Global Research Editor’s Note

We bring to the attention of our readers the following text of Osama bin Laden’s interview in Urdu 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. We were informed that It was available in recognized electronic news archives including BBC translation.

click here  Ummat 

The interview tends to demystify the Osama bin Laden persona.

In the Unmat interview, 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 allegedly 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.

It 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.

Global Research 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, September 11, 2024

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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

Order Directly from Global Research

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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A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending France’s military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME’s article, “The Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?” decides that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome “War on Terror” narrative.TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop “Islamist” terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the article states:

“…there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for attack.”

What TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France intervened on behalf of during NATO’s 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya – providing weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the overthrow of Libya’s government.

As far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote “Algeria will be next to fall,” where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted:

Algeria has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist jihadis.

And thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become – a Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda. AQIM’s headway in northern Mali and now French involvement will see the conflict inevitably spill over into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of “Which Path to Persia?” which openly conspires to arm yet another US State Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there – illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign policy.Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar noted a more direct connection between LIFG and AQIM in an Asia Times piece titled, “How al-Qaeda got to rule in Tripoli:”

“Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda’s number two, Zawahiri, officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been one and the same – and Belhaj was/is its emir. “

“Belhaj,” referring to Hakim Abdul Belhaj, leader of LIFG in Libya, led with NATO support, arms, funding, and diplomatic recognition, the overthrowing of Muammar Qaddafi and has now plunged the nation into unending racist and tribal, genocidal infighting. This intervention has also seen the rebellion’s epicenter of Benghazi peeling off from Tripoli as a semi-autonomous “Terror-Emirate.” Belhaj’s latest campaign has shifted to Syria where he was admittedly on the Turkish-Syrian border pledging weapons, money, and fighters to the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” again, under the auspices of NATO support.

LIFG, which with French arms, cash, and diplomatic support, is now invading northern Syria on behalf of NATO’s attempted regime change there, officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007 according to the US Army’s West Point Combating Terrorism Center (CTC). According to the CTC, AQIM and LIFG share not only ideological goals, but strategic and even tactical objectives. The weapons LIFG received most certainly made their way into the hands of AQIM on their way through the porous borders of the Sahara Desert and into northern Mali.

It is no coincidence that as the Libyan conflict was drawing to a conclusion, conflict erupted in northern Mali. It is part of a premeditated geopolitical reordering that began with toppling Libya, and since then, using it as a springboard for invading other targeted nations, including Mali, Algeria, and Syria with heavily armed, NATO-funded and aided terrorists.

Algeria was able to balk subversion during the early phases of the US-engineered “Arab Spring” in 2011, but it surely has not escaped the attention of the West who is in the midst of transforming a region stretching from Africa to Beijing and Moscow’s doorsteps – and in a fit of geopolitical schizophrenia – using terrorists both as a casus belli to invade and as an inexhaustible mercenary force to do it.

Part I: Syria comes to the Russian Caucasus

On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi, acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous Russian Republic of Dagestan, was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to enter his house and detonate an explosive device.

The murder target had been carefully selected. Sheikh Afandi, a seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role in attempting to bring about reconciliation in Dagestan between jihadist Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions, many of whom in Dagestan see themselves as followers of Sufi. With no replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny Russian autonomous republic.[1]

The police reported that the assassin was an ethnic Russian woman who had converted to Islam and was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist insurgency against Russia and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated North Caucasus region.

Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990. Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus.

The latest Salafist murders of Sufi and other moderate Muslim leaders in the Caucasus are apparently part of what is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.

Previously US and allied intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that began in Tunisia late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan across Central Asia to Morocco—is the incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named “democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda groups, Saudi Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.

Fundamentalism comes to Caucasus

Following the dissolution of the USSR, radical Afghanistani Mujahadeen, Islamists from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on Turkey’s Erdogan AKP party.

Gülen was quick to establish The International Dagestani-Turkish College in Dagestan. During the chaotic days after the Soviet collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation officially registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly Saudi foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included Al-Haramein a Saudi foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in Germany, that allegedly raised funds for jihadi fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, and was charged by French intelligence of ties to Al Qaeda.[3] Many of these charities were covers for fundamentalist Salafists with their own special agenda.

As many of the foreign Islamists in Chechnya and Dagestan were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil war, Russian authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and institutions. Throughout the North Caucasus at the time of the Chechyn war in the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all mosques.

The International Dagestani-Turkish College was one that was forced to close its doors in Dagestan. The College was run by the Fethullah Gülen organization.[4]

At the point of the Russian crackdown on the spread of Salafist teaching inside Russia at the end of the 1990’s, there was an exodus of hundreds of young Dagestani and Chechyn Muslim students to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other places in The Middle east, reportedly to receive training with the Gülen movement and various Saudi-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in Russia that the students trained by Gülen supporters or Saudi and other Salafist fundamentalist centers then were sent back to Dagestan and the North Caucasus to spread their radical strain of Islam.

