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I gave the following speech in Tokyo, Japan on September 2, 2023, the seventy-eighth anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan to the United States on the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay.

On that occasion, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government and General Yoshijiro Umezu signed for the Japanese military.

Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur then gave a speech in which he declared that

“It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.”

But although peace found its way to Japan somehow through that signing, the United States was just starting a horrific war with the world that has continued down to the present day, and threatens to be the cause, not the end, of a new world war today.

The United States would never return to a peace economy after 1945, and the dependency on the production of petroleum, vehicles, planes, and weapons to drive a consumption economy that resulted from the war would reshape the America forever.

My speech (text in Japanese below) explains that the only way for the United States to snap out of the current drive for world war, and for nuclear war, which now poses an overwhelming threat for humanity, is to recognize the profound manner in which the nation was transformed into an empire driven by war wherein the core of governance is conducted in secret, in the shadows, during the Second World War—especially the final two years.

That process was driven in part by the melding together of the United States with the British Empire during the war in an economic, technical and ideological sense. The introduction of British colonial cruelty, combined with the gentleman’s polite rhetoric, was best represented by the firebombing of Dresden (February 13-15, 1945). That action introduced an unprecedented level of institutional brutality into American governance that went even further than the worst of American colonial policy in the Philippines.

Even more importantly, the establishment of the Manhattan Project, a top- secret government project within the Department of War that brought together politicians, scientific experts, private industry, military officers, and other interests to pursue the development of, and the needless and cruel use of, two nuclear weapons, changed everything in governance utterly.

This new form of unaccountable secret governance within the Manhattan Project, as I explain in the speech, made possible the constant criminal drive for war, and specifically for nuclear war, that continues to this day, unaccountable to the constitution, the citizens, or even the politicians. RAND Corporation was the direct fruit of this secret and unaccountable fusion of finance, industry, military and government after the war, but there are many other such parasitic institutions today.

The final result is the concrete plans for a catastrophic nuclear war with Russia and China now at an advanced planning stage and nuclear was is entirely possible, if not inevitable, if we follow the current game plan to its natural conclusion.

The use of classified directives, secret law and nondisclosure agreements to govern the United States, and much of the Earth, in complete secrecy can be traced back to the Manhattan Project.

I also talk in the speech about the development of napalm and other chemical and biological weapons that were used in the totally unnecessary bombings of the Tokyo and other Japanese cities as part of a new form of industrialized and brutal warfare that would be taken to its extreme, in part as a form of economic stimulus for American industry, during the Korean War.

I apologize on behalf of the American people and the American government for these criminal actions, and I pledge that all classified documents related to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombing of Tokyo (March 10, 1945), and also related to American interference in Japanese politics and education after the war will be declassified immediately.

I promise that in my administration the United States will uphold the 1970 Non-proliferation Treaty and will reduce the number of nuclear weapons we possess to 500 within five years, and to zero within ten years.

This move will give America some moral legitimacy for the first time since the dropping of the atomic bombs and let us to focus on real security threats like the destruction of the environment, the collapse of biodiversity, the use of technology to dumb down and destroy the vast majority of humanity, and the economic violence resulting from the overwhelming concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few.

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An English AI translation of the speech from the Japanese version: 

On the 78th Anniversary of the Signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender

Seventy-eight years ago, on September 2, 1945, representatives of the Japanese government signed the articles of surrender offered by the United States on the deck of the warship Missouri then anchored in Tokyo Bay, bringing the Greater East Asia War, the Pacific War for the United States, to an end.

On that day, after a speech by the General of the Army Douglass MacArthur, Japanese Foreign Minister Aoi Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Government of the Empire of Japan, followed by Chief of the Army General Staff Yoshijiro Umezu on behalf of the Japanese Armed Forces.   

At that time, the Japanese people were eating weeds to survive. Their homes had been burned by continuous American air strikes that continued day and night, and they had no choice but to cover the children’s wounds with rags. Yet, granted the means were harsh and brutal, substantive peace came to Japan, albeit in a painful and cruel manner.  

From that day on, however, America set out on a course for eternal war. At the same time, that signing marked the beginning of Japan’s occupation period, which continues to this day, by an unaccountable secret dual government lodged deep in the military.   

The United States had been possessed by the demon of war and was jinxed by the sweet curse of victory. The result was a United States that continued to wage indiscriminate wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. That series of wars allowed a ruthless demon to reach its bloody hands deep into the American soul. The “rights of the people” enshrined in the Constitution degenerated into “consumer hedonism,” “freedom” was replaced with “narcissism,” and America, the victorious nation, had bravely set out on a course to damnation.   

Dear respected citizens of Japan. My name is Emanuel Pastreich and I am an American who served as a professor of Japanese literature for many years, and has written on East Asian security.   

On the 78th anniversary of the signing of the signing of the surrender to the United States by Japan, as someone who is preparing to run as a presidential candidate in the Green Party of the United States, there is something I would like to share with you.   

In light of America’s desperate political culture in 2020, I decided to run for president. I made my campaign slogan “Make America great for the first time.” Maybe you remember a similar slogan?  

That’s right. As a candidate in 2016, President Donald Trump employed the slogan “Make America Great Again.” However, granted the chaos and violence that Japanese and Americans are facing at home and abroad, we have no time for such vague nostalgia.   

The old America may have had its charms, but it was never a great country.   

Today there really is not much we can say about America that is “great” seeing as its military is planning a global nuclear war while secretly pursuing plans to wipe out its own citizens.   

I want team up with Japanese, and first to acknowledge America’s crimes, and then to rebuild America. I am deeply impressed by Japanese culture, and I want to use Japanese wisdom to help change America.  

It is necessary for us to recognize what kind of a country Japan surrendered to 78 years ago.   

And we must clearly recognize what kind of country America is as it currently plans for nuclear war against China and Russia.   

Only by joining with you, and acknowledging the crimes that our country, the United States, has committed in the past, and continues to commit in the present, will there be hope for Japan and the United States.   

President Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” meant that America must have the world’s strongest military, spread military bases all over the world, and intervene in almost all military conflicts in the world.  It meant that the United States should keep claiming to be the world’s police force and keep funneling tax dollars into nuclear weapons to prepare for a global nightmare.   

No, I cannot see anything great about that at all.   

The Secret Military Command System that Possesses America Like an Evil Spirit   

The American players who effectively continue an economic and ideological occupation of Japan are not the poor American workers who make up the majority of our population, but a secret military command system centered around the Pentagon and intelligence agencies. The reality of the United States, a nation that advocates democracy but uses secretive methods, backed by violence, to carry out its politics, can be traced back to the Manhattan Project, that classified plan that developed, and then dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, changed everything.   

The Manhattan Project was a criminal plan that prepared the dangerous and unnecessary nuclear attack on Japan, and did it in such extreme secrecy that even the members of the project did not know what was going on. This system was set up in this manner not so much to be secret, as to be unaccountable. It was an administrative system that had no responsibility to the Constitution, to the people, or to ethics.  

That malignant form of secret governance has metastasized across the entire Federal government, which is now preparing for nuclear war far from the reach of the citizens, or the government itself.  

The recent global blockbuster movie “Oppenheimer” introduces Robert Oppenheimer, the physics professor who played the central role in the Manhattan Project, misleading and seducing the best and the brightest into participating in this pact with the devil.   

Strangely, although the movie has been released around the world, no date for a release in Japan has been scheduled.     

Perhaps the mysterious Japan-US Joint Committee was involved in preventing the screening of a film that exposes American crimes against Japan.   

The historian Masao Maruyama described prewar Japanese politics as a “system of irresponsibility.” Although apt, the more I read of history, the more convinced I am that the “system of irresponsibility” existed not in Tokyo, but in Washington.   

The Crime of the United States   

The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, were aimed at testing uranium and plutonium based atomic bombs and collecting data about the results.   

Japan was already taking concrete steps to accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender at the time. The bombings were not strategically necessary.   

Even after the war, America’s military secrecy continued. The U.S. government to dismiss reports of radiation-related illnesses in the year after the atomic bombing, dismissing accounts as mere conspiracy theories. It took a great deal of fighting not only in the United States, but also around the world, before the US government even acknowledged that the atomic bomb was different from conventional weapons.   

America’s secret war plans are only possible because of secret pacts and treaties with other countries, including Japan. These agreements, unconstitutional yet legally binding, empower the psychopaths in the Pentagon who dream of global destruction.   

America has stockpiled thousands of nuclear weapons without any justification, and the insane who work behind the curtains at the  Strategic Command openly discuss plans for a winnable nuclear war. They have written up detailed plans for a pre-emptive nuclear attack that will kill hundreds of millions of innocent civilians in both Russia and China, if not all of humanity.     

The two nuclear attacks against the Japanese were not America’s only crimes during the Pacific War.   

During the Pacific War, the United States conducted approximately 2,000 bombing raids targeting Japanese citizens, not military installations. In just three and a half years, the United States dropped approximately 20 million napalm bombs on Japanese urban spaces. Those napalm bombs were developed so as to effectively burn down Japanese wooden houses and burn Japanese citizens to death.   

In particular, the Great Tokyo Bombing, carried out in the middle of the night on March 10, 1945, purposely targeted the most densely populated areas using napalm to bomb private homes, and injuring at least 300,000 people and killing over 115,000 in one night. It was a large-scale massacre of civilians that left over 800,000 homes destroyed through the use of Napalm.  

When the war ended on August 15th, there remained still 86,000 mustard gas and phosgene bombs, and bombs filled with anthrax still waiting to be used. Over three million Japanese citizens were killed by the attacks of the United States over three and a half years.     

We Americans were taught that the two nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary to save Japanese lives. Most do not even know about other crimes against the Japanese people. I strongly believe that in order to rebuild America, Americans have the right, and the need, to know what they did in Japan.   

The nightmare of eternal war continues today in America. The US continues nuclear war in a different form by firing depleted uranium shells in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, and Hawaii.   

Similarly, the United States uses, or sells, cluster bombs that are made to look like toys so as to lead children to their deaths.  

We are planting nightmares with these cluster bombs that will last for decades.  

War haunts the American soul like a demon, transformed into a spiritual cancer that seeps into the nation’s marrow. The culture of war has transformed American culture into a world of pleasure and narcissism, a bland Disneyland wherein consumption becomes the purpose of life.   

The rich and powerful use this sick culture, with its foundations in violence, to promote superficial excitement, instead of ethical behavior, and thus make possible brutal exploitation and domination at home and abroad.   

Americans have lost the independence of mind. We lack the will or the inclination to contemplate civilization and historical processes, to consider the importance of values for a healthy society.   

In the vacuum that remains, we see serious conflicts, fed by interested parties, accelerating over ideological issues, over race, religion, and gender.   

Americans, now incapable of independent thinking, are easily manipulated by others. There can be no doubt that the United States is headed for conflicts at home and abroad.   

For Japan, which has been under the influence of American culture for two generations, the palpable decline of American culture is a direct blow.   

As someone who studied classical Japanese literature, who was inspired by reading The Tale of Genji and Hojoki, who tried to realize a new politics in America by employing the political ideas of Jinsai Ito and Sorai Ogyu of Tokugawa Japan, I am saddened by the disappearance of what I thought was the best of Japanese culture. America’s rotten, pleasure-oriented, consumer culture has extended its fingers into every corner of Japan.   

We must look at the transformation of the United States during the Second World War, especially after 1941, which increasingly tossed away the spirit, and the policy, of independence grounded in the Declaration of Independence, and replaced it with an alliance with the British Empire. As a result, policy makers in the United States shifted away from the ideals of fighting fascism and towards the power and the loot to be found if they took control of the wreckage of the British Empire—and were therefore made a part of it. The United States ceased to be a republic and started to act like a global empire.   

The result was that the US government has effectively treated Japan as a client state since the end of the war. American corporations planted in Japan a parasitic economic structure that undermined the integrity and the self-sufficiency of Japanese culture that was founded on narcissistic consumption.  

Most insidious was the establishment of a narrative in education and the media by the United States that glorified Western civilization and established it as a model for Japan’s future development. That is to say that the achievements of European nations, the developments in science and technology in Europe and America, were attributed to an advanced and superior civilization that must be emulated; the fact that such wealth was generated by enslaving the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, and the Americas and exploiting their resources was hidden from view.      

It was a sin to destroy Japan’s traditional craft culture, a noble tradition that placed value on enduring objects made from bamboo, wood, and stone, and to replace it with a consumer society that dependent on disposable plastic utensils and other items designed for built-in obsolescence.   

It was a sin to undermine Japanese values of respecting humanity, living in harmony with nature, and frugality, and to brainwash Japanese into believing that business administration focused on gaining short-term profits by taking advantage others was more respectable than supporting community and family.   

Japanese novels, waka and haiku poetry, and the inspiring diaries of the Heian period that I studied in graduate school are lost on young Japanese who have been seduced by corporations into relying on video games, YouTube broadcasts and Instagram memes, and various forms of pornography for continuous and dizzying stimulation. The resulting psychological state means that youth are unable to concentrate, numb to the experience of “wabi” (austere beauty), “sabi” (subtle sadness) or “aware” (deep empathy with sorrow) that were at the core of Japanese aesthetics.   

Traditional Japanese fabric made from flax, silk, or cotton, was woven to last and used for the most comfortable and healthy clothing appropriate to Japan’s climate. But the kimono and yukata dresses, the zori and geta sandals, that I saw when I first visited Japan have disappeared. In their place are disposable Western-style nylon and polyester clothes, plastic shoes, that do not fit the Japanese body, cause discomfort and disease, and produce mountains of undegradable waste.   

Wooden Japanese houses breathe with the wind, water, and soil around, creating a true refuge for the family. They have been replaced with cold-blooded concrete housing complexes funded by multinational banks that have devastated traditional neighborhoods even more brutally than the airstrikes.   

Japanese food highly nutritious and delicious, has become a rarity these days. It its place spreads American-style fast food, processed foods heavy with sugar and carbohydrates and injected with cancer-causing additives. What is left of traditional Japanese cusine is for tourism and novelty.   

The highly literate, artistic, and expressive Japanese have been stripped of their identity through decades of bombardment with consumerism propaganda that has distorted basic values. The role of American corporations promoting a culture based on money and waste was substantial.   

The United States destroyed Japan’s traditional culture through a violence of the soul. It was a crime to give multinational corporations, and private banks, such control over Japan’s economy.   

We Americans should not hide from these truths; we should be fully aware, and we should repent.    

Apology as a Presidential Candidate, Confession as a United States of America   

It was a sin to push American culture as a model while hiding its shameful core, to introduce to Japan a narcissistic consumer culture that reduces citizens to idiots.   

The original sin can be found in the conquest of North America, from the East Coast, to the Midwest, to California, to Hawaii and to Japan and Asia. The crazy culture of the Europeans made material development and consumption more important than spirituality and morality. It made the extermination of Native Americans, and the erasure of their culture, a culture that featured a remarkable balance of human settlements with nature.   

That cultural violence continues on today in Japan and across Asia.   

Enough is enough. It must end now.   

Americans must be aware of our crimes in the Pacific War, of our constant interference in Japanese politics after the war, and of our introduction to Japan of a toxic narcissistic consumption culture that promoted narcissism and growth over spiritual insight and community harmony.     

I want Americans to understand what happened and to take responsibility for it.   

We must repent and purify ourselves and our culture, so that we can make America great “for the first time.”  

Dear citizens of Japan, I am sorry for the crimes of the United States I have described.   

“Gomen nasai!” (I am sorry!)   

And from now on, I hope that you will consider becoming true friends with a new repentant and honest America.   

My Promise as Future President of the United States   

I am seeing the nomination for the nomination of the Green Party US as a candidate for president. It is in this capacity that I address you concerning the criminality and brutality of the two nuclear attacks of 1945, and the deaths of civilians in Tokyo and other cities during the Pacific War. I sincerely and sincerely apologize to all Japanese people, and to the world.     

I will demand that the U.S. government admit how America has been transformed by its own evil acts, and how the secrecy surrounding these acts has laid the foundation for an unaccountable military-industrial complex that threatens the entire Earth today.   

Americans lacked the courage to confront the serious corruption in the American government that resulted from the expansion of secret administration within the American military after 1941. I would like to apologize to the Japanese people, and the world, for that lapse that continues to this day. We Americans should be ashamed of ourselves.   

Furthermore, as president, I will insist that all materials related to the Manhattan Project, and to the employment of the atomic bomb, and other weapons for killing civilians, be immediately declassified. I will also demand that all the operations carried on in Japan after the war by American intelligence agencies and corporations to interfere in Japanese politics and society be declassified as well.   

The true story must be known to Americans and to Japanese.   

Finally, if elected President, I will lead the United States to adhere to its commitment to eliminate nuclear weapons under the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which we signed and to which we supposedly adhere.   

First, we will reduce the number of nuclear weapons held by the United States to less than 500 over the next five years, and then we will eliminate them completely within 10 years. We can defuse the vast majority within a few months of my inauguration.   

Only when our country, the United States, expresses its resolve and its commitment to nonproliferation at home will we have the legitimacy, and the moral authority, to demand the same from the rest of the world.   

Stupidly, foolishly, the United States has wasted trillions of dollars on the “modernization” of America’s nuclear forces under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations in blatant violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. military’s Strategic Command is currently discussing extremely concrete plans for a preemptive nuclear strike on both Russia and China. I will order that this suicidal idiocy stop immediately.   

If America is preparing for a global nuclear war, and trying to draw Japan into that catastrophe, it has no right to criticize Iran, North Korea, or any other country.   

The United States, now facing economic, political, and cultural collapse, needs Japan’s assistance now. We do not need money, but rather a courageous spiritual tradition of courageously seeking truth, peace, and justice. I found that tradition in the Japanese classic Hagakure which I shared with my students as a professor of Japanese literature.  

From now on, Americans, with due humility, will learn from the Japanese, and we will join together the best of Eastern and Western civilizations so as to form a truly universal culture wherein there will be an equal, balanced, transparent, and accountable relationship between the United States and Japan.  

Let us get to work.   

The first step must be for the United States to admit clearly its past crimes and to apologize.   

Dear citizens of Japan, thank you for kindly listening to me today.  

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Fear No Evil

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Annex: Original Japanese version

日本降伏文書署名７８周年に当たって

七八年前の一九四五年九月二日、東京湾に停泊したアメリカの軍艦ミズーリ号甲板上に於ける降伏文書署名を以て、当時の大東亜戦争、今日言う処の太平洋戦争そのものは終結したと言えます。

 その日、まずマッカーサー陸軍元帥によるスピーチの後、天皇陛下と大日本帝国政府の代理として、重光葵外務大臣が署名を行い、続いて日本軍の大本営の代表として梅津美治郎参謀総長が署名をしました。

 その当時、日本国民は雑草を食べて命をつないでいる有様でした。昼夜休み無く続いたアメリカによる空爆で家も焼き尽くされ、子供達の傷口もぼろ切れで覆うしか手立てはありませんでした。ともあれ、その様な過酷な状況の中、たいへんな痛みを伴う残酷な形ではありましたが、実質的な平和が日本に訪れたのでした。

 しかし、その日からアメリカは永遠の戦争に向かって出発したのです。同時に現在まで継続されている日本の被占領時代の始まりともなりました。

 アメリカが「戦争という悪霊」に取りつかれ、「勝利という甘美な呪い」をかけられた事で、アメリカはその後も朝鮮、ベトナム、イラン、イラクなどで、無差別な戦争を続ける事になりました。一連の戦争によってアメリカ人の魂はその奥深くまで、血塗られた悪霊の手先とされてしまったのです。合衆国憲法に明言された「国民の権利」は「消費者の快楽主義」へと堕落し、「自由」は「ナルシシズム」に置き換えられ、戦勝国であるアメリカは、破滅への道を歩み始めたのです。

 さて、親愛なる日本の皆様。私はアメリカ人で、日本文学の教授を務め、東アジア安全保障について長く研究したエマニュエル・パストリッチと申します。

日本降伏文書署名七八年目に当たって、アメリカ緑の党の大統領候補者出馬を準備している者として、どうしても皆様にお話ししたい事が有ります。

 二〇二〇年からのアメリカの絶望的な政治文化に鑑み、大統領候補者の準備を始めた頃、私は自分のキャンペーン・スローガンを “Make America Great for the First Time”、即ち「アメリカを初めて偉大な国にしよう。」としました。もしかしたら皆様はこれに似たスローガンを覚えておられるかもしれません。そうです。二〇一六年にトランプ大統領は候補者として “Make America Great Again” 即ち「アメリカを再び偉大な国にしよう。」というスローガンを挙げたのです。しかし日本人とアメリカ人が国内国外の深刻な混乱に直面している現状に於いては、そのような漠然としたノスタルジアに落ち込む暇もありません。昔のアメリカには確かに魅力的な部分が在ったかもしれませんが、決して偉大な国ではなかったのです。

 現在のアメリカは、秘密裏に国民を抹殺する計画を進展させながら、全世界核戦争を計画している国であり、絶対に偉大ではありません。

 私は日本人有志と手を組んで、アメリカの犯罪を認め、アメリカを改めて、アメリカを立て直します。日本の文化に深い感銘を受け、日本の知恵を生かして、アメリカを変えようと思います。

７８年前、日本がどういう国に降伏したのか、正しく認識する必要があります。

 現在、中国とロシアに対する核戦争を計画しているアメリカがどういう国であるか、それをまず明確に認識する必要があるのです。

 皆様と一緒に、わが国アメリカが、過去のみならず、現在もなお犯し続けている犯罪を認める事によって、初めて日本にもアメリカにも希望が生じます。

 トランプ大統領による「アメリカを再び偉大な国にしよう」というスローガンは、つまり「アメリカが世界最強の軍隊を持って、世界中に軍事基地を配備し、世界中で発生した殆どの戦争に介入し、世界の警察だと公言して、税金を核兵器に注ぎ込んでいた悪夢をもう一度蘇らせる事」です。私にはこれが、「偉大な事」とは到底思えません。

【アメリカにとりついた悪霊の機密国防制度】

 日本を占領しているアメリカの主体とは、多数派である貧しいアメリカの労働者ではなく、国防総省と情報機関を中心とした影の機密国防制度なのです。民主主義を訴えながら、極端な機密手段で政治を遂行するアメリカの実態は、まさに広島長崎原爆投下を準備したマンハッタン計画に顕著に現れています。

 マンハッタン計画は、人類史上最も危険、且つ必要の無い核戦争を準備して、計画関係者以外に何の相談も無しに実行した犯罪計画でした。しかも、そのような事を実行しても、憲法、国民、良心に何の責任も発生しない行政システムは、現在もそのままアメリカの政府の中に残っており、それ故に、現在のロシアと中国に対する核戦争の本格的準備が進められているのです。

 現在も日本を占領している機密国防制度が、その真実を常に否定しています。

 最近の世界的大ヒット映画『オッペンハイマー』は、マンハッタン計画の中心人物であったオッペンハイマー博士を紹介するもので、奇妙な事に公開予定日を超えても、日本では上映されていません。その背景には間違いなく、法律を超える機密行政が在り、それが日本を牛耳っているのです。

 おそらく、その当時のアメリカの犯罪を暴く映画上映を阻む過程に、謎に包まれている日米合同委員会の働きが在ったでしょう。

 丸山眞男博士は戦前の日本政治を「無責任の体系」と表現しましたが、私は歴史を研究するにつれ、どうもその「無責任の体系」は東京にではなく、ワシントンにこそ在ったと確信しております。

【原爆の犯罪】

 一九四五年八月六日の広島、九日の長崎への核攻撃はそれぞれウラン型、プルトニウム型の原爆の実験とデータ収集を目的としたものであり、当時、既にポツダム宣言受諾の方向に動いていた日本に対して戦略上必要な攻撃ではありませんでした。

 戦後もアメリカの軍事秘密主義は続いています。原爆投下後の一年間、日本から報告された放射線による病気やその他の症状を、アメリカ政府が陰謀論だとして一蹴したのも継続している軍事秘密主義故の事です。原爆が通常兵器とは異なるものである事をアメリカ政府が認めるまでには、アメリカ国内だけではなく世界中で多大な論争が在ったのです。

 アメリカの秘密戦争計画は、秘密の協定と条約、 違憲の状態でありながら、法律に守られ、世界の破滅を夢見るサイコパスの軍事専門勢力を生み出しました。

 アメリカは何千発もの核兵器を蓄え、戦略司令部には狂った連中が暗躍しています。その様な連中は、勝ち目の有る核戦争について公然と語り、全人類とは言わないまでも、ロシアと中国の両方に於いて数億人の罪無き市民を殺すであろう先制核戦争の具体的な計画を、今も練っているのです。

 日本人に対する二度に渡る核攻撃が、第二次世界大戦中のアメリカの唯一の犯罪ではありません。

 太平洋戦争に於いて、アメリカは約二千回にも及ぶ一般日本人（一般人?　一般市民？）

をも目標とした無差別爆撃を実行しました。僅か三年半の間に、アメリカが落としたナパーム弾はなんと約２０４０万発に及びます。ナパーム弾は軍事施設ではなく、木造で建てられた日本の民家を焼き尽くし、日本人を焼き殺す為に開発されました。

 特に一九四五年三月一〇日深夜に実行された東京大空襲は、民家が密集した人口密度の高い所を狙い、一夜にして被災者は約３０万人、死者は１１万5千人以上、負傷者は１５万人以上、損害家屋は８０万軒以上という大規模な民間人殺戮となりました。

 八月一五日に終戦した為に、次に日本の一般市民に対して使用しようと用意していたマスタード　ガス、ホスゲンなどの強力な毒ガス爆弾八万六千発と、炭疽菌を充満させた細菌兵器一〇〇万発は、幸いにも未使用に終わりました。

 僅か三年半の間に３００万人以上の日本人が殺されたのは事実です。

 しかし多くのアメリカ人は、広島と長崎の二度に渡る核攻撃は、日本人の命を救う為に必要だったと教えられ、信じています。そして、それ以外の日本人に対する虐殺も知りません。アメリカを建て替えるには、アメリカ人が日本で行った事を知る権利が有り、知る必要が有ると、私は強く考えるのです。

 アメリカには永遠の戦争という悪夢が、現在でも続いています。アメリカが劣化ウラン弾をイラク、アフガニスタン、ウクライナ、シリア、ハワイにばら撒いて、実際に核戦争を違う形で継続しています。

 同じくアメリカは子供達を騙す為に玩具に似せて作ったクラスター爆弾を、それらの国、その他の所にも、ばら撒いています。地雷と同様に今後、何十年間と続く悪夢を他国に植えているのです。

 戦争は悪霊のように、アメリカ人の魂に取り憑き、国の骨髄に浸み込んで精神的なガンとなって、アメリカの文化を快楽とナルシシズムを勧誘し、消費こそが人生の目的であるかの様に、アメリカの一部の権力者が、一般のアメリカ国民を操作してきました。

 その結果、くだらない表面的な興奮を重んじさせられ、その裏に残忍な搾取と支配の計画を立てられました。

 その結果、アメリカ人は文明、価値観、健全な社会を考える主体性が無くなり、人種、宗教、ジェンダーなどに関連したイデオロギーの問題を以って、深刻な衝突が加速しています。

 独立思考できない多くのアメリカ人が簡単に何者かに操られて、間違い無くアメリカ国内が重大な紛争に向かっています。

 アメリカ文化の影響下に置かれた日本にとって、アメリカ文化の退廃は直接に深い打撃を与えています。

 日本の古典文学を研究し、『源氏物語』、『方丈記』を読んで感銘を受け、徳川時代の伊藤仁斎と荻生徂徠の思想に習って、アメリカの新しい政治を実現しようとする者として、私は最近になって日本の文化が消えていく事に鑑み、たいへん遺憾の思いを抱きます。

 それは間違いなく日本に存在しているアメリカの腐った快楽中心の消費文化の影響です。

 まず、アメリカが一九四一年以降、独立精神を失って、密かに大英帝国と合併する事で、共和国ではなく全地球の帝国の様に振舞い始めた事に端を発します。

 その結果、アメリカ政府は事実上、日本を属国として扱ってきています。日本の文化を無視してアメリカに都合の良い様に勝手に憲法を作り変えさせた上に、アフリカ、アジア、アメリカの先住民を奴隷にして、その資源を吸い取って実現した寄生的な経済構造の結果として、西洋諸国が驚異的な経済発展を実現したにも関わらず、その事実を隠して、日本に新しい教育制度を導入させ、いつまでも素晴らしい西洋文明こそが、日本人が習うべき立派な模範だと讃えさせ続けています。

 加えて、アメリカの企業が映画とテレビ放送を通して、日本人の主体性を破壊するナルシシズム文化を戦略的に紹介し続けています。

 竹と木と石から作られた器を尊ぶ日本の伝統工芸文化を破壊し、プラスティック使い捨て道具に依存する消費社会を以て、多国籍大企業に日本の経済を任せたのは罪深い事でした。

 人情と自然と和を重んじる日本の哲学を軽視して、隣人を利用して短期的な利益を得ようとする経営学などを日本人に信じ込ませたのは罪深い事でした。

 現在の若い日本人が連続的で目まぐるしい刺激を与えるゲーム、YouTube、ポルノに慣れさせられて、集中不可能な心理状態になり、侘び、寂び、哀れを深く察する日本の物語、和歌、俳諧、日記文学を読めない、書けないという悲しい世の中に成り果てたのも、その背景にやはりお金を儲ける消費文化を紹介したアメリカ企業の罪が深いのです。

 誠心を以て絹や木綿を織り上げた日本の伝統衣装は、日本の気候に最も相応しいもので、孫子まごこの代まで持ちましたが、その着物、浴衣、草履が消えてしまって、代わりにナイロンで作られて長持ちしない西洋風な洋服が人間らしくない大都会に溢れています。

風土に合って、風、水、土と木と呼吸する日本家屋が消えて、その代わりに冷血的なコンクリートの団地が、空爆よりも残酷に日本の街並みを壊してしまいました。

 栄養価に優れ美味しい日本料理も現在では非日常的なものとなり、アメリカ風にカロリー過多とガンになる添加物を混ぜた加工食品などファストフードが当たり前に一般的となって、もはや嘗ての優れた食文化は、単なる観光誘致の方法（手段？）になってしまいました。

 よく考えれば、過去、アメリカは自国の利益の為に、非常に暴力的な外交手段として日本の伝統文化を破壊しようとしてきました。

 それらを、隠さずに、しっかりと自覚し、悔い改めます。

【大統領候補者としての謝罪、アメリカ合衆国としての懺悔】

 アメリカ文化の良い点を拡張しながら、その恥ずべき点を隠して、人を馬鹿にするナルシシズム消費文化を当然の様に紹介してきた背景には、やはり罪の継承が在ります。要するに、最初から北米大陸に自然と均衡をとった素晴らしい文化をもっていた原住民ネイティブ・アメリカンを皆殺しにして、物質開発を精神よりも重要視した白人の狂った文化があるのです。

 日本にもアジアにも同じ様な文化的暴力が為されました。

 もうこれ以上は、たくさんです。

 きちんとアメリカ人は自覚し、謝る事で懺悔、禊ぎを行われなければならない筈なのです。

 私のこの思いがアメリカ人に伝わり、悔い改め、懺悔し、その汚い歴史を明確に自覚し、罪を清める禊ぎを行なって初めて、そこから真の新しい「偉大な国アメリカ」への道が始まると確信しております。

 親愛なる日本の皆様、誠に申し訳ありませんでした。

「ごめんなさい。」

そしてこれから、悔い改めた新しいアメリカと、本当の親友となってください。

【アメリカ合衆国の大統領としての約束】

 現在、緑の党で来年の米国大統領候補として指名が検討されている者として、私は一九四五年の二度に渡る核攻撃の犯罪性と残虐性、そして東京やその他の都市への一般市民を狙ったナパーム弾による絨毯爆撃について、加えて戦後の日本の国内政治と文化に対する干渉と攪乱について、全ての日本国民に対して、そして世界に対して、厳粛に誠意を持って心よりお詫び申し上げます。

 私は、こうした自らの邪悪な行為によって、アメリカが如何に変貌してきたか、そしてこうした行為に関する秘密の存在が、如何に説明責任を果たさない軍産複合体を育成する素地を作り上げたか、をアメリカ政府が正式に認めるように求めます。

 また一九四一年から一九四五年にかけて、アメリカ軍内部での機密行政と支配の拡大から生じたアメリカ政府の深刻な腐敗に立ち向かえる勇気が、アメリカ人に欠けていた事を、日本国民と世界に深くお詫びしたいと思います。恥の極まりでございます。

 しかも、私は大統領として、アメリカが核兵器を開発したマンハッタン計画や、日本への核攻撃を計画した陸軍航空部隊に関するあらゆる資料、戦後にもアメリカの情報機関と大企業が日本政治に干渉した作戦に関連した全ての資料の機密指定を解除して、全世界にお詫びしながら公開します。

 私は大統領として、アメリカが1970年の核不拡散条約に基づいて、核兵器を廃絶するという約束を厳守するように求めます。まず今後五年間でアメリカ国内の核兵器の数を五〇〇発以下に減らし、その上で、一〇年以内に完全に核兵器を廃絶します。我が国、アメリカ合衆国がその覚悟と約束を表明して初めて、世界の他の国々にも同じ事を求める正当性と道徳的な力が生まれるのです。

 オバマ政権、トランプ政権、バイデン政権の下で行われたアメリカの核戦力の「近代化」は、核不拡散条約（NPT）にあからさまに違反しており、米軍の戦略司令部にロシアや中国への先制核攻撃の選択肢を秘密裏に真剣に準備している事を止めるように命令します。

 本格的に全世界核戦争を準備して、日本を巻き込もうとしている限り、アメリカにはイランと北朝鮮などを批判する資格は全くありません。

 経済、政治、文化の崩壊に向かっているアメリカは今こそ真に日本の援助が必要です。その援助は金銭的な援助ではなく、「葉隠」などに表れた日本の素晴らしい文化に由来する勇気をもって、真実・平和・正義を求める伝統です。

 これからアメリカ人が謙虚な態度をもって、日本人から習って、東洋文明と西洋文明の接合によって初めて、アメリカと日本の間に平等でバランスの取れた、 透明性を持って、説明責任を果たせる関係が成り立ちます。

 そのため、アメリカがまず過去の犯罪をはっきり認めて、謝罪しなければなりません。

 日本人の皆様、今日親切にお話を聞いてくださいまして、誠にありがとうございます。皆さまのお教え頂きたく、よろしくお願いいたします。

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Aug. 28, 2023 – Larissa Borges, 33 year old Brazilian fitness influencer died suddenly on Aug.28, 2023 after suffering double cardiac arrests. She was traveling in Gramado, Brazil when she had 1st cardiac arrest, went into a coma, then had a 2nd cardiac arrest that was fatal.

Aug. 22, 2023 – Northern Ireland – 30s year old Irish doctor Dr. Sean McMahon collapsed in the FITNESS SUITE at Craigavon’s South Lake Leisure Centre on Aug. 22, 2023 and died suddenly. He was due to get married in 4 days.

Aug. 10, 2023 – Slovakia – 28 year old Dayana Dulovcova, personal trainer who has been training since age 16 was found dead in the bathtub in her apartment by her mother on Aug. 10, 2023.

July 2023 – Dallas, TX – 57 year old Kathryn Wyant Huffman, a nurse at Medical City Dallas Hospital died suddenly in early July 2023. She was preparing for a fitness competition when she died.

July 4, 2023 – Goiania, Brazil – 22 year old personal trainer Daniel Ribeiro da Silva was found dead inside his house on July 4, 2023. Cause of death suspected to be cardiac arrest.

July 2, 2023 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – 18 year old Luiz Nathan, one of the greatest talents in the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu died suddenly on July 2, 2023.

June 24, 2023 – Glastonbury, CT – 44 year old Susana Barraza Herrick, DMD, dentist and owner of Herrick Family Dentistry, youth lacrosse coach and CrossFit fitness enthusiast died suddenly in Miami, FL, on June 24, 2023.

May 27, 2023 – Limerick, Ireland – 32 yo European fitness model champion & nurse Judy Fitzgerald died unexpectedly on May 27, 2023.

May 19, 2023 – Nousty, France, 31 year old Sandra Badie, World runner up Jiu-Jitsu champion, and practitioner of judo, karate and aikido, died suddenly of a cardiac arrest during the night of May 18/19.

April 21, 2023 – Naples, FL – 35 year old Amy Brooke Jordan, a certified personal trainer who studied kinesiology died suddenly in her sleep on April 21, 2023.

March 26, 2023 – Orange County, FL – 31 year old Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Milmerstadt died suddenly on March 26, 2023 after suffering a brain injury during training session at gym which started out as severe headache after his workout.

March 25, 2023 – Uruacu, Brazil – 24 year old personal trainer Jhonatan Saraiva had a sudden medical emergency while swimming in a lake on March 25, 2023 and died unexpectedly. He leaves a pregnant wife.

Feb. 6, 2023 – 55 year old fitness industry leader Laurie McCartney died suddenly on Feb. 6, 2023. She supported Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates in fitness facilities, gyms, health clubs, etc. “gyms should take the necessary steps prescribed by government to stay open”.

Feb. 1, 2023 – UK Teacher, Katy Hancock, age 32, died of brain aneurysm on Feb. 1, 2023 was described as “massively fit and healthy” by her dad but collapsed of a brain aneurysm while teaching a fitness class.

Jan. 23, 2023 – Whitehaven, UK – 26 year old school teacher Rachel Morgan died unexpectedly on Jan.23, 2023 She was a year 1 teacher at Kells Infant School. Rachel had a passion for health and fitness and was a keen member of her local gym, jogged regularly.

Dec. 14, 2022 – Brazil – 16 year old aspiring model and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner Andressa Santos Monteiro died suddenly in her sleep on Dec. 14, 2022 from a sudden cardiac arrest. She had started suffering from seizures at school a few months prior to her death.

My Take…

It’s becoming harder and harder to keep up with reporting the endless sudden deaths.

When a prominent fitness influencer like Brazilian Larissa Borges dies suddenly (of double cardiac arrest), the news overshadows and pushes out all other similar recent deaths.

There has been a recent cluster of these deaths of “fitness enthusiasts”.

In this article I focused on regular people who were not professional athletes.

These were people who were personal trainers, fitness instructors, fitness enthusiasts, crossfit practitioners, brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners and regular gym goers.

As always, the causes of death are typical for COVID-19 vaccine injury – vast majority are cardiac arrests, and then the occasional “died in sleep”, blood clots or brain injury.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccination is not just dangerous for professional athletes but is extremely dangerous for anyone who is a fitness enthusiast.

Doctors did not disclose these risks of sudden death after COVID-19 vaccination to their patients and that a person who is deeply involved in fitness, has a much higher risk of sudden death.

In my opinion, COVID-19 vaccinated individuals should not engage in any strenuous physical activity until they have an extensive cardiac work-up and are cleared by a team of specialists.

*

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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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On August 22, the US State Department renewed its ban on the use of US passports for travel to North Korea. This travel ban prohibits as many as 100,000 Korean Americans living in the United States from visiting their relatives in North Korea. The ban was first set in place by the Trump administration in 2017, and—in spite of Korean American activists’ repeated calls to lift the draconian ban—has been renewed annually since.

During his presidential campaign in 2020, Joe Biden had promised to “reunite Korean Americans separated from loved ones in North Korea for decades,” but has extended the travel ban each year he has been in office. This current ban will remain in place until August 31, 2024, at which point it will either be lifted or extended again.

Families Separated by the Travel Ban

Kate Youngjoo Shim, an activist with the women’s peace organization Korea Peace Now!, is one of the many Korean Americans the travel ban impacts. Born in Korea, Shim moved to the US at the age of 15. Both sides of her family are originally from North Korea, and the ban now prevents her from visiting cousins and other close relatives there.

Shim pointed out the hypocrisy of the US government lecturing North Korea on human rights while keeping so many Korean family members separated.

“The biggest human rights violation to me is not letting people see their family,” said Shim. “The US government is always trying to say things about [North Korea’s] human rights conditions, but if you’re not letting people meet their mothers, their children, their immediate families… there’s no excuse.”

Things were not always this way. Shim’s grandmother was separated from her oldest son—Shim’s uncle—during the Korean War. After decades of trying to track him down while living in South Korea, her grandmother moved to the US at the age of 65 in the 1980s in the hopes that it would improve her chances of finding and reuniting with him. The task had proved difficult for her in South Korea due to the political situation between the North and South at that time. Even after decades of not knowing where he was and against all odds, Shim’s grandmother remained hopeful that she and her long-lost son would meet again. After moving to the US, she even started working at a factory so that she could afford to bring him back gifts once he was found.

Eventually, Shim’s family was able to track down her lost uncle in North Korea, and her grandmother was finally reunited with her son after 37 years. While there, Shim’s grandmother also met her brother after decades of separation. She would return to North Korea again to attend her grandson’s wedding.

