased the figure to 9.8 million tons, far ahead of France and second only to the United States.

Yet other less positive events were occurring in Germany which was out of their control. On 9 March 1888 Kaiser Wilhelm I, who had possessed a good deal of wisdom and humility, died at the age of 90. Upon hearing this the British, who tended not to interfere in mainland European affairs, were concerned to hear of the kaiser’s death. Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister wrote, “This is the crossing of the bar. I see the sea covered with white horses”.

Kaiser Wilhelm I had not much interest in or ability when it came to politics, but he wisely left such vital matters to his chancellor, Bismarck. Immediately after Wilhelm’s death he was succeeded as kaiser by Frederick III, his only son; but the 56-year-old Frederick was in the final months of his life. He was dying of cancer of the larynx, an illness which he succumbed to on 15 June 1888. The position of kaiser now went to Wilhelm II, who was the son of Frederick III and grandson of Wilhelm I.

In Germany at this time, some influential circles were publicly expressing their belief in “the inevitable war” between the German and Russian empires. Among them no less was the Chief of the German General Staff, Alfred Graf von Waldersee. General Waldersee went about advocating an unprovoked military attack against Russia. Waldersee’s rants would have been irrelevant in years gone by, but with Wilhelm II on the throne the new kaiser, who lacked his grandfather’s common sense, was inclined to take seriously what Waldersee was saying.

Bismarck was alarmed by this as he had no cause to quarrel with Russia, and in fact the last outcome he wanted was a war between Germany and Russia.

Bismarck had served as the Prussian ambassador in St. Petersburg for a three-year period from 1859, and he was aware the Russian state contained greater material strength than Germany. Even more serious for Germany was that if they invaded Russia, the French would almost certainly take advantage of the circumstances by attacking the Germans from the west. Germany would be faced with two separate wars on either side of her. These scenarios were apparently lost on General Waldersee.

Bismarck explained the realities at length to Kaiser Wilhelm II and eventually his arguments got through. Waldersee would no longer be listened to. In spite of this, relations between Bismarck and the kaiser were strained. The chancellor complained that Wilhelm II was “like a balloon. If you don’t keep fast hold of the string, you never know where he’ll be off to”. On becoming kaiser in June 1888, Wilhelm II said he intended to let Bismarck “shuffle on for six months, then I’ll rule myself”. That Wilhelm II failed to recognise Bismarck’s political capabilities, and the service he had given Germany as chancellor, says much about the direction in which the German nation was heading under the kaiser.

Born in 1815, Bismarck represented an older generation of Germans and a 19th century society which was fast disappearing. Kaiser Wilhelm II, aged 31 in 1890, represented the new, swaggering Germany which was taking on some of the dubious characteristics that can come with material success. Bismarck’s policies had contributed heavily to Germany’s growing wealth. On the other hand, he was often intent on making the clock stand still and preserving the military gains which Germany had secured in Europe by 1871, whereas Wilhelm II had different ambitions.

Time was moving on. In 1895 German steel production overtook Britain and Germany was winning fame in areas like electrics and combustion engines. The German Empire had come a long way since replacing the “little Spartan Prussia” at the end of the Franco-Prussian War.

While the kaiser insisted he would remove Bismarck after half a year, the departure did not come until 21 months after Wilhelm II became emperor. Bismarck’s dismissal occurred on 20 March 1890. Had he been allowed to, he could have remained as chancellor for further years because his health and energy levels were still good. There have been suggestions that Waldersee had something to do with Bismarck’s fall, though it seems unlikely.

By the latter end of Bismarck’s tenure, there was hardly anything on which he and Wilhelm II could agree on and this was part of the problem. The kaiser, who had no political experience, had said he was intent on ruling himself, of being master of his own ship, and there was no place for a figure like Bismarck in his plans.

Nine days after Bismarck’s ousting, on 29 March 1890 the former chancellor left Berlin for his country house in the district of Friedrichsruh in northern Germany. Bismarck took with him huge quantities of alcohol and three cases loaded down with official papers. The kaiser was jubilant to see Bismarck gone. He wrote to his personal adviser and ex-tutor Georg Hinzpeter, “It has fallen to me to be officer of the watch on the ship of state. The course remains the same and now full speed ahead!”