By 2005 the situation in the Caucasus was so influenced by this Salafist intervention that the Chechen Salafist, Doku Umarov, cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda,[6] unilaterally declared creation of what he called the Caucasus Emirate, announcing he planned to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law encompassing the entire North Caucasus region including Dagestan. He modestly proclaimed himself Emir of the Caucasus Emirate. [7]

*  *  *

*  *  *

 

Part II: Salafism at war with Sufi tradition

Salafism, known in Saudi Arabia as Wahhabism, is a fundamentalist strain of Islam which drew world attention and became notorious in March 2001 just weeks before the attacks of September 11. That was when the Salafist Taliban government in Afghanistan willfully dynamited and destroyed the historic gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan on the ancient Silk Road, religious statues dating from the 6^th Century. The Taliban Salafist leaders also banned as “un-islamic” all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Sharia.

Afghani sources reported that the order to destroy the Buddhas was made by Saudi-born jihadist Wahhabite, Osama bin Laden, who ultimately convinced Mullah Omar, Taliban supreme leader at the time to execute the act.[8]

Before and…After Salafist Taliban …

While Sufis incorporate the worship of saints and theatrical ceremonial prayers into their practice, Salafis condemn as idolatry any non-traditional forms of worship. They also call for the establishment of Islamic political rule and strict Sharia law. Sufism is home to the great spiritual and musical heritage of Islam, said by Islamic scholars to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam, going back centuries.

As one Sufi scholar described the core of Sufism, “While all Muslims believe that they are on the pathway to God and will become close to God in Paradise–after death and the ‘Final Judgment’– Sufis believe as well that it is possible to become close to God and to experience this closeness–while one is alive. Furthermore, the attainment of the knowledge that comes with such intimacy with God, Sufis assert, is the very purpose of the creation. Here they mention the hadith qudsi in which God states, ‘I was a hidden treasure and I loved that I be known, so I created the creation in order to be known.’ Hence for the Sufis there is already a momentum, a continuous attraction on their hearts exerted by God, pulling them, in love, towards God.” [9]

The mystical Islamic current of Sufism and its striving to become close to or one with God is in stark contrast to the Jihadist Salafi or Wahhabi current that is armed with deadly weapons, preaches a false doctrine of jihad, and a perverse sense of martyrdom, committing countless acts of violence. Little wonder that the victims of Salafist Jihads are mostly other pacific forms of Islam including most especially Sufis.

The respected seventy-five year old Afandi had publicly denounced Salafist Islamic fundamentalism. His murder followed a July 19 coordinated attack on two high-ranking muftis in the Russian Volga Republic of Tatarstan. Both victims were state-approved religious leaders who had attacked radical Islam. This latest round of murders opens a new front in the Salafist war against Russia, namely attacks on moderate Sufi Muslim leaders.

Whether or not Dagestan now descends into internal religious civil war that then spreads across the geopolitically sensitive Russian Caucasus is not yet certain. What is almost certain is that the same circles who have been feeding violence and terror inside Syria against the regime of Alawite President Bashar al-Assad are behind the killing of Sheikh Afandi as well as sparking related acts of terror or unrest across Russia’s Muslim-populated Caucasus. In a very real sense it represents Russia’s nightmare scenario of “Syria coming to Russia.” It demonstrates dramatically why Putin has made such a determined effort to stop a descent into a murderous hell in Syria.

Salafism and the CIA

The existence of the so-called jihadist Salafi brand of Islam in Dagestan is quite recent. It has also been deliberately imported. Salafism is sometimes also called the name of the older Saudi-centered Wahhabism. Wahhabism is a minority originally-Bedouin form of the faith originating within Islam, dominant in Saudi Arabia since the 1700’s.

Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen Schwartz of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism give the following description of Saudi conditions under the rigid Wahhabi brand of Islam:

“Women living under Saudi rule must wear the abaya, or total body cloak, and niqab, the face veil; they have limited opportunities for schooling and careers; they are prohibited from driving vehicles; are banned from social contact with men not relatives, and all personal activity must be supervised including opening bank accounts, by a male family member or “guardian.” These Wahhabi rules are enforced by a mutawiyin, or morals militia, also known as “the religious police,” officially designated the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) who patrol Saudi cities, armed with leather-covered sticks which they freely used against those they considered wayward. They raid homes looking for alcohol and drugs, and harassed non-Wahhabi Muslims as well as believers in other faiths.” [10]

It’s widely reported that the obscenely opulent and morally-perhaps-not-entirely-of- the-highest-standards Saudi Royal Family made a Faustian deal with Wahhabite leaders. The deal supposedly, was that the Wahhabists are free to export their fanatical brand of Islam around to the Islamic populations of the world in return for agreeing to leave the Saudi Royals alone.[11] There are, however, other dark and dirty spoons stirring the Wahhabite-Salafist Saudi stew.