Shim’s grandmother died more than 10 years ago. If she were alive today, she would no longer be able to visit her own child or other family members because of the travel ban.

The ban is a cruel expression of US imperialist policy, and as the generation of Korean War survivors are now aging well into their 80s, lifting it is a matter of urgency now more than ever.

“My grandmother was one of the lucky ones,” said Shim. “There are so many unlucky people who cannot even see their family members. Or maybe a mother has her children there. Now it’s been 70 years [since the signing of the Armistice Agreement], so people are dying.”

Trips to North Korea Were ‘Life-Changing’

And it’s not only Korean Americans barred from visiting family members in North Korea—the travel ban prohibits any US passport holder from traveling there, effectively prohibiting any kind of cultural exchange between US citizens and Koreans in the North. These exchanges are essential to challenging the US propaganda campaign that dehumanizes North Koreans in order to justify sanctions.

Gloria La Riva, an organizer with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) Coalition, called her travels to the North in 1989 and 2015 “life-changing experiences.”

“I saw people and a country that is the opposite of the hysterical, demonizing images we see in the West,” La Riva recalled. “I met people who were thoughtful and kind to visitors. That is what struck me most of all. When we boarded a full train, people immediately offered us their seats, smiling—the best language of all.”

“That is the real reason the US government bans its citizens from visiting North Korea,” she continued. “It is the same reason the US travel ban to Cuba has existed for more than 60 years. The US fears that we will see the Korean people as our friends, not our enemy. The travel ban is a denial of our right to see North Korea for ourselves.”

End the Korean War

The crimes that Washington has inflicted on Korea cannot be overstated. It was the US that divided Korea along the 38th parallel in 1945 and separated millions of families, occupied the South, and dropped more than 600,000 tons of bombs over the peninsula during the Korean War. So extensive was the bombing campaign that US pilots even ran out of targets and would drop bombs into the sea to safely land. Over the course of the war, the US military leveled “nearly 90% of major cities and villages in North Korea,” killing a staggering 20% of its population.

On top of the murderous carpet bombing campaign, the entire Korean War itself was punctuated by US-backed atrocities: the murder of more than 100,000 people during the Bodo League massacre in 1950, which was committed by the government forces of US-installed President of South Korea Syngman Rhee; the Sinchon massacre in which the US military and South Korean anti-communist forces killed more than 30,000 civilians; the No Gun Ri massacre where US military forces opened fire on civilian refugees, killing around 300 people. Taken altogether, US involvement in the Korean War was nothing short of genocidal.

While the signing of the 1953 Armistice Agreement brought an end to the fighting, it did not bring an end to the conflict. The US refuses to sign a peace treaty, and it, along with the South, remains suspended in an official state of war with the North. And even after the signing of the armistice, the US government maintains a heavy military presence in Korea and continues to ratchet up tensions between the North and the South. South Korea remains under occupation: it’s home to the largest US overseas base, and a total of 28,500 US military personnel are stationed in the country. South Korea also hosts the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint military exercises with the US. These annual drills simulate the invasion of North Korea and include live-fire practice attacks from the air, land, sea, and space. The war games present a dress rehearsal for regime change in North Korea. And especially since 2006, the US government, along with the United Nations Security Council, have relied on a brutal sanctions regime to punish North Korea for defying US imperialism. These sanctions have caused food insecurity, malnutrition, and medical supply shortages in the country, leading to enormous suffering and thousands of preventable deaths.

The travel ban for the US, then, is another weapon of war, part of its broader strategy to further isolate North Korea and inflame tensions between both halves of the peninsula. And with Washington forging stronger military ties with Australia, the Philippines, and other countries in the “Indo-Pacific,” as well as increasing its militarization of the South China Sea, the Pentagon’s ultimate goal is to secure South Korea as an ally in its road toward major power conflict in Asia.

“We’re in a period of extreme tension in Korea,” explained Ju-Hyun Park, an organizer with the nonprofit Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, which advocates for reunification of the country. “The US does not want to do anything to de-escalate that tension because the current situation benefits US interests. The more conflict there is in Korea, the easier it is to corral South Korea and Japan into an alliance against not only North Korea, but ultimately against China and Russia as well.”

This path that Washington is leading North and South Korea down will only lead to more war and devastation for the Korean people. The US government has never been interested in peace for the Korean peninsula. For more than 70 years, it’s done everything in its power to divide North and South, obstruct any and every path to lasting peace, and turn Koreans against each other. What the US government owes to the people of Korea can never be repaid. But the path toward justice begins with lifting the travel ban to North Korea—along with signing a peace treaty to bring an official end to the Korean War.

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This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Amanda Yee is a writer and organizer based out of Brooklyn. She is an editor of Liberation News, and her writing has appeared in Monthly Review Online, the Real News Network, and Peoples Dispatch. Follow her on Twitter @catcontentonly.

Featured image: Activists march in Washington DC on July 27, in recognition of the 70th anniversary of the armistice in Korea. Photo: Women Cross DMZ via Twitter

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*** 

Polish Anti-War Debates are a kind of phenomenon. Even though Poland is not formally a belligerent, there is strict war censorship there.

Secret Service has the right to limit access to independent media without giving a reason. The recent amendment to the Penal Code introduced the categories of “unconscious espionage” and “disinformation”, i.e. “dissemination of false or misleading information with the aim of causing serious disruptions in the system or economy of the Republic of Poland , an allied state or an international organisation of which the Republic of Poland is a member”. 

Simply: any criticism of pro-Kiev policy or NATO activities is punishable in Poland with a prison sentence of up to 8 years.

And yet there are still brave people who take this risk, trying to present the Polish public with true information about the war in Ukraine, as well as to raise awareness that even Western public opinion is by no means uniform in supporting the Zelensky regime. Thanks to independent media such as “Myśl Polska”, the oldest Polish political weekly, founded in 1941 in exile in London, and the online channel “Wbrew Cenzurze / Without Censorship”, Polish viewers and readers get know the opinions of leading Western analysts and activists of anti-war movements from the UK, USA, Ireland and Germany.

Source: Konrad Rekas

International Voices for Peace

The Anti-War Debates hosted i.a.: George Galloway, leader of the Workers Party of Britain and the No2NATO movement; Col. Douglas Macgregor, military expert, former advisor of the President Donald Trump’s administration; Larry C. Johnson, security expert, former CIA officer and analyst; Chris Williamson, ex-MP and former Labour Shadow Cabinet member; Diana Sosoaca, Romanian senator, president of the SOS Romania party; Grzegorz Braun, Polish Member of Parliament; Prof. Kees van der Pijl, a leading scientist in international political economy; David Pyne, former Pentagon analyst, advisor to the candidate in the Republican Party primaries, Vivek Ramaswamy; and Scott Ritter, military analyst, former disarmament inspector.

Guests of the last, special edition of the programme included: Clare Daly, Irish MEP, member of Independents 4 Change, The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL, pro-neutrality, anti-war activist and renowned Palestinian right campaigner; Peter Ford, English diplomat, British ambassador to Bahrain from 1999 to 2003 and Syria from 2003 to 2006. Determined opponent of the British militarist involvement in the Middle East and in the Eastern Europe. Member of the Workers Party of Britain; Tommy Sheridan, Scottish Socialist MSP and current chair of the Scottish independence campaign Hope Over Fear. Mick Wallace, Irish MEP, leader of Independents 4 Change, The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL renowned anti-war activist, a proven friend of the Palestinian cause, engaged in supporting anti-imperialist movements in the Middle East, Africa, South America. The discussion was organised on the anniversary of the outbreak of World War 2, to  emphasise  a warning against the tragic consequences of further escalation in the international relations.

False Anglo-Saxon Guarantees

Starting a discussion, I recalled the words of general Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Polish Commander-in-chief during the late period of the WW2. He has written to the Polish soldiers in 1944:

“Five years have passed since the day when Poland, having listened to the encouragement of the British government and received its guarantees, stood alone in the fight against the German power”.

After that harsh but true reminder, that Poland was pushed to fight by Britain, Churchill successfully demanded general Sosnkowski’s dismissal. Today we can see with no doubts, that it has been the encouragement of London and Washington pushing Kiev to pursue a policy that resulted in war with Russia.

“Ukraine was definitely under pressure from London and Washington to continue the war. In April last year, a peace agreement was already on the table that could end the conflict and seemed acceptable to Moscow and Kiev. In particular, it was Boris Johnson, then supported by the Americans and part of the EU, who ordered Ukraine to continue fighting. This is the Western proxy war with Russia, and the longer it lasts, the more Ukrainians are thrown into the meat grinder, the more destruction there is, and more territories are lost. This is an absolute disaster for Ukraine, commissioned by supposed Western friends who are in fact not friends of Ukraine at all,” Clare Daly agreed.

Centre of Extremism

“It is clear that British and American policy is failing. In fact, it never had a chance to succeed. The policy makers of London and Washington dreamed, taking their dreams for reality. Of course, they were never going to pay for it themselves. It was the Ukrainians who were thrown into the meat grinder. So it was a highly risky policy, although without much risk for London or Washington themselves. It is worth remembering that 10 years ago, in 2013, the British Labour Party in a Commons vote protected Britain from participating in the bombing of Syria. This was achieved with a small majority and with the help of a group of braves, rebellious Conservative MPs, but it was proof that there was a party of peace in my country. But those days are long gone. There has been a collapse of the true, authentic British left, all the main parties today are in positions of extreme centre, ready to fight to the last Ukrainian,” added Ambassador Ford.

Fight to the Last Ukrainian!

Mick Wallace emphasised that we are also dealing with a European crisis:

“We have just had a meeting of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on the financing of Ukraine. Some of the voices were truly shocking, so unreasonable were the speeches of the MEPs who kept repeating that he had to pump up Ukraine’s arsenals or Ukraine would lose the war. There is still talk of Ukraine regaining lost territories and Crimea. Ukraine will not regain Crimea without a nuclear war! Does Europe think of a nuclear war on its own continent as something that could realistically happen?! The speeches of European politicians have no connection with the interests of their own citizens or with the interests of Ukrainians, who are dying en masse in this war. This is a serious crisis. Party politics does not attract intelligent people. We are witnessing a serious lack of European leadership.”

Global Reconfiguration

Tommy Sheridan’s voice was particularly strong:

“Only Pope Francis had the courage to say that none of the European politicians had the balls to admit that Russia was provoked to invade. As the Pope said, when a dog barks at someone’s door, one cannot be surprised by the reaction. Would the American government be happy to learn tomorrow that China is installing its weapons in Mexico? This is terrible for socialists like me, who are completely against war, against nuclear weapons, against the very idea of militarism, which I sincerely hate, because only workers suffer because of it, and they die in wars. But I must admit: if I were Vladimir Putin, in the same situation, what could I do other than attack to defend my own sovereignty? So, with all due respect, I believe that this war was made inevitable as a result of NATO’s actions, obviously led by the US. And I must also add that they were wrong in their calculations. They expected that financing Ukraine and the widespread imposition of sanctions would bring Russia to its knees. Meanwhile, what happened was China, India, Brazil, Argentina, subsequent countries declaring: We do not want to be part of your imperialist expansion. We will not follow American orders. This is a global reconfiguration!”

By slightly opening the door of the Polish prison of thought, Polish anti-war groups try to participate, at least partially, in this global anti-imperialist transformation.

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Konrad Rękas is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

 

 

 

 

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, wants to know what the U.S. Department of Justice is doing to recover an estimated $280 billion in U.S. COVID-19 relief spending that allegedly flowed to criminals inside and outside the United States.

On Tuesday, Mr. Wenstrup sent a letter (pdf) to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking that he and the DOJ provide a full account of all current and past investigations into the misallocation of U.S. taxpayer funds as part of COVID-19 pandemic relief programs. Mr. Wenstrup cited a June Associated Press analysis, which estimated that around $280 billion of U.S. COVID-19 relief spending was lost to fraudulent schemes carried out both inside and outside the country.

Mr. Wenstrup further cited a 2021 NBC News report, claiming much of the COVID relief that was lost to fraud went to Russian, Chinese and Nigerian criminal organizations.

“Some of these fraudulent actors were based outside the United States and may involve international criminal organizations. Estimates imply that at least half of all stolen COVID-19 relief funds went to Russian, Chinese, and Nigerian criminals,” he wrote.

The U.S. government has been working to account for more than $4 trillion in COVID-19 relief spending. In addition to the $280 billion the Associated Press believes was lost to fraud, the media publication estimated another $123 billion was simply wasted or misspent.

In a March 2022 press release, the DOJ announced it had recovered about $8 billion worth of COVID-19 relief funds lost to fraud through a combination of criminal prosecutions and civil enforcement actions. That DOJ fund recovery effort amounts to about three percent of the money that may have been lost to fraud, and Mr. Wenstrup said it’s unclear just how much the DOJ has recovered from criminal actors living abroad.

“It is highly concerning that possibly billions of taxpayer dollars intended to help Americans suffering the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic were stolen by organized criminal rings in foreign countries,” the Republican lawmaker wrote. “Therefore, we write today to better understand the full scope of this problem and what actions the Department has taken to investigate international COVID-19 relief program fraud and hold these foreign actors accountable.”

Mr. Wenstrup requested the DOJ provide a country-by-country account of all current and closed COVID-19 fraud cases and dollar value estimates of COVID-19 relief spending they believe went missing in these fraud cases.

The DOJ is continuing to bring new cases to recover COVID-19 relief funds. Last week, the department announced it had conducted a nationwide enforcement effort resulting in 718 enforcement actions against 371 defendants, for alleged fraud offenses that resulted in the misallocation of around $836 million.

Even with this latest DOJ effort, the U.S. is still well short of recovering all of the funds that are likely missing as a result of COVID-19 fraud schemes. It could take years to recover all of those funds, assuming they can all eventually be recovered.

“The COVID-19 public health emergency may have ended, but the Justice Department’s work to identify and prosecute those who stole pandemic relief funds is far from over,” Mr. Garland said upon announcing the latest DOJ anti-fraud efforts last week.

Legislation extending the statute of limitations to prosecute pandemic-era fraud cases has enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

During last week’s anti-fraud announcement, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced the department had started a new COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force in Colorado and another one in Delaware.

“The two new Strike Forces launched today will increase our reach as we continue to pursue fraudsters and recover taxpayer funds, no matter how long it takes,” Ms. Monaco said.

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Featured image: US Congressman Brad Wenstrup (Licensed under Public Domain)

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The Modi government is not perplexed by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the G20 Summit on September 9-10. Its intuitive cognition helps to be stoical. This is, arguably, a Shakespearean predicament — “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

India’s high-calibre diplomats would have divined some time ago already that an event conceived in the world of yesterday, before the new cold war came roaring in, wouldn’t have the same scale and significance today.  

Yet, Delhi must feel disappointed, as the compulsions of Putin or Xi Jinping have nothing to do with their countries’ relations with India. The government has given a bureaucratic spin that

“The level of attendance at global summits varies from year to year. In today’s world with so many demands on the leaders’ time, it is not always possible for every leader to attend every summit.” 

That said, Delhi administration is sprucing up the city, removing the slums from public view, adding new alluring hoardings to catch the eye of the foreign dignitaries, and even lining flower pots along the roads their motorcades pass. 

One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the common thread in the decisions taken in Moscow and Beijing is that their leaderships are not in the least interested in any interaction with the US President Joe Biden who will be camping in Delhi for four days with all the time at his disposal for some structured meetings, at the very least, some “pull asides” and the like at a minimum that could be caught on camera. 

Biden’s considerations are political: anything that helps to distract attention from the gathering storm in US politics which is threatening to culminate in his impeachment that might in turn blight his candidacy in the 2024 election. 

Of course, this not Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment. Johnson made the tumultuous decision in March 1968 to retire from politics as a strong step toward healing the nation’s fissures, while agonising deeply that

“There is division in the American house now.” 

But Biden is anything but a visionary. He was setting up a bear trap for Putin to reinforce his false narrative that if only the latter dismounted from his high horse, the Ukraine war would end overnight, whereas on its part, the Kremlin is well aware that the White House continues to be the strongest proponent of the thesis that a prolonged war would weaken Russia. Indeed, Biden has gone to extraordinary extents that none of this predecessors ever dared to reach — aiding and abetting Ukrainian terrorist attacks deep inside Russia. 

In a way, Xi Jinping also faces a trap, as Biden administration is going to great extent to project itself as conciliatory toward China, as the beeline of US officials heading for Beijing recently would testify — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in June; Treasury Secretary and Climate Envoy John Kerry in July; and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August. 

The New York Times on Tuesday carried a report titled U.S. Officials Are Streaming to China. Will Beijing Return the Favor? It chastised Beijing: 

“China has much to gain from dispatching officials to the United States. It would signal to the world it was making an effort to ease tensions with Washington, particularly at a time when China needs to bolster confidence in its shaky economy. A visit could also help lay the groundwork for a potential, highly anticipated meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at a forum in San Francisco in November. 

“Beijing, however, has been noncommittal.”

The point is, all this while, Washington has also been incessantly taunting and provoking Beijing with belligerence and through calculated means to weaken China’s economy and incite Taiwan and the ASEAN countries to line up as the US’ Indo-Pacific allies, apart from vilifying China. 

Both Putin and Xi Jinping have learnt the hard way that Biden is a past-master in doublespeak, saying one thing behind closed doors and acting entirely to the contrary, often being rude and offensive at a personal level in unprecedented display of boorish public diplomacy. 

Of course, the symbolism of US-Russian “reconciliation” on Indian soil, howsoever contrived, can only work to Washington’s advantage to pull Modi away from India’s hugely consequential strategic partnership with Russia at a juncture when the West’s entreaties over Ukraine failed to get resonance in the Global South. 

As it is, India’s misconceived participation in the recent “peace talks” in Jeddah (which was actually the brainwave of the White House NSA Jake Sullivan) created misperceptions that Modi government “will be part of the implementation of the 10-point peace formula proposed by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the details are being discussed.” 

Both Moscow and Beijing will be extremely wary of the Biden administration’s booby traps aimed at creating misunderstanding in their mutual relationships and create misperceptions about the stability of the Russian-Chinese strategic relationship at a critical juncture when Putin is preparing to visit Beijing. 

Putin’s possible visit to China in October can be considered as a response to Xi Jinping’s March visit to Moscow, but it has a substantial content as evident from Beijing’s invitation to him to be the main speaker at the third Belt and Road Forum marking the 10th anniversary of the appearance of BRI in Chinese foreign policies. 

Although in 2015 Putin and Xi signed a joint statement on cooperation on “linking the construction of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Silk Road Economic Belt”, so far Moscow’s support to BRI has been more of a declaratory character falling short of accession to it. The Chinese side, when it is convenient, mentions Russia as a Belt and Road country, while Moscow simply adheres to the previous formulations. 

This may change with Putin’s visit in October, and if so, it could be a historic game changer for the dynamics of Sino-Russian partnership and for the flow of international politics as a whole. 

Indian diplomats hope to produce a joint document that papers over the contradictions, which are not only over Ukraine but also climate change, the debt obligations of emerging markets, the Sustainable Development Goals, digital transformation, energy and food security, and so on. The confrontational line of the collective West poses a major obstacle. 

The G20 foreign ministers failed to adopt a joint declaration, and the deliberations, under pressure from the G7 countries, “strayed into emotional statements,” as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later said. Putin and Xi probably do not expect any breakthrough solutions from the G20 summit.

The strong likelihood is that the forthcoming Delhi event this weekend may turn out to be the last waltz of its kind between the cowboys of the Western world and the increasingly restless Global South. The revival of the anti-colonial struggle in Africa is ominous. Quite obviously, Russia and China are putting their eggs in the BRICS basket.

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Not everyone is a-okay with Japan’s recent decision to dilute radioactive wastewater from the melted-down Fukushima nuclear power plant and dump it back into the Pacific Ocean, most notably communist China, which is no longer buying seafood from Japan due to concerns about it being contaminated with radiation.

According to reports, China is blocking all further import shipments of seafood from Japan, despite reassurances from the government of Japan and even the United Nations (UN) nuclear watchdog group International Atomic Energy Agency, which says everything is going to be just fine.

Chinese consumers, we are told, want more studies to be conducted before they dare to ever touch another piece of fish from their neighbors to the east. Many of them are calling for a boycott of other Japanese products as well, including high-end skin care creams and various household items.

“The effort is shaping up to be the largest campaign of state-supported nationalist outrage against Japan in more than a decade and comes at a time of widening divisions between China and U.S.-aligned countries in the region,” one media outlet reported about the matter.

Will China Eventually Ban Other Japanese Imports?

After “lists of products to be boycotted” started circulating online throughout China, many consumers started returning Japanese products that they had already purchased in retaliation.

Many Japanese manufacturers are now labeling their products as “radiation-free” to try to lure back Chinese consumers, some of whom have purchased handheld Geiger counters to test their Japanese-made products for radioactivity.

In response, Japanese analysts are accusing China of “scapegoating” Japan in an attempt to distract from its own nation’s many problems.

Not long after China gave the axe to all further imports of Japanese seafood, many Japanese businesses and government departments started receiving concerned and angry calls from Chinese consumers, including on the short-video platforms Kuaishou and Douyin.

Many users of these two platforms began uploading video footage of themselves calling Japan and expressing their concerns about nuclear-contaminated wastewater affecting Japanese-made products.

Following a two-year review, the IAEA concluded just last month that Japan’s plan to dump tens of thousands of tons’ worth of radioactive water straight into the Pacific Ocean is just swell, easily meeting international safety standards.

According to the IAEA, radioactive wastewater in the Pacific Ocean will have a “negligible” radiological impact on both people and the environment – case closed.

China does not agree with the IAEA’s assessment, though, with state-run media outlets throughout the country bashing Japan over the move. Environmental groups and residents in nearby South Korea, as well as some residents of Japan itself, further say that what Japan is now doing creates and “unnecessary risk.”

Obviously, China is trying to inflict serious economic damage on Japan, which says its nation’s businesses are already taking a “significant” hit, with more on the way.

Together with Hong Kong, China imports more than $1.1 billion worth of seafood from Japan every year – or at least it did before this recent decision was made. Nearly half of Japan’s seafood exports end up in China – or, again, they did before the change.

“While Japan’s government is deeply concerned by what it sees as the aggressive actions of the Chinese Communist Party, they understand that it is in their interests to maintain stable relations with their larger neighbor,” commented James DJ Brown from Temple University in Philadelphia.

“China’s growing economic difficulties could mean that any ban is relatively brief and narrow, so as to limit the negative impact on Chinese importers and business sentiment.”

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Featured image is from The Millennium Report

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“Repacking” of 3.5 miles of U.S. Military Red Hill Fuel Pipes in Hawaii Begins with October 16, 2023 as the Target Date to Begin “Defueling” the dangerous Underground Tanks

U.S. Military Now Has New Capacity to Store Above Ground 104 million gallons of fuel that Must be Removed from Massive Red Hill Underground Fuel Tanks

With the announcement on August 31, 2023, by Island Energy of Honolulu, of the completion of 63-million-gallon capacity for military fuel in five newly constructed above ground fuel tanks at Kapolei, a few miles from Pearl Harbor and the Red Hill underground tanks, the U.S. military has constructed sufficient storage capacity for the 104 million gallons of military fuel that is to be removed from the massive underground Red Hill fuel tanks.

Families Still Suffering from Effects of Toxic Fuel Poisoning

The May and November 2021 fuel leaks of 19,000 gallons of fuel at the 80-year-old Red Hill fuel storage facility into the drinking water aquifer of Honolulu gave toxic exposure to over 93,000 persons.  Many are suffering from toxic poisoning that will have lifelong effects.

27,000 gallons of fuel had “leaked” in January 2014. Some families who have lived in the 19 residential areas served by the Red Hill well report they have had health conditions for many years prior to the November 2021 spill that went directly into the Red Hill well. They feel that these health issues may be attributable to the leak in 2014, nine years before.

After the November 2021 leak, on March 7, 2022 Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the Red Hill facility to be closed.  The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act required an additional certification that closing would not negatively affect U.S. national security.  That certification has not been issued.

“Repacking,” or filing the pipes to force air out of the 3.5 miles of pipes at the Red Hill fuel facility began on August 28. According to Joint Task Force Red Hill,

“During repacking, fuel operators will fill the lines using fuel from the upper tank farm and remove all air to ensure a stable flow of fuel when defueling the main underground storage tanks. The process is expected to take several days.”

“Defueling” of the 14 of 20 huge underground tanks that hold 104 million gallons of fuel is scheduled to begin on October 16, 2023 and should be completed by January 19, 2024. 6 tanks have been empty for several years. Between 100,000 and 400,000 gallons could remain in the tanks and low parts of the pipes at the conclusion of defueling and would still need to be removed, a process that the Red Hill Task Force has said is outside its scope of responsibility. The removal of this large amount of residual fuel has yet to be specifically addressed by the military. 

80-Million-Gallon U.S. Military Fuel Storage Facility Constructed in Australia

Another U.S. military fuel storage facility in Darwin, Australia has been completed under contract with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and provides an additional 80-million-gallon capacity for the Red Hill fuel.  The $270 million project has eleven fuel storage tanks constructed on East Arm of Darwin Harbor.

The contract for the Darwin facility was awarded in September 2021, the same time the Australia, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) pact was signed. The contract to provide energy logistics management and services to receive, store, protect and ship aviation-grade JP-5 turbine fuel and commercial grade Jet A-1 fuel for military forces was awarded to Florida-based Crowley Government Services Inc.  The contract is for four years, with a five-year option period.

One complicating factor for the US military is that  Darwin port was leased in 2015 for 99 years by the cash strapped Northern Territories provincial government to Chinese billionaire Ye Cheng’s Landbridge Group for about $355 million without notifying the Australian federal government. China is Australia’s largest trading partner, bigger than the next three — Japan, the U.S. and South Korea — combined. 

Massive Increase in Military Facilities in Australia Used by U.S. Military

Military ties between the U.S. and Australia continue to increase with the heated rhetoric of the West towards China. The U.S. and Australia have just completed Talisman Sabre, the largest land exercise in Asia with 34,000 military from 13 countries conducting war exercises throughout Australia.   A massive build-up of Australian military facilities included a $317 million upgrade to Darwin harbor wharf facilities with a 820-foot-long wharf at Larrakeyah Defence Precinct which will support surface warships, submarines, mine hunters and hydrographic ships.

Australian air bases in the Northern Territory frequently used by visiting U.S. aircraft are also being improved.  At Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Darwin $88.65 million was allocated to construct more fuel tanks, expand the airfield and erect maintenance facilities while 200 miles south of Darwin,  a $496 million project at RAAF Tindal upgraded the airfield and increased aviation fuel storage to accommodate U.S. B-52 bombers and U.S. stealth fighters including Marine Corps F-36B Lightning IIs deployed from Iwakuni, Japan, and Air Force F-22 Raptors from Hawaii.

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Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel.  She was also a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia.  She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq.  In Hawaii, Ann is a member of Oahu Water Protectors, Shut Down Red Hill Coalition, Hawai’i Peace and Justice and Veterans For Peace Chapter 113-Hawai’i.

Featured image: Inside Red Hill Fuel Storage Facility. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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When the Chilean military overthrew Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government in September 1973, UK officials supported and worked with the new junta as it indulged in widespread atrocities, declassified files show.

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On 11 September 1973, a democratically-elected Chilean government under President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a brutal coup organised by the Chilean military with the backing of the CIA. 

The presidential palace was rocketed by the military and Allende committed suicide [was assassinated]. Thousands of people were imprisoned, Congress was suspended and all political parties and the trade union movement were banned.

General Augusto Pinochet soon emerged as the leader of the military junta as summary executions took place throughout the country. At least 3,000 people were soon killed, most executed, died under torture or “disappeared”.

Pinochet went on to rule Chile for 17 years. His regime became one of Latin America’s most repressive and bloody in modern history. 

After the fall of the dictatorship in 1990, a truth commission confirmed that more than 40,000 people were tortured and over 200,000 fled into exile. 

Declassified British files show UK officials described the 1973 coup as “cold-blooded” and “ruthless”. It was widely condemned throughout the world as an illegitimate overthrow of a progressive government. 

It also elicited much public outrage, including among the British public, especially as the Edward Heath government did nothing in public to strongly condemn the coup.

In fact, in private his Conservative government strongly supported it, the declassified files at the National Archives show.

Coup of September 11, 1973. Bombing of La Moneda (presidential palace) (Licensed under CC BY 3.0 cl)

‘Good Relations’

British planners in London and Santiago, Chile’s capital, immediately set about forging good relations with the new military rulers as repression increased, even secretly conniving with the junta to mislead the British public.

Officials were completely aware of the scale of atrocities. Three days after the coup, ambassador Reginald Secondé reported to the Foreign Office that “it is likely that casualties run into the thousands, certainly it has been far from a bloodless coup”. 

Six days after, he noted that “stories of military excesses and mounting casualties have begun increasingly to circulate. The extent of the bloodshed has shocked people”.

But it did not appear to shock Secondé and his staff in Santiago. He immediately reported that “we still have enough at stake in economic relations with Chile to require good relations with the government in power”. 

But he suggested those good relations should be kept secret, writing: “It would not be in anyone’s interests to identify too closely with those responsible for the coup”. 

‘Orderly Government’

After cabling London about casualties reaching into the thousands, Secondé further told the Foreign Office that “whatever the excesses of the military during the coup” the Allende government had been leading the country into “economic ruin”. 

Therefore, Britain should welcome the new rulers since “there is every reason to suppose that they will now… try to impose a period of sensible, orderly government”. 

Indeed, Secondé effectively condoned the political repression, noting that “the lack of political activity is, for the time being, no loss”.

The ambassador also told the Foreign Office that “most British businessmen… will be overjoyed at the prospect of consolidation which the new military regime offers”. British companies, such as Shell, he added, “are all breathing deep sighs of relief”. 

The reference was to Allende’s nationalisation campaign that had taken over some key Western commercial interests in the country, notably copper, the country’s principal economic resource. 

“Now is the time to get in”, he recommended, while urging the British government to provide early diplomatic recognition of the new regime.

‘Better Prospect’

The foreign secretary in Edward Heath’s Conservative government, Alec Douglas Home, sent an official ‘guidance’ memorandum to various British embassies on 21 September outlining British support for the new junta. 

It said:

“For British interests… there is no doubt that Chile under the junta is a better prospect than Allende’s chaotic road to socialism, our investments should do better, our loans may be successfully rescheduled, and export credits later resumed, and the sky-high price of copper (important to us) should fall as Chilean production is restored”.

Indeed, the Foreign Office decided to go to extraordinary lengths to assure the Chilean junta of Britain’s desire for good relations. 

Eleven days after the coup, Secondé met Admiral Huerta, the junta’s new foreign minister. The ambassador’s briefing notes for this meeting state that:

“I shall put it to him frankly that HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] understands the problems which the Chilean armed forces faced before the coup and are now facing: this is a particular reason why they are anxious to enter early into good relations with the new government”.

Then Secondé said he would refer to

“our own problems of public opinion at home. It would therefore help us if he [ie, Huerta] could agree that we should be able to say something to reassure public opinion at home”. 

Secondé’s record of his meeting with Huerta confirms that he said that the British government “understood the motives of the armed forces, intervention and the problems facing the military government” – diplomatic language for support for the junta. 

The British ambassador then gave Huerta a draft form of wording to be used in public by the UK government, to which Huerta was asked to agree.

Agreed Statement

This agreed statement was an apologia for what the military junta was then doing, undertaken in order to placate public opinion in Britain. 

It said Britain accepted that the internal situation in Chile “is of course a matter for the Chilean government only” and that the UK ambassador had expressed “the very strong feeling which exists in many quarters in Britain over the deaths of President Allende and others and over the many people arrested”. 

It added that “the Chilean government offered assurances that they will deal in a humane manner” with those in detention and in political opposition – an obvious lie, since Secondé and Whitehall were perfectly aware of the scale of atrocities being committed.

Image: The facilities of the National Stadium were used as a detention and torture center after the coup. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Douglas Home was delighted with Secondé’s success in reaching agreement with the junta on a form of words. He cabled the ambassador praising him for carrying out a “difficult brief”, adding:

“The statement helped us to defend our relatively early recognition of the new government against domestic criticism”. 

‘Proper Perspective’

The removal of the democratically elected government was explained away by Secondé. He said in a reflective 20 page dispatch three weeks after the coup that “the overthrow of constitutional government was not what it may seem in Britain”. 

While he recognised that the armed forces were being widely condemned internationally “this must be put into its proper perspective”, Secondé added. 

His analysis referred to the regular defeats Allende’s government suffered in the Congress and the government’s retention of power on the basis of the 36 per cent of the vote won by Allende in the 1970 presidential election, which, Secondé was convinced, would never happen in Britain.

As for the new military junta, Secondé noted that “circumstances also will push them into directions which British public opinion will deplore” and “the next few years may be grey ones, in which freedom of expression may suffer”. 

“But this regime suits British interests much better than its predecessor”, he concluded, adding: “The prospects for British business in Chile are clearly much brighter under the new regime… The new leaders are unequivocally on our side and want to do business, in the widest sense, with us”’.

This was in the context of clear recognition by British planners that “torture is going on in Chile” and also of the “allegedly quasi-fascist inclination of the new leaders”. 

It was also recognised, as Secondé noted above, that the new regime was going to continue to be repressive for a long while. As one Foreign Office official noted: “It seems very hard to foresee a return for many years to anything like democratic government of the kind to which Chile has been accustomed for many years to come”.

Aiding the Regime

Foreign minister Leo Amery made clear in private meetings with Judith Hart, Labour’s shadow minister for overseas development, that the UK aid programme and credit lines would not be suspended, as some donors had done. 

In reply to a parliamentary question, the Foreign Office drafted:

“Our priorities in Latin America are determined largely by our trading and investment interests… On the recent events in Chile, our public policy is to refuse to be drawn into the controversy of the rights or wrongs of President Allende’s government or the new military government”.

The issue of British arms exports to the junta was especially pertinent since Hawker Hunter aircraft supplied by Britain had been used in the coup to attack Allende’s presidential palace and his residence. 

The ambassador noted that

“Hawker Hunters swept down with their aerial rockets, directed with remarkable accuracy at the palace, which was severely damaged and set on fire”.

With the junta in power, British officials made clear that arms contracts agreed with Allende would be honoured, involving eight Hawker Hunters and other equipment worth over £50m. 

But they went further, saying in the secret files that “we shall want in due course to make the most of the opportunities which will be presented by the change in government”. 

Expectations were for new requests for arms from the junta but “we shall wish to play these as quietly as possible for some time to come” owing to widespread public opposition. 

The Heath government defied calls from the Labour party to impose an arms embargo on Chile and all the Hawker Hunters had been delivered by the time of the 1974 British general election.

A further major task was to counter the British and international opposition to the military regime’s atrocities. 

‘Atrocity Stories’

One extraordinary note by Foreign Office official Hugh Carless to Secondé, in December 1973, stated that

“unfortunately, there is (as you have pointed out to us) a good deal of fact behind the atrocity stories and that alone makes it impossible for us to counter the propaganda”. 

“We can do little about the press”, he added “but you can assure them [the Chilean junta] that we and our ministers do understand the facts”. 

Carless also mused that

“Chileans must be wondering why on Earth… so much unfair attention is being paid to their change of government”. 

He continued by noting that due to the emergence of a worldwide Chile Solidarity Movement protesting against the new regime, “we shall, occasionally, have to adopt a lower profile than we would like”. 

This was especially the case in providing arms, helping the junta with debt relief and to “rescue them from being pilloried in international meetings”.

‘Violent Revolution’

The impact of the coup on Chileans was harsh. But the removal of a popular government may also have had another effect beyond the country, signalling that a peaceful, democratic path to improving the position of the poor in a developing country would be met by violence.

Ambassador Secondé noted in a dispatch after the coup that

“the final seal of failure has now been put on this experiment by the Chilean armed forces”. 

“This has some obvious advantages”, he noted, but also disadvantages, one of which was that “it will be widely concluded that violent revolution is the only effective way to communism”. 

Douglas Home similarly suggested that

“the overthrow of Allende has ruined prospects for social change to be achieved democratically in Latin America”.

‘Our Major Interest in Chile Is Copper’

A Foreign Office brief noted that “our major interest in Chile is copper” which accounted for one third of the UK’s copper imports. 

The disruption in Chile under Allende and “fear for the future” had recently meant large rises in copper prices which were costing the UK an extra £500,000 in foreign exchange. “We therefore have a major interest in Chile regaining stability, regardless of politics”, the Foreign Office stated.

Allende’s primary heresy as seen from London and Washington was nationalisation. In July 1971 the copper industry – which provided 70 per cent of Chile’s export earnings – was fully nationalised and the US-owned copper mines taken over by the government, with the unanimous approval of the Congress. 

The US reacted sharply and cut off all credit and new aid to the government and pressed the World Bank to do the same. The chief US mining corporations, Kennecott and Anaconda, began legal proceedings against the government.

The US ambassador, Nathaniel Davis, told Reginald Secondé that the US government was concerned “not only about the loss to the copper companies, but also about the precedent that the Chilean action would set for the nationalisation of other big American interests throughout the developing world”.

Several banks were also nationalised while in early 1972 the government announced its intention to take over 91 key firms which accounted for around half of Chile’s economic output. 

A British Conservative Party briefing paper noted that UK companies had been affected by nationalisation “but it was generally considered at the time that where nationalisation of British assets had taken place the compensation agreed upon had been fair”. 

In a despatch just eight days before the coup, Secondé admitted that

Chile “‘has at least caught her social problems by the tail: many people in the poorer and most depressed sections of the community have, as a result of President Allende’s administration, attained a new status and at least tasted, during its early days, a better standard of living, though it has been eroded by inflation”. 

Secondé concluded that

“this is a major achievement and has set Chile apart from most other Latin American states”.

Threat of a Good Example

Yet it was precisely because Allende’s government was being successful that British and US planners wanted him to be removed.

After being elected in 1970, Allende was appointed president of a Popular Unity government with the consent of the Christian Democratic Party. He inherited an economy that, as in most of Latin America, was controlled by a small elite. 

In his victory speech in November 1970 Allende proclaimed a programme for fundamental economic change, proposing to abolish the monopolies “which grant control of the economy to a few dozen families”. 

He also pledged to abolish the tax system that favoured the rich, abolish the “large estates which condemn thousands of peasants to serfdom” and “put an end to the foreign ownership of our industry”. 

“The road to socialism lies through democracy, pluralism and freedom”, Allende proclaimed.

The strategy was to create a restructured society based on state, mixed and private ownership of resources to be achieved mainly through the rapid extension of state control over large parts of the economy, either by direct nationalisation or government investment. 

These policies improved the position of the poor, especially in the early part of the Allende presidency, through raising the minimum wage and special bonuses paid to poorly paid workers. 

This was matched by rising popularity for the government; in congressional elections in the year of the coup, 1973, the Popular Unity coalition increased its vote to 44 per cent.

‘Redistribution of Income’

Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) recognised

“the Allende government has been directing its economic efforts primarily at effecting a redistribution of income” in which prices had been held down and salaries allowed to rise. 

The strategy was “to put right what they regard as economic and social injustices (including foreign domination of certain sectors of the economy)”. Allende was “committed to proving that socialism can be brought to Chile in a peaceful and democratic fashion”.

Just three months after Allende assumed office, the JIC was concluding that “Washington is clearly very perturbed by developments in Chile”. 

As well as nationalisation of US business interests,

“the United States must view the prospect of a moderately successful extreme left-wing regime in Chile with considerable misgiving if only because of the effect this might have elsewhere in Latin America”, the JIC noted.

It also expressed the same fear from a British perspective, saying that the course of events in Chile is likely to have “important repercussions throughout Latin American and perhaps beyond”. 

It added:

“Allende’s victory has been hailed as strengthening the prevailing radical, anti-American trend in Latin America”. It may lead to a bloc of “like-minded states comprising Chile, Bolivia and Peru whose negative attitude towards foreign investment has already been demonstrated”.

Covert Action

The CIA had initially sought to prevent Allende taking office. A declassified CIA report reveals that throughout the 1960s and 1970s the US promoted “sustained propaganda efforts, including financial support for major news media, against Allende”. 

This included “political action projects” that “supported selected parties before and after the 1964 elections and after Allende’s 1970 election”. 

In the 1960s, activities included financial assistance to the Christian Democratic Party, the distribution of posters and leaflets, and financial assistance to selected candidates in Congressional elections. 

By the time of the 1964 election, won by favoured US candidate Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democratic Party, the CIA had provided $3m to prevent Allende winning.

In the run-up to the 1970 election won by Allende, the CIA conducted “spoiling operations” to prevent his victory while President Nixon authorised the agency “to seek to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office”. 