The course would not remain the same, not by any means, and the reaction from some of the other major powers to Bismarck’s departure is telling. The Russian hierarchy, including Tsar Alexander III and diplomats like Nikolay Girs, were sorry to see Bismarck go because they knew that Russia had lost a reliable partner. The Russians felt that Bismarck’s steady influence in central Europe would be missed. Tsar Alexander III, who had come to the throne in Russia in March 1881, disliked and distrusted Kaiser Wilhelm II and he believed, with good reason as it would turn out, that the impetuous German monarch lacked the qualities needed to rule Germany.

The reaction in France was different. The French held Bismarck as primarily responsible for their nation’s decline and defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Bismarck’s presence in Berlin was a constant, painful reminder to the French of their country having been overtaken by the Germans.

With the “Iron chancellor” sent into retirement, a dark cloud was lifted from the French conscience. The mood across France improved, people were more confident they would regain their supremacy over Germany one day, despite the widening gap in resources between the two states. French foreign policy suddenly became self-assured while German diplomacy deteriorated.

The French were heartened, furthermore, by the fact that Kaiser Wilhelm II picked a military commander, General Leo von Caprivi, to succeed Bismarck. Caprivi was intelligent and sincere, a respected professional soldier, but seldom is it the case that military men make a smooth transition to the political arena. He lacked the abilities required to be the chancellor of Germany.

Caprivi admitted he was not the man to “juggle five balls in the air” as he felt Bismarck did. He had no experience of politics and Bismarck was understandably careful not to share his knowledge with people outside of his circle. Now that Bismarck and Wilhelm I were no longer around, it is hardly surprising that Germany would become its own worst enemy in the decades ahead.

*

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

“Alfred Graf von Waldersee”, prussianmachine.com

Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 2nd edition, 3 April 1985)

“[Tsar] Alexander III”, Tchaikovsky Research

“Kaiser Wilhelm II”, Spartacus Educational

“Population of the major European countries in the 19th century”, Wesleyan University

“Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil” [Lord Salisbury or Lord Robert Cecil], archontology.org

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU

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First published on August 15, 2023

***

Climate change – climate change – climate change – the world is burning. The Global North with the CO2 emission is the culprit. Weather maps in Southern Europe and Australia are deep red. Add an invented degree or two, and they are going to be black.

News are talking about 48 to 50 and more degrees C in Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily, Greece. Scary. Hardly anybody notices and reports that the temperatures are largely exaggerated by the media, to cause a fear and guilt effect. Possibly a precursor to heat-lockdowns.

Meteorologists are part of the lie-game. Often, for fear and shock effect, they are reporting ground temperatures instead of air temperatures which are usually measured 2 meters above the ground and are typically 10 or more degrees C lower than ground temps.

It is like MK-Ultra has been socialized: When people see the deep-red-colored weather map and are being told that temperatures are at record heights, in the upper forties into the fifties, they feel the burning heat, they feel it is much hotter than other years, when in fact it is not.

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This is the map that climate researchers themselves use.

TEMPERATURE DEVIATIONS FOR LAND AND SEA, APRIL 2023 relative to the temperature normal, the average for the years 1991–2020. In this map, which uses a clearly indicated and color-coded temperature scale that the scientists themselves use, the temperature deviations we reported about over the last few months from North and South America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, with hard-hit Mongolia, India, and Australia, are confirmed. This is despite the fact that critics argue it consistently shows higher temperatures due to non-representative and then tampered with measurement data. Source and map: NOAA 

TEMPERATURE PERCENTILES FOR LAND AND SEA, APRIL 2023 based on an unspecified average. Here we can see that the Benelux countries, where Belgium and the Netherlands in April were 1.4 and 1.1 °C cooler than the climate normal 1991–2020, are falsely presented as having had an April average temperature “Above average” or “Much above average”. Central and Eastern Europe, which were much cooler than normal in April—for example, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Serbia were 2.1 to 2.8 °C below the climate normal in April, which is significant in a climate context—are marked as “Near average” with misleading neutral white color. Source and map: NOAA

For more details see GR article entitled Climate Maps Manipulated to Mislead the Public

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This is a list of heatwaves going back 500 years, demonstrating that worldwide temps vary widely and that there were much “hotter” years even in the past 20 to 30 years, than 2023. See this.