Little known is the fact that the present form of aggressive Saudi Wahhabism, in reality a kind of fusion between imported jihadi Salafists from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist Saudi Wahhabites. Leading Salafist members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into the Saudi Kingdom in the 1950’s by the CIA in a complex series of events, when Nasser cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood following an assassination attempt. By the 1960’s an influx of Egyptian members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Saudi Arabia fleeing Nasserite repression, had filled many of the leading teaching posts in Saudi religious schools. One student there was a young well-to-do Saudi, Osama bin Laden.  [12]

During the Third Reich, Hitler Germany had supported the Muslim Brotherhood as a weapon against the British in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. Marc Erikson describes the Nazi roots of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood thus:

…as Italian and German fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and ’40s to counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and “supreme guide” Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini.[13]

After the defeat of Germany, British Intelligence moved in to take over control of the Muslim Brotherhood. Ultimately, for financial and other reasons, the British decided to hand their assets within the Muslim Brotherhood over to their CIA colleagues in the 1950s. [14]

According to former US Justice Department Nazi researcher John Loftus,  “during the 1950s, the CIA evacuated the Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia. Now, when they arrived in Saudi Arabia, some of the leading lights of the Muslim Brotherhood, like Dr Abdullah Azzam, became the teachers in the madrassas, the religious schools. And there they combined the doctrines of Nazism with this weird Islamic cult, Wahhabism.” [15]

“Everyone thinks that Islam is this fanatical religion, but it is not,” Loftus continues. “They think that Islam–the Saudi version of Islam–is typical, but it’s not. The Wahhabi cult has been condemned as a heresy more than 60 times by the Muslim nations. But when the Saudis got wealthy, they bought a lot of silence. This is a very harsh cult. Wahhabism was only practised by the Taliban and in Saudi Arabia–that’s how extreme it is. It really has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is a very peaceful and tolerant religion. It always had good relationships with the Jews for the first thousand years of its existence.” [16]

Loftus identified the significance of what today is emerging from the shadows to take over Egypt under Muslim Brotherhood President Morsi, and the so-called Syrian National Council, dominated in reality by the Muslim Brotherhood and publicly led by the more “politically correct” or presentable likes of Bassma Kodmani. Kodmani, foreign affairs spokesman for the SNC was twice an invited guest at the Bilderberg elite gathering, latest in Chantilly, Virginia earlier this year.[17]

The most bizarre and alarming feature of the US-financed  regime changes set into motion in 2010, which have led to the destruction of the secular Arab regime of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muhammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the secular regime of President Ben Ali in Tunisia, and which have wreaked savage destruction across the Middle East, especially in the past eighteen months in Syria, is the pattern of emerging power grabs by representatives of the murky Salafist Muslim Brotherhood.

By informed accounts, a Saudi-financed Sunni Islamic Muslim Brotherhood dominates the members of the exile Syrian National Council that is backed by the US State Department’s Secretary Clinton and by Hollande’s France. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood is tied, not surprisingly to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood of President Mohammed Morsi who recently in a meeting of the Non-Aligned in Iran called openly for the removal of Syria’s Assad, a logical step if his Muslim Brothers in the present Syrian National Council are to take the reins of power. The Saudis are also rumored to have financed the ascent to power in Tunisia of the governing Islamist Ennahda Party,[18] and are documented to be financing the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Council against President Bashar al-Assad. [19]

Part III: Morsi’s Reign of Salafi Terror

Indicative of the true agenda of this Muslim Brotherhood and related jihadists today is the fact that once they have power, they drop the veil of moderation and reconciliation and reveal their violently intolerant roots. This is visible in Egypt today under Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi.

Unreported in mainstream Western media to date are alarming direct reports from Christian missionary organizations in Egypt that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood has already begun to drop the veil of “moderation and conciliation” and show its brutal totalitarian Salafist colors, much as Khomeini’s radical Sharia forces did in Iran after taking control in 1979-81.

In a letter distributed by the Christian Aid Mission (CAM), a Christian Egyptian missionary wrote that Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood “announced they would destroy the country if Morsi didn’t win, but they also said they will take revenge from all those who voted for [his opponent Ahmed] Shafiq, especially the Christians as they are sure we did vote for Shafiq. Yesterday they began by killing two believers in el Sharqiya because of this,” the missionary added, speaking on condition of anonymity.[20]