Declassified has revealed that Britain also conducted a covert propaganda offensive to stop Allende winning the 1964 and 1970 elections. 

The Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD) gathered information designed to damage Allende and lend legitimacy to his political opponents, and distributed material to influential figures within Chilean society.

The IRD also shared intelligence about left-wing activity in the country with the US government. British officials in Santiago assisted a CIA-funded media organisation which was part of extensive US covert action to overthrow Allende, culminating in the 1973 coup.

Overthrow

Image: General Augusto Pinochet

A few days after Allende assumed office in 1970, the CIA was authorised to establish direct contacts with Chilean military officers “to evaluate the possibilities of stimulating a military coup if a decision were to be made to do so”. 

Arms, including machine guns and ammunition, were provided to one of the groups plotting a coup. 

A fund of $10m was authorised “to prevent Allende from coming to power or unseat him”, which was used to strengthen opposition political parties and assist militant right-wing groups to undermine him. 

CIA money was also used for planting stories in local media and promoting opposition to Allende in the Chilean press. Also approved were efforts “to encourage Chilean businesses to carry out a program of economic disruption”. 

US ambassador Edward Korry explained that the strategy was to “do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty, a policy designed for a long time to come to accelerate the hard features of a communist society in Chile”. 

After the Pinochet takeover, the CIA notes that it “continued some ongoing propaganda projects, including support for news media committed to creating a positive image for the military junta”.

Reginald Secondé went to become British ambassador to Romania and Venezuela, before dying in 2017 at the age of 95.

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This is an edited extract from Mark Curtis’ book, Unpeople: Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, which includes full sources.

Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

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Taiwanese troops last month attended military exercises led by the US National Guard in Michigan, the Sankei Shimbun reported on Saturday.

More than 7,000 soldiers from several countries participated in the exercises, which were held from Aug. 5 to Aug. 19, the Japanese daily reported.

Following the joint exercises last summer, Taiwan and the US have continued to deepen military exchanges and enhance interoperability, it said.

Soldiers run after alighting from an assault amphibious vehicle during a military drill in Kaohsiung on Jan. 12. (Photo: Daniel Ceng, AP)

It is unclear how many Taiwanese troops attended the exercises, but the scale was larger than previous training with the US, the Sankei Shimbun said.

Taiwan could also send more troops to attend similar training, it added.

It was reported in July that the armed forces sent the entire joint battalion of the army’s 333rd Infantry Brigade to Michigan for training and to participate in the summer Northern Strike exercise organized by the US.

The Sankei Shimbun said that to not provoke China too much, the Michigan exercises were led by the National Guard — a strategic reserve force that is normally overseen by US state governments — instead of the US Armed Forces.

The US National Guard also helped train Ukrainian soldiers after Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, it said.

US President Joe Biden’s administration in February said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has instructed his nation’s military to “be ready by 2027” to invade Taiwan.

To prevent Xi from taking over Taiwan by force, the US continues to expand support to bolster Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, the Sankei Shimbun said.

The US announced military assistance of US$345 million to Taiwan in July through the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which requires no approval from the US Congress. It also approved a military transfer of US$80 million under its Foreign Military Financing program last week.

In Taipei, the Army Command Headquarters yesterday said it “has no comment” on the report, stating only that “the armed forces continue to strengthen combat readiness and improve soldier training.”

As early as 2021 foreign media have reported on joint military training between Taiwan and the US at Camp Grayling in Michigan, Institute of National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said.

Asked in July whether the US National Guard helped train Taiwanese troops, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner said discussions about the issue should be kept behind closed doors, Su said.

Judging by Ratner’s response, in which he did not deny the issue, and the Sankei Shimbun’s report, the training “probably happened,” Su said.

The training demonstrated mutual trust between Taiwan and the US, and could also be seen as military diplomacy, he said.

Institute for National Defense and Security Research analyst Shu Hsiao-huang (舒孝煌) said the armed forces could benefit hugely by learning from the combat experience and tactics of the US National Guard.

High-level generals should also participate in the training, he said.

In other news, Jim Hockenhull, commander of the British Armed Forces’ Strategic Command, told Nikkei Asia yesterday that cutting-edge technologies would be crucial in preventing a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Hockenhull said that it would require “advanced military capabilities that go beyond ships, tanks or aircraft” to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

The UK and Japan could “generate even greater and even better capabilities, which play a part in any deterrence approach” by bolstering cooperation on advanced technologies and cybersecurity to guard against disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, he added.

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*** 

‘Pfizer Took My Career Away’

Tim McAdams, a 59-year-old pilot, health enthusiast, husband and father was content with his job training pilots for Airbus Helicopters — a job he held for over a decade — until Airbus mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for its employees.

Tim received his first Pfizer shot on Oct. 17, 2021, and the second on Nov. 7, 2021. Three weeks later he had two cerebellar strokes, a rare stroke in the cerebellum that accounts for only 1-4% of total strokes.

In the hospital, the McAdams asked the doctors repeatedly what could have caused this rare event, but “they always shrugged.”

Soon after, Tim started suffering from repeated brain swelling, resulting in a craniectomy and over 80 days in the hospital.

He also had double pneumonia, lung failure, and vocal cord damage from a tracheotomy and feeding tube. Today, Tim is still working to recover from the injury he received, and is unable to fly due to the physical limitations he now suffers from.

Pilot Larry Talks About Pilots Having Problems Passing EKG Tests

This video is making the rounds on social media, however, I have not been able to verify the exact identity of the pilot.

Click here to view the video

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On August 5, 1962, Nelson Mandela was apprehended by South African authorities while driving with Cecil Williams, a white Communist theater director, from Durban to Johannesburg.

At the time, Mandela, a leader of the military wing of the anti-Apartheid African National Congress (ANC), was a fugitive from South Africa’s Apartheid regime.

After his arrest, Mandela was tried for treason and served 27 years at the infamous Robben Island prison, before being freed and becoming South Africa’s first Black president after the fall of the Apartheid regime in 1994.

Details have since emerged indicating that the South African police who arrested Mandela had been tipped off about his whereabouts by the CIA.

August 1962 was during the height of the Cold War—Mandela’s capture occurred only a few weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis—and the American intelligence community believed that Mandela and the ANC were secret allies of the Soviets—which indeed they were.

The U.S. government was also intent on keeping South Africa open to U.S. corporations—the U.S. signed a military cooperation agreement with South Africa, an important source of uranium and other strategic minerals—and did not like the left-wing character of the ANC and the prospect of it destabilizing the country.  

This past February, Richard Stengel wrote in Time magazine about his quest to uncover the truth about Mandela’s arrest.

Screenshot from Time

Stengel noted that, in 1986, while Mandela was still in prison, when the U.S. Congress was contemplating putting anti-Apartheid sanctions on South Africa, the Johannesburg Star printed an un-bylined news story that said, according to a “retired senior police officer,” the South African police had been tipped off to Mandela’s whereabouts by an American diplomat at the U.S. consulate in Durban who was “the CIA operative for that region.”

In 1963, the diplomat, according to the Star, had revealed his role while drunk at a party at the Durban apartment of “Mad” Mike Hoare, a well-known Anglo-Irish mercenary.

Four years after the Star article, at the time of Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 when he was about to visit the U.S. and get a hero’s welcome, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a piece reporting that a “retired [American] intelligence official” said that, within hours of Mandela’s arrest, a “senior CIA operative” named Paul Eckel walked into his office in Washington and said,

“We have turned Mandela over to the South African security branch. We gave them every detail, what he would be wearing, the time of day, just where he would be. They have picked him up. It is one of our greatest coups.”

The article further quoted a former South African intelligence official named Gerard Ludi as saying the CIA had a paid informant in the ANC Durban branch who told the local case officer where Mandela would be.

Then, in 2016, a long-retired CIA officer named Donald Rickard, then 88 years old, gave an interview to British film director John Irvin in which he said he had informed the South African police about Mandela.

Speaking to Irvin for his dramatized documentary, Mandela’s Gun, Rickard confirmed that he had been operating under cover as a State Department vice-consul in Durban.

He described the city as a “cauldron” of anti-Apartheid activity and that the ANC was riling up the city’s substantial Indian community.

Rickard stated further that

“Mandela was going to come down and incite the Indians and I found when he was coming down and how he was coming, and he came in a black limousine with a guy sitting in the back as the passenger and he was the driver. That’s where I was involved and that’s where Mandela was caught.”

When I was a professor at Bucknell University from 2006 to 2009, my office was next to Donald’s nephew, a popular English professor who had been active in the anti-Vietnam War movement who had told me about his Uncle and Mandela.

Reached for this article, he said he could not add anything more to what was reported by Stengel in Time magazine.

A 2018 biography of mercenary Mike Hoare quotes him confirming Donald Rickard’s story.

Rickard was personally unrepentant about assisting in Mandela’s capture, saying:

“Mandela was completely under the control of the Soviet Union. He was a toy of Moscow. He could have incited a war in South Africa. The United [States] would have to get involved, grudgingly, and things could have gone to hell…The Soviet Union would have done anything to get its hands on the mineral chest—anything—and Khrushchev said: ‘When we get it we’ll dictate the terms of surrender for the West.’ We were teetering on the brink here and it had to be stopped, which meant Mandela had to be stopped. And I put a stop to it.”

Donald Rickard died two weeks after his confession. His only regret was that he had been indiscrete. Rickard said “the biggest mistake of my life” was boasting about it at Mike Hoare’s party. “I was never promoted again after I came back from South Africa. They were embarrassed that I embarrassed them.”

Richard Stengel has recently reviewed declassified documents, which point to the U.S. government’s concern about Mandela being a Communist organizer, and the CIA’s role in tracking him.

Stengel filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see if they would confirm any details surrounding Mandela’s capture, which they refused to do.

Nevertheless, the evidence seems clear from Rickard’s testimony and other revelations that the CIA was behind the capture and long-term imprisonment of one of the 20^th century’s greatest historical figures.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

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*** 

Welcome to the Censorship Industrial Complex. It’s rather like the old “military industrial complex,” which was shorthand for the military, private companies, and academia working together to achieve U.S. battlefield dominance, with the R&D funded by the government that buys the final product.

But the censorship industrial complex builds algorithms, not bombers. The players aren’t Raytheon and Boeing, but social media companies, tech startups, and universities and their institutes. The foes to be dominated are American citizens whose opinions diverge from government narratives on issues ranging from COVID-19 responses to electoral fraud to transgenderism.

When first exposed a few months ago, many of the actors and their media defenders perversely claimed that they, as private entities, were acting out of concern for “democracy” and exercising their own First Amendment rights.

However, the records and correspondence of an advisory committee to an obscure government agency tell a different story.

The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) has obtained through a public records request documents of the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee of the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The committee was composed of academics and tech company officials working with government personnel in a much closer relationship than either they or the media want to admit. Several advisory committee members who appear throughout the documents as quasi-federal actors are among those loudly protesting that they were private actors when censoring lawful American speech (e.g., Kate Starbird, Vijaya Gadde, Alex Stamos).

But the advisory committee members met often and worked so closely with their government handlers that the federal liaison to the committee regularly offered members his personal cell phone and even reminded them to use the committee’s Slack channel. Your average concerned citizen doesn’t have a Homeland Security bureaucrat on speed dial.

What were they working on?

CISA’s “Mis-, Dis-, and Mal-information” (MDM) subcommittee discussed Orwellian “social listening” and “monitoring,” and considered the government’s best censorship “success metrics.”

Who was to be censored?

CISA was formed in response to misinformation campaigns from foreign actors, but it evolved toward domestic “threats.”

Meeting notes record that Suzanne Spaulding of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said they shouldn’t

“solely focus on addressing foreign threats … [but] to emphasize that domestic threats remain and while attribution is sometimes unclear, CISA should be sensitive to domestic distinctions, but cannot focus too heavily on such limitations.”

So CISA should combat “high-volume disinformation purveyors before the purveyor is attributed to a domestic or foreign threat” and not worry so much about First Amendment niceties.

More telling is the group’s attitude toward what it called “mal-information” – typically information that is true, but contrary to the preferred narratives of the censor. Dr. Starbird wrote in an email, “Unfortunately current public discourse (in part a result of information operations) seems to accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms …” Therein lies a dilemma for the censors, as Starbird wrote: “So, do we bend into a pretzel to counter bad faith efforts to undermine CISA’s mission? Or do we put down roots and own the ground that says this tactic is part of the suite of techniques used to undermine democracy?”

It is chilling that there is no consideration of whether the information is true or of the public’s right to know it. “Democracy” in this formulation is whatever maintains the government’s narrative.

Accordingly, the group discussed recommendations for countering “dangerously inaccurate health advice.” It contemplated the roles of the FBI and Homeland Security in addressing “domestic threats,” and a CISA staffer felt the need to remind the subcommittee “of CISA’s limitations in countering politically charged narratives.”

Image: Official government portrait of Nina Jankowicz, appointed to serve as Executive Director of the new “Disinformation Board” to be housed within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (posted by Jankowicz to Twitter)

CISA couldn’t censor all the people the advisors wanted. And it could face the same outrage that greeted President Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, led by singing censor Nina Jankowicz. Americans didn’t want that body deciding what they could say, and Biden shut it down within three weeks. CISA’s advisers were acutely aware their work could be conflated with that of the DGB, and even considered changing the name of the MDM subcommittee. Dr. Starbird noted in an email that she’d “removed ‘monitoring’ from just about every place where it appeared” and made “other defensive word changes/deletions.” Similarly, Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde “cautioned the group against pursuing any social listening recommendations” for the time being.

The group also sought cover from outside and inside the government. They spent an inordinate amount of time talking about “socializing” the committee and its work – something DGB apparently hadn’t done. And like a partisan campaign, they looked for natural allies. Meeting notes record that they sought to “identify a point of contact from a progressive civil rights and civil liberties angle to recruit as a [subject matter expert].”

A government committee that seeks partisan allies, obfuscates its purpose, and can’t even be honest about the nature of its members’ participation is going to sort out online truth for Americans? Welcome to the Censorship Industrial Complex.

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Pete McGinnis is director of communications at the Functional Government Initiative.

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The first Ukrainian tank crews have completed training to operate American M1 Abrams battle tanks, after approximately 200 Ukrainian personnel began training at U.S. Army facilities in Germany earlier in the year. The last stages of training at the Hohenfels Training Area, the home of the U.S. Army’s Joint Multinational Readiness Center, included a combined arms force on force exercise simulating operations at battalion strength. Washington pledged to supply 31 Abrams tanks to support Kiev’s ongoing war effort against Russia, with U.S. Army Acquisition Chief Doug Bush having stated in August that the vehicles would arrive by “early fall,” indicating a delivery date before October. Reports from Politico indicate that the first 10 tanks will arrive in mid-September, with these vehicles “undergoing final refurbishments.” The United States has notably refused to provide its more capable M1A2 tanks, and is sending the older M1A1 which officials have stressed will have sensitive technologies removed. Although the U.S. Army retains very large reserves of Abrams tanks, refurbishing and downgrading the vehicles for export has proven to be time consuming. 

Image: Iraqi Army M1A1 Abrams Destroyed By HJ-8 Missile

M1A1 tanks built for export have consistently suffered from a questionable combat performance, as demonstrated by their operations in Iraq and Yemen in Iraqi and Saudi hands. The tank’s combat record is nevertheless far less tarnished than that of its German counterpart the Leopard 2 which took heavy losses in Turkish Army hands against lightly armed militias in Iraq and Syria. More modern Leopard 2 variants have more recently taken significant losses in Ukraine as well. Where Ukrainian Abrams tanks will differ from those exported to the Middle East is that they will benefit from integration of depleted uranium munitions, with Reuters having reported just hours after confirmation that the first crew had completed training that Washington would supply such rounds. Britain has already supplied depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine, with Russian officials having issued harsh warnings in response. A notable example was the statement by the head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control Konstantin Gavrilov on January 25 that

“If Washington and NATO countries provide Kiev with weapons for striking against the cities deep inside the Russian territory and for attempting to seize our constitutionally affirmed territories, it would force Moscow to undertake harsh retaliatory actions. Do not say that we did not warn you.”

This was interpreted by some sources at the time to be an indication that nuclear weapons use was not being ruled out.

Image: M1 Abrams Tank Firing

Depleted uranium is one of the heaviest elements on the planet, and is made from low-level radioactive waste produced during the manufacture of nuclear fuel and nuclear warheads which makes it affordable to use in large quantities. Although it has been used in the armour of Abrams tanks, the M1A1s built for the Ukrainian Army will not have this armour the composition of which is a sensitive Pentagon secret, meaning they will be similarly vulnerable to even lower end anti armour weapons as Iraqi Army Abrams tanks have proven to be. Use of depleted uranium munitions has been highly controversial due to its highly detrimental effects on human health, with British Royal Navy Commander Robert Green having reported after the Gulf War a resulting “surge of unexplained illnesses, cancers and children born with genetic deformities among the Iraqi people, especially in the south near the battlefields” A confidential UN report leaked in May 1999 similarly concluded regarding depleted uranium weapons: “this type of ammunition is nuclear waste, and its use is very dangerous and harmful.” In the subsequent Iraq War the city of Fallujah was heavily bombarded using depleted uranium weapons, with Professor Chris Busby who participated in a survey of 4,800 Fallujah residents referring to a “major mutagenic exposure” causing effects “similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout.”

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Featured image: U.S. Army M1 Abrams TankAndrew Greenwood (By Andrew Greenwood)

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On August 20, 2023, the Israeli government launched a new 3.2-billion-shekel five-year plan (2024-2028) to develop east Jerusalem.

Under pretexts of reducing social and economic disparities and increasing economic development in East Jerusalem, the Israeli government announcement also made it clear that over $1 billion CAD equivalent investment is focused on strengthening Israeli sovereignty over the city.

The plan is an update of the previous 2-billion-shekel five-year plan (2018-2023). That plan had also focused on strengthening the policy of annexation and so-called integration of Palestinian Jerusalemites into Israeli society.

This new plan will be managed and implemented by the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Tradition, with annual report-backs around Jerusalem Day. Even the choice of the annual reporting date is an affront. Jerusalem Day is the day that Israel marks the 1967 capture of East Jerusalem, celebrating with provocative flag marches through Palestinian neighbourhoods

Strengthening the Israeli Narrative

In announcing the plan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated it shows that the Israeli government “attends to the needs of all citizens and residents of Israel and it is strengthening our policy to benefit a united and strong Jerusalem, under Israeli sovereignty.” 

In using the word “resident,” Netanyahu refers to those who hold Jerusalem residency but are not afforded Israeli citizenship.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, referencing “Jerusalem, our eternal capital,” stated,

“I am pleased to lead the largest five-year plan for East Jerusalem as someone who believes in strengthening [Israeli] sovereignty over Jerusalem as a whole.” 

The mayor of Jerusalem, Moshe Lion, said “the decision that was taken is a sovereign decision.” 

The Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, indicated that the Israeli government has allocated 120 million shekels for what he called “strengthening security sovereignty in East Jerusalem.”

He indicated this is “another important step in our relentless struggle to restore personal security in Jerusalem, our capital.” 

A Plan to Oppress Palestinians

For Palestinians, this means the money will be aimed at increasing surveillance, militarization, police stations, and security personnel, together with more isolation and racial segregation.

This reality means “Israelization of all aspects of life and obliterating the Palestinian-Arab identity of the city of Jerusalem,” says the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem.  

They continued,

“there has always been a clear difference between East and West Jerusalem for the 56 years of occupation of East Jerusalem.” 

Budgets, programs and services have been regularly dedicated to West Jerusalem and to the Israeli settlements. They serve the communities’ development and attract more settlers. On the other hand, Palestinian neighborhoods have been deliberately neglected over the decades of the city’s occupation since 1967. 

Even though Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem pay taxes to the municipality, the quality of the services they receive is much lower than those in West Jerusalem. Beyond this, the Israeli authorities regularly pursue forced evictions of Palestinian residents, seizing their lands under different pretexts, including so-called public interest and development of the city and law organization, construction, absentee property law and other laws.

Education, Transport, to Serve Israeli State

Education is a key factor in the annexation of the city of Jerusalem. One-third of the new five-year plan’s budget goes toward enforcing the Israeli education system and its curriculum in Palestinian schools in East Jerusalem.  

Education is considered the main entrance to obliterating the Palestinian narrative, history and national identity. The Israeli government is intensifying this effort under what they call “reducing the gap.” 

Meanwhile, the plan’s funding for transportation infrastructure is not likely to focus on Palestinian communities. Rather, it will likely focus on linking Israeli settlements to each other, through a network of roads, trains, tunnels, bridges, and an air train. This will enable settlers’ movement into the city. 

The Civic Coalition notes that “this plan aims, in fact, above all to satisfy the interests and protect the settlers and to increase the isolation and segregation of Arab neighbourhoods.”

Canada’s Silence

So far, Canada’s government officials have remained quiet on this new plan. But this is not surprising. Despite Canada’s official policy that it “does not recognize Israel’s unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem,” it is also evidently not concerned about changing facts on the ground. Canada maintains that “the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.” 

This hands-off stance regarding Jerusalem is not new. In fact, Canada’s first vote against a United Nations Resolution associated with Palestine occurred on December 9, 1949. The resolution proposed a permanent international regime for the Jerusalem area and the protection of the Holy Places​.

This trend regarding Jerusalem has remained quite consistent over the last 75 years. For example, in 1981, Canada​​ abstained​ from a UN vote in regard to Israeli excavations in eastern Jerusalem. The resolution indicated that “the excavations and transformations of the landscape and of the historical, cultural and religious sites of Jerusalem constitute a flagrant violation of the principles of international law and the relevant provisions of the Geneva Convention.” 

In 1987, Canada voted no to condemning “Israel’s decision to annex Jerusalem and to declare it as its ‘capital’ as well as the measures to alter its physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure, and status.” More recently, in 2016 and 2017, Canada abstained from UN votes on the status of Jerusalem. 

But interestingly in 2018, the year that the USA moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Canada switched back to a no vote. 

Canada’s Subsidies for Pro-Israel Charities 

Canadian charities continue to provide funds to organizations such as Elad/Ir David that use bogus archaeology and delegitimate excavations to advance a colonial narrative –  those narratives attempt to erase ancient Palestinian, Muslim, and other non-Jewish heritage in Jerusalem. 

There have been about a dozen or so recent complaints to the Canada Revenue Agency about the approximate $100 million out-of-country tax-subsidized funds that have been sent to various pro-Israel charities. Those include several organizations that support the annexation and the so-called “unification” of Jerusalem. 

Canada’s stance at the United Nations over the last three-quarters of a century, as with its tolerance for Canadian taxpayers subsidizing Jerusalem’s erasure, reveals its hypocrisy. 

Despite a policy that condemns East Jerusalem’s annexation, Canada seems to let the facts on the ground change without any response. Canada fails to uphold international law or even apply its own domestic laws such as the Income Tax Act. As a result, Canadians are inadvertently supporting this erasure of Palestine.

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Featured image: From left to right: Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem Affairs and Jewish Heritage Minister Meir Porush, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion. Credit: Koby Gideon / Municipality of Jerusalem

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This week saw widespread air strikes on the Russian Federation involving mass aerial drone attacks. Six regions were attacked including the capital, Moscow. Among the targets was the Kursk region where a nuclear plant is located. Several international airports across Russia were temporarily shut down. This is an incredible situation in which Russian territory is being targeted by a military assault not seen since the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany.

The U.S. media could barely contain its glee at the surge in air strikes on Russia. The New York Times hailed them as a “morale booster” for Ukraine, while CNN noted cryptically that the Kiev regime was “emboldened” to hit strategic targets inside Russia. The telling question of course not asked by CNN is: emboldened by whom?

Most of the incoming drones were shot down or disabled by Russian air defenses. But that is beside the point that Russian territory is now being targeted by mass attacks. And there can be no doubt that this “emboldened” military campaign is being enabled and directed by the United States and its NATO allies who are arming the Nazi regime in Kiev to the teeth.

The air strike, this week at Pskov airport is particularly revealing. Several Russian military cargo planes were reportedly destroyed. The location is only some 30 kilometers from Russia’s northwestern border with Estonia and over 600 km from Ukraine. It is almost certain that NATO members Estonia and possibly Latvia enabled that attack on Pskov. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has openly accused NATO of participating in the air assaults on Russian territory. The British publication, The Economist, also reported that NATO hardware, satellite and navigational logistics were vital for the drone campaign.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Security Council, this week stated that Russia now has legal justification for going to war with NATO members directly. He warned that the world is on the brink of a nuclear conflagration.

We need to step back here and see the process of the proverbial boiling-frog scenario. This describes an insidious creeping situation which would otherwise not be tolerated. A frog apparently will jump back from a pot of boiling water but if the frog is placed in the pot of water which is then slowly brought to the boil it will succumb passively to its ill fate.

The process seems apt as a metaphor for the conflict in Ukraine between the U.S.-led NATO bloc and Russia. The Kiev regime was installed in 2014 through a CIA-backed coup against a democratically elected president; it was armed and trained by NATO, despite its vile Nazi battalions, to attack ethnic Russians in Ukraine; when Russia intervened militarily in February 2022 after diplomatic offers were rejected by the U.S. and NATO, the conflict has steadily escalated over the past 18 months to the point where pre-war Russian territory is now coming under mass air strikes.

This mass assault on Russian territory by NATO forces would have been unthinkable only a few months ago. And yet here we are at that astounding point.

There seems little doubt that the air strikes on Russia are a sort of Plan B to compensate for the abject failure of the NATO-backed regime on the battlefields in Ukraine. The much-vaunted “counteroffensive” that started in June has become a debacle for the NATO sponsors. The turn towards drone strikes on Russia appears to be a change in tactic as a way of terrorizing the Russian population and destabilizing the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as distracting from NATO’s military incompetence.

Russia’s defense doctrine mandates the use of nuclear weapons if the state’s existential security is threatened. So far, the NATO-backed drone attacks on Russia have not reached that threshold. But the incremental process is dangerously heading in that dreadful direction.

If we were to turn the tables on the situation, the audacity would become even more apparent. Can anyone imagine for a second how the United States would react if a foreign adversary was enabling the launch of air strikes on Washington DC and other strategic centers, whereby airports were shut down and military infrastructure was being destroyed?

Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said this week that he believed the United States was heading towards a catastrophic hot war with Russia over the coming year. He pointed out that the Biden administration and most of the politicians in Washington are incapable of avoiding such an outcome because of their arrogance, ignorance and irrational Russophobia. The U.S. lackeys in the European Union are also equally pathetic in their acquiescence to such a doomsday scenario.

Russia’s forbearance has been remarkable given the relentless outrageous provocations from the U.S. and NATO. It has reached the stage where Russia has the legal right to defend itself by striking directly at NATO members. World War Three and the end of the planet are all but imminent and only checked because of the immense moral and military fortitude of Russia.

The United States’ incumbent leaders and those of the European Union (with a few honorable exceptions like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán) are showing themselves to the world as the reckless criminals that they are. They are willing to risk the deaths of millions of people and quite possibly planetary extinction.

Russia overcame the existential assault by Nazi Germany. It will do so again against the despicable NATO axis. The formidable strength of the Russian people and its military defenses will ensure that.

However, the ultimate fate of the corrupt Western states is one of definitive, historic failure. The longer this geopolitical conflict in Ukraine persists the deeper will be the fatal damage to Western presumptions of moral authority, governance and its war-driven capitalist economies. The boiling frogs are not in Russia. They are in the endemically corrupt Western regimes.

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This year, we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 WTC bombing. In line with this, we repost this important article by Ae911Truth, first published in 2019.

On September 11, 2001, at 5:20 PM, the 47-story World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed into its footprint, falling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second destruction.

Despite calls for the evidence to be preserved, New York City officials had the building’s debris removed and destroyed in the ensuing weeks and months, preventing a proper forensic investigation from ever taking place. Seven years later, federal investigators concluded that WTC 7 was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely as a result of normal office fires.

Today, we at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth are pleased to partner with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in releasing the draft report of a four-year computer modeling study of WTC 7’s collapse conducted by researchers in the university’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. The UAF WTC 7 report concludes that the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11 was caused not by fire but rather by the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.

Click here to download the report.

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To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the other “9/11” —the 1973 Chilean coup, we repost his article by Shane Quinn which was originally published in September 2017.

On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende’s democratic government in Chile was ousted by United States-backed forces in one of the Cold War’s defining moments. Allende himself was killed during the coup while his presidential palace, La Moneda, was extensively bombed. Many thousands of Chileans were either murdered, “disappeared”, imprisoned, and coerced to emigrate or enter exile. Allende’s widow and family were forced to go into hiding in Mexico for many years.

In replacing Allende the Americans installed General Augusto Pinochet, one of the most notorious of the post-Second World War dictators. During the next 17 years of Pinochet’s dictatorship around 40,000 Chileans were tortured – often under the most sadistic fashion and overseen by doctors in the Josef Mengele style (the Nazi doctor at Auschwitz). The doctors would ensure the victims would remain alive for as long as possible, administer medication to resuscitate them, so the torture could then recommence.

A Chilean who suffered such treatment in these chambers, but survived and later became an international lawyer, was asked where these doctors are today? He replied, “they’re practicing in Santiago”. There have been a number of Mengele-style doctors not only walking free in Chile, but resuming employment unhindered.

There have been no calls from the United States or Israel to bring these Nazi-style physicians to justice. Indeed, the Pinochet regime was already protecting Nazi war criminals such as SS Colonel Walter Rauff, creator of the gas chambers, and Mengele himself.

As the US’s population is approximately 18 times bigger than Chile’s, with an infinitely bigger landmass, the Chilean 9/11 was felt on a far greater scale. Indeed, it was also more destructive. In the US’s 9/11, the White House was not bombed, the President (George W. Bush) was not killed, its people were not imprisoned and tortured en masse after the initial crimes were committed, a brutal dictator and his death squads were not imposed.

Before the Chilean coup in 1973, the country had been a lively, vibrant place where people were welcoming and cheerful. The Pinochet years afflicted upon the population persistent feelings of terror and suspicion.

A few days after the coup was implemented National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger described the situation in Chile as,

“Nothing of very great consequence”.

U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with Pinochet in 1976 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Except to the people of Chile that is. Following Allende’s election three years before, Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms over the phone,

“We will not let Chile go down the drain”, to which Helms responded, “I am with you”.

Kissinger, a future Nobel Peace Prize winner, had been implicated in other war crimes such as an open call for genocide in Cambodia in 1969, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.

Disturbed by Allende’s election victory in early September 1970, US President Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to, “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him”. Allende was not due to take office until two months later. The US State Department suggested to, “let Allende come in and see what we can work out”, – the words “work out” denoting a sinister undertone judging by the record books.

However, President Nixon rejected the State Department’s proposal, protesting the possibility of,

“Like another Castro? Like in Czechoslovakia? The same people said the same thing. Don’t let them do that”.

President Nixon expressed caution saying that,

“We don’t want a big story leaking out that we are trying to overthrow the government”, before warning Kissinger “to be sure the paper record doesn’t look bad”.

Kissinger forwarded to Secretary of State William Rogers that,

“The President’s view is to do the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover”.

The aim of the Nixon administration in attempting to overthrow Allende’s incoming government was to destroy independent nationalism, or what was called a “virus” that might “infect” others – the domino effect. After all Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War during World War II, described Latin America as “our little region over here which has never bothered anybody”.

Chile obviously came under the auspices of “our little region”, despite the fact its capital Santiago is over 8,000 km from Washington. The rights of nations to manage their own affairs is an unacceptable prospect to US planners. We see examples of this to the present day.

In the meantime, “the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover” failed as the former physician successfully assumed office in November 1970. The CIA had been sent to work in building support for Allende’s rival, former President Jorge Alessandri, but to no avail. Instead the CIA exerted covert pressure, including paying millions of dollars to opposition groups to speed up Allende’s ousting.

The four-week tour of Chile by Cuban leader Fidel Castro in late 1971 further alarmed policymakers in the US. Allende himself had visited Cuba about a decade before, and had been impressed by the progress made by Castro’s revolution, before again visiting the island nation in 1972.

Fidel Castro with Salvador Allende (Source: teleSUR / Twitter)

By the following year Allende was ousted and killed, with crucial CIA input, as Pinochet went about privatising the Chilean economy to suit American corporate requirements. The “Chicago boys”, neoliberal Chilean economists trained at University of Chicago, were welcomed into the government – and were supported by the IMF and the World Bank.

The Chicago boys’ policies had a disastrous effect on the population as unemployment more than doubled between 1974 and 1975, to over 18%. By 1983 unemployment further rocketed to 34.6%, far worse than the Great Depression in the US.

The population revolted at various stages but this is where Pinochet’s brutal methods of repression came in useful, and was no doubt welcomed by the US government, IMF, and so on. Furthermore, Pinochet was a major drug trafficker who sold cocaine to the US and Europe in the 1980s, amassing a personal fortune in the process, along with his cronies. Pinochet, who also had links to Colombian drug dealers, said

“Not a leaf moves in Chile if I don’t move it – let that be clear”.

Meanwhile, the population continued to slide into poverty and desolation.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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This year, we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 WTC bombing. In line with this, we repost this important article by Stephen Lendman, first published in 2019.

David Ray Griffin’s Legacy Will Live. It Embodies 9/11 Truth

“The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False” by the late David Ray Griffin debunked the official account of what happened.

He explained that the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s official findings were fabricated.

He accused NIST of falsifying and ignoring hard evidence, sticking to the official Big Lie about WTC 7’s collapse.

AE911Truth’s Richard Gage said the following about Griffin’s book:

He “provided a comprehensive dismantling of NIST’s theory about WTC 7, according to which it suffered global collapse because of ordinary building fires,” adding:

“Besides showing that NIST committed massive scientific fraud, Griffin also points out that NIST was able to complete its theory only by affirming a miracle: a steel-framed high-rise building coming down in free fall even though explosives had not been used to remove its columns.”

Physics Professor John Wyndham said

“Griffin show(ed) that NIST’s WTC 7 report has no scientific credibility.”

Big Lies take on a life of their own because establishment media report them as facts — serving as press agents for powerful interests inimical to peace, equity and justice.

The official 9/11 story is the Biggest Big Lie of our time — about the mother of all state-sponsored false flags, dark forces in Washington responsible.

Osama bin Laden and so-called “crazed Arabs” had nothing to do with what happened on a day that will live in infamy forever.

It opened the gates of hell for endless US wars of aggression against nonbelligerent states threatening no one — responsible for countless millions of deaths and human misery on an appalling scale.

Seriously ill with kidney disease and other ailments, bin Ladin in mid-2001 was being treated at the American Hospital in Dubai.

On September 10, 2001 (one day before 9/11), CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported his admittance to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan hospital. He was dying.

On July 11, 2002, The NYT said “Osama bin Laden is dead. (He) died in December (2001) and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan.”

The BBC, Fox News, and other media sources reported the same information.

On December 26, 2001, a leading Pakistani newspaper reported bin Laden’s death. It cited a prominent Taliban official who attended his funeral – witnessing his dead body before it was laid to rest.

Obama didn’t kill Osama, another Big Lie of our time. So-called “Enemy Number One” was an unwitting CIA asset — recruited in the 1980s by Pakistani intelligence against Soviet Russia in Afghanistan.

The official 9/11 account was fabricated to conceal state-sponsored terrorism, dark forces in Washington responsible for what happened.

David Ray Griffin 10 books on the 9/11 Big Lie provide the most detailed account of what happened and its aftermath — including about the 9/11 (whitewash) Commission.

Jet fuel had nothing to do with bringing down the twin towers. The BBC reported WTC 7’s collapse nearly 30 minutes before it happened.

UK activist Tony Rooke refused to pay his BBC license fee — required of all Brits to watch television.

He cited Section 15 of Britain’s 2000 Terrorism Act, stating it’s an “offense for someone to invite another to provide money, intending that it should be used, or having reasonable cause to suspect that it may be used, for terrorism purposes.”

He accused the BBC of reporting the collapse of WTC 7 before it came down. A UK judge agreed with him, his victory unreported by US establishment media — part of their conspiracy of silence about hard truths dark forces want suppressed.

Fires and heavy debris from the twin towers had nothing to do with WTC 7’s collapse — the official Big Lie reported by Western media.

A four-year study by University of Alaska’s J. Leroy Hulsey, South Carolina Department of Transportation bridge engineer Zhili Quan, and Nanjing University of Science and Technology Department of Civil Engineering academic Feng Xiao titled “A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center” was in part funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth).

It provided detailed scientific evidence of what caused WTC 7’s collapse, debunking the official Big Lie.

The study’s “principle conclusion…is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on

9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse.”

The official 9/11 account was fabricated, suppressing hard truths about what happened on that fateful day, changing the course of history.

According to the study, scientific evidence shows that “fires could not have caused weakening or displacement of structural members capable of initiating any of the hypothetical local failures alleged to have triggered the total collapse of the building, nor could any local failures, even if they had occurred, have triggered a sequence of failures that would have resulted in the observed total collapse.”

WTC 7’s collapse “was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

No “progressive collapse involving the sequential failure of columns throughout the building” occurred.”

Nothing external to WTC 7 caused its free fall collapse in 2.5 seconds. Debris from the twin towers and building 7 was removed and destroyed to prevent a proper forensic analysis, AE911Truth explained.

On 9/11, remaining remnants of rule of law in the US died. Endless war on humanity at home and abroad replaced it.

Things are worsening, not improving — both right wings of the US war party responsible for an increasingly nightmarish scenario.

US rage for unchallenged dominance risks unthinkable/potentially catastrophic global war by accident or design, including possible use of nuclear weapons for the first time in earnest — a nightmarish scenario if things turn out this way.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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This year, we commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 WTC bombing. In line with this, we repost this important article by Dr. Gary Kohls, first published in 2019.

“It is my firm belief that 9/11 skeptics—and true skeptics of any paradigm-shifting and taboo subject—who publicly expose lies and ‘naked emperors’ are heroes …They have suffered the ridicule and wrath of those emperors, their minions, and the just plain frightened…In our American society, many of our authority figures routinely lie to us, but nonetheless, many citizens continue to look to them for truth and safety—especially when fear is heightened.

This strong tendency to believe and obey authority is another obstacle with which skeptics of the official 9/11 account must contend…By unquestioningly believing and obeying authority, we make very bad decisions, which often negatively affect others. This can be equally true for the four human proclivities studied by social psychologists: doublethink, cognitive dissonance, conformity, and groupthink.” – Frances Shure, clinical psychologist and early skeptic of the official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory that two hi-jacked commercial jet planes caused three concrete, steel-reinforced towers to explode into fine dust and collapse into their own footprints in less than 12 seconds.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan

“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth … For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.” — Patrick Henry – March 23, 1775

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them. … “What good fortune for those in power that the people do not think.” — Adolf Hitler

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.  …  Propaganda must always be essentially simple and repetitious. The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly… it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”– Joseph Goebbels, German Nazi “Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment”

“We’ll know that our disinformation campaign has worked when everything the American public believes is false.” — William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director at his first staff meeting, 1981

“Image of the World Trade Center’s South Tower as it explodes, from top to bottom, into fine dust and severed steel columns. Within the next 12 seconds much of the tower blows away and the rest collapses into its own footprint into a relatively small pile of debris. The arrow points to one of the exploding “squibs” from one of the multitude of pre-planted demolition charges that are intended to section all the massive steel 110 story columns (4 inches thick at their bases) which allowed the building to fall straight down rather than falling sideways and causing damage to adjacent structures or people. This image is typical of what it looks like when standard controlled demolitions take down high-rise buildings in the most cost-effective manner possible. In the 100 year history of skyscrapers, the only tall buildings that have ever fallen down without controlled demolitions (allegedly) were the 3 World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 and 7 – and they all happened on 9/11/2001!. ” (Check out  www.ae911truth.org for everything you need to know about the many anomalies that conclusively disprove the “official”, CIA-, Pentagon- White House- Mainstream Media-approved conspiracy theories about what happened of 9/11.)

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The question posited by the title of this article, explores the dilemma faced by truth-seekers who have the facts that totally refute the Big Lies about 9/11/2001 about which the mainstream media, their elected representatives in Congress, their presidents and the Deep State refuse to debate.

These “9/11 Truthers” have been unfairly labeled “conspiracy theorists” (a pejorative term invented by the CIA after the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963 raised all sorts of skepticism doubting the official story blaming “the single shooter”).

This courageous group of truth-seekers have been attempting to inform and enlighten individuals and institutions that have chosen to disregard and/or disbelieve the overwhelmingly documentable evidence that proves that pre-planted controlled demolition charges – and not airplanes – pulverized into fine dust the three WTC towers on 9/11/01.

The corollary of course is that the three towers could not have bee demolished by anybody other than insiders using explosives.