Since 2020, with the onset of the infamous UN Agenda 2030, the news and fake news about the heat, the man-made CO2-provoked “climate-change” reaches new heights. To press that point, forest fires are not just made by paid arsonists, but by military grade Directed Energy Weapons (DEW) and other means of Environmental Modifications (ENMOD) technologies.

It is called geoengineering – and what we are witnessing today, in the last three years and even way before, is an outright war with highly sophisticated weaponized laser-directed electromagnetic energy. The energy is so strong, it blows up entire buildings on impact, with towers of flames, but it spares trees, blows up and burns cars, but not tires – and also boats on the sea, far from burning forests.

This is how the beautiful Hawaiian island, Maui, and her major city Lahaina was destroyed. For more on this – see further down.

Directed Energy Weapons are defined as electromagnetic systems capable of converting chemical or electrical energy to radiated energy, then these energies are fired by laser beams with the speed of light on specific targets. DEWs can produce forces that range from deterrent, to damaging, to destructive.

In parallel with these horrendous heat waves come typhoons, hurricanes and tsunami-like floodings around the world, especially but not exclusively, in the northern hemisphere. Most of them are also the result of geoengineering. Scandinavia was hit by deluge-like rains, causing floods throughout Norway and Denmark.

Extreme floodings were also experienced in Japan and northeastern China. Beijing registered almost simultaneously record heat waves, closely followed by extreme typhoon-caused torrential rains and consequential flooding. Natural? You bet.

Just a thought: The self-styled masters of the universe think linear. That is what their minds have been trained for. What if these weather and climate modifications they now carry out on specific – always more diverse – targets, develop their own dynamic, since they are not linear, but, yes, dynamic – and have long-lasting effects much different from those intended by the Globalist Cult? – Just saying.

Now while everybody screams “climate-change, climate-change, climate-change”, always referring to man-made CO2 emissions, on July 6, 2023, the Aviation Tracking System, “Flightradar 24”, registered a record number ever of civilian airplanes in the air – some 134,384 airplanes. This does not include military airplanes and other non-civilian flights.

See this.

Have you noticed, airlines put on your ticket or your flight reservation how many kilograms of CO2 your flight produces – and so far, mostly on a voluntary basis they suggest you pay for the global warming or climate change “damage” you cause. Nobody has been able to provide a clear answer what happens with this money.

Maybe the money helps compensating for the airlines’ losses during the covid hoax, or it flows into budgets of governments. The same way traffic fines do. Speeding infractions are not reduced by the fines, nor are the numbers of civilian flights reduced by the CO2-emission charge.

Have you noticed, the media must have a restraining order not to speak about military CO2 emission, let alone war-emissions. Just imagine, CO2 emissions of the Ukraine war and other armed conflicts around the globe, dwarfs all civilian car and industrial CO2 emissions worldwide. But nobody talks about it. Very strange.

Back to DEWs and other ENMOD technologies. This science has been developed since the 1940s and in the last 80 years has become highly sophisticated, resulting in a myriad of technologies, capable of causing unspeakable damage, destroying infrastructure, housing, forests – and lives of all sentient beings, including animals and humans.

These technologies are very diverse and range from DEW, to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, a US Airforce program, as well as Scalar electromagnetic wave weaponry, similar to DEW – and more.

There is a vast literature on the subject but virtually no media coverage.

HAARP array of antennas. Gakona, Alaska

It is worth noting that the HAARP program was acknowledged by a CBC Program as early as 1996

Video HAARP CBC. Weather Control

Why Is It So Massively Used?

People are spellbound – have no idea what is going on and why. They cannot understand that such all-destructive and killing disasters are actually man-made, by technologies intent of simulating “climate change”. These people, the Globalist Cabal, who have sold their soul to the devil cannot be called humans anymore.

Maybe part of the answer provides the case of Australia – which is committed to the UN Agenda 2030. It supports the implementation of radical changes in the central role of land ownership and natural resources over the next decade.

In this context, Aussi authorities are developing a series of smart city initiatives, promising locations full of “sustainable” programs.