This report came only weeks after Egyptian State TV (under Morsi’s control) showed ghastly video footage of a convert from Islam to Christianity being murdered by Muslims. The footage showed a young man being held down by masked men with a knife to his throat. As one man was heard chanting Muslim prayers in Arabic, mostly condemning Christianity, another man holding the knife to the Christian convert’s throat began to cut, slowly severing the head amid cries of “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is great”), according to transcripts. In the letter, the Egyptian missionary leader added that, “soon after Morsi won, Christians in upper Egypt were forcibly prevented from going to churches.” Many Muslims, the letter claimed, “also began to speak to women in the streets that they had to wear Islamic clothing including the head covering. They act as if they got the country for their own, it’s theirs now.” [21]

Already in 2011 Morsi’s Salafist followers began attacking and destroying Sufi mosques across Egypt. According to the authoritative newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm (Today’s Egyptian), 16 historic mosques in Alexandria belonging to Sufi orders have been marked for destruction by so-called ‘Salafis’. Alexandria has 40 mosques associated with Sufis, and is the headquarters for 36 Sufi groups. Half a million Sufis live in the city, out of a municipal total of four million people. Aggression against the Sufis in Egypt has included a raid on Alexandria’s most distinguished mosque, named for, and housing, the tomb of the 13th century Sufi Al-Mursi Abu’l Abbas.[22]

Notably, the so-called “democratically elected” regime in Libya following the toppling of Mohamar Qaddafi by NATO bombs in 2011, has also been zealous in destroying Sufi mosques and places of worhip. In August this year, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova expressed “grave concern” at the destruction by Islamic Jihadists of Sufi sites in Zliten, Misrata and Tripoli and urged perpetrators to “cease the destruction immediately.” [23] Under behind-the-scenes machinations the Libyan government is dominated by Jihadists and by followers of the Muslim Brotherhood, as in Tunisia and Egypt. [24]

The explosive cocktail of violence inherent in allowing the rise to power of Salafist Islamists across the Middle East was clear to see, symbolically enough on the night of September 11,^th when a mob of angry supporters of the fanatical Salafist group, Ansar Al-Sharia, murdered the US Ambassador to Libya and three US diplomats, burning the US Consulate in Bengazi to the ground in protest over a YouTube release of a film by an American filmmaker showing the Prophet Mohammed indulging in multiple sex affairs and casting doubt on his role as God’s messenger. Ironically that US Ambassador had played a key role in toppling Qaddafi and opening the door to the Salafist takeover in Libya. At the same time angry mobs of thousands of Salafists surrounded the US Embassy in Cairo in protest to the US film. [25]

Ansar Al-Sharia (“Partisans of Islamic law” in Arabic) reportedly is a spinoff of Al-Qaeda and claims organizations across the Middle East from Yemen to Tunisia to Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Ansar al-Sharia says it is reproducing the model of Sharia or strict Islamic law espoused by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq. The core of the group are jihadists who came out of an “Islamic state”, either in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, or among jihadists in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003.[26]

The deliberate detonation now of a new round of Salafist fundamentalist Jihad terror inside Muslim regions of the Russian Caucasus is exquisitely timed politically to put maximum pressure at home on the government of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin and the Russian Government are the strongest and most essential backer of the current Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad, and for Russia as well the maintenance of Russia’s only Mediterranean naval base at Syria’s Tartus port is vital strategically. At the same time, Obama’s sly message to Medvedev to wait until Obama’s re-election to evaluate US intent towards Russia and Putin’s cryptic recent comment that a compromise with a re-elected President Obama might be possible, but not with a President Romney, [27] indicate that the Washington “stick-and-carrot” or hard cop-soft cop tactics with Moscow might tempt Russia to sacrifice major geopolitical alliances, perhaps even that special close and recent geopolitical alliance with China.[28] Were that to happen, the World might witness a “reset” in US-Russian relations with catastrophic consequences for world peace.

F. William Engdahl*  is the author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

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Nel dibattito tra i due candidati alla presidenza degli Stati Uniti, Kamala Harris ha dichiarato: “L’agenda di Putin non riguarda solo l’Ucraina. Gli Alleati europei sono grati che noi comprendiamo l’importanza della più grande alleanza militare che il mondo abbia mai conosciuto, che è la NATO. Ciò che abbiamo fatto è preservare la capacità di Zelensky e degli Ucraini di combattere per la loro indipendenza. Altrimenti, Putin sarebbe seduto a Kiev con gli occhi puntati sul resto dell’Europa.” La Harris capovolge in tal modo la realtà, nascondendo il fatto che è stata la NATO sotto comando USA ad aggredire la Russia, espandendosi con basi militari e armi nucleari sempre più a ridosso del suo territorio, organizzando nel 2014 con forze neonaziste il colpo di stato in Ucraina e il conseguente attacco ai Russi di Ucraina. Guerra a oltranza, dunque, contro la Russia. In tale quadro – scrive il New York Times – “il presidente Biden sembra sul punto di spianare la strada all’Ucraina per il lancio di armi occidentali a lungo raggio in profondità nel territorio russo, a patto che non utilizzi armi fornite dagli Stati Uniti.” In altre parole, Biden autorizzerà gli Alleati europei a fornire all’Ucraina armi a lungo raggio per colpire in profondità il territorio russo. La Gran Bretagna è già pronta a farlo. “L’esercito ucraino non è in grado di sferrare attacchi a lungo raggio con armi occidentali. – sottolinea il presidente Putin – Ciò è possibile solo utilizzando i dati di intelligence dei satelliti NATO. Non si tratta di permettere al regime ucraino di attaccare la Russia con queste armi, ma di decidere se i paesi della NATO siano direttamente coinvolti nel conflitto o meno. Se la decisione verrà presa, significherà che i paesi della NATO, gli Stati Uniti e i paesi europei, saranno in guerra con la Russia. E se è così, allora, tenendo presente il cambiamento nell’essenza stessa di questo conflitto, prenderemo le decisioni appropriate in base alle minacce che verranno create nei nostri confronti”. Poiché i missili a lungo raggio possono essere armati sia di testate non-nucleari che nucleari, la Russia sarebbe esposta a un più alto rischio di attacco nucleare.