Given that the alleged planes that allegedly hit 2 of the towers were commercial planes (that of course contained no explosives), no other conclusion can be drawn than that the explosives that brought down the three skyscrapers had been pre-planted in the manner of classical controlled demolitions, which are the only way that concrete, steel-reinforced, high-rise buildings can be efficiently demolished.

It is obvious to many folks who were alive and aware in the era of the assassinations of the 1960s (the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King) that 9/11/01 was a false flag operation that has seriously (and intentionally, according to the Project for the New American Century – google it) destabilized the Middle East and the world and justified the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. And, of course the rapid passage of the Patriot Act by the bamboozled US Congress ensured that the United States took another step closer to becoming an armed police state, by seriously curtailing the civil liberties of its citizens.

That series of programmed events started a state of perpetual US-led wars in the Mideast (wars that only benefited our one ally in the area [Israel]. It also ensured the lucrative future of America’s military-industrial-congressional complex and global weapons manufacturers.

These self-perpetuating – and ultimately bankrupting – wars have destroyed and are continuing to destroy the physical and psychological well-being of the tens of thousands of duped patriot soldiers (and their families) as well as the millions of unarmed innocents that were victimized by the lethal, often indiscriminate weaponry of our military. Also victimized forever were their cultures, their religions, their economies and the very planet that militarism is making uninhabitable.

And, it must be mentioned, our illegal and ill-advised military aggressions have raised up billions of mortal enemies all around the world whose enmity and justified desire for revenge will never be quenched until “the Great Satan” is finally beaten.

The dilemma raised by the title question, “Why Do Good People Remain Silent”, has been faced throughout the history of the world by a multitude of truth-seekers and truth-tellers long before the events of 9/11. A short list of American examples that have shaped world history was enumerated in the previous two Duty to Warn columns, which are available at (See this).

The “bamboozle quote” from Carl Sagan above should help any thinking person to understand one of the psychological reasons why both human and inhuman entities (such as corporations and the corporate-controlled press) so readily accept – and even promote – Big Lies; and then, when the truth comes out that thoroughly refutes the lies, these entities refuse to admit that they have been bamboozled.

One expects major corporate media networks like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal (not to mention the Duluth News-Tribune) to refuse to admit that they are shills for the Deep State or their corporate advertisers or just being duped by them, but even the more honorable BBC, PBS, NPR and MPR do the same by continuously using the phrase “terrorist attacks on 9/11” instead of telling the truth. Perhaps, if one could only get through to these unaccountable and unreachable talking heads, they might at least claim that they were unaware of what is blatantly obvious to most unbiased observers.

The quotes from Hitler and Goebbels could have easily been made by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, Allen Dulles’ CIA and right-wing politicians like the odious politicians during the McCarthy, leftist witch-hunt era, not to mention any number of the pro-militarization, pro-war, pseudo-patriotic “my country right or wrong” types that profitably occupy Wall Street, War Street and Washington, DC.

Those realities should help us understand how the misleaders of militarily powerful empires are able to manipulate the “Good Germans” of every nationality into believing Big Lies.

Clinical psychologist Frances Shure, who was an early skeptic of the official White House conspiracy theories has experienced her share of criticism from those who tend to implicitly trust their leaders. Her story, in a 9-part series on the subject, discusses the psychological background about how public opinion and beliefs can be manipulated. The series can be found here.

It is painful being an artificially demeaned and unfairly criticized “conspiracy theorist” about 9/11. Even though the 9/11 Truth-tellers have the scientific truth behind them, they have been mistreated by the mass media as a despised out-group for the past 18 years.

Being a 9/11 truth-teller is like being a black-listed anti-fascist author, writer or musician during Hitler’s thousand-year Reich or during the proto-fascist American McCarthy era of the 1950s.

One has to sympathize with Galileo who was persecuted by the authoritarian church when he proved that the earth revolved around the sun when 99.9% of the world believed that the sun revolved around the earth – because it said so in the bible.

I personally empathize with the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis who proved in the mid-1800s that washing or sterilizing one’s hands before delivering a baby resulted in a dramatic decrease in post-delivery deaths of new mothers from “child-bed fever”. 99.9% of physicians at the time often delivered babies between performing autopsies without washing their hands. His discovery never caught on with the profession, although midwives understood the wisdom and washed their hands prior to deliveries. The midwive’s patients had 10 times fewer deaths from infection than the doctor’s patients. Dr Semmelweis, just like many other dissident physicians to follow, was ostracized by his arrogant and ignorant profession for promoting such a radical notion and, labeled as being mentally ill, died in disgrace in a mental institution a few years later.

Cognitive Dissonance and 9/11

One major psychological factor that helps explain why the Cheney/Bush White House’s official conspiracy theory has become so ingrained is the concept of cognitive dissonance. A good YouTube discussion of the title question – by a number of psychologist colleagues of Frances Shure – can be seen here. I highly recommend watching it.

I wrote a Duty to Warn column devoted to the subject of cognitive dissonance in 2013. It has been archived here.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:

“Cognitive dissonance refers to the psychological or emotional discomfort felt when one is confronted with new information or a new reality that contradicts one’s deeply held beliefs.

“When there are conflicting, mutually exclusive beliefs, intelligent, open-minded and thoughtful people that have not been victimized by significant psychological trauma during their upbringing, are usually willing to change their minds by re-evaluating their prior stances, looking carefully and honestly at the new evidence, reassessing the credibility of both positions and then making a decision to adopt or reject the new information, depending on the evidence before them.

“Close-minded, distracted, uninformed, addicted, ignorant, too-busy, overly obedient, uber-patriotic, co-opted or radically conservative people may not have the time, inclination, intelligence or political will (or courage) to look at the available new evidence that runs contrary to their old, ingrained beliefs. Therefore, they may unconsciously or reflexively reject the new information, even if the evidence is overwhelmingly and provably true.”

Not too many people that live in punitive, militarized empires have the courage to do what the whistle-blowing boy did when he saw that his emperor had no clothes on. Not too many people want to be truth-tellers in a nation whose governmental bodies imprison, expel, black-lists or bans truth-tellers and their stories and suppresses every truth that threatens national security and corporate security or profitability.

Hitler got his timid or privileged “Good Germans” – who lived outside the concentration camps – to believe the Big Lie that “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“work makes one free” even inside a concentration camp) and that his dictatorship would last a thousand years. Citizens of supposedly democratic societies like America’s are told that “The Truth Shall Make You Free”, that “The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword” and that “The Arc of History Bends Towards Justice”. Don’t believe it, unless lots of courageous citizen take action and demand justice. Otherwise, those noble thought are just cunning lies to calm the people.

Without a body of dissenters, whistle-blowers and courageous people of conscience (like the multitude of banned 9/11 truth-seekers and antiwar, anti-globalist, anti-fascist activists) that are willing to go up against the conscienceless, the profiteers, the globalists, the fascists, the militarists, the racists, the corporate polluters, the economic exploiters, the bankers and the sociopathic corporations those exploiters will continue to grow in power, wealth and influence – fouling our planetary nest as they go. I would hate to see them succeed.

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The Bin Ladens and the Bushes: On 9/11 George Herbert Walker Bush Meets Osama’s Brother Shafiq bin Laden

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 03, 2023

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.

Space Junk in Earth Orbit and on the Moon Will Increase with Future Missions − But Nobody’s in Charge of Cleaning It Up

By Prof. Chris Impey, September 04, 2023

There’s a lot of trash on the Moon right now – including nearly 100 bags of human waste – and with countries around the globe traveling to the Moon, there’s going to be a lot more, both on the lunar surface and in Earth’s orbit.

Video: Defying State-Driven Medical Censorship

By Dr. Mark Trozzi and RAIR Foundation USA, September 03, 2023

In a defiant stand against the suppression of real science and the subversion of medical ethics, Canadian physician Dr. Mark Trozzi has found himself in the crosshairs of a legal battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). Dr. Trozzi, one of the early doctors to challenge prevailing COVID-19 narratives, faces a lengthy and expensive ‘trial’ as he seeks to defend his views grounded in science and genuine concern for patient well-being.

Defriending Canada: Natural Disasters and Facebook’s Information Scrub

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 03, 2023

Australia experienced this in February 2021. Facebook had gotten nastily stroppy, wishing to dictate public policy to the Commonwealth government. To teach Canberra mandarins a lesson, it literally unfriended the entire country, scrubbing all news platforms of content and making any posted links through the platform inaccessible.

Russia and BRICS Counter-Terrorism Projects: Moscow Remembers “The Beslan Terrorist Attack” in Northern Ossetia

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, September 03, 2023

On September 3, the Russian Federation is marking a memorable date, specifically, the Day of Solidarity in the Fight against Terrorism that became part of Russian legislation in 2005, a year after a horrendous terrorist attack in Beslan that killed over 300 Russian citizens, including children.

Are Directed Energy Weapon (DEW) and HAARP Experiments Being Ratcheted Up Worldwide?

By Dr. Mathew Maavak, September 03, 2023

I have watched various images and commentary-laced video clips of this strange event and concede that they can be attributed to Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). I was sceptical of DEW capabilities until the Maui incident.

Discredit COVID Vaccine Sceptics as “Mentally Ill”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, September 03, 2023

After it was recently announced that the Digital Service Act (DSA) for very large platforms and search engines has come into force, which is supposed to limit the power of internet monopolists and expand possibilities of political censorship, the well-known German business journalist Dr. Norbert Häring has now reported on his blog that the EU project “Jitsuvax” will be funded with 3.1 million euros over a period of four years to develop psychological methods to combat vaccination scepticism.

Spike Protein in the Blood of the COVID-19 Vaccinated. New Study: Do 50% of Pfizer and Moderna Vaxxed Produce Spike Protein Forever?

By Dr. William Makis, September 03, 2023

Potentially 50% of COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated people have spike protein in the blood at least 6 months after vaccination or longer, maybe indefinitely! Potentially 60% of Long COVID-19 patients have spike protein in the blood at least 12 months after infection, or longer, maybe indefinitely!

More Banks to Fail? Not in North Dakota

By Ellen Brown, September 03, 2023

U.S. banks are again in the crosshairs. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded five new middle-tier banks and put three others on negative outlook. This follows sweeping downgrades earlier in August by Moody’s, which cut credit ratings on 10 banks and placed four of the 15 largest U.S. banks on review for possible downgrade.

Wikipedia Is an Information Warfare Tool. Hijacked by U.S. Intelligence

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, September 03, 2023

Wikipedia is the most biased encyclopedia in history, having been hijacked by U.S. intelligence, industry and the political establishment years ago. According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger, U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer.

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There’s a lot of trash on the Moon right now – including nearly 100 bags of human waste – and with countries around the globe traveling to the Moon, there’s going to be a lot more, both on the lunar surface and in Earth’s orbit.

In August 2023, Russia’s Luna-25 probe crashed into the Moon’s surface, while India’s Chandrayann-3 mission successfully landed in the southern polar region, making India the fourth country to land on the Moon.

With more countries landing on the Moon, people back on Earth will have to think about what happens to all the landers, waste and miscellaneous debris left on the lunar surface and in orbit.

I’m a professor of astronomy who has written a book about the future of space travel, articles about our future off-Earth, conflict in space, space congestion and the ethics of space exploration. Like many other space experts, I’m concerned about the lack of governance around space debris.

Space Is Getting Crowded

People think of space as vast and empty, but the near-Earth environment is starting to get crowded. As many as 100 lunar missions are planned over the next decade by governments and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Near-Earth orbit is even more congested than the space between Earth and the Moon. It’s from 100 to 500 miles straight up, compared with 240,000 miles to the Moon. Currently there are nearly 7,700 satellites within a few hundred miles of the Earth. That number could grow to several hundred thousand by 2027. Many of these satellites will be used to deliver internet to developing countries or to monitor agriculture and climate on Earth. Companies like SpaceX have dramatically lowered launch costs, driving this wave of activity.

“It’s going to be like an interstate highway, at rush hour in a snowstorm, with everyone driving much too fast,” space launch expert Johnathan McDowell told Space.com.

The Problem of Space Junk

All this activity creates hazards and debris. Humans have left a lot of junk on the Moon, including spacecraft remains like rocket boosters from over 50 crashed landings, nearly 100 bags of human waste and miscellaneous objects like a feather, golf balls and boots. It adds up to around 200 tons of our trash.

Since no one owns the Moon, no one is responsible for keeping it clean and tidy.

The clutter in Earth’s orbit includes defunct spacecraft, spent rocket boosters and items discarded by astronauts such as a glove, a wrench and a toothbrush. It also includes tiny pieces of debris like paint flecks.

There are around 23,000 objects larger than 10 cm (4 inches) and about 100 million pieces of debris larger than 1 mm (0.04 inches). Tiny pieces of junk might not seem like a big issue, but that debris is moving at 15,000 mph (24,140 kph), 10 times faster than a bullet. At that speed, even a fleck of paint can puncture a spacesuit or destroy a sensitive piece of electronics.

The amount of debris in orbit has increased dramatically since the 1960s.

In 1978, NASA scientist Donald Kessler described a scenario where collisions between orbiting pieces of debris create more debris, and the amount of debris grows exponentially, potentially rendering near-Earth orbit unusable. Experts call this the “Kessler syndrome.”

Nobody Is in Charge Up There

The United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that no country can “own” the Moon or any part of it, and that celestial bodies should only be used for peaceful purposes. But the treaty is mute about companies and individuals, and it says nothing about how space resources can and can’t be used.

The United Nations Moon Agreement of 1979 held that the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of humanity. However, the United States, Russia and China never signed it, and in 2016 the U.S. Congress created a law that unleashed the American commercial space industry with very few restrictions.

Because of its lack of regulation, space junk is an example of a “tragedy of the commons,” where many interests have access to a common resource, and it may become depleted and unusable to everyone, because no interest can stop another from overexploiting the resource.

Scientists argue that to avoid a tragedy of the commons, the orbital space environment should be seen as a global commons worthy of protection by the United Nations. The lead author of a Nature article arguing for a global commons filed an amicus brief– a type of outside comment offering support or expertise – on a case that went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in late 2021.

The author and his research collaborators argued that U.S. environmental regulations should apply to the licensing of space launches. However, the court declined to rule on the environmental issue because it said the group lacked standing.

The tragedy of the commons asserts that if everyone has unlimited access to a resource, then in the long run it may become depleted and unusable.

National geopolitical and commercial interests will likely take precedence over interplanetary conservation efforts unless the United Nations acts. A new treaty may emerge from the work of the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs, which in May 2023 generated a policy document to address the sustainable development of activities in space.

The U.N. can regulate the activities of only its member states, but it has a project to help member states craft national-level policies that advance the goals of sustainable development.

NASA has created and signed the Artemis Accords, broad but nonbinding principles for cooperating peacefully in space. They have been signed by 28 countries, but the list does not include China or Russia. Private companies are not party to the accords either, and some space entrepreneurs have deep pockets and big ambitions.

The lack of regulation and the current gold rush approach to space exploration mean that space junk and waste will continue to accumulate, as will the related problems and dangers.

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Chris Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona.

Featured image is from InfoRos

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a

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(This version contains Robert J Sawyer’s original narration. The previous version (June 17, 2023) was a second take after this version was lost. MW September 4, 2023)

“Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders…

Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” – Future of Life Institute (March 22, 2023) [1]

“Wonder is not only a superb conclusion to a tremendous trilogy, but stands alone as one of the best books that Sawyer has ever written.” – Winnipeg Free Press [2]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Imagine a world where you can now take your problems to a computer and found that it is the best therapist you ever had! Where the companion on-line that could well be the love of your life based on your private conversations is in fact not human! Where every professor, every lawyer, every writer, every artist, every detective, physician and architect you ever met cannot match this new program at your finger tips! And how this threatens just about every upper income job in existence!

Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that this moment may finally be upon us…

The Artificial Intelligence research laboratory OpenAI, which ran on a non-profit basis, announced the release of ChatGPT, an AI chatbot on November 30, 2022. Two months later, it was used by 100 million users! And the numbers have continued to expand ever since. [3]

Then in February of 2023, Microsoft announced it was building AI technology on the same foundation as ChatGPT and incorporating it into Microsoft Bing, Edge, and other products. Then in March, the Future of Life Institute has attracted the signatures of several people specializing in Artificial Intelligence in calling for a “ pause for at least 6 months” in the development of post-GPT-4 AI systems. The ability to further inflame our media with mis-information and dis-information, the disruption of the Labour landscape and yes even an attack or subversion against humanity by an artificial system that can out-think us are some of the primary concerns. [4][5]

This episode of the Global Research News Hour takes a deep dive into these various areas and both the opportunities and the perils from which we cannot turn back once we have crossed the first threshold of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This week’s guests feature individuals fully capable of engaging the host in a fifty minute long conversation: Khal Shariff, head of the Virtual Reality and related Technology company Project Whitecard, and Robert J Sawyer, the acclaimed Canadian Science fiction author and keynote speaker.

Khal Shariff is the founder and CEO of Project Whitecard, a company dedicated to using technology for good. They use game technology for education, and the latest project is all about driver training in BC, where Project Whitecard is using AI extensively during development.

Robert J Sawyer is, according to multiple press organizations, the leading science fiction author in Canada. The only Canadian to receive all 3 of the world’s top science fiction awards for best novel of the year, he is also the first writer to receive the Lifetime Achievement Aurora Award. His now fourteen year old series, Wake, Watch and Wonder (WWW), was his in-depth look at Artificial Intelligence and received the Hugo Award and three Aurora Awards.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 395)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/
2. https://sfwriter.com/exw3.htm
3. https://www.globalresearch.ca/ai-fastest-growing-application-ever/5819668
4. Tom Dotan (February 10, 2023)’Microsoft Adds ChatGPT AI Technology to Bing Search Engine’, Wall Street Journal; https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-adds-chatgpt-ai-technology-to-bing-search-engine-11675793525
5. https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ 

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*** 

The RAIR Foundation Wrote:

Dr. Mark Trozzi’s haunting words, ‘People are being processed as animals with no rights, and when you consider the chilling predictability and the mounting data, it’s a grim reality—hospitals turning into places of harm instead of healing,’

In a defiant stand against the suppression of real science and the subversion of medical ethics, Canadian physician Dr. Mark Trozzi has found himself in the crosshairs of a legal battle with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

Dr. Trozzi, one of the early doctors to challenge prevailing COVID-19 narratives, faces a lengthy and expensive ‘trial’ as he seeks to defend his views grounded in science and genuine concern for patient well-being.

Dr. Trozzi’s ordeal symbolizes the larger struggle within the medical community, where divergent perspectives on COVID-19 and vaccine-related issues have led to clashes between medical professionals and regulatory bodies. The CPSO’s tribunal against Dr. Trozzi, rather than focusing on patient safety and the pursuit of medical truth, appears to be driven by a need to protect political authority and state ideology.

Unveiling Insights Through Exclusive Interview

Amidst his legal battle, RAIR Foundation USA had the privilege of conducting an exclusive interview with Dr. Mark Trozzi. In this enlightening conversation, Dr. Trozzi shares his remarkable journey through the pandemic landscape. He candidly discusses the formidable challenges he encountered as a physician, navigating through a landscape where hospitals appeared to exaggerate their strain, narratives were manipulated to shape public opinion, and the pervasive influence of global health organizations cast a shadow over medical decision-making.

In the interview, Dr. Trozzi delves into the significance of treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in the battle against COVID-19. He provides critical insights into his departure from the mainstream narrative, driven by research indicating a higher mortality rate among recipients of experimental COVID-19 shots compared to other vaccines. Dr. Trozzi also addresses concerns about the rate of miscarriages observed during Pfizer’s COVID “vaccine” trials.

Dr. Trozzi’s Trial

Central to this conflict is Dr. Trozzi’s steadfast dedication to articulating perspectives that challenge unscientific state mandates, fortified by his reliance on scientific evidence. He is a vocal critic of the mainstream COVID-19 narrative, particularly in relation to “vaccine” mandates. According to Dr. Trozzi, the CPSO’s actions indicate an attempt to silence honest scientific discourse and stifle freedom of speech.

The latest phase of Dr. Trozzi’s trial, which unfolded on July 10, 2023, marked a significant turn of events. Proceedings resumed before the CPSO, but not without a protracted battle over expert witnesses. The CPSO made multiple attempts to disqualify Dr. Peter McCullough, a prominent figure in the medical community, from testifying as an expert witness. Despite their efforts, Dr. McCullough eventually took the stand and provided a compelling defense.

Additionally, Deanna McLeod, a seasoned clinical trials expert with over 20 years of professional experience and a lead investigator at the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA), was scheduled to testify as an expert witness. She intended to present evidence related to Pfizer’s initial clinical trial data, which can be found here: link. However, the CPSO engaged in lengthy questioning and ultimately disqualified her as an expert witness, a decision that raised questions given her extensive expertise.

Dr. Paul Alexander was also scheduled to testify in Dr. Trozzi’s defense, but circumstances prevented him from doing so. Dr. Alexander, who would have faced rigorous questioning from the CPSO, had to withdraw due to a family emergency, leaving Dr. McCullough as the sole expert witness to testify. The CPSO’s persistent attempts to disqualify expert witnesses, including the abuse endured by Deanna McCLeod, shed light on the contentious nature of the trial and raised concerns about the transparency of the proceedings.

While Dr. McCullough did testify briefly, he effectively demonstrated that there were no issues with Dr. Trozzi’s actions or words, affirming the validity of his position. For a detailed look at the CPSO trial proceedings, including the challenges faced by Deanna McCLeod and the CPSO’s handling of objections from Dr. Trozzi’s legal team, you can view the available recordings on the What’s Up Canada channel. These recordings encompass the entire trial and offer valuable insights into the events that transpired.

Ethical Dilemmas and Upholding Medical Standards

The interview offers a unique perspective on the ethical dilemmas faced by medical professionals who challenge prevailing narratives. Dr. Trozzi reveals the suspension of some of the best doctors, whose commitment to their Hippocratic Oath led them to provide alternative treatments. This commitment eventually led to the suppression of honest medical opinions and the revocation of licenses.

Dr. Trozzi’s insights extend to the shifting dynamics of medical practice, where the role of doctors has transformed from patient-centered care to enforcing state-driven narratives. The interview provides an intimate glimpse into Dr. Trozzi’s unwavering dedication to the pursuit of medical truth and his belief in the power of science to shape a just future.

As the CPSO’s decision looms, the legal battle led by Dr. Trozzi resonates as a reminder of the delicate balance between medical authority, scientific inquiry, and individual rights. The outcome holds far-reaching implications not only for Dr. Trozzi and his colleagues but for the broader landscape of medical discourse and patient care in Ontario. Dr. Trozzi’s steadfast faith in science and the collective conscience shines as a beacon of hope in a polarized medical landscape.

Further Resources for Deeper Understanding

For those seeking to delve further into Dr. Mark Trozzi’s perspectives and insights, here is a collection of essential resources that shed light on the issues he passionately addresses:

• Inaugural Publication (January 2021): Dr. Trozzi’s first article and video, published in January 2021, offers a foundational understanding of his concerns. Access it here.
• Synergistic Bioweapons (December 2021): In this article, dated December 14, 2021, Dr. Trozzi delves into the concept of synergistic bioweapons. Explore it here.
• The Immune System Series (May and August 2023): Dr. Trozzi expands on the intricacies of how the COVID vaccines impact the immune system. Watch the enlightening video series here and here.
• Canada’s Cover-up Exposed (July 2022): Dr. Trozzi uncovers a disturbing cover-up within Canada. Read about it here.
• The Fertility Crisis (2022-2023): Dr. Trozzi delves into the crucial topic of fertility and its relation to the bioweapons narrative. Explore his insights through articles such as this and this.
• Autopsies for Gathering Evidence (December 2022): Dr. Trozzi provides valuable information about autopsies as a means to gather evidence. Read about it here.
• Comprehensive Website: Dr. Trozzi’s official website, www.drtrozzi.org, hosts over 700 posts available in 23 languages. The content is fully searchable and offers a wealth of knowledge.
• Newsletter Subscription: Stay updated with Dr. Trozzi’s latest insights by subscribing to his newsletter here.
• Supporting the Cause: Donations to Dr. Trozzi’s cause are greatly appreciated. The battle against establishment pressures requires continued dedication and support. Contribute here.
• Prophetic Warning (June 2021): In June 2021, Dr. Trozzi released a video and article that eerily predicted the dangers of the COVID vaccines, now proven accurate over two years later. Dive into the details here.
• World Council for Health: Dr. Trozzi is an integral part of the World Council for Health, an organization dedicated to fostering global health awareness.

These resources provide an opportunity for readers to explore Dr. Mark Trozzi’s extensive body of work, insights, and advocacy for medical ethics and informed decision-making.

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Featured image is from Dr. Mark Trozzi

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page. 

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*** 

Australia experienced this in February 2021. Facebook had gotten nastily stroppy, wishing to dictate public policy to the Commonwealth government. To teach Canberra mandarins a lesson, it literally unfriended the entire country, scrubbing all news platforms of content and making any posted links through the platform inaccessible. It mattered not that the content involved the tawdry details of celebrity love affairs gone wrong or advice on how to respond to a cyclone. The users of an entire country had been cancelled. For a time, a blissful blackhole had appeared at the centre of Australia’s information scape.

Facebook’s parent company Meta had one fundamental problem. The Australian government had proposed a bargaining code that would distribute income from news shared on digital platforms with its providers. The measure was designed to rescue an ailing sector from demise, and ironically served to aid the likes of Rupert Murdoch and such media moguls struggling to keep dying empires afloat. Digital giants such as Facebook and Google were told to swallow a regulatory regime that would force them into income sharing agreements that they deemed illogical and much against the spirit of the internet.

Meta eventually came over to the view that “refriending” Australia was in its best interests. The then treasurer Josh Frydenberg had convinced them that the much detested code could work. In truth, Frydenberg had merely caved in, more or less easing off on most of the demands, such as a full disclosure of algorithms on sharing material. Independent agreements with news outlets were rapidly reached. Everyone came out of it a villain, except small, independent news outlets deemed irrelevant in the negotiations. They were the true victims.

Canada’s Online News Act proposed something similar in regulating “digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to sustainability.” Mimicking the Australian model, digital platforms and news businesses could “enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries.”

In reaching such agreements, factors such as the “significant bargaining power imbalance between [the digital news intermediary] operator and news businesses” would be taken into account. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission was also vested with powers to “impose, for contraventions of the enactment, administrative monetary penalties on certain individuals and entities and conditions on the participation of news businesses in the bargaining process.”

The digital platforms, in turn, took issue: why should they have to pay media outlets for doing their job, having offered them a gratis platform in the first place? Arguments from the Australian example were re-run. Meta, as it outlined in a statement, had “made it clear to the Canadian government that the legislation misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms. The legislation is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true.”

In June, Meta announced that it had “begun the process of ending news availability in Canada” as part of its moves to comply with the Act. It was a statement of general smug finality, indicative of the company’s own self-belief as an exclusive platform for news. For media outlets, this meant that links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in the country would no longer be available for those in Canada. Content posted by international news publishers and broadcasters outside Canada would also not be viewable by those within the country.

It did not take long for the consequences of such a policy to bear bitter fruit. As summer fires raged in Canada, forcing tens of thousands from their homes and threatening cities such as Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, information was meagre on measures and responses from the authorities. “Right now, in an emergency situation where up to date local information is more important than ever, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of peoples safety,” the indignant Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau huffed at a news conference in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island.

Trudeau thought it “inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits of insuring that local news organizations can get up to date information to Canadians.” British Columbia Premier David Eby also found it “astonishing that we are at this stage of the crisis and the owners of Facebook and Instagram have not come forward and said ‘We’re trying to make a point with the federal government, but it’s more important that people are safe’.” These men obviously know little about the workings of this dark entity.

Meta, in response, claimed that those in Canada could still use Instagram and Facebook “to connect with their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations.”

The obvious question here was why Trudeau was placing such astonishing reliance on a private corporation’s information sharing services, one with no allegiance to the Canadian government, let alone the citizenry, to do so. The onus should have been on national and local broadcasting outlets to inform the population of the disasters. As always, governments gravitate in low fashion for the cheapest alternative. The payment of peanuts results in a monkey return.

In Australia, for instance, the initial ban imposed by Facebook led to an upsurge of interest in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which has its own set of digital sharing tools. It became clear that an information environment without Facebook offered healthier alternatives – without the creepy world of surveillance capitalism.

The Australian and Canadian examples serve as salient lessons to those in government who forget their duties to the public. If you get into the bed of a sociopathic, petulant founder who could only conceive of dating girls through digital networks, using such skin-crawling argot as “the poke”, you are asking for trouble. Even more to the point, you are asking for some share of the blame in forfeiting your duties. Surely it would be more prudent for governments to establish their own information channels in times of crisis, invest in public broadcasters and improve their services to areas of a country, however remote?

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

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*** 

“The crisis began when a group of armed terrorists occupied School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia.

“On 1 September 2004. The hostage-takers were members of the Riyad-us Saliheen, sent by the Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who demanded Russian withdrawal from and recognition of the independence of Chechnya.

On the third day of the standoff, Russian security forces stormed the building.”

Basayev had links to Al Qaeda. 

On September 3, the Russian Federation is marking a memorable date, specifically, the Day of Solidarity in the Fight against Terrorism that became part of Russian legislation in 2005, a year after a horrendous terrorist attack in Beslan that killed over 300 Russian citizens, including children. This appalling terrorist atrocity was something unprecedented in terms of its meanness and brutality, and it highlighted the need to rally the entire international community against terrorism.

“We have to state that, in the current international realities, the issue of combating terrorism has long since lost its unifying essence. The collective West that considers itself a beacon of democracy and human rights is openly waging a hybrid war against Russia. Not only is the West using Ukraine as a geopolitical battering ram against our country, but it is brazenly turning a blind eye on the terrorist essence of the Kiev regime and is sponsoring it,” official statement, released ahead of September event, said.

At the same time, the Western line to “isolate” Russia has not been crowned with success even in such a sensitive area as the fight against terrorism.

The opinion of Russia remains significant and weighty during dialogue with friendly states. The Russian Federation prioritises cooperation with friendly states in the current complicated conditions of foreign policy turbulence. For example, we are collaborating rather fruitfully with our partners at various regional associations, including the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.

Close contacts between the security agencies of these associations’ member states are taking place under the auspices of the CIS Anti-Terrorism Centre and the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure. As for the CSTO, it can deploy its Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the shortest possible time, and this is an extremely important, effective and essential factor in facilitating counter-terrorism security in the zone of its responsibility.

Additionally, the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Working Group now ranks among the most advanced cross-regional formats. The BRICS Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the Action Plan for its implementation, drafted in 2020 and 2021 when Russia and India chaired BRICS, are the gold standard, reflecting an analytical and well-thought-out perception of real, rather than imaginary, terrorist threats.

The Russian Federation also supports constructive dialogue on counter-terrorism operations with the states of the African continent. The Declaration of the Second Russia-Africa Summit on Strengthening Cooperation in the Fight against Terrorism, signed following the Second Russia-Africa Summit in St Petersburg in July 2023, reflects the common approaches of our countries.

“We will continue to coordinate joint efforts in the above-mentioned multilateral formats, including those aimed at streamlining the existing mechanisms for coping with the security risks of the states involved,” the statement finally said.

The Beslan school siege and the Moscow theater siege were the toughest tests that Vladimir Putin went through during his 20 years in power.

“Major terrorist attacks were the toughest to deal with. The Beslan school siege was one of them. I will never forget it. Another one was the Moscow theater siege,” Putin noted in the Kremlin.

Back in 2019, officers and rescuers who helped to release hostages from Beslan’s School No.1 in 2004 were awarded by Vyacheslav Bitarov in the Caucasus republic of North Ossetia.

More than 1,200 people were taken hostage during the terrorist attack at a school in the North Ossetian city of Beslan, which occurred on September 1, 2004, the first day of the academic year. The tragedy claimed 334 lives, including 186 children. Some 126 of these hostages became handicapped, of them 70 children.

The school, located next to the district police station, housed approximately 60 teachers and more than 800 students. Its gymnasium, where most of the hostages were held for 52 hours, was a recent addition, measuring 10 metres (33 ft) wide and 25 metres (82 ft) long.

There were reports that men disguised as repairmen had secreted weapons and explosives into the school during July 2004, something that the authorities later denied. However, several witnesses have since testified they were forced to help their captors remove the weapons from caches hidden in the school. There were also claims that a “sniper’s nest” on the sports-hall roof had been set up in advance.

The attack at Beslan was met with international abhorrence and universal condemnation. Countries and charities around the world donated to funds set up to assist the families and children that were involved in the Beslan crisis. This School No. 1 was one of seven schools in Beslan, a town of about 35,000 people in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania in Russia’s Caucasus.

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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.

Featured image is from the author

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*** 

According to Wikipedia, in

“early August 2023, a series of wildfires broke out in the U.S. state of Hawaii, predominantly on the island of Maui. The wind-driven fires prompted evacuations, caused widespread damage, killing at least 115 people and leaving 388 others missing in the town of Lāhainā.”

Residents of Maui are recounting another, more fiendish account altogether. They do not agree with the official casualty toll either.

I have watched various images and commentary-laced video clips of this strange event and concede that they can be attributed to Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). I was sceptical of DEW capabilities until the Maui incident.

The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) describes DEW as

“concentrated electromagnetic energy to combat enemy forces and assets. These weapons include high energy lasers and other high power electromagnetics—such as millimeter wave and high power microwave weapons…If a greater amount of force is required, DEWs can also damage or destroy enemy assets. To do this, a high energy laser can emit electromagnetic energy with a wavelength the target material absorbs most effectively, melting the material.” The GAO summary also adds that high energy lasers…are “capable of melting steel”.  (bold added for emphasis)

Now that we have broadly established the capabilities of DEW, is there any evidence of its deployment in Maui?

Well, we have seen an uncanny series of fires, explosions and train derailments all across the Western world after the global coronapsychosis had breached its credulous limits and scepticism began to creep in. These strange incidents curiously impacted infrastructures and warehouses (and the materials therein) that are vital to societal survival e.g. fuel, food and medicines. I can’t even begin to recall the number of such incidents that have taken place over the past 12 months alone. Search engines, as we all know, are now solely designed to promote the rancid narratives of the global fakestream media.

When it comes to the anomalies encountered in Maui, Peggy Hall has an excellent post that encapsulates the logic-defying tragedy. I agree with Hall that a lot of things just “don’t add up.”

According to Hall, the

“photographic images depict obliterated structures and molten metal, while the surrounding vegetation, including grass and trees, remains relatively unscathed, and wooden picnic tables are still standing… Strangely, the ships were on fire in the middle of the ocean as well. Images from this fire are mostly in line with what you would expect to see after a bomb or with the notion that a directed energy weapon was responsible.”

But it is not just in Hawaii or the United States where incendiary events have broken out over the past 12 months. And I am not entirely convinced of the theory that an entire enclave on a Hawaiian island was deliberately razed to make way for 15-minute smart cities that align with the White House-World Economic Forum (WEF) agenda of “Build Back Better”. There are enough adjacent spaces around to pull this off. This is the primary reason why I held off from commentating on this subject. Till now, that is…

Maybe, there is another agenda afoot? I needed more anecdotal evidence to support a theory that had been germinating in my mind. Last night, I stumbled upon one such corroborative incident. I am now going out on a limb here.

It seems fires and earthquakes have been breaking out all over China – right after it was subjected to a series of devastating floods. I am still sceptical of a High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) aka “weather warfare” weapon at work here but that scepticism is dwindling by the day.

According to a China Insights video clip, blazing fires have broken out across major cities in the mainland. And when I say blazing fires, I mean they are literally blazing in an eerily artificial manner. New, highrise buildings that are supposedly fire resistant are now behaving like fiery giant concrete candles.

Here I need to propose my somewhat radical hypothesis. The operationalization and deployment of DEW, HAARP and biological weapons – to the extent they are real – are designed to remind US military rivals, namely Russia and China, to remain “within boundaries” while the pillars of global governance are erected on a hellish foundation of scarcities, famines, “natural disasters”, supply chain breakdowns and hunger worldwide.

Incidents like the one witnessed in Maui are not just technological demonstrators but they also serve as an avenue to perfect these weapons systems.

What do you think? Does the US military have the capability to bring Russia and China to keel with their unconventional weaponries?

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Dr Mathew Maavak’s research interests include systems science, global risks, geopolitics, foresight and governance. Follow him on Twitter @MathewMaavak or read his latest articles here: https://drmathewmaavak.substack.com 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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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***

 

Einführung in Thematik

Die Mitglieder der Europäischen Union leisten „ganze Arbeit“ und wollen wohl nichts dem Zufall überlassen. Andere Organisationen wie die WHO schließen sich an.

Nachdem vor kurzem bekannt wurde, dass der Digital Service Act (DSA) für sehr große Plattformen und Suchmaschinen in Kraft getreten ist, der die Macht von Internetmonopolisten einschränken und Möglichkeiten politischer Zensur erweitern soll (1), hat nun der bekannte deutsche Wirtschaftsjournalist Dr. Norbert Häring auf seinem Blog darüber berichtet, dass das EU-Projekt „Jitsuvax“ mit einer Laufzeit von vier Jahren mit 3,1 Millionen Euro gefördert wird, um psychologische Methoden zur Bekämpfung von Impfskepsis zu entwickeln (2). Der Artikel mit dem Titel „Jitsuvax: Psychologische Kampfkunst gegen Leute, die bei mRNA-Impfstoffen skeptisch sind“ erschien inzwischen auch auf der unabhängigen Internetplattform „apolut“ als Standpunkt (3).

Härings Beurteilung des Projekts hört sich so an:

„‘Wissenschaftler‘, die sich von der Regierung bezahlen lassen, um faule psychologische Tricks zu entwickeln, mit denen die Regierung die Bürger manipulieren kann, sind eine Schande für die Wissenschaft. Sie fügen der Demokratie großen Schaden zu.“ (4) 

Persönlich denke ich angesichts der beiden Schock-Erlebnisse nicht nur an die Wissenschaft und Demokratie, sondern auch an die unzähligen Forschungsergebnisse und Artikel über die internationale Corona-Politik und die meist tödlich verlaufenden Covid-Impfungen. Unter anderem denke ich an die engagierten Beiträge des kanadischen Wirtschaftsprofessors Michel Chossudovsky, Herausgeber und Direktor des „Centre for Research on Globalization“ und Betreiber der Webseite „gloabelresearch.ca“ sowie an die neue EU-Verordnung, die ehrliche Aufklärung in naher Zukunft als mutwillige und schädliche Desinformation charakterisieren und ahnden will. 

EU-Projekt der Universität Bristol 

Die Universität Bristol leitet sein zwei Jahren ein EU-Projekt, das psychologische Methoden zur Überwindung von Impfablehnung entwickelt. Cornelia Betsch, Psychologin und Professorin für Gesundheitskommunikation leitet die deutsche Abteilung des Fünfländerprojekts mit dem Namen „Jitsuvax“.

Für den Publizisten Häring ist das ganze Projekt fragwürdig, weil Menschen, die gegenüber experimentellen mRNA-Impfungen skeptisch seien, als Gegner behandelt und ihnen niedere Motive und unlautere Mittel unterstellt würden. Als Methode setze man auf psychologische Manipulation.

Diese „Manipulationswisse nschaftler“, so Häring, identifizieren elf problematische Persönlichkeitsmerkmale bei Impfskeptikern, auf denen die Impfskepsis beruhe; unter anderem: Verschwörungsglaube, Misstrauen gegen Autoritäten, religiöse Einstellung und Beharren auf Autonomie. Für sie existieren als Gründe für Impfskepsis nur psychische Defekte. Legitime sachliche Gründe für die Ablehnung der Impfung haben diese sogenannten Forscher nicht beschrieben (5).

Zum Inhalt des Projekts schreibt Häring wörtlich:

„Es erforscht und verbreitet psychologische Tricks, die Ärzte anwenden sollen, um Impfzurückhaltung zu überwinden.“ (6) 

Vorschlag einer Impfpflicht zur Befriedung der Gesellschaft

Mit Datum vom 15.11. 2022 schreibt Häring in seinem Blog:

„Regierungsnahe ‚Wissenschaftler‘ schlagen allen Ernstes Impfpflicht zur Befriedung der Gesellschaft vor.