Could it be that the current forest fires across Australia – and across the world for that matter – are part of this plan? What is the hidden agenda? The link below provides more details of Australia’s bushfire ‘crisis’, including weather / climate geoengineering, the proposed CLARA high-speed rail network and the connection to the smart city agenda led by the fully compromised United Nations. See this and this: Australia under Fire – Environmental Warfare and the Climate Change Deception.

See also this by Jeff Philips and this.

A similar question, why and how is Lahaina of Maui and much of this paradisical Hawaiian island destroyed, with so far officially close to 100 deaths – and thousand missing?  The unofficial but closer-to-the-truth figure, is up to thousand and more deaths. And the devastation and the count goes on.

The rumor mill about the destruction of Maui is diverse. One of the more consistent gossips has it that the Lahaina and Maui fires are meant to depopulate Maui and pave the way for a buyout of all property owners – for a penny on the dollar – by the multi-multi billionaires. It is living in paradise when the shitstorm hits.

Here are terrifying images on how “paradise” became hell and this.

Maui, a paradise island, might be bought for pennies on the dollar… privatized paradise for the powerful financial interests.  

And for more on Maui you may also want to see this (video of more than an hour).  

Apparently some 90% of the people of Maui know what is going on, that it has nothing to do with the climate change hoax, but was a direct assault on their paradise island. See this.

Video

Who are actors behind the DEW attacks? Were the US and State governments involved?

There are several, speculative answers, but they are food for reflection for those who are somewhat familiar with UN Agenda 2030 and the Great Reset — and with Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) dream of the all digitized Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The government of Hawaii states as goal of the destruction is the rebuilding to make the entire island of Maui the first Smart Island. They want the entire island governed by Artificial Intelligence (AI), as outlined in the Hawaii Digital government summit of 2023 that they have planned to host on September 25, 2023 on Maui.

Plans to Implement a Digital AI Government over Hawaii

See this and this and this, Maui Island of Hawaii, a case study.

Dr. Rosalie Bertell, author of “Planet Earth: Latest Weapon of War”, says

“While the earth’s human civic community has been trying to rid itself of nuclear weapons over the last 65 years, some economically developed nations have quietly moved into the realm of geo-warfare. Geo-weaponry has recently been introduced to the public as a ‘new’ high tech way to mitigate the effects of ‘global warming’, and it is being called ‘geo-engineering’…defined as planetary-scale environmental engineering of our atmosphere: that is, manipulating our weather, our oceans, and our home planet itself.”

“What is planned now are climate and weather wars, wars in which earthquakes and volcanoes, floods and droughts, hurricanes and monsoon rains will play a role.“ See this.

Does this make living today on Mother Earth scarier? Is it fear-mongering for pushing the Agenda 2030? – or is it real?

In any case, Do Not Fear, But Stand UP – as We, the People, against this unhuman atrocity, in unison and solidarity and in a mind of PEACE – not anger, not aggression, but PEACE. This is the only way we can defeat the drive to the abyss – and start afresh. But the time is NOW.

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.  

Featured image: US Navy personnel operate a Directed Energy Weapon aboard the USS Ponce during an operational demonstration in the Persian Gulf in 2014. Photo | DVIDS

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Türkiye and Russia are two original Eurasian countries with their own unique characteristics. Russia is the largest country in the world with an area of more than 17 million square kilometers. Türkiye, on the other hand, sits in the world’s most valuable geopolitical location at the intersection of three continents.

The relations of both countries with Europe or the West in general have been problematic. The Western Imperialists, who had difficulty in seizing Russia and Turkey, historically envisaged to make these two fight and to remain enemies as the most practical solution. The two great revolutionaries who broke this “chain of happiness” were Atatürk and Lenin. The cooperation, albeit for a short time, against imperialism, the natural enemies of Turkey and Russia, has changed the shape and course of the world. The Black Sea, on the other hand, has always preserved its identity as a privileged and private sea by its northern and southern neighbors.

The Erdogan-Putin meeting in Sochi, located in the north of the Black Sea, was important. In fact, Erdogan had invited Putin to Turkey in August.

But this invitation remained in the air due to Turkey’s recent rapprochement with the West. There were very important issues on the agenda.