Al dibattito con la Harris, Donald Trump ha detto che “la situazione sta peggiorando, potrebbe portare alla terza guerra mondiale. Putin ha armi nucleari. Nessuno ci pensa. E alla fine le userà. Una cosa di cui non ci piace parlare. A nessuno piace parlarne.” Ha quindi sottolineato: “Penso che sia nell’interesse degli Stati Uniti terminare questa guerra e negoziare un accordo.” Trump semplifica però il modo in cui, se divenisse Presidente degli Stati Uniti, potrebbe realizzare tale accordo.: “Se fossi stato presidente, la guerra non sarebbe mai iniziata. Conosco Putin molto bene e Putin mi rispetta, mentre non rispetta Biden.” La visione semplicistica che la guerra potrebbe terminare con un accordo personale tra i due Presidenti, ignora il fatto che essa è stata fatta esplodere dai poteri forti degli Stati Uniti e dell’Occidente che stanno perdendo il predominio finora mantenuto nel mondo e che cercano di conservare con la guerra. E lo scenario bellico europeo è collegato a quello mediorientale, dove divampa una guerra di cui Trump, come la Harris, attribuisce la responsabilità non a Israele sostenuto dagli USA ma all’Iran, alleato di Russia e Cina, la più temuta dagli USA e dallo stesso Trump per le sue grandi capacità economiche.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO :

Image Professor Peter Dale Scott

This article was originally published in November 2011

“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”   — Senator Frank Church (1975)

I would like to discuss four major and badly understood events – the John F. Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and 9/11. I will analyze these deep events as part of a deeper political process linking them, a process that has helped build up repressive power in America at the expense of democracy.

In recent years I have been talking about a dark force behind these events — a force which, for want of a better term, I have clumsily called a “deep state,” operating both within and outside the public state. Today for the first time I want to identify part of that dark force, a part which has operated for five decades or more at the edge of the public state. This part of the dark force has a name not invented by me: the Doomsday Project, the Pentagon’s name for the emergency planning “to keep the White House and Pentagon running during and after a nuclear war or some other major crisis.”1

My point is a simple and important one: to show that the Doomsday Project of the 1980s, and the earlier emergency planning that developed into it, have played a role in the background of all the deep events I shall discuss.

More significantly, it has been a factor behind all three of the disturbing events that now threaten American democracy. The first of these three is what has been called the conversion of our economy into a plutonomy – with the increasing separation of America into two classes, into the haves and the have-nots, the one percent and the 99 percent. The second is America’s increasing militarization, and above all its inclination, which has become more and more routine and predictable, to wage or provoke wars in remote regions of the globe. It is clear that the operations of this American war machine have served the one percent.2

The third – my subject today — is the important and increasingly deleterious impact on American history of structural deep events: mysterious events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which violate the American social structure, have a major impact on American society, repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, and in many cases proceed from an unknown dark force.

There are any number of analyses of America’s current breakdown in terms of income and wealth disparity, also in terms of America’s increasing militarization and belligerency. What I shall do today is I think new: to argue that both the income disparity – or what has been called our plutonomy — and the belligerency have been fostered significantly by deep events.

We must understand that the income disparity of America’s current economy was not the result of market forces working independently of political intervention. In large part it was generated by a systematic and deliberate ongoing political process dating from the anxieties of the very wealthy in the 1960s and 1970s that control of the country was slipping away from them.

This was the time when future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, in a 1971 memorandum, warned that survival of the free enterprise system depended on “careful long-range planning and implementation” of a well-financed response to threats from the left.3 This warning was answered by a sustained right-wing offensive, coordinated by think tanks and funded lavishly by a small group of family foundations.4 We should recall that all this was in response to serious riots in Newark, Detroit, and elsewhere, and that increasing calls for a revolution were coming from the left (in Europe as well as America). I will focus today on the right’s response to that challenge, and on the role of deep events in enhancing their response.