Eine allgemeine Impfpflicht würde die Polarisierung der Gesellschaft abbauen helfen, schreiben fünf deutsche Sozialwissenschaftler in einem Aufsatz in der Zeitschrift Nature Human Behaviour. Wie sie darauf kommen? Mit Wissenschaft hat es nichts zu tun, aber viel mit Voreingenommenheit, Tricks und akademischer Lebensferne.“

Häring bringt dazu ein Beispiel:

„Wenn also jemand zu dem Schluss kommt, das eigene Kind nicht gegen Covid impfen zu lassen, weil sich herausgestellt hat, dass die Impfung nicht gegen Ansteckung und Weitergabe hilft, und weil die Gefahr von schweren Nebenwirkungen mindestens für Kinder größer ist als die Gefahrschwerer Gesundheitsschäden durch Covid, dann muss als Ursache einer der elf psychischen Defekte identifiziert werden. Denn die Möglichkeit, dass die Behörden einen Fehler gemacht haben, und die Impfempfehlung für Kinder und Säuglinge falsch war, ist ausgeschlossen. Für die Manipulationswissenschaftler ist die Wahrheit ein flexibles Ding, das sich immer danach richtet, was die Behörden gerade sagen.“ (7) 

Weitere namhafte Organisationen schließen sich unheilvollen Plänen an

Unter der Überschrift „WHO-Mitglieder beschließen Resolution zur Manipulation der öffentlichen Meinung“ schreibt Häring auf seinem Blog mit Datum vom 31.05.2023:

„Auf der Weltgesundheitsversammlung in Genf haben die Mitgliedstaaten eine Resolution verabschiedet, die alle Regierungen und die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) auffordert, die Verhaltenswissenschaften verstärkt und systematischer zu nutzen, um ‚gesundheitsbezogene Fehlinformationen und Desinformationen‘ zu konterkarieren und die Nachfrage nach Impfstoffen sicherzustellen.“ (8)

Am 31.01.2023 schreibt Häring zur Überschrift „WHO rät Regierungen, die alles Vertrauen aufgebraucht haben, Schleichwerber anzuheuern“:

„In einem von der WHO empfohlenen Artikel in Foreign Affairs raten Gesundheitswissenschaftler und -funktionäre den Regierenden, denen große Teile der Bevölkerungen nicht mehr vertrauten, in vertrauenswürdige Institutionen und Personen zu ‚investieren‘, damit diese für Pandemiemaßnahmen werben.“ (9) 

Wissenschaftliche Aufklärung als Desinformation: Schöne neue Welt!

Sollten die wertvolle wissenschaftliche Aufklärung in naher Zukunft als schädliche Desinformation charakterisiert und geahndet und Covid-Impfskeptiker als psychische krank diskreditiert werden, dann lässt Aldous Huxleys “Schöne neue Welt“ („Brave New World“) grüßen!

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer in der Erwachsenenbildung. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.   

Noten

[1] https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/458082.digital-services-act-eu-regeln-für-big-in-kraft.html

[2] https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/7GU4gc

[3] https://apolut.net/jitsuvax-psychologische-kampfkunst-gegen-mrna-skeptiker-von-norbert-haering/

[4] a. O.

[5] a. O.

[6] a. O.

[7] a. O.

[8] a. O.

[9] a. O.

 

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Introduction to the topic

The members of the European Union are doing a “good job” and do not want to leave anything to chance. Other organisations like the WHO are joining in.

After it was recently announced that the Digital Service Act (DSA) for very large platforms and search engines has come into force, which is supposed to limit the power of internet monopolists and expand possibilities of political censorship (1), the well-known German business journalist Dr. Norbert Häring has now reported on his blog that the EU project “Jitsuvax” will be funded with 3.1 million euros over a period of four years to develop psychological methods to combat vaccination scepticism (2). The article titled “Jitsuvax: Psychological martial arts against people sceptical about mRNA vaccines” has meanwhile also appeared on the independent internet platform “apolut” as a viewpoint (3).

Häring’s assessment of the project sounds like this:

“‘Scientists’ who let themselves be paid by the government to develop lazy psychological tricks with which the government can manipulate citizens are a disgrace to science. They do great harm to democracy.” (4)

Personally, in light of the two shock experiences, I think not only of science and democracy, but also of the myriad research findings and articles on international Corona politics and the mostly fatal Covid vaccinations. Among others, I think of the dedicated contributions of the Canadian economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, editor and director of the “Centre for Research on Globalization” and operator of the website “gloabelresearch.ca”, as well as the new EU regulation that will characterise and punish honest enlightenment as wanton and harmful disinformation in the near future.

EU Project of the University of Bristol

For two years, the University of Bristol has been leading an EU project that develops psychological methods to overcome vaccination refusal. Cornelia Betsch, a psychologist and professor of health communication, heads the German section of the five-country project called “Jitsuvax”.

For the publicist Häring, the whole project is questionable because people who are sceptical about experimental mRNA vaccinations are treated as opponents and accused of having base motives and unfair means. The method used is psychological manipulation.

These “manipulation scientists”, according to Häring, identify eleven problematic personality traits in vaccination sceptics on which vaccination scepticism is based; among others: Conspiracy belief, distrust of authority, religious attitude and insistence on autonomy. For them, only psychological defects exist as reasons for vaccination scepticism. Legitimate factual reasons for the rejection of vaccination have not been described by these so-called researchers (5).

On the content of the project, Häring writes literally:

“It researches and disseminates psychological tricks for doctors to use to overcome vaccination reluctance.”(6)

Proposal of Compulsory Vaccination to Pacify Society

Dated 15.11. 2022, Häring writes in his blog:

“Pro-government ‘scientists’ are seriously proposing compulsory vaccination to pacify society.

Compulsory vaccination would help to reduce the polarisation of society, write five German social scientists in an essay in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. How do they arrive at this? It has nothing to do with science, but a lot to do with bias, tricks and academic detachment from life.”

Häring gives an example:

“So if someone comes to the conclusion not to have their own child vaccinated against Covid because it has turned out that the vaccination does not help against infection and transmission, and because the risk of serious side effects at least for children is greater than the risk of serious health damage from Covid, then one of the eleven mental defects must be identified as the cause. Because the possibility that the authorities made a mistake and the vaccination recommendation for children and infants was wrong is excluded. For the manipulation scientists, truth is a flexible thing that always depends on what the authorities are saying at the moment.” (7)

Other Renowned Organisations Join Ominous Plans

Under the headline “WHO members pass resolution to manipulate public opinion”, Häring writes on his blog dated 31/05/2023:

“At the World Health Assembly in Geneva, member states passed a resolution calling on all governments and the World Health Organization (WHO) to make greater and more systematic use of behavioural science to counter ‘health misinformation and disinformation’ and ensure demand for vaccines.” (8)

On 31/01/2023, Häring writes to the headline “WHO advises governments that have used up all trust to hire surreptitious vaccinators”:

“In a WHO-recommended article in Foreign Affairs, health scientists and officials advise rulers who are no longer trusted by large segments of the populations to ‘invest’ in trusted institutions and individuals to promote pandemic measures.” (9)

Science Education as Disinformation: Brave New World!

Should valuable scientific education be characterised and punished as harmful disinformation in the near future and Covid vaccine sceptics discredited as mentally ill, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World sends his regards!

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Dr Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist and psychologist. After his university studies he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.

Notes

(1) https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/458082.digital-services-act-eu-regeln-für-big-in-kraft.html

(2) https://www.printfriendly.com/p/g/7GU4gc

(3) https://apolut.net/jitsuvax-psychologische-kampfkunst-gegen-mrna-skeptiker-von-norbert-haering/

(4) op. cit.

(5) op. cit.

(6) A. a. O.

(7) A. a. O.

(8) A. a. O.

(9) A. a. O.

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*** 

.

Heavy subsidies and government-money created a few chips factories (still struggling to start) and saved some automobile jobs to make electric vehicles. But these few bright spots won’t help the majority of US industry to blossom again. There simply aren’t government-billions enough – not even in the US deficit-economy – to create enough subsidies to reindustrialize the US. A broad US path of “industry-for-subsidies” would be a kind of state-capitalism in a country with no apparatus, levers, tradition, experience, theories, insights – or even funds – to run such a beast. Such a path, a dreamed up by Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden would never be economically sustainable for US society.

During Biden’s time, the US sees a sharp decline in productivity – precisely the kind of development which destroys industry, not builds it.

The US will never get out of its import-dependency. Yeah, it may shift some imports from China to Vietnam or Mexico (with Chinese sub-suppliers still running much of the show), but the US will never get out of its addiction to imports of “stuff” it cannot produce itself anymore.

And no, India won’t replace China as “factory-of-the-World”. India is doing well, thankfully, but India is far too bureaucratic and self-enclosed to play the global production-role which China plays.

And hardly has the US automobile industry once again been resuscitated from the brain-dead with billions from, government and we see the union problem starting up again. Writes the Wall Street Journal today 2 September 2023 in its daily newsletter summary (forwarded below):

In the five months since Shawn Fain narrowly won a runoff election to become the president of the United Auto Workers, the 54-year-old has tossed out the typical union playbook. Fain is negotiating new labor contracts for about 146,000 hourly workers at General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis. He has said he’s ready to strike if a deal isn’t reached when contracts expire later this month—potentially with not just one automaker, but all three.

A strike against ALL three major US automakers – Bon Appetit!

US automobiles are so bad for the money that no one will buy them outside of the USA.

The automobile workers union is only part of the problem, however. The managements and owners of US car industries are simply doing a consistently lousy job and have done so for the past half a century. But speaking of US unions, the union of US port workers is also infamous for creating inefficiency in America. The biggest US ports are not conduits for an efficient society, but chokepoints slowing down the whole US Inc.

This is not boding well for US economic competition with China – even is China is slowing down.

US media are salivating for every bit of news that can put a blot on China, but US workers are not doing too fine. Yes – consumption in general is up, but living standards for ordinary Americans have been severely hit by Bidenomics.

The New York Times (NYT) is at great pains to explain that Bidenomics “isn’t so bad after all” and that voters just don’t get how “good” things really are. But at the end of the NYT piece about the blessings of Bidenomics, The NYT suddenly cannot hide the ugly truth anymore – like a Freudian slip of the tongue, even the NYT itself reveals that:

Now he said it was difficult for the Biden administration to take victory laps over slowing inflation because wages haven’t kept pace, leaving a typical worker about $2,000 behind compared with before the pandemic. See this.

Big outburst of inflation created by Biden has hollowed out US real incomes by no less than $2,000! That’s a lot of money for nearly all Americans, and especially for those on low or fixed incomes which used to vote for the Democrats. Obviously, the most recent 1-2 months of a-little-better-than-lower-wage-adjustments aren’t going to reverse that. Biden takes $2,000 from Americans and maybe gives back 50 bucks – how nice is that?

The prospect that a US recession might not happen after all may be celebrated, but truly, the absence of a meltdown doesn’t really show anything great about US economics.

These views on US economy are vital to understanding the whole picture of China-US strategic competition. China has had an enormous export – now Chinese exports are just big, not enormous. China has got a youth unemployment problem. China has got some overheated construction projects and entities. But all this does not mean that China’s growth rate is going to go below that of the US. China is still having a decent growth and look set to continue that. Moreover, China has a lot of unused economic levers and buttons to push.

The US is simply not overtaking China in growth.

The latest World Economic Outlook July 2023 from IMF says that US will in 2023 have a growth of 1.8% against a growth in China of 5.2%. In 2024 the US will be even worse off with a growth of meagre 1.0% in 2024 and China will grow at 4.5% in 2024. In both years, we see China growing by around 3½ % faster than the US. 

China will continue for many years to do a lot better than the US.

That puts the gleefulness by which US media describe China’s economic challenges into a more correct perspective.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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Several recent studies deal with spike protein in the blood and I will briefly review the following: 

• Sep.2, 2022 – Zoe Swank et al. (spike in blood of long COVID patients at 12 mo)
• Sep.12, 2022 – Cosentino et al. (does vaxx spike get into blood & cause injury?)
• Jan.4, 2023 – Yonker et al. (vaxxed w myocarditis had full spike in blood)
• Jan.17, 2023 – Castruita et al. (vaxx mRNA detected in blood of 10% at 28 days)
• Aug.15, 2023 – Brogna et al. (spike detected in blood of 50% vaxxed at 6 months!)

Aug. 15, 2023 – Brogna et al – Detection of recombinant Spike protein in the blood of individuals vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2: Possible molecular mechanisms

• Spike protein is one of 4 major proteins of SARS-CoV2, it enables recognition of host cell receptor and entry into the host cell
• Both Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines use a modified spike protein – all uridine bases were replaced with methyl pseudouridine (less immunogenic, more stable)
• Both Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines also use a stabilized spike (different from natural spike) that differs by a double amino acid change at position 986 and 987, K986P and V987P – the amino acids lysine and valine are both replaced by two proline amino acids in order to stabilize the spike confirmation in an inactive prefusion state (PP-Spike).
• researchers can differentiate natural SARS-CoV-2 spike which can be broken down by tryptic digestion, from Pfizer/Moderna vaccine spike (PP-spike) which can’t be digested (because the double amino acid change eliminated the tryptic digestion site).
• Study: 20 were vaccinated with mRNA vaccine, 20 were unvaccinated and uninfected with COVID-19, 20 were unvaccinated but positive for COVID-19.
• Results: 50% of the mRNA vaccinated still have spike protein in the blood 6 months after vaccination (and will continue, possibly indefinitely)
• Theories:

1. mRNA integrates into some blood cells and spike is continuously produced

2. mRNA integrates into bacterial cells in the blood and spike is continuously produced

Jan. 17, 2023 – Castruita et al. – SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine sequences circulate in blood up to 28 days after COVID-19 vaccination

• In Denmark, Hepatitis C patients were monitored for HCV infection
• Study: They extracted RNA from patient plasma in 108 Hepatitis C patients who were COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated
• Results: 10% had full length or traces of COVID-19 vaccine mRNA sequences in the blood up to 28 days after vaccination
• Theory: authors suspect this mRNA is in LNPs which are being slowly released into the blood from the injection site for up to 28 days!

Jan. 4, 2023 – Yonker et al. – Circulating Spike Protein Detected in Post–COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Myocarditis

• Study: looked at 16 adolescents ages 12-21 (13 men, 3 women) with COVID-19 mRNA vaccine induced myocarditis vs 45 mRNA vaxxed control subjects
• Results: full length spike protein (unbound by antibodies) was found in plasma of individuals with vaxx induced myocarditis, but none was found in mRNA vaxxed controls.
• elevated spike was seen equally in affected females and males(!!!)
• circulating free spike remained detectable at 3 weeks after vaccination

Sep. 2, 2022 – Zoe Swank et al. – Persistent Circulating Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Spike Is Associated With Post-acute Coronavirus Disease 2019 Sequelae

• Study: looked at 63 long COVID patients and took blood samples up to 12 months after their 1st positive result
• Results: 60% Long COVID patients had detectable spike protein in plasma up to 12 months.
• In contrast, COVID-19 patients who did not go on to develop Long COVID had no spike detectable. They only had detectable S1 within 1st week after diagnosis.
• Theory: authors theorize that “SARS-CoV-2 viral reservoirs may persist in the body”
• Problem: some of these patients were COVID-19 vaccinated and they didn’t account for the vaccine status and its effects.

Sep. 12, 2022 – Cosentino et al. – Does the S protein leak into the circulation, at what concentration, and for how long?

• After COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, circulating spike protein originates from endogenous production and its concentration will be much higher in tissues where production occurs(!)
• Roltgen et al. detected vaxx mRNA and spike in axillary lymph nodes up to 60 days after 2nd dose of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
• circulating S1 subunit levels from those with severe COVID-19 infection are similar to post mRNA vaccine circulating S1 levels.
• Theory: severe COVID-19 infection and mRNA vaccination could result in similar total systemic amounts of S protein (about 72 billion spikes estimated)
• most virus spike protein remains in respiratory tract while mRNA vaccine induced spike protein production occurs in internal organs and tissues, which can exert more systemic effects (!!!)
• Conclusion: COVID-19 mRNA vaccines under some circumstances induce high and possibly toxic amounts of S protein in organs and tissues, in turn leaking into the circulation.

My Take… 

There is a very concerning picture emerging.

Potentially 50% of COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated people have spike protein in the blood at least 6 months after vaccination or longer, maybe indefinitely!

Potentially 60% of Long COVID-19 patients have spike protein in the blood at least 12 months after infection, or longer, maybe indefinitely!

Almost all Long COVID-19 patients are also COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated – is the spike protein in their blood coming from a viral reservoir (hiding in the gut or testes) or is it coming from the mRNA vaccine?!

The 50% of COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated who have spike in the blood (possibly indefinitely), are getting spillover of spike into the blood due to much higher concentrations of spike being produced in organs and tissues (causing local damage) – how did the spike get into those organs and tissues?

COVID-19 vaccine Lipid Nanoparticles with mRNA leak into the blood circulation for up to 28 days after vaccination – their circulation allows the vaccine mRNA to get delivered into various organs and tissues where spike gets produced.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated with myocarditis have spike circulating in the blood, while those without myocarditis don’t have any!

The vaccine spike is causing the injuries!

This means that spike detoxing is more important than ever for many people (those suffering from Long COVID, possibly 50% of all vaccinated individuals, those who react to external shedding, etc). 

In the coming days, I will write a separate substack on the latest on spike protein detoxing.

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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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U.S. banks are again in the crosshairs. Standard and Poor’s has downgraded five new middle-tier banks and put three others on negative outlook. This follows sweeping downgrades earlier in August by Moody’s, which cut credit ratings on 10 banks and placed four of the 15 largest U.S. banks on review for possible downgrade. As with the banks going into receivership earlier this year, concerns include interest rate risk due to unrealized losses from long-term securities.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government itself has been downgraded by Fitch Ratings, which questions the government’s ability to finance its nearly $33 trillion federal debt. Just the interest on the debt is approaching $1 trillion annually — one third of the government’s federal income tax receipts — while the military budget is closing in on another $1 trillion, devouring over half the discretionary federal budget. That leaves virtually none to cover the nearly $6 trillion that, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, is needed to repair America’s broken infrastructure, among other neglected service needs. 

While economists disagree on the overall economic outlook, conditions seem to be deteriorating across the board. Congress cannot agree on a budget, with threats of another government shutdown October 1 when the new fiscal year begins. The moratorium on student debt also ends on October 1, with 45% of borrowers saying they expect to go delinquent on their student loan debts. Credit card debt is at the highest level ever recorded, surpassing $1 trillion; with the average rate of interest at a new all-time record of 20.63 percent, and delinquencies surging dramatically. One trillion dollars in corporate debt is rolling over at much higher interest rates this year; layoffs and empty offices are decimating the commercial real estate market; and elevated interest rates are jeopardizing the home mortgage market, among other debt crises.

Where North Dakota Shines

One state, however, has escaped all this unscathed. North Dakota has the fastest growing GDP per capita in the country; and North Dakota banks are thriving, backstopped by the nation’s only state-owned bank. (“Who knew?” said Kevin O’Leary in a recent Fox News news clip.) According to the latest annual report of the Bank of North Dakota, “The Bank set a record net income of $191.2 million in 2022, up $47 million from 2021. Our asset size set a record as well — $10.2 billion. The return on investment was a healthy 19%. Standard & Poor’s (S&P) affirmed BND’s credit rating as A+/Stable.” 

The BND has been called the nation’s safest bank. Its stock cannot be short-sold, since it is not publicly traded; the bank cannot go bankrupt, because by law all of the state’s revenues are deposited in it; and it will not suffer a run, since the state, being the principal bank depositor, would not “run” on itself. Compare JP Morgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, considered among the country’s safest because it is “too big to fail.” JPM has over $1 trillion in uninsured deposits, the type most likely to “run” or be pulled in a crisis, and it has total deposits of $2.38 trillion. The FDIC insurance fund now has a balance of only $116.1 billion – only 5% of JPM’s deposits. JPM also has major counterparty risk in the derivatives market, a multi-trillion-dollar global bubble called by the Bank for International Settlements a “ticking time bomb.” JPM has $61 trillion in total derivatives, or $628 billion in netted derivatives, five times those of Credit Suisse which went insolvent last spring. Credit Suisse had to be bought by the giant Swiss bank UBS to avoid a derivatives implosion among “globally systemically important banks,” of which Credit Suisse was one. 

Not just the BND but North Dakota’s local banks are very safe. The BND acts as a “mini-Fed” for them, helping with liquidity, capitalization, and regulation. It provides correspondent banking services, an active Fed Funds program, check clearing, cash management services, loan guarantees, and other banker’s bank services. No local banks have been in trouble this year (or in fact during this century), but if they were to suffer a bank run, the BND would be there to help. According to its former CEO Eric Hardmeyer, the BND has a pre-approved Fed Funds line set up with every bank in the state; and if that is insufficient for liquidity, the BND can simply buy loans from the troubled local bank as needed. 

Replicating the Model

Advocates in other states are working to replicate the BND model or variations of it, with some very promising business plans forthcoming. One analysis recently published by the Center for New York City Public Affairs at the New School measures the projected economic impact of a local New York City public bank, based on a business model put forth by local advocates. The analysis focuses on job creation, affordable housing development and preservation, and community development lending during the bank’s five-year start-up phase, the time projected to achieve a full lending portfolio. The authors concluded:

In just its five-year start-up phase, a New York City public bank has the potential to create thousands of jobs, while constructing and renovating nearly 20,000 units of affordable housing, directing over a billion dollars to climate infrastructure investments, and expanding the capacity of the city’s CDFI community banks and credit unions to meet the needs of low- and middle-income New Yorkers. …

By partnering with CDFI banks and credit unions and other responsible lenders, the public bank could enable these institutions to increase their lending by over $5.8 billion. Besides financing affordable housing and community development and climate infrastructure, the public bank’s loans would allow CDFIs to increase their capacity with respect to mortgage and consumer lending. … Loans for mortgages and small businesses will build wealth and ensure that a larger share of the City’s money keeps circulating in New York’s working-class communities. Public bank lending of $4.55 billion is estimated to create approximately 70,600 jobs in its start-up phase.

Other states pursuing legislation in 2023 involving the establishment of public banks include California, Oregon, Washington State, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. At the federal level, a much needed solution to the infrastructure crisis is a national infrastructure bank, proposed in HR 4052. We have faced these crises before and have come out the stronger for them. Alexander Hamilton dealt with what appeared to be an insurmountable sovereign debt crisis by establishing the First Bank of the United States as an infrastructure and development bank in 1791. That model was followed by Roosevelt’s government in pulling the country out of the 1930s Great Depression, and it can help put our economy on a more solid footing today.

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This article was first posted on ScheerPost.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, chair of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Wikipedia is the most biased encyclopedia in history, having been hijacked by U.S. intelligence, industry and the political establishment years ago

According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger, U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer.

Sanger noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he noticed that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery

Over-the-top kind of establishment bias includes Wikipedia’s assertion that the Ukraine-Biden scandal is a conspiracy theory designed to undermine Biden, even though evidence of Biden’s corruption has been made public

One explanation for why ideological bias has taken over Wikipedia is that it’s intentionally being used as a propaganda tool by intelligence agencies and the globalist establishment that is seeking to establish a One World Government. To succeed, they can’t allow a multitude of dissenting viewpoints to proliferate, and intelligence agencies are working together to disseminate and uphold the Deep State’s narratives worldwide

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Intelligence agencies have a long history of using propaganda as a tool of war, and the effectiveness of information warfare radically improved with the emergence of the internet, to say nothing of artificial intelligence and social media.

If you’re over 50, you can probably remember a time when your family had a row of encyclopedias on the bookshelf — usually obtained at considerable cost — which were perused whenever you needed to learn more about a particular topic.

Today, you can’t even give a complete set of encyclopedias away because, well, we have Wikipedia. However, Wikipedia has also become a favored propaganda tool, so to call it unreliable would be an understatement.

According to Wikipedia cofounder Larry Sanger — who left Wikipedia in 2002, the year after its inception — U.S. intelligence has been manipulating the online encyclopedia since at least 2008, if not longer. Sanger recently sat down to speak with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (video above) about the subversion of the site he helped create.¹

The Blatant Bias of Wikipedia

Sanger says he noticed a bias creeping in around 2006, particularly in areas of science and medicine. Around 2010, he started noticing that articles about Eastern Medicine were being changed to reflect blatantly biased positions, using “dismissive epithets” to paint this ancient tradition as quackery.

In 2012, evidence also emerged revealing a Wikipedia trustee and “Wikipedian in Residence” were being paid to edit pages on behalf of their clients and secure their placement on Wikipedia’s front page in the “Did You Know” section,² which publicizes new or expanded articles³ — a clear violation of Wikipedia rules.

“It really got over the top … between 2013 and 2018,” Sanger says, “and by by at the time Trump became president, it was almost as bad as it is now. It’s amazing, you know, no encyclopedia, to my knowledge, has ever been as biased as Wikipedia has been …

I remember being mad about Encyclopedia Britannica and The World Book not mentioning my favorite topics, [and] presenting only certain points of view in a way that establishment sources generally do. But this is something else. This is entirely different. It’s over the top.”

Greenwald agrees, highlighting some recent examples of the “over the top” kind of establishment bias, such as Wikipedia simply declaring that the Ukraine-Biden scandal is a conspiracy theory designed to undermine Biden:

“The very first sentence reads: ‘The Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a series of false allegations that Joe Biden, while he was Vice President of the United States, engaged in corrupt activities relating to his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma.’

‘As part of efforts by Donald Trump and his campaign in the Trump–Ukraine scandal, which led to Trump’s first impeachment, these falsehoods were spread in an attempt to damage Joe Biden’s reputation and chances during the 2020 presidential campaign,’ the Wikipedia entry still reads.

So, notice: The Biden-Ukraine scandal is — according to Wikipedia — the ‘Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory’ but the Trump controversy involving Ukraine is ‘the Trump–Ukraine scandal’. Everything is written to comport with the liberal world view and the Democratic Party talking points.”

Wikipedia’s treatment of all things COVID-related is equally skewed. It presents only the establishment’s “truth” across the board, no matter how much evidence there is to refute it.

‘Truth’ Has Been Married to Ideology

“Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia devoted to truth,” Greenwald says. The problem is that “The premise seems to be that you don’t have truth anymore independent of ideological outlook.”

Indeed, Sanger points out that Wikipedia’s official policy even declares that 80% of Right-wing media is unreliable, and “that really, really colors the articles and what the editors allow the articles to say,” he says. Just how did we get to a point where “truth” is tied to a particular ideology? Common sense tells you it simply cannot be so.

Intel Agencies Control Wikipedia

One explanation for why this ideological bias has taken over Wikipedia is that it’s intentionally being used as a propaganda tool by intelligence agencies and the globalist establishment that is seeking to implement a new global governance, a New World Order/One World Government.

To succeed in that Herculean effort, they can’t allow a multitude of dissenting viewpoints to proliferate, and intelligence agencies are working together to disseminate and uphold the Deep State’s narratives worldwide. Sanger puts it this way:

“I think that the Left … very, very deliberately seeks out to take control. Except it isn’t just the Left. We’re learning that now, aren’t we? No, it’s the establishment, and they have their own agenda.

I’m not going to try to offer any opinions — because it’s not something that I study — as to how they bring that about. But it’s clear that between 2005 and 2015 … Wikipedia moved onto the establishment’s radar, and we … have evidence that … even as early as … 2008 … CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia. Think they stopped doing that? No.

And not just them. We know that a great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online, and where, if not on websites like Wikipedia?

They pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community. [They] learn the Wikipedia game and then push what they want to say with their own people. So, that’s my take on that.”

Google and Social Media Are Controlled Too

As noted by Greenwald, Google has played a significant role in Wikipedia’s growth and success by algorithmically placing Wikipedia answers at the top of most searches, and, of course — while they don’t discuss this in the interview — Google also has deep and longstanding ties to the military-intelligence-industrial complex and the globalist Deep State.

The same can be said for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. As reported by Jimmy Dore in the video above, in early 2023, Elon Musk released documents showing Twitter’s former executives censored content at the request of the FBI and assisted the U.S. military’s online propaganda campaigns.

Twitter also censored anti-Ukraine narratives on behalf of several U.S. intelligence agencies. Similarly, Facebook censored accurate information that was damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign at the direct request of the FBI. There’s simply no doubt that intelligence agencies are directly involved in controlling and directing public information flow, and Wikipedia is invaluable in that respect.

Anonymous Writers Have No Credibility

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t stress a key feature of Wikipedia that makes it unreliable, no matter what, and that is the fact that contributing authors and editors are all anonymous.

Clearly, the credibility of an author, regardless of the media format, is of importance when trying to determine the veracity of a given topic, keeping in mind that even experts in the same field will often reach different (and perhaps opposing) conclusions.

Not every expert will have read and evaluated the exact same evidence, for example, leading to differences in interpretation of data. This is normal and unlikely to change, as it is human nature to draw conclusions based on our own breadth of experience and knowledge.

It’s then up to the reader to make up their mind about which of the two or more experts they believe is most correct — a choice that in turn is dependent on the reader’s own prejudices and knowledge base. That said, it should be obvious that no one individual, or even group of individuals, can be the final arbiter of which expert opinion is “the truth.”

However, that’s exactly the position that Wikipedia has inserted itself into. They now decide who they think is right and which position is the correct one, and they simply censor opposing views.

Google Must Have Known They Were Promoting Unreliable Info

Considering that one of the primary factors that come into play when determining the credibility of an author is his or her credentials, affiliations and previous writings,⁴ how is it that Google promotes Wikipedia as an authority for every possible type of information by listing them at the top of its search results?

And how can Google use Wikipedia as a primary tool for its quality raters to establish credibility of other online material?^5,6 It doesn’t make sense, unless you realize that neither Google nor Wikipedia are about giving people accurate and unbiased information. Their function is to facilitate the programming of people with a certain set of narratives and viewpoints.

As early as 2011, the fact that Wikipedia editors were being paid by corporations to remove and suppress unwanted information was well known and had been declared scandalous.⁷ Yet nothing changed. At least not for the better.

A 2014 paper⁸ titled, “Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia” by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu, compared 4,000 articles that appear in both encyclopedias and found 73% of Wikipedia’s articles contained political buzz words, compared to 34% in Britannica, and in nearly all cases, Wikipedia was more left-leaning than the Britannica.

Wikipedia Used to Smear and Defame Truthtellers

A key take-home from all this is that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. It’s a propaganda tool, and relying on it will frequently leave you wearing the dunce hat. Articles on science and medicine are definitely corrupted and biased in favor of establishment views and should never be used to make medical decisions.

According to a 2014 study,^9,10 which assessed the veracity of medical claims made on Wikipedia by cross-checking them with the latest peer-reviewed research, reported finding “many errors” in articles concerning the 10 costliest medical conditions. In fact, 9 out of 10 entries — 90%! — contained assertions that were contradicted by published research.

“Health care professionals, trainees, and patients should use caution when using Wikipedia to answer questions regarding patient care,” the authors warned.

That said, articles about historical events, current geopolitical issues and the biographies of public figures are not much better. Greenwald himself has seen his personal page transform from a neutral listing of his work history and accomplishments to an “ideological war” description that paints him in a bad light.

Many excellent scientists and doctors who veered from the establishment narrative on COVID have also been shamefully smeared and defamed by Wikipedia, and anyone who tries to clarify or clear up inaccuracies on the site is simply blocked.

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, for example, has repeatedly tried to “correct provably false facts” about her background on Wikipedia, only to be told she’s “not a reliable source” and having her edits overridden by anonymous editors that guard her page, making sure her award-winning work is kept hushed and her character portrait tarnished.¹¹ Other examples of “sanitizing” certain pages and tarnishing others can be found in a June 28, 2015, article¹² in The Epoch Times.

Ditch Wikipedia and Use Other Online Encyclopedias

If you’re interested in learning more about Wikipedia, its history and inner workings, pick up a copy of Andrew Lih’s book, “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia.”¹³ In it, Lih asks, “If Wikipedia is a minefield of inaccuracies, should one even be tiptoeing through this information garden?” It’s a fair question, for sure.

Similarly, in a 2005 blog post critiquing Wikipedia, Nicholas Carr, author of “What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” noted:¹⁴

“[A]n encyclopedia can’t just have a small percentage of good entries and be considered a success. I would argue, in fact, that the overall quality of an encyclopedia is best judged by its weakest entries rather than its best. What’s the worth of an unreliable reference work?”

The good news is there are dozens of other online encyclopedias, many of which do not suffer from this entrenched ideological bias. Two great resources are encyclosearch.org and encycloreader.org, which allow you to search for answers across dozens of encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, at once. This way, you can compare a multitude of sources.

Examples of more specialized encyclopedias include Ballotpedia (an explicitly neutral encyclopedia of American politics), Scholarpedia, EduTechWiki, MedlinePlus (a medical encyclopedia), Encyclopedia Mythica (religion, folklore and mythology) and HandWiki (computing, science, technology and general).

Sanger is involved in the creation of encyclosearch.org, which he describes as an effort to “strike a blow against censorship and control of information by simply making it easier to find the all the other encyclopedias that are out there.”

Truth be told, Wikipedia is dependent on your lack of knowledge about how they really operate. Taking advantage of your desire for quick information, their goal is to shuttle your thoughts, opinions and knowledge into a silo that doesn’t allow anything in except what they put in there. And what they’re putting on their site is some of the most biased information you’ll find anywhere in media today.

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Notes

¹ ZeroHedge August 3, 2023

² Wikipedia Main Page

³ CNET.com September 18, 2012

⁴ Hofstra University’s library Q&A Q: How can I determine if an author is credible? Answered by Georgina Martorella

⁵ The SEM Post.com May 17, 2019

⁶ Telapost 2019 Google Quality Rater Guidelines

⁷ Royal Dutch Shell PLC December 18, 2011

⁸ Working Knowledge, Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia November 7, 2014

⁹ Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2014 May;114(5):368-73

¹⁰ Journal of the American Osteopathic Association 2014 May;114(5):368-73 (Archived copy)

¹¹ Sharylattkisson.com May 25, 2019

¹² The Epoch Times June 28, 2015

¹³ Amazon.com The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia by Andrew Lih

¹⁴ Roughtype.com Nicholas Carr blog 

Featured image is from The Grayzone

First published on June 25, 2020. Revised on September 3, 2023

***

This month we are commemorating The tragic events of September 11, 2001 which led to the October 7, 2001 US-NATO invasion of Afghanistan on the grounds that that America had been “attacked by an unnamed foreign power”.

“There is continuity from the colonial style legitimate “drug war” led by the British Empire, to the present drug trafficking structures: Afghanistan under US military occupation, the Narco-State in Latin America.”

Rarely acknowledged by the media, the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT) which was launched on 9/11 coupled with an extensive dollarization of the global economy has a bearing on the global trade in narcotics, which is controlled by powerful financial interests, with the support of U.S. intelligence. 

The illegal trade in narcotics is conducted in U.S. dollars under a sophisticated money laundering framework which is tacitly supported by the Washington Consensus.  

 

Source: United Nations (UNODC)

 

Michel Chossudovsky, September 3, 2023

***

In accordance with  Resolution 42/112 of 7 December 1987, the UN General Assembly decided to observe 26 June as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking as an expression of its determination to strengthen action and cooperation to achieve the goal of an international society free of drug abuse.

Raise awareness?

Rarely acknowledged, (“legal”) drug trafficking was initiated by the British Empire.

There is continuity. The colonial label has been scrapped. Today the (“illicit”) drug trade is a multibillion “neocolonial” dollar operation.

The two main hubs of production today are:

• Afghanistan which produces approximately 90% of the illegal World supply of opium (transformed into heroin, morphine and opioid related products). There was a successful drug eradication programme in 2000-2001 which was initiated (with UN support) conducted by the Taliban government. Was conducted in the year prior to the US-NATO led invasion in October 2001. Since the invasion and military occupation, according to UNODC, the production of opium has increased 50 fold, reaching 9000 metric tons in 2017.

• The Andean region of  South America (Colombia, Peru, Bolivia) which produces cocaine. The drug trade is protected by powerful Big Money interests, which in turn control Latin-American politicians. The illegal narcotics trade is intimately relate to engineered political chaos and “regime change” (e.g. Peru).

Colombia and Peru are currently (2022) the largest producers of cocaine Worldwide (Colombia 1400 tons, Peru 870 tons.) 

Colombia is a US supported narco-state. Cocaine from Colombia supplies the U.S. market, a large share of which transits through Mexico. The Mexican Drug Cartels play a key role in this trade.

The Drug Economy is an integral part of Empire Building. Drug trafficking is protected by the US military and intelligence apparatus.

The Role of the British Empire

Historically, drug trafficking was an integral part of British colonialism. It was “legal”.

Opium produced in Bengal by the British East India Company (BEIC) was shipped to China’s Southern port of Canton.

While the share of agricultural land allocated to opium was comparatively small, opium production under colonial rule was nonetheless conducive to impoverishing the Indian population, destabilizing the agriculture system as well as triggering numerous famines.

According to an incisive  BBC report:

“The cash crop [opium] occupied between a quarter and half of a peasant’s holding. By the end of the 19th Century poppy farming had an impact on the lives of some 10 million people in what is now the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

The trade was run by the East India Company, the powerful multinational corporation established for trading with a royal charter that granted it a monopoly over business with Asia. This state-run trade was achieved largely through two wars, which forced China to open its doors to British Indian opium. …

Stiff production targets fixed by the Opium Agency also meant farmers – the typical poppy cultivator was a small peasant – could not decide whether or not to produce opium. They were forced to submit part of their land and labour to the colonial government’s export strategy”.

BEIC Opium Factory and Stacking Warehouse, Patna, 1850s

China and the Opium Wars

When China’s Qing Emperor Daoguang ordered the destruction of opium stocks in the port of Canton (Guangzhou) in 1838, the British Empire declared war on China on the grounds that it was obstructing the “free flow” of commodity trade.

The term “trafficking” applies to Britain. It was condoned and supported throughout the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). In 1838, 1,400 tons of  opium per annum were exported from India to China. In the wake of the First Opium war, the volume of these shipments (which extended until 1915) increased dramatically.

The so-called first opium war (1838-1842), which represented an act of aggression against China was followed by the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which not only protected British imports of opium into China, it also granted extraterritorial rights to Britain and other colonial powers leading to the formation of the “Treaty Ports”.

The massive revenues of the opium trade were then used by Britain to finance its colonial conquests. Today it would be called the “laundering of drug money”.  The channeling of opium revenues was also used to finance the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank (HKSB) established by the BEIC in 1865 in the wake of the first opium war.

In 1855, Sir John Bowring on behalf of the British Foreign Office negotiated a treaty with King Mongkut (Rama IV) of Siam, entitled The Anglo-Siamese Treaty of Friendship and Commerce (April 1855) which allowed for the free and unrestricted import of opium into the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand). 

While Britain’s trade in opium with China was abolished in 1915, Britain’s drug trafficking monopoly continued until India’s Independence in 1947. Affiliate companies of the BEIC such as Jardine Matheson played an important role in the drug trade.

Of significance, in the aftermath of World War II, US financial interests took possession of the drug trade, which became extensively “dollarised”.

Racism, Narcotics and Colonialism

Historians have focussed on the Atlantic Triangular Slave Trade: slaves from Africa exported by colonial powers to the Americas, followed by commodities produced in plantations using slave labour exported back to Europe.

Britain’s colonial drug trade had a similar triangular structure. Opium produced in colonial plantations by impoverished farmers in Bengal was exported to China, the revenues of which (paid in silver coins) were used largely to finance Britain’s imperial expansion including mining in Australia and South Africa.

No compensation was paid to the victims of  the British Empire’s drug trade: The impoverished farmers of Bengal, the people of India and China.

Together with the Atlantic slave trade, colonial drug trafficking constitutes a crime against humanity.

Both the Slave Trade and Drug Trafficking were sustained by racism. In 1877, Cecil Rhodes put forth a “secret project” which consisted in integrating the British and US empires into a single “White Supremacist” Anglo-Saxon Empire:

“I contend that we are the finest race in the world …  Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings… Why should we not form a secret society… for making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire…  

Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. … It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best the most human, most honourable race the world possesses. (emphasis added)

There is continuity from the colonial style legitimate “drug war” led by the British Empire, to the present drug trafficking structures: Afghanistan under US military occupation, the Narco-State in Latin America.

Drug trafficking is a multi-trillion dollar business. The UN office  on drugs and crime) estimates the laundering of drug money and other criminal activity to be of the order of 2-5 percent of Global GDP, $800 billion to $3 trillion. Drug money is laundered through the global banking system. (the date of this estimate is not indicated)

Remember the Crack Cocaine scandal revealed in 1996 by journalist Gary Webb. Crack was sold to the African-American communities in Los Angeles.

Since 2001, the retail sale of heroin and opioids has become increasingly “weaponized” directed against sustaining racism, poverty and social inequality.

While today’s drug trade is the source of wealth and enrichment, drug addiction including the use of heroin, opioids and synthetic opioids has skyrocketed  In 2001, 1,779 Americans were killed as a result of heroin overdose. By 2016, heroin addiction resulted in 15,446 deaths. 

Those lives would have been saved had the US and its NATO allies NOT invaded and occupied Afghanistan in 2001.