The first was the grain agreement, which was of great interest to Turkey in the axis of the Ukraine war and the second was the Turkish-Russian geopolitical relations in hot regions such as Syria, Karabakh, Cyprus, Libya, Iraq and the Black Sea. Of course, energy issues that will make Turkey an energy center were also one of the important agenda items. Before the meeting on September 4, Turkey’s new Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had visited Kiev and Moscow.

He had made efforts to reactivate the grain corridor agreement, which was abused by the West. The main motive for the USA to sabotage this agreement was to draw a new route through Romania and bring Turkey and Russia face to face in the Black Sea. This manifested itself in both the bombing of silos on the Danube and the Russian raid on a Turkish cargo ship. Ankara expressed that this alternative is unacceptable in the Kiev and Moscow meetings. My guess is that the Sochi meeting was planned after this statement.

To summarize what happened in Sochi: While there was open support for existing energy projects and the construction of Turkey’s energy hub, the Grain Corridor remained in limbo. Putin voiced the condition of removing sanctions on the West through Turkey. But the most important was Syria. Lavrov’s reminder of last month’s Adana Agreement was important, but the two leaders preferred to remain silent on Syria in their press release.

However, in Syria, the USA inflamed the events again, and with the HTS in Idlib and the PKK/YPG forces in the North, they moved against the regions held by Turkey in order to gain ground. Russia, on the other hand, brought in the Arab tribes together with Damascus. In Idlib, it started hitting HTS points from the air.

Putin, who did not go into the subject after the meeting, only said that they should strengthen the tripartite Astana process in Syria. The most similar thing to the development in the grain corridor was the idea of processing Russian grain to be sent directly to Turkey and distributed to poor African and global southern countries with the support of Qatar. Türkiye is the world’s largest flour producer and exporter. However, it does this not with its own grain, but mainly with Russian and Ukrainian grain. That’s why the grain corridor issue is very important for Ankara, which is suffering from the economic crisis.

But another issue that is at least as important as this is the great advantages that Turkey provides as a result of not participating in the sanctions against Russia. After February 2022, Turkish companies started to fill the commercial space emptied by the West.

Russia-Türkiye trade volume increased by 86 percent last year.

Many Turkish companies started operations in Russia.

During the meeting of the two leaders, the use of their own currencies in trade was also discussed.

This can be considered as an implicit invitation for the BRICS, which is gradually expanding with a focus on trading in local currencies.

According to some recent news, the project to establish a chip (computer chip) factory with a Russian-Turkish partnership is on the agenda. If this claim-size development is confirmed, it is very important, because Turkey has to buy all its digital chips from outside.

I suppose the most concrete development that emerged during the Erdogan-Putin meeting was in the field of energy. Noting that he expects Moscow and Ankara to conclude talks on the establishment of a natural gas transfer center (hub) in Turkey soon, Putin said,

“We have made progress and I hope that we will complete the negotiations soon, so that we will make the energy situation more stable and balanced in our region.”

The planned energy center will enable Russian gas to reach Europe via Türkiye. According to the Russian RBK’s claim, Gazprom gave the roadmap to Botaş (Turkish State Gas Co.) to establish a hub in Thrace.

The hub is planned to be close to Kiyikoy, where TurkStream reaches land. Nuclear energy was also an important item in the negotiations. Putin, stated that the the construction of Akkuyu, Mersin Nuclear Power Plant (NGS) project is progressing according to the schedule and the first power unit will be commissioned in 2024. After the first batch of Russian nuclear fuel was delivered to Akkuyu, Turkey became a member of the nuclear club. Erdogan, on the other hand, said that after the meeting, steps will be taken to establish a Nuclear Power Plant with Russia in Sinop (a city in Blacksea Region) after Mersin Akkuyu.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the two Eurasian countries are obliged to cooperate. The biggest fear of the “empires” UK and then the USA is the cooperation of Russia-China-Germany and Turkey, which are the main land powers of Eurasia. After the Second World War, they pulled the iron curtain and took control of defeated Germany. China and the USSR, on the other hand, were separated by the USA due to bilateral border problems and Beijing’s pragmatic approach at that time. Türkiye was also removed from Russia, by NATO and the Western financial system.