What was important about the Powell memorandum was less the document itself than the fact that it was commissioned by the United States Chamber of Commerce, one of the most influential and least discussed lobbying groups in America. And the memorandum was only one of many signs of that developing class war in the 1970s, a larger process working both inside and outside government (including what Irving Kristol called an “intellectual counterrevolution”), which led directly to the so-called “Reagan Revolution.”5

It is clear that this larger process has been carried on for almost five decades, pumping billions of right-wing dollars into the American political process. What I wish to show today is that deep events have also been integral to this right-wing effort, from the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963 to 9/11. 9/11 resulted in the implementation of “Continuity of Government” (COG) plans (which in the Oliver North Iran Contra Hearings of 1987 were called plans for “the suspension of the U.S. constitution”). These COG plans, building on earlier COG planning, had been carefully developed since 1982 in the so-called Doomsday Project, by a secret group appointed by Reagan. The group was composed of both public and private figures, including Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

I shall try to show today that in this respect 9/11 was only the culmination of a sequence of deep events reaching back to the Kennedy assassination if not earlier, and that the germs of the Doomsday Project can be detected behind all of them.

More specifically, I shall try to demonstrate about these deep events that

1) prior bureaucratic misbehavior by the CIA and similar agencies helped to make both the Kennedy assassination and 9/11 happen;

2) the consequences of each deep event included an increase in top-down repressive power for these same agencies, at the expense of persuasive democratic power;6

3) there are symptomatic overlaps in personnel between the perpetrators of each of these deep events and the next;

4) one sees in each event the involvement of elements of the international drug traffic – suggesting that our current plutonomy is also to some degree a narconomy;

5) in the background of each event (and playing an increasingly important role) one sees the Doomsday Project — the alternative emergency planning structure with its own communications network, operating as a shadow network outside of regular government channels.

Bureaucratic Misbehavior as a Factor Contributing to both the JFK Assassination and 9/11

Both the JFK assassination and 9/11 were facilitated by the way the CIA and FBI manipulated their files about alleged perpetrators of each event (Lee Harvey Oswald in the case of what I shall call JFK, and the alleged hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in the case of 9/11). Part of this facilitation was the decision on October 9, 1963 of an FBI agent, Marvin Gheesling, to remove Oswald from the FBI watch list for surveillance. This was shortly after Oswald’s arrest in New Orleans in August and his reported travel to Mexico in September. Obviously these developments should normally have made Oswald a candidate for increased surveillance.7

This misbehavior is paradigmatic of the behavior of other agencies, especially the CIA, in both JFK and 9/11. Indeed Gheesling’s behavior fits very neatly with the CIA’s culpable withholding from the FBI, in the same month of October, information that Oswald had allegedly met in Mexico City with a suspected KGB agent, Valeriy Kostikov.8 This also helped ensure that Oswald would not be placed under surveillance. Indeed, former FBI Director Clarence Kelley in his memoir later complained that the CIA’s withholding of information was the major reason why Oswald was not put under surveillance on November 22, 1963.9

A more ominous provocation in 1963 was that of Army Intelligence, one unit of which in Dallas did not simply withhold information about Lee Harvey Oswald, but manufactured false intelligence that seemed designed to provoke retaliation against Cuba. I call such provocations phase-one stories, efforts to portray Oswald as a Communist conspirator (as opposed to the later phase-two stories, also false, portraying him as a disgruntled loner). A conspicuous example of such phase-one stories is a cable from the Fourth Army Command in Texas, reporting a tip from a Dallas policeman who was also in an Army Intelligence Reserve unit:

Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow, Intelligence Section, Dallas Police Department, notified 112th INTC [Intelligence] Group, this Headquarters, that information obtained from Oswald revealed he had defected to Cuba in 1959 and is a card-carrying member of Communist Party.”10

This cable was sent on November 22 directly to the U.S. Strike Command at Fort MacDill in Florida, the base poised for a possible retaliatory attack against Cuba.11

The cable was not an isolated aberration. It was supported by other false phase-one stories from Dallas about Oswald’s alleged rifle, and specifically by concatenated false translations of Marina Oswald’s testimony, to suggest that Oswald’s rifle in Dallas was one he had owned in Russia.12

These last false reports, apparently unrelated, can also be traced to officer Don Stringfellow’s 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit.13 The interpreter who first supplied the false translation of Marina’s words, Ilya Mamantov, was selected by a Dallas oilman, Jack Crichton, and Deputy Dallas Police Chief George Lumpkin.14 Crichton and Lumpkin were also the Chief and the Deputy Chief of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit.15 Crichton was also an extreme right-winger in the community of Dallas oilmen: he was a trustee of the H.L. Hunt Foundation, and a member of the American Friends of the Katanga Freedom Fighters, a group organized to oppose Kennedy’s policies in the Congo.