Drug Related Mortality. Impacts of the Covid-19 Lockdown (March 2020)

In recent developments, resulting from the Covid-19 lockdown, mortality resulting from cocaine, heroin and opioids has increased dramatically. 

The hike starts in February 2020 (coinciding with the financial crash).

Following the mid-March 2020 lockdown, drug overdose deaths go fly high.

In May 2020 the overdose death count was in excess of 3000, i.e. a more than three fold increase in relation to the  drug overdose deaths recorded prior to the corona crisis.  

In the US, the recorded monthly drug overdose deaths in 2020 have more than tripled.

 

Graph based on CDC data, Source PBS

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***

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

You can view this program in the video below (scroll down)

While this show has principally focused on the much more talked about Ukraine during Russia’s offensive, there has been considerably less attention to the turmoil seizing the third largest country in South America.

In the past seven years, the Republic of Peru has undergone six changes in the presidency, which makes it a challenging place to govern. But the most recent, that of the ouster of President Pedro Castillo and implementing Dina Boularte to replace him caused waves of protests that still grip the country. People living in rural regions of the country were most opposed to Castillo’s removal. Protests in the Andean highlands were particularly highlighted, areas where the inital victory of Castillo, being a left-leaning teacher with Indigenous roots, was seen as historic for the impoverished and Indigenous communities. [1][2]

Abroad, there were a considerable number of countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Columbia, Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela continue to recognize Castillo and not Boularte as the democratically elected President. Brazil, Chile, the United States, and Canada meanwhile support the ousting and Boularte’s continuing to govern until 2026. This is spite of a recent poll by the Institute for Peruvian Studies which found that 80 per cent of the population of the country wants early elections.[3][4][5][6][7][8]

Researching the incident reveals more details of the context for this uprising. Peru is the second largest producer of copper in the world. The communities supplying the mineral are not getting compensation despite sky high international prices. Pedro Castillo was reluctant to impose emergency measures on protests. [9]

As well, there are indications that the ouster in December 2022 was arranged with help from beyond Peru. As Peter Koenig pointed out in a January 2023 essay:

“In the last two to three years, almost all of Latin American countries were turned to the “left” – the apparent left – which looks suspiciously like WEF / CIA-orchestrated elections or coups.” [10]

This week, on the Global Research News Hour, we present a panel discussion presented by The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute. Hosted in February, the panelists described the developments around the population, U.S. and Canadian interests. The speakers were Eliana Carlin Ronquillo, Ben Norton, author and activist Yves Engler and Professor of International Development Studies Kirsten Francescone.

See unabridged video from Canadian Foreign Policy Institute

Eliana Carlin Ronquillo is a Peruvian political scientist. As an activist she advocates for Gender equality and human rights.

Ben Norton is a journalist and analyst focused primarily on geopolitics , international political economy and US foreign policy, and based in Latin America.

Yves Engler is one of Canada’s foremost Canadian foreign policy critics and dissidents. He is the author of ten books on Canadian foreign policy including Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military (2021) and House of Cards: Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy (2020). His articles have appeared at globalresearch.ca, rabble.ca, canadiandimension.com, and on his own site yvesengler.com.

Kirsten Francescone is assistant professor in International Development Studies at Trent University and a former Latin America program coordinator at Miningwatch Canada.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

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.csmonitor.com/text_edition/World/Americas/2023/0831/Protesters-in-Peru-fight-indifference-demand-new-elections
2. https://www.radiohc.cu/en/noticias/internacionales/332802-peruvians-carry-out-mobilization-against-dina-boluartes-government
3. December 12, 2022, ‘Colombia, Argentina, Mexico and Bolivia, in favor of Castillo’, Associated Press; https://apnews.com/article/c4152daee74d1e733412ee70386c48a1 
4. January 26, 2023, ‘Peru recalls ambassador to Honduras for ‘unacceptable interference’ as diplomatic spat deepens’, Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/peru-recalls-ambassador-honduras-unacceptable-interference-diplomatic-spat-2023-01-26/
5. https://lula.com.br/manifestacao-sobre-a-posse-da-presidenta-dina-boluarte-no-peru/
6. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/7/peru-president-pedro-castillo-calls-to-dissolve-congress
7. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/peru-canada-castillo-boluarte-1.6689225
8. https://www.csmonitor.com/text_edition/World/Americas/2023/0831/Protesters-in-Peru-fight-indifference-demand-new-elections
9. Marcelo Rochabrun and Carolina Pulice (April 20, 2022),’Peru declares state of emergency to restore copper production at Cuajone mine’, Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/peru-declares-state-emergency-restore-copper-production-cuajone-mine-2022-04-20/

First published on September 10, 2016.

Prof Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research  points out, if we ever hope to derail the never-ending war on terror, we must be absolutely clear that neither Al Qaeda nor Saudi Arabia could have pulled off the attacks of that day.

“The tragic events of September 11, 2001 constitute a fundamental landmark in American history,  a decisive watershed, a breaking point. 

Millions of people have been misled regarding the causes and consequences of 9/11. 

9/11 marks the onslaught of the “Global War on Terrorism” (GWOT), used as a pretext and a justification by the US and its NATO allies to carry out a “war without borders”, a global war of conquest.  

A far-reaching overhaul of US military doctrine was launched in the wake of 9/11. 

9/11 was also a stepping stone towards the relentless repeal of civil liberties, the militarization of law enforcement and the inauguration of “Police State USA”.

Michel Chossudovsky, 22 years later, September 03, 2023

GRTV Video produced by James Corbett, Interview with Michel Chossudovsky

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*** 

Over the weekend, Democrats across the country received a text message “begging” them to sign a petition to “BAN Robert F. Kennedy from the ballot.” Signed “PTP,” the hyperlink leads recipients to the website for the Progressive Turnout Project, where a survey asks a series of politically-charged questions.

Grassroots campaigns like this are not new. However, the attempt to prevent the American people from having the choice to vote for their preferred candidate is. This continues an unprecedented string of attacks on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the First Amendment itself.

The group behind the campaign is the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee (PAC) that has been described as “the largest voter contact organization in the country.” It has a series of sub-organizations operating under different names, two of which are also engaged in the BAN RFK petition: Stop Republicans and Progressive Takeover.

We at The Kennedy Beacon were curious why this pro-Democrat PAC would be pushing for RFK Jr.’s removal from the ballot, so we followed the money.

Using the most recent publicly-available data from OpenSecrets, we discovered that the single largest donation to the PTP came from Dustin Moskovitz.

Moskovitz is most famous for co-founding Facebook alongside Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Facebook is a co-defendant in a lawsuit brought by Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense and other plaintiffs censored by the platform in collusion with the Biden administration.

Moskovitz also co-founded a project management application called Asana in 2008. Between these two massively profitable companies, Moskovitz generated so much wealth that he was identified by Forbes in 2011 as the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, even beating out Zuckerberg.

After earning his fortune in big tech, Moskovitz and his future wife, Cari Tuna, signed on to “The Giving Pledge,” committing to give away the vast majority of their money before the end of their lives. The Giving Pledge was the creation of mega-millionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, with co-signatories including Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, George Lucas, David Rockefeller, and Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the recently-collapsed FTX cryptocurrency trading platform.

To accomplish their goal, Moskovitz and Tuna embraced a philosophy of “effective altruism.” According to its proponents, effective altruists seek to direct funding towards the people and organizations most likely to accomplish a given intended outcome for the betterment of humanity and the planet —often focusing on topics such as artificial intelligence, natural disasters, and combating “misinformation/disinformation.”

With effective altruism as their anchor, Moskovitz and Tuna started the Good Ventures Foundation in 2011. The focus of their philanthropy was to include biomedical research, pandemics & bioterrorism, education, food security, foreign aid, geoengineering, global health & development, immigration, nanotechnology and treatment of animals. Good Ventures also partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to co-fund research related to infectious diseases in Africa.

In August 2014, Good Ventures partnered with a similar organization called GiveWell to launch the Open Philanthropy Project, which would recommend grants for Good Ventures to fulfill (paid for by Moskovitz).

In the years leading up to COVID-19, Moskovitz used Open Philanthropy and Good Ventures to provide significant funding toward pandemic preparedness and biosecurity. Open Philanthropy is also listed as the primary sponsor of a series of tabletop pandemic “war games,” during which world leaders practice how they might respond to various scenarios involving outbreaks of novel viruses, whether man-made or of natural origin. Some examples include Clade X (May 2018);  A Spreading Plague (February 2019); and of course, the infamous Event 201 (October 2019). 

Open Philanthropy also funded an exercise in March 2021 that was eerily accurate in its predictions of the upcoming outbreak of monkeypox, which appeared right on schedule a year later.

Each of these pandemic war games led to a set of recommendations, all of which emphasized the need to merge the public and private sectors in order to reduce regulatory barriers, combat mis/disinformation, and minimize accountability. (Kennedy provides a comprehensive summary of these war games in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci.)

As the COVID-19 crisis emerged, Open Philanthropy began providing millions of dollars to help shape America’s institutional response. In March 2020, they provided a $250,000 grant to a think tank called the Center for Global Development to support work “developing COVID-19 response guidelines and decision support tools to disseminate to local leaders,” which were “intended to help local leaders take appropriate measures to limit the spread of the virus.” 

They provided further funding for projects involving “long-haul COVID,” COVID-19 testing, coverage of COVID-19 in the media, lockdown policies, bioethics, and Pfizer’s experimental drug Paxlovid – all areas where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. argues that the Trump and Biden administrations completely failed Americans, if they were even necessary to begin with.

In our news roundup yesterday, Louis Conte highlighted an interview on The Hill: Rising, with progressive educator and activist Sabby Sabs addressing the “BAN RFK Jr.” petition. Sabs raises the point that a co-founder of Facebook was involved in another attempt to suppress Kennedy’s campaign, after that same social media platform had admitted to censoring political opposition (such as in the case of the Hunter Biden laptop story). 

“Here you have social media platforms working hand-in-hand with the Democratic Party, and this is very much a problem,” Sabs said. “I think everybody should be concerned,” Sabs continued. “Whether you support RFK Jr.’s campaign or not, who are they to tell you to kick someone off of the ballot?”

Moskovitz likely no longer holds a formal position with Facebook or its parent company, Meta, but a good chunk of his wealth appears to be from Facebook stock he still owns. Will Moskovitz’s own political and personal interests be jeopardized if Kennedy makes it to the White House? 

The Kennedy Beacon reached out to Moskovitz for comment through both Open Philanthropy and the Effective Ventures Foundation. By press time, we did not receive a response. 

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Liam Sturgess is a Vancouver-based singer/songwriter and music producer, performing professionally since 2013. During the COVID-19 era, he has worked with the Canadian Covid Care Alliance, Rounding the Earth and American Values 2024.

Featured image is from Bracing Views

Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin Laden’s interview with Ummat, a Pakistani daily, published in Karachi on September 28, 2001. It was translated into English by the BBC World Monitoring Service and made public on September 29, 2001.

The authenticity of this interview remains to be confirmed. It was available in recognized electronic news archives including the BBC. 

The interview tends to demystify the Osama bin Laden persona.

Osama bin Laden categorically denies his involvement in the 9/11 attacks.  Bin Laden’s statements in this interview are markedly different from those made in the alleged Osama video tapes.

In this interview, Osama bin Laden exhibits an understanding of US foreign policy. He expresses his views regarding the loss of life on 9/11. He focusses on CIA support to the narcotics trade.

He also makes statements as to who, in his opinion, might be the likely perpetrator of  the September 11 attacks.

This is an important text which has not been brought to the attention of Western public opinion.

We have highlighted key sections of this interview.

It is our hope that the text of this interview, published on 28 September 2001 barely a week before the onset of the war on Afghanistan, will contribute to a better understanding of the history of Al Qaeda, the role of Osama bin Laden and the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

I should be noted that on the day preceding the 9/11 attacks, Osama Bin Laden had been admitted for treatment in a Military Hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

This was confirmed by Dan Rather in a CBS News Report. 

This interview is published for informational purposes only.

GR does not in any way endorse the statements in this interview. Nor are we in a position to confirm its authenticity.

Michel  Chossudovsky, September 2, 2023

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Full text of September 2001 Pakistani paper’s “exclusive” interview with Usamah Bin-Ladin

translated from Urdu by the BBC World Monitoring Service

Karachi, 28 September 2001, pp. 1- 7.

Ummat’s introduction

Kabul: Prominent Arab mojahed holy warrior Usamah Bin-Ladin has said that he or his al-Qa’idah group has nothing to do with the 11 September suicidal attacks in Washington and New York. He said the US government should find the attackers within the country. In an exclusive interview with daily “Ummat”, he said these attacks could be the act of those who are part of the American system and are rebelling against it and working for some other system. Or, Usamah said, this could be the act of those who want to make the current century a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity. Or, the American Jews, who are opposed to President Bush ever since the Florida elections, might be the masterminds of this act. There is also a great possibility of the involvement of US intelligence agencies, which need billions of dollars worth of funds every year. He said there is a government within the government in the United States.

The secret agencies, he said, should be asked as to who are behind the attacks. Usamah said support for attack on Afghanistan was a matter of need for some Muslim countries and compulsion for others. However, he said, he was thankful to the courageous people of Pakistan who erected a bulwark before the wrong forces. He added that the Islamic world was attaching great expectations with Pakistan and, in time of need, “we will protect this bulwark by sacrificing of lives”.

Following is the interview in full detail:

Ummat: You have been accused of involvement in the attacks in New York and Washington. What do you want to say about this? If you are not involved, who might be?

Usamah [Osama bin Laden]: In the name of Allah, the most beneficent, the most merciful. Praise be to Allah, Who is the creator of the whole universe and Who made the earth as an abode for peace, for the whole mankind. Allah is the Sustainer, who sent Prophet Muhammad for our guidance. I am thankful to the Ummat Group of Publications, which gave me the opportunity to convey my viewpoint to the people, particularly the valiant and Momin true Muslim people of Pakistan who refused to believe in lie of the demon.

I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks, nor do I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people.

Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle. It is the United States, which is perpetrating every maltreatment on women, children, and common people of other faiths, particularly the followers of Islam. All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.

There is also a warning for those Muslim countries, which witnessed all these as a silent spectator. What had earlier been done to the innocent people of Iraq, Chechnya, and Bosnia?

Only one conclusion could be derived from the indifference of the United States and the West to these acts of terror and the patronage of the tyrants by these powers that America is an anti-Islamic power and it is patronizing the anti-Islamic forces. Its friendship with the Muslim countries is just a show, rather deceit. By enticing or intimidating these countries, the United States is forcing them to play a role of its choice. Put a glance all around and you will see that the slaves of the United States are either rulers or enemies of Muslims .

The US has no friends, nor does it want to keep any because the prerequisite of friendship is to come to the level of the friend or consider him at par with you. America does not want to see anyone equal to it. It expects slavery from others. Therefore, other countries are either its slaves or subordinates.

However, our case is different. We have pledged slavery to God Almighty alone and after this pledge there is no possibility to become the slave of someone else. If we do that, it will be disregardful to both our Sustainer and his fellow beings. Most of the world nations upholding their freedom are the religious ones, which are the enemies of United States, or the latter itself considers them as its enemies. Or the countries, which do not agree to become its slaves, such as China, Iran, Libya, Cuba, Syria, and the former Russia as received .

Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed.

According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US government has stated. But the Bush administration does not want the panic to spread. The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive. They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia. In the US itself, there are dozens of well-organized and well-equipped groups, which are capable of causing a large-scale destruction. Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.

Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger.

They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened. You see, the Bush administration approved a budget of 40bn dollars. Where will this huge amount go? It will be provided to the same agencies, which need huge funds and want to exert their importance.

Now they will spend the money for their expansion and for increasing their importance. I will give you an example. Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat. In the same way, whether it is President Bush or any other US president, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.

Ummat: A number of world countries have joined the call of the United States for launching an attack on Afghanistan. These also include a number of Muslim countries. Will Al-Qa’idah declare a jihad against these countries as well?

Usamah: I must say that my duty is just to awaken the Muslims; to tell them as to what is good for them and what is not. What does Islam says and what the enemies of Islam want?

Al-Qa’idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa’idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad.

We are in favour of armed jihad only against those infidel countries, which are killing innocent Muslim men, women, and children just because they are Muslims. Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan. The orders of Islamic shari’ah jurisprudence for such individuals, organizations, and countries are clear and all the scholars of the Muslim brotherhood are unanimous on them. We will do the same, which is being ordered by the Amir ol-Momenin the commander of the faithful Mola Omar and the Islamic scholars. The hearts of the people of Muslim countries are beating with the call of jihad. We are grateful to them.

Ummat: The losses caused in the attacks in New York and Washington have proved that giving an economic blow to the US is not too difficult. US experts admit that a few more such attacks can bring down the American economy. Why is al-Qa’idah not targeting their economic pillars?

Usamah: I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom. This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel. In fact, it is Israel, which is giving a blood bath to innocent Muslims and the US is not uttering a single word.

Ummat: Why is harm not caused to the enemies of Islam through other means, apart from the armed struggle? For instance, inciting the Muslims to boycott Western products, banks, shipping lines, and TV channels.

Usamah: The first thing is that Western products could only be boycotted when the Muslim fraternity is fully awakened and organized. Secondly, the Muslim companies should become self-sufficient in producing goods equal to the products of Western companies. Economic boycott of the West is not possible unless economic self-sufficiency is attained and substitute products are brought out. You see that wealth is scattered all across the Muslim world but not a single TV channel has been acquired which can preach Islamic injunctions according to modern requirements and attain an international influence. Muslim traders and philanthropists should make it a point that if the weapon of public opinion is to be used, it is to be kept in the hand. Today’s world is of public opinion and the fates of nations are determined through its pressure. Once the tools for building public opinion are obtained, everything that you asked for can be done.

Ummat: The entire propaganda about your struggle has so far been made by the Western media. But no information is being received from your sources about the network of Al-Qa’idah and its jihadi successes. Would you comment?

Usamah: In fact, the Western media is left with nothing else. It has no other theme to survive for a long time. Then we have many other things to do. The struggle for jihad and the successes are for the sake of Allah and not to annoy His bondsmen. Our silence is our real propaganda. Rejections, explanations, or corrigendum only waste your time and through them, the enemy wants you to engage in things which are not of use to you. These things are pulling you away from your cause.

The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves. Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.

Ummat: What will the impact of the freeze of al-Qa’idah accounts by the US?

Usamah: God opens up ways for those who work for Him. Freezing of accounts will not make any difference for Al-Qa’idah or other jihad groups. With the grace of Allah, al-Qa’idah has more than three such alternative financial systems, which are all separate and totally independent from each other. This system is operating under the patronage of those who love jihad. What to say of the United States, even the combined world cannot budge these people from their path.

These people are not in hundreds but in thousands and millions. Al-Qa’idah comprises of such modern educated youths who are aware of the cracks inside the Western financial system as they are aware of the lines in their hands. These are the very flaws of the Western fiscal system, which are becoming a noose for it and this system could not recuperate in spite of the passage of so many days.

Ummat: Are there other safe areas other than Afghanistan, where you can continue jihad?

Usamah: There are areas in all parts of the world where strong jihadi forces are present, from Indonesia to Algeria, from Kabul to Chechnya, from Bosnia to Sudan, and from Burma to Kashmir. Then it is not the problem of my person. I am helpless fellowman of God, constantly in the fear of my accountability before God. It is not the question of Usamah but of Islam and, in Islam too, of jihad. Thanks to God, those waging a jihad can walk today with their heads raised. Jihad was still present when there was no Usamah and it will remain as such even when Usamah is no longer there. Allah opens up ways and creates loves in the hearts of people for those who walk on the path of Allah with their lives, property, and children. Believe it, through jihad, a man gets everything he desires. And the biggest desire of a Muslim is the after life. Martyrdom is the shortest way of attaining an eternal life.

Ummat: What do you say about the Pakistan government policy on Afghanistan attack?

Usamah: We are thankful to the Momin and valiant people of Pakistan who erected a blockade in front of the wrong forces and stood in the first file of battle. Pakistan is a great hope for the Islamic brotherhood. Its people are awakened, organized, and rich in the spirit of faith. They backed Afghanistan in its war against the Soviet Union and extended every help to the mojahedin and the Afghan people. Then these are the same Pakistanis who are standing shoulder by shoulder with the Taleban. If such people emerge in just two countries, the domination of the West will diminish in a matter of days. Our hearts beat with Pakistan and, God forbid, if a difficult time comes we will protect it with our blood. Pakistan is sacred for us like a place of worship. We are the people of jihad and fighting for the defence of Pakistan is the best of all jihads to us. It does not matter for us as to who rules Pakistan. The important thing is that the spirit of jihad is alive and stronger in the hearts of the Pakistani people.

Copyright Ummat in Urdu, BBC translation in English, 2001

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Read about Osama Bin Laden in Michel Chossudovsky’s international best-seller

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America’s “War on Terrorism”

by Michel Chossudovsky

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.

 

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We commemorate September 11, 2001. 22 Years 

This incisive article by the late Dr. Elias Davidson and Craig McGee was originally published on GR in April 2018. The Legacy of Elias Davidson will live. 

Scholars who attempt to elucidate the crime perpetrated on 9/11 – who are commonly referred to as 9/11 truthers – are often criticized for relying on conjecture and speculation in support of their claims. Such criticism may at times be justified, though often made in bad faith.

There is actually no need to resort to speculative arguments that the official account of 9/11 is a fraud since there are hard facts that support this conclusion. Here are 10 such undisputed facts:

1. U.S. authorities have failed to trace, arrest, try (prosecute), and punish anyone responsible for the crime against humanity committed on 9/11.

The mass murder committed on September 11, 2001 represents, under international law, a crime against humanity. The State where it was committed – in this case the United States of America – bears the obligation to the international community to trace, arrest, try, and punish individuals responsible for that crime.

Since 2002, U.S. authorities admit they have detained a handful of persons at Guantánamo Bay who are accused of helping to orchestrate 9/11. Their identities remain in doubt; their alleged confessions were made behind closed doors; and their trial by a military court does not fulfill minimal international norms of due process.

U.S. authorities claim to have sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life imprisonment for not having warned the FBI about the preparations for 9/11, an allegation he denied. No evidence was presented that he was involved in the preparations for 9/11 or knew anything about these preparations. No evidence was presented that he even knew the alleged hijackers. U.S. authorities also claim to hold, since 2003, a man by the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed (KSM) in Guantánamo who allegedly confessed to have masterminded 9/11 and more than 30 other terrorist operations. He also allegedly confessed to having planned an attack on a bank in Washington State that did not exist until after he was already in Guantánamo. The man, whose identity remains murky and whose connection to 9/11 is limited to what he said in his ludicrous confession, has not been prosecuted, let alone sentenced. No one seriously expects him to be ever brought to trial, let alone a trial fulfilling international norms.

2. When announcing to the United Nations their decision to attack Afghanistan, U.S. authorities failed to provide evidence that the crime of 9/11 was in any way connected to Afghanistan. In fact, such evidence has still not been produced.

See the letter from U.S. Representative John Negroponte to the President of the UN Security Council, October 7, 2001 (mirrored here).

3. The United States government did not authorize an investigation of the events of 9/11 that could have fulfilled minimal international standards: The 9/11 Commission was neither independent nor impartial, and its investigation was neither thorough nor transparent.

Regarding minimal standards of investigation, see Elias Davidsson, “The Events of 11 September 2001 and the Right to the Truth.” (See this or this)

4. Despite vilifying Osama bin Laden as a terrorist leader, judicial authorities in the United States have failed to charge him in connection with 9/11. He was not even wanted in connection with this crime.

The FBI admitted in June 2006 that it possesses no concrete evidence linking Osama bin Laden to 9/11. (See: Ed Haas, “FBI says, it has no ‘hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11,” Information Clearing House, June 18, 2006, mirrored here)

5. Authorities in the United States have failed to produce clear and convincing evidence that the 19 persons named by the FBI as 9/11 hijackers even boarded aircraft that they are alleged to have subsequently hijacked. 

To be precise: U.S. authorities have failed to produce authenticated passenger lists that would include the names of the alleged hijackers; witnesses who saw these alleged hijackers in the airports or boarding the aircraft; authenticated security-camera videos proving their presence in the airports of departure; and DNA identification of these individuals’ bodily remains (see detailed analysis in Elias Davidsson, Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11 [Algora Publishers, New York, 2013], Chapter 2).

6. U.S. authorities have failed to produce clear and convincing evidence that passenger airliners crashed at the known landmarks on 9/11.

The FBI admitted in a letter to the Nevada District U.S. Court on March 14, 2008, signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick A. Rose, that records detailing the collection and positive identification of the wreckage of the crashed aircraft do not exist (Letter mirrored here). He thus admitted that the FBI failed to formally identify the wreckage found at the various crash sites as belonging to the allegedly hijacked aircraft. It is, therefore, not established that the allegedly hijacked aircraft crashed at these locations.

7. U.S. authorities have failed to explain why more than 1,100 persons, who were present at the World Trade Center on 9/11, vanished into thin air.

Vast parts of the Twin Towers were literally pulverized as can be seen from video recordings, photos, and testimonies. Of more than 1,100 missing persons, not a single tooth, nail, or bone has been found as of 2011 (See, inter alia, Anemona Hartocollis, “Connecting with lost loved ones, if only by the tips of fingers,” The New York Times, September 11, 2011 [mirrored here]). U.S. authorities have never explained what could have caused more than 1,100 persons to vanish without leaving a trace. They bear the obligation, under human rights law, to determine the reason for such disappearances.

8. U.S. authorities compensated families of 9/11 victims that agreed to waive their right to further court action. The compensation exceeded by at least seven times what was paid to the families of firefighters who died in rescue operations on 9/11.

The families of 9/11 victims received from the U.S. Compensation Fund, established in October 2001, an average of $2.1 million if they agreed to waive their right to engage in civil proceedings (see, inter alia, Brian Bernbaum, “9/11 Fund Chief Faults Payments,” CBS News, 4.9.2003 [mirrored here]). As of 2013, spouses of firefighters who die in line of duty can obtain $333,605 under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits (PSOB) Act (42 U.S.C. 3796). The figure for 2001 was undoubtedly lower. The 95 families, who did not apply to the Compensation Fund and preferred to let courts determine their rights, obtained an average of $5.5 million in out-of-court settlements (see, Ashby Jones, “The 9/11 Victim Settlements: A Chat with Skadden’s Sheila Birnbaum,” The Wall Street Journal, 13.3.2009 [mirrored here]).

9. U.S. authorities have failed to explain the effect of numerous military drills conducted on the morning of 9/11 – including the simulation of aircraft hijackings – on the commission of the mass murder.

Military drills caused confusion and surprised military and civilian personnel responsible for air traffic, as reported in U.S. media. For example, NORAD Major General Larry Arnold said that, “By the end of the day, we had twenty-one aircraft identified as possible hijackings.” (See, Eric Hehs, “Conversation with Major General Larry Arnold,” One Magazine, January 2002 [mirrored here]). Colonel Robert Marr, NEADS battle commander, said he had been told that across the nation there were “29 different reports of hijackings.” (See, Robert A. Baker, “Commander of 9/11 Air Defenses Retires,” Newhouse News Service, March 31, 2005 [mirrored here]). U.S. authorities failed to explain how these drills affected the commission of the crime, including the apparent failure to intercept hijacked aircraft.

10. U.S. authorities promoted numerous officials who, according to the official account on 9/11, had failed to carry out their duties with regard to 9/11. Not a single person has been held accountable anywhere in government for what went wrong on or prior to 9/11.

Here are few examples: Richard Myers, in charge of the Pentagon on 9/11, was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on October 1, 2001; Ralph Eberhart, in charge of NORAD on 9/11, was promoted to head the new “Northern Command” a year after 9/11; Captain Charles J. Leidig, acting NMCC Director on 9/11, was promoted in 2004 to the rank of admiral; Brigadier General Montague Winfield, who on 9/11 was in charge of the National Military Command Center (NMCC), was promoted in May 2003 to the two-star rank of major general; Marion (Spike) Bowman, who blocked FBI investigations into the alleged hijackers before 9/11, was given an award for “exceptional performance” after a 9/11 Congressional Inquiry report claimed that his unit gave Minneapolis FBI agents “inexcusably confused and inaccurate information” that was “patently false.”

Conclusion

The above facts are sufficient to reject the official account of 9/11 and consider the administration of President George W. Bush as the main suspect for this crime against humanity. While the facts are not sufficient for leveling criminal charges against specific individuals, they permit general conclusions to be drawn regarding the dangerous nature of the U.S. regime and the complicity of the political class, mainstream media, academia, and the justice system of NATO member states in covering-up the crime of 9/11 and shielding those responsible for that crime.

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This article was originally published on Truth and Shadows.

First published on August 7 2020

The United Nations (U.N.) announced in August 2020 that the electric car boom will result in a number of devastating ecological side effects for the planet.

While the shift to electric cars reflects ongoing efforts to reduce the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, the UN warns that the raw materials used to produce electric car batteries are highly concentrated in a small number of countries and their extraction and refinement pose a serious threat to the environment.

The U.N. trade body, UNCTAD, has issued a new report breaking down some of the unintended negative consequences of the shift, which include ecological degradation as well as human rights abuses.

The report notes that metals such as cobalt, lithium, manganese, copper, and minerals like graphite “play a significant role in energy-related technologies such as rechargeable batteries that are used in a variety of applications ranging from electronics to electric vehicles as well as in renewable energies such as nuclear, wind, and solar power.”

Several of these raw materials are quite rare and have few or no substitutes and they come from specific areas of the globe. More than half the world’s supply of lithium, for example, a key component of lithium-ion batteries, comes from beneath the salt flats in the Andean region of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina.

The production of these raw materials “is often associated with undesirable environmental footprints, poor human rights and worker protection,” the report asserts.

In Chile, for instance, “lithium mining uses nearly 65% of the water in the country’s Salar de Atamaca region, one of the driest desert areas in the world, to pump out brines from drilled wells,” the U.N. notes, because nearly 2 million liters of water are needed to produce a ton of lithium.

This has “contributed to environment degradation, landscape damage and soil contamination, groundwater depletion and pollution,” the U.N. states.

In its report, UNCTAD estimates that some 23 million electric cars will be sold over the coming decade and as a result the market for rechargeable car batteries is forecast to rise by over 700 percent in just four years, from its current level of $7 billion to $58 billion by 2024.

Along with lithium, another key component of electric car batteries is cobalt, and two-thirds of all cobalt production happens in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), The U.N. observes.

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that about 20 percent of cobalt supplied from the DRC comes from artisanal mines, “where human rights abuses have been reported, and up to 40,000 children work in extremely dangerous conditions in the mines for meagre income.”

The U.N. also fears that cobalt-copper mines in DRC may contain sulphur minerals that contribute to Acid mine drainage (AMD), a phenomenon that causes pollution or contamination of surface water, thereby increasing the toxicity of rivers and drinking water.

“The environmental impacts of graphite mining are very similar to those associated with cobalt mining,” the report adds.

Last December, a prominent professor at the Copenhagen Business School said that attempts to rein in global warming by driving electric cars were nothing other than “pointless virtue signaling.”

“It is absurd for middle-class citizens in advanced economies to tell themselves that eating less steak or commuting in a Toyota TM-0.18% Prius will rein in rising temperatures,” stated Bjørn Lomborg, the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist.

“Although I am a vegetarian and don’t own a car, I believe we need to be honest about what such choices can achieve,” Lomborg declared.

Although electric cars are “branded as environmentally friendly,” the fact is that “generating the electricity they require almost always involves burning fossil fuels,” he stated.

“Moreover, producing energy-intensive batteries for these cars invariably generates significant CO2 emissions,” he wrote, so that electric cars have a huge carbon deficit when they hit the road, and “will start saving emissions only after being driven 60,000 kilometers.”

Even if the percentage of electric cars in the world were to rise to 15 times their present numbers, electric cars would only reduce global CO2 emissions by 1 percent, he declared, citing a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

For his part, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said that in 2018, electric cars saved 40 million tons of CO2 worldwide, sufficient to reduce global temperatures by a mere 0.000018°C — or a little more than a hundred-thousandth of a degree Celsius — by the end of the century.

“If you think you can save the climate with electric cars, you’re completely wrong,” Birol said.

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September 11, 1973.

We are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Military Coup.

Important testimony of how political prisoners were killed.

Henry Kissinger was behind the coup. “Intimo amigo del General Pinochet”

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Every dawn, during my daily walk to the foothills of the Andes, I pass by the Tobalaba Aerodrome, a facility that caters to a wide variety of private aircraft. For most residents of La Reina, the Santiago neighborhood where my wife and I have a home, this is an attractive and benign open space in a congested city, a guarantee that no skyscraper will blur the skyline. For me, in a year marking the 50th anniversary of the coup against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, that airport arouses less affable feelings.

It was from there, just weeks after the military uprising of September 11, 1973, that a huge Puma helicopter took off, crammed with Chilean army officers on a mission entrusted to them by General Augusto Pinochet to ensure that Allende supporters who had already been given light sentences by local military courts in the south and north of the country were summarily executed. Among the 97 political prisoners killed by what came to be called the Caravan of Death was a friend of mine, a young communist named Carlos Berger.

Image: Carlos Berger with his wife Carmen Hertz.

Carlos and I had been colleagues at the state publishing house, Quimantú, which published popular magazines and millions of books at very low prices. I remember him as handsome and serious and sometimes mischievous, but above all I remember his intense commitment to the peaceful revolution that Allende had inaugurated when he won the presidency in 1970. The last time we met, Carlos told me, with overflowing emotion, that his wife, Carmen Hertz, had given birth to a son, Germán, who would grow up, he added, in a country without exploitation, without injustice. Carlos himself was leaving Santiago to run a radio station in Calama, known as the Mining Capital of Chile. He could not  have known that this move to the north of the country would mean, at the age of thirty, his death sentence.

Despite not having offered violent resistance to the coup, he was sentenced to 70 days in prison, a sentence that had been commuted to a fine.

He was then about to be released when the Caravan of Death arrived in that Puma helicopter, with a lethal result: on October 19, Carlos and 25 other political prisoners were loaded, hooded, onto a truck that was lost in the wastelands of the Atacama Desert, where their guts were eviscerated with corvos before they were shot at point-blank range. The mutilated corpses were buried under the anonymous sands of that place, the driest in the world.

Years later, this tragedy would claim new victims. Carlos’ parents, Julio and Dora, ended up committing suicide. As for Carlos’ remains, his widow Carmen had to wait until 2014 for a mock funeral to be held, when forensic scientists identified some small human fragments found in a dune as belonging to the missing husband.

Last year, Carmen, a well-known human rights activist and now a member of Congress, co-sponsored a bill that funds the construction in front of the entrance to the Aerodrome of a Memorial commemorating the human rights violated there.

Because it was not only the site from which the Caravan of Death departed. Other Puma helicopters were later used to dispose of political prisoners who had died under torture by throwing them into the sea.

The military tied railroad tracks to the dead, so that they would sink into the Pacific Ocean and their mangled bodies would not be able to accuse the murderers. A cruel and effective way for them to remain eternally “disappeared”. And that is why the monument, austere and imposing, will exhibit in front of the Aerodrome a row of raised branches, crying to the sky against the flights of death. It is expected that the law, already approved in the Lower House (88 in favor, 49 against, 15 abstentions – let’s note these numbers), will soon be ratified by the Senate.

One more way to remember what happened and that it should never happen again.

Not everyone, however, is happy with the Memorial. A group of La Reina residents has started a campaign to prevent the monument from being erected. They are filled with fear, they say, that the site will become a point of conflict and unrest. Social networks warn that it will foment violence, that mobs will come to paint graffiti on the walls, to build barricades, to loot stores. Although there is not a single instance of such violence occurring in front of the many human rights memorials scattered across the country, that has not deterred those who suggest that it would be better to move the monument to another part of the city. Out of sight, out of mind?

Image: Proposed monument for the disappearances

It would not even be worth mentioning such protests in a lonely Chilean neighborhood if it were not representative of something more serious. This attempt to inflame citizens against a memorial for human rights victims is one more skirmish in a larger and more protracted national battle for memory that has been intensifying as the 50th anniversary of the coup approaches. The question Chileans will inevitably have to answer throughout this year is how do we want to remember that day in September 1973 when the Presidential Palace was bombed and Salvador Allende died along with the democracy he defended?

There are two main answers to that question.

The government of President Gabriel Boric, a charismatic thirty-seven year old former student leader and ardent admirer of Allende, is organizing a series of activities and commemorations that will culminate on September 11.

The emphasis will be on Memory and Human Rights as a way of guaranteeing a future where a dictatorship is inconceivable, especially for the new generations who did not live through the endless nightmare of terror suffered by their elders. The key, therefore, is to educate young people who are increasingly skeptical that democracy can respond to their frustrations and anxieties.

The stakes are high.

Like so many countries around the world, Chile is in crisis. Rampant crime, waves of immigrants, economic insecurity, drought and forest fires, political polarization, quasi-environmental hatred, are fertile ground for the rise of authoritarian populism, nurtured by a nostalgia for the days when a strongman ruled Chile and there was order in the streets.

To inoculate against new forms of tyranny, it is not enough to remember the atrocities of the past, the railroad tracks that burden us, but it is equally necessary to encourage anew the popular belief that a different and better Chile is possible, the kind of dream that fueled Allende’s peaceful and democratic revolution.

It is also a way for Boric, whose government has yet to recover from the resounding defeat of a progressive Constitution last year, to change the narrative and retake the initiative, reminding people how many excessively wealthy politicians and businessmen who call themselves democratic benefited from Pinochet’s seventeen years of dictatorship, how many were and remain his accomplices.

Remembering that Pinochet’s roots -say, that original sin- does not suit the right wing that is viciously opposing the leftist Boric. Its leaders prefer the 50th anniversary to be an occasion to leave the past behind -a denialist attitude whose persistence and obstinacy is proved by that 42% of the representatives of the Congress who chose not to approve the Aerodrome memorial. If the past is to be remembered, they say, what must be kept in mind is their trauma, the mistakes and disorder of the Allende years, how the desire for a socialist society led to insurmountable divisions that forced the Armed Forces to act. The “excesses” (the assassination of Carlos Berger?) are to be deplored, but Chile needs to learn once again the basic lesson of the coup: If we persist in demanding too much change, the result will be disastrous. And virulent. Boric must be careful not to try to push for overly radical reforms.

These two visions will clash throughout this year, as they have done for the last five decades.

In Chile, as in the rest of the world, the way a nation understands its most traumatic past is constantly determining its deepest identity, the kind of future it imagines for its children.

I cannot predict how my country will emerge from this search for an elusive unity, a consensus about who we really are.

I hope that, in that process, the dead will not be absent.

I hope that Chileans can hear the voice of Carlos Berger demanding, from the dark night he inhabits, that we remember him and, with that gentle and fierce memory, we can create a world where no child like Germán grows up without a father, no father like Julio and no mother like Dora dies of pain and despair, no widow like Carmen has to remember him through a monument.

It would be the best recognition and legacy of Carlos and so many other brothers and sisters whose lives were cut short after the coup: may his memory be a spur to unite us and not to separate us, may we be able, as a nation, to defeat the fear, hatred and blindness that prevent us from doing justice to the living and the dead.

*

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Ariel Dorfman was cultural advisor to Salvador Allende and is the author of “Words from the Other Side of Death” and, forthcoming, the novel, “Allende and the Suicide Museum.”

All images in this article are from Resumen

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Twenty-two years ago: 9/11 was  a criminal undertaking based on countless lies and fabrications. On September 11, 20233, we commemorate 9/11.

In the following weeks, Global Research will be publishing several important articles pertaining to 9/11 and its immediate aftermath, leading to the illegal US-NATO bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.

Below is the carefully documented and incisive video by James Corbett, initially released in 2011 

***

Transcript

On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man [Osama bin Laden] on dialysis in a hospital halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.

These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.

Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.

The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish. It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed.

It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening.

It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors. It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“. Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.

The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.

The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.

NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7’s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.

The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.

This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).

Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away.

Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away.

Then he lived in Abottabad [Pakistan] for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet.

Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members [SEAL] died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

This is the story of 9/11, brought to you by the media which told you the hard truths about JFK and incubator babies and mobile production facilities and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.

This has been a public service announcement by: the Friends of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, SEC, MSM, White House, NIST, and the 9/11 Commission. Because Ignorance is Strength.

*

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First published on May 21, 2023

***

‘Net Zero’, what does it mean? Does anyone know? Who dreamt-up this slogan?

Put together, these two words don’t actually have any meaning. ‘Net’ is usually used as a shortened form of ‘netto’ (netto/brutto) a term used in accountancy describing a sum of money remaining after tax or expenses have been deducted.

So what could ‘Net Zero’ possibly mean? That nothing will be left once zero carbon has been achieved?