Parameters that have changed gradually after 1990, present a brand new geopolitical landscape to us today. China and Russia cooperate. Germany, on the other hand, is paying for its dependence on the USA and NATO by destroying its huge economy with its own hands. It may experience a sharp turn to the point of bankruptcy, but that may not happen in the foreseeable future. The situation in Turkey is more complex. The post-1980 integration with the West and the neoliberal economic model based on hot money and privatization make it difficult for the country to go where it wants. At this point, NATO membership, even if it is a second class, is important not only militarily but also politically. However, geopolitical interests also impose cooperation with Russia.

Russia needs Turkey, Turkey needs Russia.

While optimistic observers say that Ankara pursues a kind of balance policy, more critical viewers like myself interpret it as a swing policy, that is, a foreign policy of approaching the USA and Russia at the same time or one at a time. In my opinion, these wrong swing policies have a great impact on the lack of concrete results expected from Sochi. However, under the current conditions, a contrary development to swing policy cannot be expected in the short term. Russia’s strategy is also based on this: knowing the situation it is in, without offending Turkey, but without breaking relations in a way that minimizes the indirect damages that may come from there, to move forward in its own course. Putin is well aware that time is running in his favor and he is not a leader famous for his impatience.

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This article was originally published on ATASAM.

Hasan Erel is a Turkish journalist-writer. He worked as a diplomacy and foreign news reporter and editor in TRT and other media for 30 years. He is a frequent commentator of Sputnik News radio and CRI Turk in Turkiye.    

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***

Aug. 21, 2023 – Loveland, CO – Emma who is a young teacher and soccer coach was attending a game, when she received a soccer ball kick to the head, had a seizure and was found to have a brain tumor.

Aug. 15, 2023 – Allentown, PA – Julia Dweck, a teacher, fell ill with a series of blood clots, strokes and was found to have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Aug. 4, 2023 – Woodbridge, VA – 45 year old Cristin Lee Kline, died August 14, 2023 at Inova Fairfax Hospital. She was a school teacher with Prince William County Schools.

Aug. 3, 2023 – Cape Coral, FL – Julia Ringenberger McKinnon, Gulf Elementary School teacher, died after a 2 months battle with Stage 4 Gallbladder cancer.

Aug. 1, 2023 – Boyce, LA – John Upton turned 30 years old, the next day he was found to have a brain tumor, Grade 4 astrocytoma, IDH mutant.

July 30, 2023 – Miami, FL – 37 year old non-smoker Christina Pakowitz is a 3rd grade teacher who was diagnosed with lung cancer.

July 29, 2023 – Milton, FL – 52 year old Janeire Brown is a Milton High School teacher who was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma.

July 25, 2023 – Santa Barbara, CA – 29 year old Tahnia Mark, is a devoted biology and math teacher at La Cuesta Continuation High School. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

July 23, 2023 – Alexandria, VA – Nikki Reed is an art teacher and a mom of a 5 year old and a 6 month old baby. She was just diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor and a chest mass.

July 21, 2023 – Spearville, KS – Destiny Barnett was diagnosed with Stage 3 Lymphoma that spread to the spleen. She has 2 babies, 21 and 3 months old.

July 20, 2023 – Norwich, CT – 27 year old Jordyn Brooks, who is a dancer and a teacher, was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer.

July 20, 2023 – Harmony, PA – Cheri Mihalik is a teacher of English at Seneca Valley, who was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 Colon cancer.

July 19, 2023 – Nashville, TN – Amy Nocton, High School Teacher, was just diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

July 18, 2023 – Athens, GA – Vickie Shell, is graduate of UGA and Georgia State, a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and a teacher. She was just diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma.

July 15, 2023 – Huntsville, TX – Nique Barnett, who worked with children, was forced to quit her job after she was diagnosed with AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia). She will be treated at MD Anderson.

July 12, 2023 – Elton, MD – Dominick Massimiano is a 9th grade Health and gym class teacher, who was just diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma of his neck. He just had a baby born in Nov. 2022.

July 3, 2023 – Table Grove, IL – 34 year old Kirsta Anderson, a teacher, was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon and liver cancer.

July 2, 2023 – San Jose, CA – Mitzy Romero is a Behavioral Analyst and works with children who have special needs such as Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, Down Syndrome. She was diagnosed with Stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

June 28, 2023 – Boca Raton, FL – Jamie Sabeeney is a Lynn University senior, studying Early Childhood Education and will begin graduate school in May 2023. She was just diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma.