We have to keep in mind that some of the Joint Chiefs were furious that the 1962 Missile Crisis had not led to an invasion of Cuba, and that, under new JCS Chairman Maxwell Taylor, the Joint Chiefs, in May 1963, still believed “that US military intervention in Cuba is necessary.”16 This was six months after Kennedy, to resolve the Missile Crisis in October 1962, had given explicit (albeit highly qualified) assurances to Khrushchev, that the United States would not invade Cuba.17 This did not stop the J-5 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the JCS Directorate of Plans and Policy) from producing a menu of “fabricated provocations to justify military intervention.”18 (One proposed example of “fabricated provocations” envisioned “using MIG type aircraft flown by US pilots to … attack surface shipping or to attack US military.”)19

The deceptions about Oswald coming from Dallas were immediately post-assassination; thus they do not by themselves establish that the assassination itself was a provocation-deception plot. They do however reveal enough about the anti-Castro mindset of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit in Dallas to confirm that it was remarkably similar to that of the J-5 the preceding May – the mindset that produced a menu of “fabricated provocations” to attack Cuba. (According to Crichton there were “about a hundred men in [the 488th Reserve unit] and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.”)20

It can hardly be accidental that we see this bureaucratic misbehavior from the FBI, CIA, and military, the three agencies with which Kennedy had had serious disagreements in his truncated presidency.21 Later in this paper I shall link Dallas oilman Jack Crichton to the 1963 emergency planning that became the Doomsday Project.

Analogous Bureaucratic Misbehavior in the Case of 9/11

Before 9/11 the CIA, in 2000-2001, again flagrantly withheld crucial evidence from the FBI: evidence that, if shared, would have led the FBI to surveil two of the alleged hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaz al-Hazmi. This sustained withholding of evidence provoked an FBI agent to predict accurately in August, 2001, that “someday someone will die.”22 After 9/11 another FBI agent said of the CIA: “They [CIA] didn’t want the bureau meddling in their business—that’s why they didn’t tell the FBI….  And that’s why September 11 happened. That is why it happened. . . . They have blood on their hands. They have three thousand deaths on their hands”23 The CIA’s withholding of relevant evidence before 9/11 (which it was required by its own rules to supply) was matched in this case by the NSA.24

Without these withholdings, in other words, neither the Kennedy assassination nor 9/11 could have developed in the manner in which they did. As I wrote in American War Machine, it would appear that

Oswald (and later al-Mihdhar) had at some prior point been selected as designated subjects for an operation. This would not initially have been for the commission of a crime against the American polity: on the contrary, steps were probably taken to prepare Oswald in connection with an operation against Cuba and al-Mihdhar [I suspect] for an operation against al-Qaeda. But as [exploitable] legends began to accumulate about both figures, it became possible for some witting people to subvert the sanctioned operation into a plan for murder that would later be covered up. At this point Oswald (and by analogy al-Mihdhar) was no longer just a designated subject but also now a designated culprit.25

Kevin Fenton, in his exhaustive book Disconnecting the Dots, has since reached the same conclusion with respect to 9/11: “that, by the summer of 2001, the purpose of withholding the information had become to allow the attacks to go forward.”26 He has also identified the person chiefly responsible for the misbehavior: CIA officer Richard Blee, Chief of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit. Blee, while Clinton was still president, had been one of a faction inside CIA pressing for a more belligerent CIA involvement in Afghanistan, in conjunction with the Afghan Northern Alliance.27 This then happened immediately after 9/11, and Blee himself was promoted, to become the new Chief of Station in Kabul.28

How CIA and NSA Withholding of Evidence in the Second Tonkin Gulf Incident, Contributed to War with North Vietnam

I will spare you the details of this withholding, which can be found in my American War Machine, pp. 200-02. But Tonkin Gulf is similar to the Kennedy assassination and 9/11, in that manipulation of evidence helped lead America – in this case very swiftly – into war.

Historians such as Fredrik Logevall have agreed with the assessment of former undersecretary of state George Ball that the US destroyer mission in the Tonkin Gulf, which resulted in the Tonkin Gulf incidents, “was primarily for provocation.”29 The planning for this provocative mission came from the J-5 of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same unit that in 1963 had reported concerning Cuba that, “the engineering of a series of provocations to justify military intervention is feasible.”30

The NSA and CIA suppression of the truth on August 4 was in the context of an existing high-level (but controversial) determination to attack North Vietnam. In this respect the Tonkin Gulf incident is remarkably similar to the suppression of the truth by CIA and NSA leading up to 9/11, when there was again a high-level (but controversial) determination to go to war.