The term seems to ape, no doubt for good reason, the one chosen to describe the blackened hole in the ground left after the devastation of 9/11: Ground Zero.

Look at it this way, by reducing carbon dioxide to nil (zero carbon) all plant life dependent for its growth on this natural gas, will die. By extension, all humans and animals dependent upon the oxygen that plants produce, via the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen, will also die. Basic biology reveals that is indeed the case. 

So what the inventors of ‘Net Zero’ seem to be suggesting is that the objective is to end all plant, animal and human life by 2050. Or have I got something wrong? Have ‘they’ quietly dropped CO2 as the arch baddie of the past three decades – and are now trying to make simple ‘carbon’ the source of all our woes?

This is, after all, what they did by surreptitiously shifting ‘global warming’ into ‘climate change’ a couple of decades ago. A classic slight of hand by the cabal spin doctors.

Let’s scrutinise the history a little more thoroughly. The World Economic Foundation (WEF) is acting as lead player of the project known as ‘Stop Global Warming’. A project which states that a deadly form of anthropogenic ‘warming’ is being caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that the stated need is therefore to completely dispense with all fossil fuels by 2050.

But doing a little elementary research reveals that what one sees coming out of factory chimneys, in ubiquitous media photographs, is not CO2. It is mostly water vapour, plus nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, methane, water vapour and various forms of particulates, with noxious CO2 forming less than 5% of these emissions. 

This corroborates with scientific tests done on the composition of the upper atmosphere, which find that man made CO2 makes a contribution of just 0.04% above natural atmospheric CO2. 

So what the perpetrators of ‘net zero’ are doing is to take an essential component of nature, without which neither we nor plant life could survive, and make it into a demon, responsible for causing catastrophic changes to the world’s climate.

This is, of course, an outrageous conclusion to come to; but should its outrageousness cancel out its logic? Could it be that all two thousand ‘scientists’ employed by the International Commission on Climate Change’ (IPCC) failed to get a pass in biology at secondary school – and then went on to become Emeritus experts on climate change?

The fact is that ‘Net Zero’ is telling us that ‘we the people’ are to be wiped-out, along with the flora and fauna of the planet; while the elite cabal running this deception racket have created their own unique CO2 subterranean storage ecosphere, of thriving plants, pure water and all the nutrients needed to carry on pretty much as before. Maybe better?

If psychopaths form a majority of the cabal that runs this planet – and that looks probable – then announcing that The Great Reset/Green New Deal has adopted ‘Net Zero’ by 2050, has a certain logic. Because to a psychopath, sentient people are strange unreal beings, their emotions and feelings being incomprehensible and alien.

Therefore,  looked at from the perspective of the psychopath, among the first thing to be done to ‘save the planet’ would be to find a good reason to get rid of the anthropogenic (human) causal agent behind the ‘destruction of the planet’ wouldn’t it?

But in the meantime, Mr Schwab and his aspiring team of henchmen want us ‘to be happy’, and have therefore found it helpful to remove all our private property and wealth and keep it for themselves – once the depopulation process is well enough advanced and provided there is little or no resistance to their ploy forthcoming.

Our ‘happiness’ will of course, be due to the fact that Herr Schwab and his main advisor Noah Yuval Harari, have studied the bible, and taken note of the words of Jesus Christ “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

So they will kindly do the removal of the riches job for us, liberating us from our private wealth and therefore releasing us from the material ties that prevent us attaining a higher state of consciousness.

One can see by uncle Klause’s patronising attitude to his hand picked dictators that he is proud of having found such a convenient way of opening heaven’s gates for humanity and thereby simultaneously ‘saving the world from global warming’.

Killing two birds with one stone is a sought after achievement for the soulless psychopath.

Achieving ‘Net Zero’ must be done with a smile. After all, making people believe that ‘to save the world’ they must first of all abandon their accustomed diets and instead chew on greatly superior laboratory raised and processed chicken thighs, garnished with a sprinkling of ground insect bodies and a special side dish of genetically modified hydroponically raised tomatoes – may not be easy. So a big American style smile should do the trick.

However a frown may be necessary to convey the seriousness of the fact that if cows are allowed to remain part of the farm animal kingdom, their survival will depend upon wearing Covid style ‘methane blocking’ masks recently awarded a special environmental prize by King Charles 111 for their contribution to slowing global warming.

But ‘a smile’ may once again be necessary to convey the fact that farmers who tend the fields are to be replaced by armies of robots, leaving the human element to be ‘cared for’ by 5/6G powered Smart Cities. Places in which every need will be catered for, by an all seeing all doing digitalised electro magnetic grid known as the ‘internet of things’. An electro magnetically charged version of Big Brother which will monitor human activities 24’7 and no doubt administer a sharp shock on anyone who steps out of line.

All this, you understand, is just the precursor for we ‘non psychopaths’ to be upgraded into chipped and cloned cyborgs, known as Transhumans.

Selling this one may not be so difficult, as the sales slogan will be “Let us do your thinking for you.” And since a rather significant proportion of mankind seems largely incapable of meaningful thought, it may be quite easy to sell them the added convenience of letting a piece of tech take over what’s left of the onerous task of having to activate one’s brain cells.

By 2050 these Transhumans will be needed as servants in the psychopaths’ underground palaces. The psychos having drained the planet of oxygen and having already killed-off a large percentage of humans via weaponised vaccines and a plethora of special laboratory designed diseases.

Not a pretty tale to tell, I’m afraid. But can anyone categorically tell me I’ve got it all wrong? That it is not the elite cabal dream goal to have a clinically sterilized and ‘purified planet’ by 2050 – in what amounts to a kind of ‘eugenics of man and nature’?

Is this the image that Net Zero is supposed to conjure-up?  To sufficiently incite us to give-up our lives for whatever it is supposed to stand for? Ground Zero mark 2?

There are demons on the loose. They thrive on chaos and fear. They muddle-up greenhouse gases, methane, carbon and whatever other elements of nature they can sell as speeding-up the arrival of  Armageddon. It’s a sort of game – in which, at any time, any one factor can be pointed-up as the evil agent of planetary destruction.

They get their greatest kicks form subverting the trajectory of human life into becoming the reverse of what evolution intends. They like to distort language and the meaning of words so as to create a twisted version of reality.

Thus, ‘Net Zero’ is a diabolical agenda sold as a saviour formula.

But once we know this, we are more than half way towards defeating it. Awareness is the crucial first step of our collective liberation.

*

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE https://hardwickalliance.org/  Julian’s latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Daily Sceptic

Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. 

The evidence confirms that there is an insidious and carefully designed project formulated by the upper echelons of the financial establishment.

According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s analysis of the history, estimates and underling scientific concepts, the so-called pandemic is “A Pack of Lies”.

VIDEO

click lower right hand corner to access vimeo / full screen

This video was initially published by Vimeo more than a year ago, prior to launching of the vaccine.

It was taken down on March 5, 2022 as an act of censorship directed against Global Research.

It was reposted on Bitchute. (there is a formatting problem on the Bitchute version)

To view the video on Bitchute and/or enter a comment, click the link to Bitchute

Please Forward

The Video is produced by Ariel Rodriguez, Global Research

Followup Reading 

For an in-depth analysis of the Corona Crisis crisis see Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book (Ten Chapters) entitled:

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

His analysis on WHO’s Mea Culpa:

The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific

***

About the Author

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),  UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, John Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)

He is the author of 13 books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005),  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015).

He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than twenty languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected]

See Michel Chossudovsky, Biographical Note

Michel Chossudovsky’s Articles on Global Research

This article was first published on May, 5, 2011

The alleged killing of Osama bin Laden, which fittingly occurred in his “mansion” within 1,000 yards of a Pakistani military training academy, could signal the winding down of the biggest psychological warfare operation ever prosecuted by the global oligarchy. 

What follows is a three-part investigation of 911 excerpted from my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network.

The Patsies

In the wake of the 911 terror attacks, Americans everywhere recited the collective mantra, “Things will never be the same”.  Actually things had changed very little.

Fifteen of the nineteen alleged hijackers were born in Saudi Arabia, where the House of Saud dictatorship has financed Muslim Brotherhood modern-day Assassins and CIA covert operations since its inception for the benefit of the Eight Families banking cartel and their Four Horsemen – whose ARAMCO oilfields are protected via US military occupation of the Kingdom.

The Assassins this time were members of al Qaeda, the cadre of former Afghan mujahadeen fighters that the CIA trained, then used to carry out proxy wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Indian Kashmir, East Turkistan Province in China, Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Somalia, Algeria and Uzbekistan.  The CIA brought al Qaeda spiritual leader and Anwar Sadat assassin Sheik Abdul Rahman to the US to recruit Islamic fundamentalists willing to fight in these CIA wars. [1]

Al Qaeda was headed by Osama bin Laden, who built the CIA’s mujahadeen training camps in Afghanistan.  Bin Laden was House of Saud point man in recruiting Arab fighters for CIA shenanigans in Central Asia and the Balkans.  Bin Laden’s brother Salem was a business partner and good friend of James Bath.  His father Mohammed provided seed money for Bath’s good friend George W. Bush’s Arbusto Energy.  The bin Laden family fortune was managed by Carlyle Group principal George Bush Sr.

According to a PBS spokeswomen, within three days of 911 both Vice-President Dick Cheney and Queen Elizabeth II called PBS to request copies of two video documentaries the station had done – one on bin Laden and the other on Islam. 

Since US intelligence knew all it needed to know of their foot soldier bin Laden, Cheney and Her Majesty were more concerned with what the US public had already been told of the Saudi paymaster so they could factor this into their forthcoming public relations blitz.

Bin Laden’s second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri heads Egyptian Islamic Jihad – a   Muslim Brotherhood front whose assassins had help from the CIA in escaping justice in Egypt so they could go to Albania to fight with the Kosovo Liberation Army.  Al-Zawahiri’s sidekick Ali Mohammed came to the US in 1984.  He trained terrorists in Brooklyn and Jersey City on weekends and instructed US Special Forces at Fort Bragg. [2]  He was later involved in the US Embassy bombings in Africa.

According to the FBI, five of the nineteen alleged 911 hijackers were trained by the US military – three at Pensacola Naval Air Station and two at other facilities. [3]

Alleged 911 ring leader Mohammed Atta received the $100,000 he needed to plan and carry out the terror attacks from Standard Chartered accounts in gold bullion haven Dubai – where US Naval vessels often berth.  Standard Chartered was founded by the Illuminated Cecil Rhodes. The bank is one of five London “gold-fixers” and prints Hong Kong’s currency.  These accounts were controlled by 911 paymaster and UAE citizen Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi.

According to British MP Michael Meacher in an article for The Guardian, M16 recruited up to 200 British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.  Meacher says a Dehli-based foundation describes Omar Saeed Sheikh – the man who beheaded US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 – as a British agent.

Meacher says it was Sheikh who – at the behest of Pakistani ISI General Mahmood Ahmed – had al-Hawsawi wire $100,000 to Mohammed Atta before 911, a fact confirmed by Dennis Lomel, director of the FBI’s financial crimes unit. [4]  An October 11, 2001 article in The Times of India also corroborates this.

At a June 25, 2002 conference in Calgary, University of Ottawa Economics Professor Michel Chossudovsky and former Los Angeles police officer Michael Ruppert further corroborated this information based on ABC News reports. 

They added that ISI Chief Ahmad was in Washington on September 4, 2001 meeting with CIA Director George Tenet, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and the heads of two Congressional intelligence committees. [5]

The New York Times reported on February 17, 2002 that the two congressmen Ahmed met with were Joint Senate Intelligence Committee Co-Chairs, Florida Senators Bob Graham and Porter Goss.  Goss is a former CIA operative and was appointed Bush Jr. CIA Director in 2004.

When President Clinton and Defense Secretary Cohen had earlier pressed UAE officials to crack down on the al Qaeda money shuffle, a senior UAE sheik told them it was difficult to discern between criminal money and that going to fight CIA proxy wars in Bosnia and Chechnya. [6]

Ruppert cited a BBC report by Gregg Palast that details how the Bush Administration ordered curtailment of an FBI investigation of the bin Laden family.  Minneapolis FBI whistle-blower Colleen Rowley and Robert Wright – who worked for the bureau in Chicago – described the same unnamed superior who “obstructed”, “deliberately thwarted” and “intimidated” their attempts to track down US-based al Qaeda operatives.

Wright was investigating an al Qaeda money laundering ring based in Chicago that may have been plugged into the Nugan Hand/Bank of Cicero/CIA/P-2 black network based in Chicago – often disguising its dirty transactions via the freewheeling Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Chossudovsky stated his belief that 911 served the US in its quest to control both Central Asian oil supplies and the Afghan opium trade.  He told the Calgary crowd,

“Osama bin Laden is and remains to this day a CIA asset.  Even now his al Qaeda operatives are working with the Kosovo Liberation Army who are US allies and with the US-backed forces in Macedonia.  Members of al Qaeda have been protected as they moved into Kashmir where they are now fomenting conflict between India and Pakistan.”[7]

Many of the alleged hijackers were in the country on legitimate US visas.  Most were issued at the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.  According to Mike Springmann, Chief of the Visa Section at Jeddah during the late 1980’s, CIA officials ran roughshod over the visa operation, often overruling Springmann’s decisions not to issue visas to people he considered dangerous.  Often CIA officials would stamp the questionable applicants’ visas themselves in clear violation of US law. [8]

Bush blocked Secret Service investigations into US-based al-Qaeda terrorist “sleeper” cells while he continued to negotiate secretly with Afghan Taliban officials.  The last meeting, headed by Bush NSA and former Unocal official Zalmay Khalilzad, was in August 2001, just five weeks before the terror attacks. [9]  The Unocal-led consortium offered the Taliban, through current Afghan President Hamid Kharzai, $100 million to run its natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to the Indian Ocean.  The Bush team offered additional aid to the Taliban, whom they’d already given over $132 million in 2001, and told them, “You either accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”[10]

Considering the history of CIA/Four Horsemen/Eight Families treachery in the Middle East and the toll these schemes have taken on the Arab world, one could easily interpret 911 as an Arab response to US imperialism.  The trouble is that explanation defies the facts.

Mohammed Atta’s father, a prominent Cairo physician, said his son was afraid of flying and insists that he was not a trained pilot.  Atta believes his son was kidnapped and made a patsy by the Israeli Mossad.  He believes Israelis used his son and the other 18 Arabs’ identities as cover to carry out the 911 plot because this would turn Americans against the Arab world, enhance the Israeli bargaining position vis-à-vis the Palestinians and draw the US further into the Middle Eastern cauldron.  Atta’s father stated, “This was done by Mossad using American pilots.”

Lending credence to the doctor’s charges is the assertion that the official passenger flight logs for all four American and United flights that became fuel-air bombs on 911 listed no Arab passengers. [11]  The Dallas Morning News reported that in July 2001 a federal task force pulled the plug on over 500 Arab websites in the US when they raided InfoCom Corporation in Texas.  Did the Feds want to silence cyber-chat concerning the actual whereabouts of the “hijackers”?  Reports emerged from the Arab world that many of them had been sighted after 911.

According to Daniel Hopsicker who wrote, Welcome to Terrorland…, Mohamed Atta began working for the US government in Hamburg in 1992.  He was later enrolled in an elite officer training course at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL.  Hopsicker says Atta had pilot licenses from six countries and wonders why, except to establish a paper trail, he would even have needed to attend flight school. [12]

Atta spoke Hebrew, snorted coke and lived with a stripper.  He met with various German and Swiss nationals just prior to 911 and was part of an email discussion on the Middle East that included numerous employees of US defense contractors.  Atta and up to seven other 911 hijackers had received flight training at US military facilities.

Most interestingly, Atta was part of an elite international exchange program run by the American/German Congress-Bundestag Program – an organization with close ties to both David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger.  The group funded Atta trips to Istanbul, Cairo and Damascus; where he played the role of Islamic fundamentalist. [13]

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) wrote in his 2005 book that two weeks after 911 he presented a chart to the Bush Administration showing that Atta and other hijackers were being monitored as part of the Pentagon’s Able Danger program.  In September 2006 the Pentagon Inspector General put out a statement denying Atta’s existence on this chart.  An infuriated Weldon stated, “I am appalled that the DOD IG would expect the American people to actually consider this a full and thorough investigation”. [14]

The Florida flight school where the 911 hijackers trained was Huffman Aviation – co-owned by Bill Clinton chum Wally Hilliard and Rudy Dekkers, who met with Atta less than one month prior to 911.  One Huffman employee told Hopsicker, “Early on I gleaned that these guys had government protection…They were let into the country for a specific purpose.  It was a business deal.”

Huffman’s hangar at Venice Airport is used to maintain the planes of Caribe Air, a known CIA-front airline which had twenty of its planes seized by federal authorities at Mena, AR after they were found to have curried billions of dollars worth of contra cocaine.  Hopsicker says Caribe could also be tied to Enron, since many of that now-defunct company’s Caribbean tax shelters had the word “Caribe” in their name. 15]

The Beneficiaries

While much of the Arab world’s mainstream media echoed Atta’s father’s viewpoint, all US media – corporate and progressive alike – dismissed these claims as “outrageous conspiracy theories”.  Yet no one could deny that Israel gained a great deal from the 911 attacks.  Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – wanted in Belgium for war crimes – began targeting Palestinian leaders for assassination as soon as Bush took office, causing US public support for Israel to wane.

Sharon used 911 to turn the tide, labeling all Palestinians, “bin Laden terrorists”, and occupying yet more Palestinian territory.  Bush sent General Anthony Zinni to Tel Aviv as Middle East envoy to lend legitimacy to Sharon’s aggression, while refusing to deal with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.  The Samuel Huntington CFR Clash of Civilizations crowd had their pretext for a global war against Arabs and Muslims.

US defense giants reaped the 911 harvest.  In October 2001 Lockheed Martin led a consortium of corporations awarded the largest single defense contract ever – a $200 billion deal to build an F-35 joint strike fighter.  The Lockheed-led group included Northrup Grumman and several British companies including British Aerospace and Rolls Royce. [16] Amidst the post-911 flag-waving frenzy, the all-American bidder McDonnell Douglas would have seemed a more discretionary choice.

Defense stocks surged.  Raytheon stock was up 36% in the month following 911 while the rest of the stock market crashed.  The hawks and their generals pushed for huge Pentagon budget increases, some advocating a $500 billion defense budget by 2005.  In January 2002, President Bush approved a defense budget of $317 billion.  Three weeks later he increased it to $379 billion, while setting a marker for a $471 billion defense budget by 2007.

The money will line the pockets of the Eight Families banking cartel which owns the defense companies, pockets already deepened by Bush tax cut and the subsequent increase in US debt – which the international bankers make a healthy living financing.  Their point man Bush – cousin to the House of Windsor – saw his dismal approval ratings skyrocket to over 80% as a fear-driven US public rallied around the Four Horsemen President.

The Rockefeller-controlled airlines, near bankruptcy before 911, glad-handed their way to a $15 billion taxpayer bailout.  The insurance industry, railroads and travel industry soon got in line at the government trough; their phony far-right anti-government venom temporarily muted.

The CIA was a major 911 beneficiary, marching out an array of “old hands” like Richard Armitage, General Barry McCafferty and United Brands grant recipient Major Andy Messing to extol the virtues of dealing with unsavory underworld characters when gathering intelligence.  The Clinton Administration had clamped down on this common CIA practice after revelations of CIA involvement in the Guatemalan death squad murders of American citizens.  CIA torture chambers were once again open for business.

Global civil liberties were a major casualty of 911.  Within a week of the attacks Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft announced plans to unleash the CIA and FBI, expanding and combining their already sweeping powers.  With no public debate and near unanimous Congressional approval – despite the fact that not one Congress member read it – Bush gleefully signed the ironically-titled USA Patriot Act into law, suspending big chunks of the US Constitution and bringing the nation a step closer to outright martial law.  Similar legislation was passed in numerous other countries.

Section 802 of the Patriot Act designated a federal crime broadly defined as “domestic terrorism”, which cast a broad net over political dissidents and seemed especially targeted at the growing ranks of WTO/IMF protestors who have taken a frontal assault on the Eight Families.  Section 411 posed an ideological litmus test for foreigners wishing to come to the US in a direct affront to the First Amendment.  Section 215 obliterated the Fourth Amendment, allowing the FBI to obtain a court order to seize a person’s “tangible things”, including books, documents and computer disks; without suspecting that person of wrongdoing and without informing that person of the seizure until well after the fact.  Section 218 gave the FBI a green light to spy on domestic “enemies” and threatened to return the US to the dark days of J. Edgar Hoover. [17]

Later Ashcroft marched out his new TIPS program, which encouraged mailmen, utility workers and neighbors to spy on their fellow citizens.  In November 2002 the Bush Administration pushed through the new Homeland Security Act, whose name conjures memories of Hitler’s Office of Fatherland Security, which he established within one month of the staged Reichstag fire and later became the SS. [18]

One provision of the act created an Information Awareness Office, which would compile a computer database on every American.  The office emerged from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – a JASON Society affiliate – that earlier spawned both the Internet and stealth technology.  Heading the office was Admiral John Poindexter, the five-count convicted felon of Iran/Contra fame.

The Center for Public Integrity revealed an even more draconian version of the Patriot Act being drafted at Georgetown University.  Dubbed the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, the draft called for secret arrests – never before allowed in US history – and carte blanche deportation of legal immigrants.  Another provision allowed chemical companies to quit disclosing toxic emissions to the communities in which they operated.

As of February 2003 there had been over 300 rollbacks of the Freedom of Information Act. [19]  In 2004 Patriot Act II passed.  Provisions included a National ID.  In 2003 the General Accounting Office dropped its lawsuit against Vice President Cheney, which would have forced him to reveal which energy executives he met with secretly to craft the Bush Energy policy.  The right of US citizens to acquire information by which they could hold their government accountable was seriously eroded by the events of 911 and the culture of secrecy that emerged in its aftermath.

But it was the Eight Families banking cartel that had the most to gain from dialing 911.  The day of the terror attacks there was an unusually heavy volume of financial transactions being handled at the WTC.  The bulk of investment bankers killed in the WTC worked for competitors of the Big Six old money investment banks.  Cantor Fitzgerald was particularly hard hit.

Merrill Lynch had its own building nearby, as did Deutsche Bank.  Lehman Brothers moved from the WTC to a newly built headquarters just prior 911.  Only seven weeks before 911 a group of wealthy oligarch investors terminated their lease on the WTC.  Investor Larry Silverstein bought a 99-year lease on the property in July 2001, while the old money slid out from under it.  Silverstein filed a $7.2 billion insurance claim after the tragedy.  The Eight Families insurance companies involved offered only $3.6 billion.

The President’s brother, Marvin Bush, was on the board of directors at Securacom – now Stratesec – from 1993-2000.  The company provided security for the WTC, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines.  It had the security contract at Los Alamos Laboratories, when there had been a number of security breaches at that facility.  The firm is backed by a Kuwaiti-American investment firm known as KuwAm.  Current clients include the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force and Department of Justice.  They carry a Blanket Purchase Agreement with the GSA – meaning that no other company can compete for these security contracts.

According to David Icke’s bombshell book Children of the Matrix, Securacom is a subsidiary of Crown Agency- a British Crown entity which Icke says also owns the Agha Khan Foundation.  Khan is based in Pakistan and is spiritual torch-bearer for Islamism, from which groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban take their cues.  This important fact points to Buckingham Palace involvement in the prosecution of 911.

Marvin Bush also sat on the board at HCC Insurance Holdings until November 2002.  That company carried some of the insurance on the WTC.  Brother Jeb – Governor of Florida – declared a state of emergency in his state one week prior to 911.  He personally escorted the alleged hijackers’ flight school documents to Washington, DC shortly after the attacks. [20]

New York Mayor Rudolf Guliani was portrayed as the hero of 911.  Yet on November 2, 2001 Guliani ordered New York firefighters to thin their ranks at ground zero.  The day before, 200 tons of gold buried in vaults beneath the WTC belonging to Silver Triangle gold kingpin/drug money laundry Bank of Nova Scotia was recovered.  Gold prices soon began their meteoric rise.  The Bank of Nova Scotia has extensive ties to both Israel and the House of Windsor.

No one in the fawning corporate media bothered to ask Guliani where that gold went.  Nor did they ask him why.  According to Internet reports, he had ordered 6,000 gallons of fuel stored beneath WTC #7 to supply his personal bomb shelter. [21]

The explosion of this fuel may have caused WTC #7 – which was clearly not hit by an airplane – to collapse, destroying sensitive Enron-related CIA and FBI documents stored there.  The CIA ran an undercover station on the 47th floor of #7.  The 23rd and 24th floors of the WTC North Tower housed FBI covert operations and boatloads of agency documents.

Louie Cacchioli, a firefighter with Engine 47 in Harlem said he was in an elevator to the spook-occupied 24th floor of the North Tower, when he heard explosions.  His crew – the first in that building – believes bombs were set off inside the towers.

In a statement to the Albuquerque Journal shortly after the disaster, Van Romero, Vice-President for Research at the world-renowned New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology, agreed.  Romero, one of the world’s foremost demolitions experts, stated, “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.”[22]

Numerous experts agreed that jet fuel alone burns too fast to have melted the massive steel structure of the WTC on its own.  The orderly nature of the collapse of both towers also begged inquiry. The contractor awarded the $7 billion job of cleaning up the WTC rubble was eerily named Controlled Demolition – the same outfit that quickly disposed of the evidence of the Alfred T. Murrah Federal Building after the Oklahoma City bombing.

WTC scrap metal was expeditiously shipped to China.  Brigham Young physics Professor Steven Jones, who studied the WTC rubble, says he found traces of thermite explosives all over the stuff.  In September 2006, Brigham Young placed Jones on paid leave for his efforts at seeking the truth.

Was Time’s 2001 Man of the Year Rudy Guliani part of a covert operation to consolidate Crown/Eight Families control over Persian Gulf and Central Asian oil?  In February 2002 Guliani was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

Next Week: Part II: Deutsche Bank & the Carlyle Group

*

Dean Henderson is the author of Big Oil & Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families & Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics & Terror Network and The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries.  His Left Hook blog is at www.deanhenderson.wordpress.com

E:book: www.smashwords.com/17076

‎3rd Edition Paperback (466 pages): www.createspace.com/3476183

Notes

[1] “Bin Laden’s Invisible Network”. Evan Thomas. Newsweek. 10-29-01. p.42

[2] Ibid

[3] “Bush: We’re at War”. Evan Thomas an Mark Hosenball. Newsweek. 9-24-01. p.31

[4] The Asian News. 9-30-05. www.theasiannews.co.uk

[5] “US Complicity in 9-11 Attacks Widely Accepted at G6B Summit in Canada”. www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/g6b_calgary.html

[6] “Emirates Looked the Other Way While al Qaeda Funds Flowed”. Judy Pasternak and Stephen Braun. Los Angeles Times. 1-20-02

[7] Ibid

[8] “The Hand that Rules the Visa Machine Rules the World”. J. Michael Springmann. Covert Action Quarterly. Winter 2001. p.41

[9] “US Ties to Saudi Elite May be Hurtng War on Terrorism”. Jonathan Wells, Jack Meyers and Maggie Mulvihill. Boston Herald Online. 12-10-01

[10] Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth. Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. Paris. 2001

[11] Taking Aim. Vol. 7. #9

[12] “Lost in Translation”. Len Bracken. Paranoia. Issue 36. Fall 2004.

[13] “911 and Peculiar Behavior”. Al Hidell and Joan d’Arc. Paranoia. Issue 37. Winter 2005

[14] “Probe Refutes Report on Hijacker”. Josh White. Washington Post. 9-21-06

[15] “Paranotes: Flight School CIA Connection”. Al Hidell. Paranoia. Issue 32. Spring 2003

[16] CNN Headline News. 10-26-01

[17] “The USA Patriot Act”. Nancy Chang. Covert Action Quarterly. Winter 2001. p.14-17

[18] Taking Aim. Vol. 7. #10

[19] “Now with Bill Moyers”. PBS. 2-7-03

[20] “Part II of Exposing the WTC Bomb Plot”. Fintan Dunne and Kathy McMahon. [email protected]

[21] [email protected]

[22] Taking Aim. Vol. 7 #10

 

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In remembrance of Prof. Graeme MacQueen, we publish this article which is Chapter 17 of his book “The Pentagon’s B-Movie: looking closely at the September 2011 Attacks“.

Many of us are convinced that the twin towers of the World Trade Center were brought down on September 11, 2001 through controlled demolition. But the question at once arises: if this is what happened, would somebody not have noticed?

The answer is that many people did notice. There is a good deal of eyewitness evidence for the demolition of buildings 1 and 2. This paper will give a brief overview of this evidence.

Before we look at the evidence, we must first confront one of the most common objections in response to it. Eyewitness evidence, say the objectors, is “soft,” untrustworthy, and unreliable. According to such critics, it does not matter how many eyewitnesses there are to an event or who these eyewitnesses are or how their accounts relate to each other; the best plan is just to dismiss everything they say. This is an odd view. There is no support for it either in social scientific studies of eyewitness testimony or in the scholarly literature on criminal investigation (255).

Eyewitness evidence certainly has its vulnerabilities: we know that eyewitnesses can misperceive, misremember and deceive. However, as with other kinds of evidence, we have developed ways of checking to see if what the witnesses report is accurate. For example, we look for corroborating evidence – further eyewitness evidence as well as evidence of entirely different kinds.

Moreover, eyewitness evidence is highly relevant to the investigation of explosions. The National Fire Protection Association’s manual on fire and explosion investigations states clearly that in an explosion investigation, “the investigator should take into consideration all the available information, including witness statements” (256).

The present paper offers not only an overview of eyewitness evidence of explosions but also a critique of the handling of this evidence by the 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. But both of these organizations make extensive use of eyewitness evidence and obviously consider it valid and important. Therefore, disagreements with NIST and the 9/11 Commission on the legitimacy of eyewitness testimony are not at the level of principle but at the level of application.

One especially important source of eyewitness testimony is the oral histories of the Fire Department of New York (technically, World Trade Center Task Force Interviews), released in 2005 by the City of New York (257). The New York Times had taken the city to court to obtain the release of the documents, and when the material was released the newspaper hosted the oral histories in the form of a series of separate PDF files on its website.

The oral histories were collected by the World Trade Center Task Force of the FDNY after New York City fire commissioner Thomas Von Essen decided it would be important to have a record of what the members of the department experienced on that day. The Task Force interviews comprise 10-12,000 pages of statements by approximately 500 “FDNY firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics collected from early October, 2001 to late January, 2002” (258).

Professor David Ray Griffin, with the help of able researchers, was the first scholar to ferret out fascinating descriptions of explosions from this material (259). The author of the present paper published a subsequent article after reading the oral histories, “118 Witnesses: the Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers” (260).

The presentation and analysis below build on this earlier work. As the evidence is presented, three important points will emerge. First, the conviction that the Towers came down because of explosions was common on 9/11. Second, there is substantial eyewitness evidence supporting this conviction. Third, this evidence has been ignored or suppressed by both the 9/11 Commission and NIST.

The Explosion Hypothesis Was Common on 9/11 

In discussions of the events of 9/11, it is often implied that the original, obvious, and natural hypothesis concerning the destruction of the Twin Towers is some variety of gravity-driven collapse. It was obvious to everyone on 9/11, we are led to believe, that the Towers came down because the buildings simply could not withstand the plane strikes and subsequent fires and therefore gave way. Those who say the buildings came down because of explosions – who hold to an “explosion hypothesis” in the broad sense – are, according to this view, late arrivals. They are folks, it is argued, who came along after 9/11 and over-thought an initially simple situation due to a conspiratorial mind-set.

In fact, it is easy to prove that this is a falsification of history. Proponents of the explosion hypothesis were extremely common on 9/11, especially at the scene of the crime. Many people made their judgment on the basis of what they directly perceived while close to the buildings, while others accepted as a matter of course that complete and energetic pulverization of these enormous buildings must have entailed explosions. Below are five of many examples supporting these views.

1. In a video clip preserved from 9/11, ABC television reporter N. J. Burkett is seen standing close to the Twin Towers. He draws our attention to the firefighters at the scene and to the burning buildings themselves. Suddenly, the South Tower begins to come apart behind him. As the pulverized debris shoots into the air, Burkett says: “A huge explosion now, raining debris on all of us. We better get out of the way!” Mr. Burkett’s statement shows no evidence of over-thinking the situation or of a conspiratorial mindset. He certainly did not come along after 9/11: he expressed his judgment before the debris of the building had even reached the ground. Then he ran for his life. Half an hour later he would run for his life again as the North Tower came down (261).
2. In CNN’s same-day coverage of the events of 9/11, Mayor Giuliani was asked questions about explosions in the Twin Towers on two separate occasions. The second occasion is a press conference at about 2:39 p.m. A female reporter (off screen) asks the Mayor: “Do you know anything about the cause of the explosions that brought the two buildings down? Was it caused by the planes or by something else?” (262). Notice that she does not ask if there were explosions: she assumes there were. She does not ask if these explosions brought down the Towers: she assumes they did. She merely wants to know what caused the explosions – the planes or “something else.”
3. In footage known as the “Matthew Shapoff video,” acquired from NIST through a Freedom of Information Act request, there are several people (off screen) chatting while they watch the events at the World Trade Center unfold at a distance and film them with their video camera. Suddenly, through their camera we see the North Tower begin to throw pulverized debris in all directions in huge plumes as it disintegrates. After a horrified, “oh, my God!” we hear a male voice, presumably that of Shapoff, exclaim as follows: “That was a bomb that did that! That was a fuckin’ bomb that did that! There’s no goddamn way that could have happened!” (263). Again, this is a spontaneous reaction to what Shapoff was observing.
4. New York firefighter Christopher Fenyo, in a passage from the World Trade Center Task Force interviews, speaks of a debate that began among firefighters who were on the scene. The debate started after the destruction of the South Tower but before the destruction of the North Tower – in other words, between about 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. “…At that point a debate began to rage because the perception was that the building looked like it had been taken out with charges.” As with Shapoff, the statement concerns not just explosions generally but the intentional destruction of the building with explosives. That is, people were already debating a subcategory of the explosion hypothesis, the controlled demolition hypothesis, before 10:30 on the morning of 9/11.
5. The FBI’s name for its investigation of the 9/11 incidents is PENTTBOM, which stands for “Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing Investigation.” Is it possible that when this name was assigned someone in the FBI thought a bombing had taken place? (Recall that according to the current official narrative there was no bombing at any of the affected locations.) On the day of 9/11, USA Today’s foreign correspondent Jack Kelley was seen telling his TV audience that the FBI’s “working theory” at that time was that “at the same time two planes hit the building…there was a car or truck packed with explosives underneath the building, which exploded at the same time and brought both of them down” (264). Given that Kelley was later shown to have routinely fabricated stories for USA Today, his allegations about the FBI would have to be corroborated. However, the general hypothesis ascribed here to the FBI – the buildings were brought down through the use of explosives – was common on 9/11. For example, Albert Turi, FDNY Chief of Safety, told NBC’s Pat Dawson not long after the destruction of the Towers that, in Dawson’s words, “according to his [Turi’s] theory he thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building” (265).

These five examples have been offered in support of the contention that the explosion theory, even in its most robust form (deliberate destruction through explosives), was familiar to eyewitnesses on the day of 9/11. It was widely accepted as a reasonable theory. That many people held this theory does not mean it is correct, but it suggests that if this theory is to be rejected it must be rejected on the basis of evidence, not because it is regarded as late, unnatural, exotic or conspiratorial.

There is strong eyewitness evidence supporting the explosion hypothesis. 

The eyewitness evidence is strong in terms of both quality and quantity. The quality of the evidence is found in the richly detailed, mutually corroborating accounts of what was witnessed. At the same time, the quantity of evidence is impressive in both the number and variety of eyewitnesses who discuss explosions in their statements.

Quality

A conversation between Dennis Tardio and Pat Zoda about the destruction of the North Tower was captured on film by the Naudet brothers on the day of 9/11 (266).

Tardio and Zoda repeatedly affirm each other’s accounts, both with words and with hand gestures. The hand gestures are like a series of karate chops starting high and going quickly downward. The witnesses evidently want to suggest that there were many discrete, energetic events that they observed, and that these started high up and then moved rapidly down the building at regular intervals.

Zoda says, as he moves his hand: “Floor by floor, it started poppin’ out.” Tardio concurs and uses the same hand gesture: “It was as if they had detonated, detonated (Zoda: “Yeah, detonated, yeah”), you know, as if they were planted to take down a building: boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” Zoda adds: “All the way down. I was watching and running.”

These are firefighters and they are used to encountering the standard sorts of explosions that occur in building fires. But they do not talk about smoke explosions, or “boiling-liquid-expanding-vapor” (BLEVE) explosions, or any of the other expected forms of explosion. Instead, they are talking about, and acting out with dramatic gestures, something altogether different. They say that what they saw resembled a controlled demolition.

The next example is Paul Lemos, who, on 9/11, was in the vicinity of the World Trade Center to participate in the filming of a commercial. Lemos was interviewed on videotape on 9/11 near the World Trade Center, with WTC-7 still standing in the distance (267). He was filmed by a different film maker at a different location than the firefighters just described. This footage appears to be entirely independent of the Tardio/Zoda footage just discussed. However, when Lemos begins describing the demise of the North Tower, he uses the same hand gestures as Tardio and Zoda: rapid chops that start high and move at regular intervals down the building.

Here is what he says as he performs his gestures:

“All of a sudden I looked up and about twenty stories below…the fire…I saw, from the corner, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom…just like twenty straight hits, just went down and then I just saw the whole building just went ‘pshew’…and as the bombs were goin’ people just started running and I sat there and watched a few of ‘em explode and then I just turned around and I just started running for my life because at that point the World Trade Center was coming right down…”

Lemos is even bolder than Tardio and Zoda, in that he does not qualify his statement by saying “as if they had detonated.” He refers openly to “bombs” and he says he watched them “explode.” In any case, the Tardio/Zoda footage and the Lemos footage are both rich in detail and mutually corroborating. The rich detail is apparent from the transcript, and the corroboration comes not just from the language used but also the hand gestures. These men clearly perceived the same event and came away with the same idea – that explosive devices in the buildings were used to bring them down.

Lemos also tells an interesting anecdote about a conversation with a person who was introduced to him as an architect, which is relevant to the tampering with and suppression of eyewitness evidence. Lemos states, “…now, they told me afterwards it wasn’t explosions. I was talking to one of the architects that they pulled in.” It is unclear who “they” is referring to in this statement, but a reasonable supposition can be made that “they” refers to the authorities on the scene. Therefore, it appears that the authorities had an architect there on 9/11 telling people like Paul Lemos what they had and had not perceived.

Regardless of whether or not this “architect” had a sinister purpose, we can be sure of the following facts about the architect: (1) unlike Lemos, he was not himself an eyewitness (he had been “pulled in” to the scene); (2) he would not have had time to carry out a thorough canvassing of eyewitnesses; (3) he certainly did not have time to do a comprehensive review of photographs and videos of the collapse; and (4) there is little possibility he could have studied the remains of the building in any detail – either the steel or the dust. Despite all of this, he feels he can tell an eyewitness what that eyewitness did not perceive. Not only is the architect making an unwarranted judgment, his behavior is extremely irregular insofar as it makes conducting an unbiased investigation much more difficult. Homicide investigations, fire investigations, and explosion investigations have strict principles, and in each case it would be unheard of to walk onto a crime scene and taint the evidence by interfering with an eyewitness.

This discussion of the architect is also important because of its wider significance. In the months following 9/11, many eyewitnesses muted, qualified and even rejected their own initial judgments after hearing that authorities had adopted a structural failure hypothesis that had no room for explosions. The structural failure hypothesis that was most common during that period, and that was widely advanced as correct, was the “pancake” hypothesis of sequentially failing floors. The pancake hypothesis has since that time been discredited and abandoned (it was specifically rejected by NIST) but in the early days it did a fine job of weakening the confidence of eyewitnesses who thought they had perceived explosions.

Examples of firefighters revising their judgment of what they had perceived on the basis of what authorities were saying at the time are common in the World Trade Center Task Force interviews.

Dominick DeRubbio says in his description of the destruction of the South Tower: “It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion, but I guess it was just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the other.”

James Drury says in his statement about the North Tower:

“…we started to hear the second roar. That was the north tower now coming down. I should say that people in the street and myself included thought that the roar was so loud that…bombs were going off inside the building. Obviously we were later proved wrong…”

John Coyle starts his important statement about the South Tower in a very tentative way:

“The tower was—it looked to me—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.”

All of these witnesses recall their initial impressions of what they saw and thought (and in the case of Drury and Coyle the initial impressions of their friends and colleagues who were also on the scene), and then try to back away from these impressions. Thus, we have clear evidence of both how common the explosive demolition theory was on 9/11, and how it was later marginalized – not by sound science but by speculative theories given a stamp of approval by authority figures.