June 8, 2023 – San Diego, CA – Meredith is a preschool teacher in San Diego who was just diagnosed with Stage IV Colon Cancer & Liver Cancer.

June 6, 2023 – Cincinnati, OH – Jeff Clark, Indian Hill High School teacher died on June 6, 2023. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer on May 19; “loved ones described the cancer as “extremely fast growing.”

June 4, 2023 – Dover, NH – Erica Rosenson is a special education preschool teacher. She was diagnosed with a very rare brain tumor – Grade 3 infiltrating glioma.

June 1, 2023 – Santa Maria, CA – Jodi Maquinalez worked at Santa Barbara County Education Office for 23 years working with special needs kids, until recently when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

June 1, 2023 – Missoula, MT – Michelle Lodato was working in a kindergarten classroom and teaching piano. She was also in pursuit of a Master’s in Education from Eastern Washington University. She was diagnosed with 2 cancers – thyroid cancer and Hodgkin Lymphoma.

May 31, 2023 – Philadelphia, PA – Jessica Leichtweisz, a teacher for children with autism, was diagnosed with a high grade, malignant grain tumor.

May 19, 2023 – Longview, TX – 32 Year old Jarrett Van Curen is the lead Ag Science Teacher at Big Sandy ISD. On May 15 he had a seizure and was found to have a brain tumor that he was told is terminal.

May 15, 2023 – Schenectady, NY – Ashley Armer is a music teacher at Central Park Middle School, and had a baby in October 2022. In Feb. 2023 she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer.

May 12, 2023, Decherd, TN – Chris Fowler is a teacher and defensive line coach for the football team at Jackson County High school. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

May 12, 2023 – Watford City, ND – Rachel Meuchel is a school counselor at Watford City High School. She was just diagnosed with Grade 4 Astrocytoma brain tumor.

April 29, 2023 – Silsbee, TX – Cindy Lindsey, a 3rd grade teacher, was just diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

April 25, 2023 – Austin, TX – Lori Chester, a music teacher, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma.

April 24, 2023 – East Wenatchee, WA, Jessica Morlan, music teacher and mom of 5, died after a 9 month battle with Stage 3 T-Cell Lymphoma.

April 11, 2023 – Washington DC – Grace Lim is a public school teacher who was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.

March 20, 2023 – Scottsdale, AZ – 54 year old Lisa Domini, kindergarten teacher at Hopi Elementary School, died after a 5 month battle with Stage 4 Bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma).

My Take… 

Special thanks to Twitter user Janiesaysyay, for finding many of these tragic cases.

This is just a sample of the tsunami of aggressive (often Stage 4) cancers that are decimating teachers in the USA, who faced COVID-19 mRNA vaccine mandates in 2021 and 2022.

In this sample, this is how the cancers break down:

• lymphoma – 10
• brain cancer – 8
• colon cancer – 5
• pancreas, hepatobiliary, breast (both triple negative) – 2 each
• lung, cervix, thyroid, leukemia, multiple myeloma – 1 each

In my previous substack about Turbo Cancer in nurses, the top 3 were:

• lymphoma (6), colon cancer (6) and breast cancer (5).

Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines can cause (through damage to the immune system) aggressive turbo cancers which often present at a late stage (usually stage 3 or 4), grow very rapidly, spread or metastasize rapidly and are generally resistant to conventional cancer treatments (chemo, radiation).

CONCLUSION: It is shocking to see so many young teachers come down with such aggressive end stage cancers.

Oncologists cannot continue to ignore this new phenomenon of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Induced Turbo Cancer, forever.

There are definite patterns emerging here.

Lymphoma is clearly a big problem in the COVID-19 vaccinated.

But it’s not just lymphoma – look at breast and colon cancers.

Why is breast cancer in the COVID-19 vaccinated usually triple negative?

Why is colon cancer in the COVID-19 vaccinated so aggressively metastatic?

Why so many aggressive and inoperable brain tumors?

Look for these patterns in ALL COVID-19 mRNA vaccine mandated professions – doctors, nurses, teachers, police, firefighters, military, government workers, etc.

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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

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