Returning now to the issue of corroboration, there are additional evidentiary sources that corroborate the descriptions given by Zoda, Tardio and Lemos of regular, descending energetic events. First, here are three examples of corroborating eyewitness testimony.

Ross Milanytch, an employee at nearby Chase Manhattan Bank, says of the South Tower: “It started exploding…It was about the 70th floor. And each second another floor exploded out for about eight floors, before the cloud obscured it all.”

John Bussey, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, said this of the South Tower:

“Off the phone, and collecting my thoughts for the next report, I heard metallic crashes and looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, spewing glass and metal outward. One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces.” (268)

Kenneth Rogers of the New York Fire Department said this about his experience with the South Tower:

“…we were standing there with about five companies and we were just waiting for our assignment and then there was an explosion in the south tower… A lot of guys left at that point. I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing.”

Corroboration can be even more impressive when it involves an entirely different form of evidence. Paul Lemos explicitly says that he was watching the North Tower, and, more specifically, a corner of the North Tower, when he saw the explosions. Evidence that corroborates his judgment that there were explosions occurring at a corner of the North Tower is found in high quality footage filmed during its destruction (269). This footage clearly shows a rapid sequence of forceful and focused ejections, apparently explosive, moving down the building. The size and velocity of these ejections can be measured, which means their existence and basic characteristics are not open to question.

Thus, there is a high degree of corroboration among the different eyewitness accounts, and between eyewitness evidence and other evidence.

Some who object to this compilation of eyewitness testimony say that what these witnesses experienced may not have been explosions at all. Falling bodies, crashing elevators, snapping columns and even sonic booms have all been proposed as alternative explanations. These assertions can be addressed by analyzing, quite closely, the statements of another eyewitness.

The witness is Sue Keane. She was, on 9/11, an officer in the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) where she had been for eight years. Before this she had spent 13 years in the U.S. Army, where she received training on how to respond to explosions.

Listed below are six common characteristics of explosions as described by former FBI explosives expert James Thurman in his book, Practical Bomb Scene Investigation (270). These characteristics are matched to selections from statements Sue Keane gave to the authors of the book, Women at Ground Zero (271). These statements, given within a few months of the 9/11 events, are supported by her separate handwritten submission to the Port Authority Police Department.

1. Sound 

Keane: “A couple of minutes later, it sounded like bombs going off. That’s when the explosions happened.”

2. Positive blast pressure phase

“The windows blew in…we all got thrown.” “Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me.”

3. Partial vacuum during positive blast pressure phase

“There was this incredible rush of air, and it literally sucked the breath out of my lungs.”

4. Negative blast pressure phase

“Everything went out of me with this massive wind… Stuff was just flying past. Then it stopped and got really quiet, and then everything came back at us. I could breathe at this point, but now I was sucking all that stuff in, too. It was almost like a back draft. It sounded like a tornado.”

5. Incendiary or thermal effect 

“…he threw me under the hose, which in a way felt great, because I didn’t realize until then that my skin was actually burning. I had burn marks, not like you’d have from a fire, but my face was all red, my chest was red.”

6. Fragmentation and shrapnel 

“…there was stuff coming out of my body like you wouldn’t believe. It was like shrapnel. It’s still coming out.”

The handwritten PAPD report of this brave and obviously traumatized individual, which corroborates the above account in several crucial respects, is directly available in the PAPD documents released in 2003 (272). One page of that report is reproduced as follows.

On what reasonable grounds can we exclude Sue Keane’s statements as we attempt to determine the causes of the destruction of the Twin Towers?

In summary, the eyewitness testimony of Tardio/Zoda, Lemos and Keane are examples of “quality,” meaning evidence that is rich in detail. Below, the issue of “quantity” of eyewitness evidence is considered.

Quantity 

It is difficult to formulate a complete account of eyewitnesses who describe, expressly or implicitly, explosions near the time of the destruction of the Twin Towers. Neither the FBI, nor the 9/11 Commission, nor the National Institute of Standards and Technology have published a count. I have compiled the most complete known list of witnesses to explosions at the Twin Towers. There are 156 such witness statements. The two graphs presented below summarize certain aspects of the list.

Figure 8-1: Witnesses by Profession/Agency

Of the 156 eyewitnesses, 121 are from the Fire Department of New York. Another 14 witnesses are from the Port Authority Police Department. Thirteen are reporters, most working for major television networks. Eight are listed as “other,” usually people who worked in the vicinity of the Towers.

Members of the FDNY and PAPD are typically referred to as “first responders.” So 135 out of 156 witnesses, or 87% of the total, are first responders. This is significant because these people have much more experience with explosions than most people. Moreover, their statements were given to superior officers as part of their professional duties, and the circumstances in which the statements were collected make this eyewitness evidence very strong.

The reporters also occupy an important position in the list because their accounts in most cases are directly captured on videotape. Their voice inflections and often their body language can be examined in detail. The reporters’ accounts are also important because they are in most cases given spontaneously, with little reflection, very soon— minutes or even seconds—after the event they witnessed. Spontaneous witness statements are widely viewed as credible because there is little time for internal or external filtering of what is stated. In fact, the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence typically do not admit into court statements made by witnesses outside of court, which are referred to as hearsay. However, one exception to the rule against hearsay is the “excited utterance” exception. The excited utterance exception allows hearsay to be admitted when it is “a statement relating to a startling event or condition made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement caused by the event or condition.” (Fed. Rules Evid. 803(2)). As expected, with respect to 9/11, the distorting tendencies in recollection have worked against the explosion hypothesis, for the simple reason that people progressively adjusted their stories as time went on to better accord with what they were being told by authority figures (273).

Before discussing the next graph, it is appropriate to describe how the list of explosion witnesses was compiled. Eyewitnesses are included in the list if they use, in their statement, at least one of the following terms: “explosion” (or the corresponding permutations of “to explode”), “blast,” “blow up” (or “blow out”) “bomb” (or “secondary device”), or “implosion.” There is also a category called “other CD,” which includes cases that do not use one of these terms, but that are in some respects strongly suggestive of controlled demolition. The point of this method is not merely to be able to quantify explosion reports, but to reduce the list compiler’s role in the interpretive process. Eyewitnesses are included in the list not because an outside observer interprets what they witnessed as explosions, but because the eyewitnesses themselves interpret what they witnessed as explosions.

Additionally, there are processes available to investigators that can help check the quality of the evidence. The witnesses can be closely scrutinized (names, occupations, reliability, experience); motives for deception can be looked at; quality of sources can be examined; chain of custody for all witness accounts can be verified; and, of course, corroboration through other evidence of both similar and dissimilar kinds can be confirmed. Corroboration is so massive in the present case that the other processes have received less attention.

The “explosion” category is by far the largest, with 112 eyewitnesses. However, the “bomb” category, with 32 eyewitnesses, is extremely important as well. Most of the people on this list speaking of bombs are firefighters, and it is clear from their use of the word “bomb” that they are not talking about the sort of explosion they expect to encounter in a high-rise fire.

Now, there are three common objections to the demolition argument as based on eyewitness evidence. Two have been addressed already: eyewitness evidence is “soft” and can be disregarded; and eyewitnesses may have mistakenly reported explosions when, in fact, non-explosive events (such as falling elevators) were at issue. The third objection is the only one that can be taken seriously. It is this: there are many natural forms of explosion that occur in large fires, and the mere fact that there were explosions does not mean that explosives were used. It is an unjustified leap, claim these objectors, to go from eyewitness statements about explosions to the controlled demolition hypothesis.

Figure 8-2: Witnesses by Term Used

The types of explosions that typically accompany a fire are described in detail in various publications, probably most authoritatively in the National Fire Protection Association’s Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations. There the NFPA describes four types of explosion that would have been expected to accompany the fires in the Twin Towers.

1. BLEVE (“boiling-liquid-expanding-vapor-explosion,” as with an exploding boiler)
2. Electrical explosion
3. Smoke explosion (i.e. backdraft)
4. Combustion explosion (e.g., natural gas, jet fuel vapor)

There are three characteristics of the eyewitness statements that rule out all four types of explosion. That is, these four sorts of explosions may well have occurred, but they do not account for the main explosions witnesses say they perceived. Here are the three characteristics that must be explained.

Identification 

If the explosions encountered were the type typically encountered in fires, the firefighters would be expected to recognize them as such and name them. There are very few instances where they do so. On the contrary, they clearly feel these were different types of explosion than those they were used to encountering, as evidenced by, for example, the number of references to bombs.

Power

Many eyewitnesses clearly thought they were watching explosions destroy the Twin Towers (“I looked up, and the building exploded…The whole top came off like a volcano”). But none of the common four types of fire-related explosions could accomplish this. Recall that according to NIST, the Twin Towers were essentially intact beneath the point where they were hit by the planes. While BLEVEs and combustion explosions sometimes destroy structures such as wood frame houses, there are no examples of these explosions causing the destruction of such robust steel structures as are at issue here. Also, there is no evidence that the right conditions for such explosions (for example, the necessary quantities of natural gas or jet fuel) existed in the Twin Towers at the time their dramatic destruction began.

Pattern

As described above, many eyewitnesses reported regular, rapid energetic events in sequence down the building, which cannot be explained by any of the four common types of explosion. If these patterned ejections are the result of explosions, they can only be explosions resulting from explosives.

Eyewitness Evidence Was Ignored/Suppressed by the 9/11 Commission and NIST

The discussion above gives a brief overview of the eyewitness testimony available to investigators. The last main point here is that this evidence has been ignored or suppressed by both the 9/11 Commission and NIST.

In its 585 pages, the 9/11 Commission Report contains one partial sentence referring to eyewitness reports of explosions at the time of collapse. The context is a discussion of firefighters who were on upper floors of the North Tower when the South Tower came down. The sentence fragment is as follows: “…those firefighters not standing near windows facing south had no way of knowing that the South Tower had collapsed; many surmised that a bomb had exploded…” (274). In other words, according to the 9/11 Commission, a subcategory of firefighters – those in upper floors of the North Tower with an impeded view—mistook the collapse of the South Tower for a bomb. The implication here is that the explosion witnesses, presumably few in number, made a mistake.

Of course, a careful examination of the available eyewitness testimony, as set forth above, would show that it is categorically false that all or most of the explosion witnesses were in the upper floors of the North Tower, and that only those with an impeded view thought a bomb had exploded. The truth is that witnesses were in a great variety of locations and many of them had an exceptionally clear view of the Towers.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology gave even worse treatment to the eyewitness testimony. One of NIST’s stated objectives is to “determine why and how WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapsed following the initial impacts of the aircraft” (275). But in the 295 pages of this report, there is not a single reference to eyewitnesses who perceived explosions in the Twin Towers.

Some may argue that this is not surprising because NIST deals with hard evidence, not soft evidence. NIST is concerned with things like column size, temperatures reached, and the yield strength of steel; NIST does not deal with eyewitnesses. This is a misconception. The truth is that NIST openly discussed its attention to eyewitnesses.

Very early in its investigation of the Twin Towers, NIST adopted a sophisticated method of collecting eyewitness evidence, and the results can be seen in Chapter 7 (“Reconstruction of Human Activity”) of the NIST final report. Telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews, and focus groups were all used (276). Note, for example, the following statement: “225 face-to-face interviews, averaging 2 hours each, gathered detailed, first-hand accounts and observations of the activities and events inside the buildings on the morning of September 11” (277). Although Chapter 7 is not about the destruction of the Towers, elsewhere NIST explicitly recognizes the relevance of eyewitness evidence to the understanding of how the buildings came down (278). Yet NIST somehow fails to note even one eyewitness reference to explosions or bombs, not only among its interviewees but also in the literature. It misses, for example, all of the 156 eyewitnesses used as the basis of this paper, even though it had access to all of the sources used to compile the list.

The 9/11 Commission and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, apparently following the lead of the FBI, have violated standard principles of investigation. Whether this is evidence of incompetence or of deliberate cover-up is irrelevant to my present argument. Either way, it is obvious that the official investigations carried out to this point have been grossly inadequate and that a new and thorough investigation is essential.

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Prof. Graeme MacQueen, was an author and distinguished professor of religious studies, Hamilton, Ont. Canada. He was a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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The Pentagon’s B-Movie

Looking Closely at the September 2001 Attacks

by Graeme MacQueen

rat haus reality press, 15 March 2023

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. He was a member of the organizing committee of the Toronto Hearings held on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, was a member of the international 9/11 Consensus Panel, and was co-editor of The Journal of 9/11 Studies.

Reviews: 

We have been told that the truth will set us free. Less emphasized is how the truth will stalk, haunt and disquiet us along the way. Few of us really have the tenacity to dwell for any length of time with those sorts of truths. Doing so is like dwelling in deep waters where it’s dark, cold, and the temptation to surface too quickly threatens us with a kind of spiritual bends. Fewer of us still try to give elusive truths their full account under the scrutiny of peers and public. Among these fewest of few, Graeme MacQueen stands out, making this remarkable collection of essays, spanning 15 years of epochal shifts in world affairs, one for the bookshelf of the ages. – Matthew Witt has a Ph.D. in urban studies from Portland State University and since 2001 has been Professor of Public Administration, University of La Verne, California.

As I reflect on how I managed to penetrate the multi-layered shield of propaganda concealing the crimes of 9/11, I realize that two things were most important for me. On the one hand, there was the physical evidence, such as the free fall of Building 7, and, on the other hand, there were the writings and lectures of Graeme MacQueen. Graeme MacQueen clothed the skeleton of physical evidence with a living body. His rigorous approach to evaluating available evidence is an outstanding example of the overwhelming power of science. – Ansgar Schneider, physicist and mathematician, Dr. rer. nat. Universität Göttingen, author of Stigmatisierung statt Aufklärung (Eng) and Generation 9/11(Eng).

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The first meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and his American counterpart Joe Biden turned out to be a real scandal, reports The Guardian, citing information published in the book ‘The Last Politician’ by the American journalist Franklin Foer.

During the first meeting of politicians in the summer of 2021, Zelensky behaved unprofessionally and “crammed his conversations” with Biden by giving “a long list of demands.”

In particular, the Ukrainian leader called for Ukraine’s entry into NATO but simultaneously expressed his opinion that France and Germany would leave the alliance, calling the bloc “a relic”.

“Zelensky’s frustration occluded his capacity for logic. After begging to join NATO, he began to lecture that the organisation is, in fact, a historic relic, with waning significance. He told Biden that France and Germany were going to exit NATO,” Foer wrote. “It was an absurd analysis – and a blatant contradiction. And it pissed Biden off.”

Foer also claimed that Zelensky considered Biden weak over his decision in early 2021 to waive sanctions against a Russian company building a gas pipeline to Germany, Nord Stream 2, with even the Ukrainian president’s most ardent supporters in the Biden Administration agreeing that he had crossed the line.

According to the author, Biden himself also “didn’t think much” of his Ukrainian counterpart, especially because of his friendly relations with Republican Senator Ted Cruz over the Nord Stream decision. In protest, Cruz blocked the confirmation of State Department nominees.

“Whether he understood this or not. Zelensky was complicit with this stunt. It reeked of what the administration considered amateurism. To be fair, Biden didn’t think much of his Ukrainian counterpart, either,” Foer writes.

Foer also revealed that Zelensky had long sought a meeting with former US President Donald Trump. However, he failed because he refused to help the then-US president “to dig up dirt on rivals including Biden.”

In the journalist’s words, Zelensky felt a “lingering resentments from the episode” and “at least subconsciously … seemed to blame” Biden, Trump’s successor in the Oval Office, “for the humiliation he suffered, for the political awkwardness he endured.”

Yet, two years after the failed meeting between the two presidents, Biden has proved in action that the US will support Ukraine and promised to continue doing so for “as long as it takes.” If taken literally, it would mean that the Biden Administration is prepared to arm and finance Ukraine’s war effort against Russia until the total and complete military victory of Kiev, which will obviously not happen, especially as lofty aspirations are often blunted by cold, hard reality.

Following the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the White House took advantage of the situation to send billions of dollars in military assistance to Kiev. However, a growing group of US legislators, mostly Republican, questions whether Washington can maintain the current level of support in perpetuity. While the Republican congressional leadership remains in line with the Biden administration to oppose Russia, the broader membership wants to end funding or want stricter accountability for additional aid.

According to data from a July poll by CNN, 55% of Americans believe that Congress should not authorise more funding for the conflict.

At the same time, 51% said the US has already done enough for Ukraine. In addition, even though 2022 was a year in which the Ukrainian Army far exceeded expectations thanks to the constant supply of US weapons, 2023 is proving to be much tougher and more complex for Kiev’s forces, as evidenced by the counteroffensive, which after ten weeks can best be described as a failure.

It is recalled that in the first three weeks after the Russian special military operation started, Congress approved $13 billion in emergency aid for Kiev. To date, Congress has appropriated $113 billion in aid to Ukraine in four tranches — about 60%, or $67 billion, is specifically for military assistance. This is an incredible amount of money being wasted on a war that Ukraine has no hope of winning, which is why the spending issue is coming to the fore and challenging Biden’s promise to support Kiev for “as long as it takes.”

Yet, despite the incredible amount of resources spent to prop up Ukraine, Zelensky, just like in 2021, as revealed by Foer, is ungrateful for the support and behaves in a juvenile entitled manner.

In July 2023, a high-level Pentagon official told former Pentagon official, Douglas MacKinnon, “Zelensky is acting like a spoiled, petulant child who gets everything he wants and it’s still not enough. Many in the US government and many of our citizens are growing tired of his act. I can assure you he is burning bridges in Europe as well.”

For all the consistent lambasting and abuse from Zelensky, there is still little indication that Biden will withdraw his support for Ukraine. However, it is doubtful that Biden can maintain a policy of “as long as it takes,” especially when the US election campaign will likely kick off in the winter.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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*** 

As I’ve noted in previous posts–and in my recent books Atomic Cover-up and The Beginning or the End–the U.S. after dropping the bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was confronted with a unique publicity (not to mention, moral) problem.

Reports from Japan warned of a mysterious new disease afflicting survivors of the twin blasts. Some in Japan were already dubbing it “radiation disease,” which was what Robert Oppenheimer some of our other bomb-makers privately expected (though unmentioned in the Christopher Nolan movie)–but still, officials and most in media in U.S. mocked the idea. No one from the West had yet reached either city.

Seventy-eight years ago this week, however, one of the most horrific, if revealing, conversations of the nuclear era took place.

Gen. Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, had received a telex the day before from Los Alamos, as scientists asked for information on those shocking reports from Japan. Groves responded that they were nothing but “a hoax” or “propaganda.”  The top radiation expert at Los Alamos also used the word “hoax.”

Knowing that the press would be seeking his official response, Groves called Lt. Col. Charles Rea, a doctor at Oak Ridge hospital (part of the bomb project).  According to the official transcript, Rea called the reports of death-by-radiation “propaganda,” “hookum,” and “kind of crazy” and Groves joked, “Of course, it’s crazy–a doctor like me can tell that!”

But Groves knew it wasn’t crazy and he grew agitated as he read passages from the Japanese reports.  He even asked, seriously, if there was “any difference between Japanese blood and others.”  Both men ultimately seized on the idea that everything was attributable to burns–or “good thermal burns,” as Rea put it.  “They are getting the delayed action of the burn,” he advised. Groves replied, “Of course we are getting a good dose of propaganda”–and blamed some of our scientists and our media for giving the reports any credence.

Groves even bragged, “We are not bothered a bit, excepting for—what they are trying to do is create sympathy.” Adding: “This is the kind of thing that hurts us.” (See PDF of transcript. click the Memorandum to access complete document)

But Rea hinted that he knew Groves was merely denying reality, admitting finally, “Of course, those Jap scientists over there aren’t so dumb either.”  Still, in a second conversation that day with Groves, Rea advised: “I think you had better get the anti-propagandists out.”  One of the great quotes of that time.  He also advised, “You will have to get some big-wig to put a countet-statement in the paper.” (That big-wig would end up being….Oppenheimer, again not mentioned in the Nolan movie.)

Five days later, on a visit to Oak Ridge, Groves publicly labelled the reports from Japan propaganda and added, “The atomic bomb is not an inhuman weapon.”

Groves’ top aide, Kenneth D. Nichols (featured as a key Oppenheimer antagonist in the Nolan movie), would admit in his 1987 memoirs that “we knew that there would be many deaths and injuries caused by the radiation.…”

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*** 

Two fifty-year old documents related to the coup in Chile were released by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department last week. The democratically elected, left wing government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown in 1973 by the Chilean military, with covert CIA backing. A US-supported dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet was subsequently installed.

President Richard Nixon’s daily briefs related to the coup on September 8^th as well as the 11^th – the day the Chilean military seized control of the government – were released. This declassification followed repeated calls for increased transparency by progressive members of Congress, human rights groups, and Santiago.

Nixon and then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger strongly opposed the leftist Allende government and attempted to prevent its rule. George Washington University’s National Security Archive issued a statement which says

“[the documents] contained information that went to President Nixon as a military takeover that he and [Kissinger] had encouraged for three years came to fruition.”

Nixon’s daily brief for September 8, 1973 reads

“a number of reports have been received… indicating the possibility of an early military coup… Navy men plotting to overthrow the government now claim army and air force support.”

The document – written three days before the coup – continues with a discussion of how a fascist paramilitary group “has been blocking roads and provoking clashes with the national police, adding to the tension caused by continuing strikes and opposition political moves. President Allende earlier this week said he believed the armed forces will ask for his resignation if he does not change his economic and political policies.”

On September 11^th, Nixon’s daily brief said

“Plans by navy officers to trigger military action against the Allende government are supported by some key army units… The navy is also counting on help from the air force and national police.”

After Allende’s initial refusal to resign, tanks opened fire, Air Force aircraft launched rocket attacks and bombed the presidential palace. Troops stormed in and Allende shot himself. [He was assassinated, M.C.]

“What followed [the coup] was a vicious, decades-long reign of terror and repression during which tens of thousands of Chileans were killed, tortured, or disappeared by the Pinochet regime, which continued to receive support from the CIA,” as Common Dreams’ Jake Johnson has written.

Indeed, in 2000, the CIA conceded that

“many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses… Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or [US] military.”

Peter Kornbluh, a Chile specialist for National Security Archive, said

“I’m happy that the Freedom of Information Act, together with some positive diplomacy by the Chilean government, broke a secrecy barrier that has kept us from knowing this history for 50 years.” He added that he hopes the White House will soon be “releasing all the [US records on Chile relating to the coup and its aftermath] that, inexplicably, remain secret after all this time.”

As the Los Angeles Times noted, the US government “favored Pinochet, who for most of his 17 years of rule had good economic and military ties with Washington as he repressed many of his own people.”

Throughout Latin America, during the Cold War, the CIA was involved in overthrowing governments, while fueling a series of proxy wars and civil wars, as well as waging terror campaigns against others. To this day, the US maintains a more than 60-year old embargo on Cuba as well as a notorious torture prison at Guantanamo Bay.

During recent years, the US has supported coups against governments in Venezuela and Bolivia. The US currently imposes sanctions on Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. In Venezuela, Washington’s economic war led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths between 2017 and 2018 as a result of vital medicines being deprived.

Additionally, among GOP presidential candidates, there is substantial support for a potential military invasion of Mexico to ostensibly counter drug trafficking.

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Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com and Counterpunch, as well as the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96

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*** 

Matt Roeske from CultivateElevate.com, who has been prolific in putting out Instagram posts regarding information on Nikola Tesla technology, EMF dangers, electroculture, Tartaria, and more, has now been nailing it around the horrific Lahaina attack —because that is what it was — an attack.  It becomes more apparent day by day.

Click here to view the interview

In addition to Roeske’s citizen journalism, another internet super-sleuth on TikTok recently uncovered satellite images of the Lahaina devastation that demonstrate “fingerprints” that can only be attributed to DEW.

How else could Lahaina be covered in these large, nearly identical in size, chard pinpoints on the ground?

Undoubtedly, the smoke and chaos were a cover for the advanced weaponry.

Satellite images of Lahaina attack. Note red arrows pointing to the large, nearly identical in size, chard pinpoints across surfaces.

A Tiktoker points out in a satellite image of Lahaina post-event nearly identical chard pinpoints throughout Lahaina.

Was arson involved in the Lahaina fires? Yes.

Is the power company culpable? Yes. Maui officials?

Yes….. the long list goes on.

But now we have clear, definitive evidence that DEWs played a massive role in obliterating the sacred land of Lahaina and its people.

Miles of “dust fence” below surround the crime scene of Lahaina. I saw this in other attempts to keep the public out of the area of “natural disaster” areas.

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Featured image: Lāhainā Lighthouse surrounded by August 2023 wildfire ruins

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*** 

In Episode 2 of this docuseries about his presidential campaign, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. travels to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona to investigate the immigration issue firsthand.

What he discovers is mind-boggling: a dire humanitarian crisis, a border security system crippled by politics and corruption, and people on both sides struggling to end the suffering. On his journey, Mr. Kennedy gathers ideas to help him decide how, as President, he will heal the southern divide.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:

“I witnessed this dystopian nightmare of this uncontrolled flow of desperate humanity crossing the border and converging here because of misbegotten policies by high leadership of the United States.”

“I’ve come to understand that the open border policy is just a way of funding a multi-billion dollar drug and human trafficking operation for the Mexican drug cartels. When I’m president, I will secure the border, which will end the cartels’ drug-trafficking economy, and I will build wide doors for those who wish to enter legally so that the United States can continue to be a beacon to the world.”

Click here to view the video

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As a child, I watched the men I loved in my family lift their high-powered rifles and shoot one prairie dog after another and another for fun, and then walk away. They called them “pop-guts.” On the way back to our camp, I stepped over their small blood-soaked, blown-apart bodies left in the matted grasses of their prairie dog town. And then, a single prairie dog raised her head out of a burrow and stood up and faced me. I froze in place, unable to avoid her gaze. She disappeared underground.

On that day, I made a vow, short of standing in front of my father’s rifle, that I would be their ally. I have tried to keep that vow.

I graduated from high school in 1973, the same year the Endangered Species Act was signed into law. At that time only 3,300 Utah prairie dogs remained in 37 isolated colonies. Due to political pressure from ranchers and developers, they were not listed on the original endangered species list. Prairie dogs were seen as vermin.

In 1977, I lobbied the Utah legislature as a graduate student in education from the University of Utah. I had created a Utah Prairie Dog curriculum for the Salt Lake City school district. At the State Capitol, I was met with incredulity and disdain by repre­sentatives who insisted on calling prairie dogs “varmints,” the Speaker of the House handed me a recipe for “Prairie Dog Stew.”

Finally in 1984, the Utah prairie dog was added to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Endangered Species List and remains on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

But in 2000, in a special millennial issue of The New York Times Magazine, the Utah prairie dog was featured as one of 10 species most likely to become extinct by the next millennium. Their fate was to become a ghost species. I wrote a book on prai­rie dogs. Every month I sent a picture of prairie dogs in different poses (one with a helmet and bazooka) to friends at The Utah Nature Conservancy, a playful nudge for protection. Did any of these gestures make a difference? It made a difference to me. This was my wild promise that became a vow I made to the lone Utah prairie dog who survived my family’s massacre.

What is the difference between a promise and a vow? A promise is “a specific declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen.” A vow is “a solemn promise” — a deepening gesture that one makes with one’s whole being. Both are nouns. But what if we see them as verbs, as actions that grows out of a commitment?

A promise becomes giving one’s word — “assuring someone that one will definitely do, give, or arrange something; undertake or declare that something will happen.” A vow is an open-ended commitment over time that moves into the realm of a sacred obligation — “dedicated to someone or something, especially a deity.” If one believes, as I do that the Divine resides in all living things, then there are many gods among us, in a myriad of shapes and sizes and forms.

What Wild Promise Will We Make?

Artist Allen Crawford has created A Wild Promise, an illustrated celebration of the Endangered Species Act, vibrant and instructive by featuring 80 vulnerable species. He is a visionary artist who not only cares about the survival and sustaining grace of the “more than human world” but has chosen to put his gifts to use with the intention of inspiring us to care more deeply and act more consciously on behalf of these vulnerable creatures.

Perhaps as you come to know their stories, and others like them, you will be moved to seek out an endangered or threatened species that lives close to you, learn their natural history and give them not only your attention, but your devotion. Or maybe you know of a species in your state or a particular ecosystem that needs federal protection. You can support a specific species campaign addressed to the Fish and Wildlife Service to nominate newly threatened plants and animals to be concerned for protection under the endangered species list.

The Endangered Species Act is an act of love that asks for our engagement, each in our own way with the gifts that are ours in the places we call home. Learn their names. Speak their names. Remember their names. Act.

 

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Excerpted with permission from the introduction to A Wild Promise: An Illustrated Celebration of The Endangered Species Act by Allen Crawford, published by Tin House.

Terry Tempest Williams is an American author, naturalist, and conservationist. Her work ranges from issues of ecology and wilderness preservation, to women’s health, to exploring our relationship to culture and nature.

Featured image is by James Marvin Phelps (CC BY-NC 2.0)

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I will briefly review these 4 recent studies on toxic compounds in masks: 

• Mar. 2022 – Bussan et al
• May 2022 – Ze Liu et al
• April 2023 – Ana Oliveira et al
• May 2023 – Hajoo Ryu et al

Mar. 2022 – Bussan et al – Quantification of trace elements in surgical and KN95 face masks widely used during the SARS-COVID-19 pandemic 

• heavy metals – observed detectable concentration levels for Cu, Sb and Pb
• copper (Cu) was detected in most of the surgical masks
• a children’s mask had the 2nd highest amount of Sb (antimony) detected, largest concentrations of Sb (antimony) were in KN95 masks
• inhalation of Sb (antimony) can cause pneumoconiosis, chronic bronchitis, chronic emphysema, pleural adhesions and respiratory irritation.
• a bestselling children’s mask also had lead (Pb) – inhaled and ingested lead can cause severe brain damage, reproductive system damage and death
• Zinc (Zn) was also detected – excess can cause lethargy , respiratory tract problems and neuronal death
• different masks of the same brand, in the same box, were found to contain different concentrations of metals – lack of quality control by manufacturer
• In a saline solution mimicking saliva, half of the lead (Pb) leached out – exposure could occur in people who may use contaminated masks for extensive periods of time or for children who may chew the mask material.
• human saliva contains enzymes that could also enhance metal leaching from masks = additional exposure

May 2022 – Ze Liu et al – Generation of environmental persistent free radicals (EPFRs) enhances ecotoxicological effects of the disposable face mask waste with the COVID-19 pandemic 

• 10 heavy metals identified in disposable face masks: Zn, Sr, Ti, Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Cd, Pb, Cr
• organic chemicals – plasticizers and organic solvents – benzothiazole, DTBP (2,4-di-tert-butylphenol), BPA (bisphenol-A), phthalide
• microplastics (polypropylene), microfibers
• EPFRs environmentally persistent free radicals – in vitro assay confirmed these cause cytotoxicity and oxidative stress
• Surgical masks release more heavy metals, organic chemicals, microplastics and free radicals than N95 masks after exposure to water.
• bisphenol-A exhibits toxic, endocrine, mutagenic and carcinogenic effects in living organisms (source)
• benzothiazoles are “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Health Canada)
• DTBP (2,4-di-tert-butylphenol) “exhibits potent toxicity against almost all testing organisms” (source)

April 2023 – Ana Oliveira et al – Current knowledge on the presence, biodegradation, and toxicity of discarded face masks in the environment 

• face masks are a source of organic and inorganic contaminants including micro(nano)plastics and fibers.
• surgical masks are disposable and mostly made of different plastic nanofibers, most common polypropylene (PP). They usually have 3-5 layers.
• disposable masks possess a nose wire frame made of metallic compounds (iron constituting 4.58 wt% of the total mass of the face mask, and the trace amount of zinc, calcium, titanium, and manganese)
• disposable masks also release hazardous chemical compounds often added during their manufacturing
• polar organic species related to polyamide-66 monomer and oligomers (nylon-66 synthesis), polyethylene glycol, and phthalate esters plasticizers also detected
• face masks contain metals (such as titanium dioxide – TiO₂ in quantities ranging from 100 to 2000 mg/kg) that can induce carcinogenic and mutagenic effects
• Bussan et al. reported detectable levels of copper, antimony and lead which implicated a potential for their leaching. Surgical masks had higher heavy metals than N95 masks.
• Face masks have a three-dimensional porous structure in which the additives are dispersed but not bounded, which contributes to their release into the environment
• inorganic and organic contaminants released from face masks can lead to oxidative stress – for example, phthalates were detected in several disposable face masks which exhibited potential carcinogenic effects on humans
• A considerable amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), PAHs, and alkanes were also detected on face masks
• In addition to the adverse effects of face masks’ chemicals, inhaled microplastics and microfibres can induce lung inflammation – fibers may cause localized responses such as its additives and sorbed contaminants may result in genotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, carcinogenicity and mutagenicity

May 2023 – Hajoo Ryu et al – Measuring the quantity of harmful volatile organic compounds inhaled through masks

• volatile organic compounds (VOC) are emitted from many commonly used masks
• in KF94 masks, the total VOC (TVOC) released was about 14 times more than that released by the cotton masks
• 15 types of VOCs were detected released from masks – among these 15 chemicals, DMAc and DMF are known to potentially cause liver and reproductive toxicity, and aromatic compounds such as toluene and xylene are toxic to the nervous system
• Acetonitrile is also a harmful substance that can cause inflammation to the skin and eyes, and can cause neurological disorders
• n-Hexane is a skin irritant that can cause headaches and pulmonary edema when inhaled.
• Simultaneous exposure to n-hexane and 2-butanone can cause severe neurotoxicity

My Take…

There are many toxic compounds hiding in disposable face masks that can be categorized as:

1. Heavy metals (mainly lead, antimony, copper), one study found 10 heavy metals
2. organic chemicals – plasticizers, organic solvents, volatile organic compounds
3. microplastics (polypropylene) and microfibers
4. environmentally persistent free radicals

All of these leach out of the masks, with surgical masks leaching more heavy metals and chemicals when exposed to moisture and saliva, than N95 masks.

“Face masks have a three-dimensional porous structure in which the additives are dispersed but not bounded, which contributes to their release into the environment”

Some best selling children’s masks have high levels of heavy metals like lead.

Also, if children chew on their masks, they can have additional exposure to these heavy metals and various carcinogenic chemicals.

Several of the organic chemicals released by masks cause reproductive toxicity, neurological toxicity and are carcinogenic.

Microplastics and microfibers released by masks are also toxic to humans.

Quality control of disposable masks is lacking, with different masks from the same box containing different amounts of heavy metals, for example.

Personal comment: The level of contamination of surgical masks and N95 masks is much worse than I had suspected. It might be useful for people to print out these studies and send them to anyone thinking about implementing mask mandates again, advising them that they’re engaging in criminal conduct if they proceed.

That best selling children’s masks have high contamination with heavy metals like lead, actually does not surprise me at all. Our political and healthcare leaders have repeatedly shown a strong intent to harm children throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

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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 COVID Intel

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Incumbent Gabon’s president Ali Bongo Ondimba, who has been in power for 14 years, has won a third term with 64,27%, according to official results announced on Wednesday (Aug. 30) by the electoral commission. Ali Bongo defeated his main rival Albert Ondo Ossa in a single round of voting. Elections took place last Saturday, 26 August 2023 – curiously the day of the Niger military coup.

Ali Bongo is the son of Omar Bongo, who was president of Gabon from 1967 until his death in 2009. Ali took over at the time of his father’s death. During his father’s presidency, Ali was Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Today, 31 August, General Brice Oligui Nguema, was named Gabon’s new leader. He served the Central African country’s long-time former president Omar Bongo before finally turning on his son, ousting leader Ali Bongo.

The announcement of the voting results on 30 August 2023, they say, prompted the military coup of Gabon, a resources-rich Central African country at the African West Coast. The military claimed electoral fraud – what else is new, just look at elections in the west and around the world.

Gabon is a former French colony – and new economic and monetary colony – for the last 50-plus years. See this and this.

The new Gabonese military junta rejected the election results, dissolved all state institutions, and placed Ali Bongo under house arrest. It looks like this may be the end of a 55-year Bongo-family dynasty. See this from BBC:

Unlike other West- and Central African countries, Gabon has no US military base, but easy access to military advice and training from the US largest African military base in Djibouti.

These are the recent Francophone African military uprisings:

Niger (July 2023);

Burkina Faso (January 2022),

Guinea (September 2021);

Chad (April 2021);

Mali (August 2020);

and now Gabon (30 August 2023).

At the outset, it looks like the former French colonies and present French neo-colonies have had enough of French enslavement and shameless monetary exploitation.

That may be true, though, at the same time, there is a growing US influence visible in West- and Central Africa. Maybe Madame Victoria Nuland’s – Deputy US Secretary of State – recent three visits to the region are indicative. The latest visit to Niger took place on 7 August 2023, under the pretext of the US interest to restore stability in the Region.

See this for further analysis.

It looks quite convincingly like Washington would like to get rid of France in Africa and replace the French with their own style of neo-colonialism.

The 14 West (8) and Central (6) African former French colonial territories may finally get rid of the cursed, French Central Bank controlled CFA Franc which was their French-imposed currency since “independence”, analogous to a highly coercive price for independence.

But, will it be replaced by the US-dollar?

God forgive! May they – all 14 West-and Central African countries – apply for BRICS membership at the next round in 2024. One of the BRICS top-priorities is de-dollarization.

Interests in Gabon?

Other than enhancing the strategic stronghold in Africa – against the potential interests of Russia and China – Gabon has sizable natural resources. It is one of the resources-richest Sub-Sahelian countries.

According to World Bank data, Gabon’s surface is 267,670 sq. km (2020), about half the size of France (547,557 sq. km). Of Gabon’s total surface, some 88% is covered by forest, mostly rain forest. This level of forestation can be maintained thanks to Gabon’s relatively low population of only 2.4 million (World Bank 2023 estimate).

Gabon is situated in a region known for its mineral wealth. Gabon’s minerals include, timber, manganese, diamonds, gold, and uranium. Minerals are so important to the country’s economy that the entire economy revolves around the country’s mining industry, to the detriment of agricultural development.

Mining Industry

Gabon has the second largest deposit of manganese in the world and is currently the world’s third largest producer.  From high-grade manganese to minerals, there are over 250 million tons of manganese reserves, and their metal content is between 48% to 52%.

Manganese is Gabon’s second largest export product, accounting for roughly 11% of Gabon’s total exports.  La Compagnie Minière de l’Ogooue (COMILOG), a subsidiary of the French company ERAMET, is the largest company currently producing manganese in Gabon.

Mining prospects also exist for iron, copper, diamonds, and other minerals.

See this.

Oil and Gas

Gabon has the sixth largest proven oil deposits in Africa, with an estimated 3.68 billion barrels of oil reserves. The daily production is estimated at 0.244 million barrels, with a minimal local consumption of 0.013 million barrels. The balance is exported. More than 90% of it to the United States.

Gabon, the fourth largest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa, posted strong economic growth over the past decade, driven mainly by oil and manganese production. In 2020, the oil sector accounted for 38.5% of GDP and 70.5% of exports despite efforts to diversify the economy.

Gabon also has large deposits of natural gas which are estimated to be over 28.3 billion cubic meters. The production of the natural gas in the country is estimated to be about 0.1 billion cubic meters per year. Unlike the country’s crude oil which is primarily destined for foreign markets, Gabon consumes all the natural gas it produces. See this.

Gabon’s almost exclusive reliance on oil exports is a real danger for her economy and social development, especially given the volatility of hydrocarbon prices. Due to this reliance on petrol income, the agricultural sector has been neglected to the point where, according to government estimates, more than 80% of food is imported – and this given the high degree of fertility of Gabon’s soil. See this.

Food imports make for food price volatility an instability.

Given her resources, Gabon may be one of the most obvious Sahel countries attracting foreign interests. In this case, the US wants to strengthen their foothold in Gabon. Washington controls now almost 100% of the country’s crude oil exports, not to be challenged by other contenders.

The hydrocarbon energy market which is hypocritically being suppressed by the west for the climate change hoax while every western country knows that without hydrocarbon the world economy as it presents itself today would collapse. Today, still about 85% of all energy used in the world stems from hydrocarbons.

Gabon’s hydrocarbon resources might be sought after also by other blocs, like China and Russia. The US will make sure they will not lose out on what they already control. Not to forget all the other natural resources riches Gabon possesses.

Therefore, it is not to be excluded that Washington may have played a role in timing the military coup just coinciding with the Gabonese elections – fake elections, naturally.

Let’s see, if and when Washington’s Madame Nuland will show up and look for order and calming unrest in Gabon – with US assistance, of course.

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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: Satellite image of Gabon (Licensed under the Public Domain)