Increases in Repressive Power After Deep Events

All of the deep events discussed above have contributed to the cumulative increase of Washington’s repressive powers. It is clear for example that the Warren Commission used the JFK assassination to increase CIA surveillance of Americans. As I wrote in Deep Politics, this was the result of

the Warren Commission’s controversial recommendations that the Secret Service’s domestic surveillance responsibilities be increased (WR 25-26). Somewhat illogically, the Warren Report concluded both that Oswald acted alone (WR 22), . . . and also that the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, should coordinate more closely the surveillance of organized groups (WR 463). In particular, it recommended that the Secret Service acquire a computerized data bank compatible with that already developed by the CIA.31

This pattern would repeat itself four years later with the assassination of Robert Kennedy. In the twenty-four hours between Bobby’s shooting and his death, Congress hurriedly passed a statute— drafted well in advance (like the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 and the Patriot Act of 2001) — that still further augmented the secret powers given to the Secret Service in the name of protecting presidential candidates.32

This was not a trivial or benign change: from this swiftly considered act, passed under Johnson, flowed some of the worst excesses of the Nixon presidency.33

The change also contributed to the chaos and violence at the Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968. Army intelligence surveillance agents, seconded to the Secret Service, were present both inside and outside the convention hall. Some of them equipped the so-called “Legion of Justice thugs whom the Chicago Red Squad turned loose on local anti-war groups.”34

In this way the extra secret powers conferred after the RFK assassination contributed to the disastrous turmoil in Chicago that effectively destroyed the old Democratic Party representing the labor unions: The three Democratic presidents elected since then have all been significantly more conservative.

Turning to Watergate and Iran-Contra, both of these events were on one level setbacks to the repressive powers exercised by Richard Nixon and the Reagan White House, not expansions of them. On the surface level this is true: both events resulted in legislative reforms that would appear to contradict my thesis of expanding repression.

We need to distinguish here, however, between the two years of the Watergate crisis, and the initial Watergate break-in. The Watergate crisis saw a president forced into resignation by a number of forces, involving both liberals and conservatives. But the key figures in the initial Watergate break-in itself – Hunt, McCord, G. Gordon Liddy, and their Cuban allies — were all far to the right of Nixon and Kissinger. And the end result of their machinations was not finalized until the so-called Halloween Massacre in 1975, when Kissinger was ousted as National Security Adviser and Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller was notified he would be dropped from the 1976 Republican ticket. This major shake-up was engineered by two other right-wingers: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in the Gerald Ford White House.35

That day in 1975 saw the permanent defeat of the so-called Rockefeller or liberal faction within the Republican Party. It was replaced by the conservative Goldwater-Casey faction that would soon capture the nomination and the presidency for Ronald Reagan.36 This little-noticed palace coup, along with other related intrigues in the mid-1970s, helped achieve the conversion of America from a welfare capitalist economy, with gradual reductions in income and wealth disparity, into a financialized plutonomy where these trends were reversed.37

Again in Iran-Contra we see a deeper accumulation of repressive power under the surface of liberal reforms. At the time not only the press but even academics like myself celebrated the termination of aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, and the victory there of the Contadora peace process. Not generally noticed at the time was the fact that, while Oliver North was removed from his role in the Doomsday Project, that project’s plans for surveillance, detention, and the militarization of the United States continued to grow after his departure.38

Also not noticed was the fact that the US Congress, while curtailing aid to one small drug-financed CIA proxy army, was simultaneously increasing US support to a much larger coalition of drug-financed proxy armies in Afghanistan.39 While Iran-Contra exposed the $32 million which Saudi Arabia, at the urging of CIA Director William Casey, had supplied to the Contras, not a word was whispered about the $500 million or more that the Saudis, again at the urging of Casey, had supplied in the same period to the Afghan mujahedin.40 In this sense the drama of Iran-Contra in Congress can be thought of as a misdirection play, directing public attention away from America’s much more intensive engagement in Afghanistan – a covert policy that has since evolved into America’s longest war.

We should expand our consciousness of Iran-Contra to think of it as Iran-Afghan-Contra. And if we do, we must acknowledge that in this complex and misunderstood deep event the CIA in Afghanistan exercised again the paramilitary capacity that Stansfield Turner had tried to terminate when he was CIA Director under Jimmy Carter. This was a victory in short for the faction of men like Richard Blee, the protector of al-Mihdhar as well as the advocate in 2000 for enhanced CIA paramilitary activity in Afghanistan.41

Personnel Overlaps Between the Successive Deep Events

I will never forget the New York Times front-page story on June 18, 1972, the day after the Watergate break-in. There were photographs of the Watergate burglars, including one of Frank Sturgis alias Fiorini, whom I had already written about two years earlier in my unpublished book manuscript, “The Dallas Conspiracy” about the JFK assassination.

Sturgis was no nonentity: a former contract employee of the CIA, he was also well connected to the mob-linked former casino owners in Havana.42 My early writings on the Kennedy case focused on the connections between Frank Sturgis and an anti-Castro Cuban training camp near New Orleans in which Oswald had shown an interest; also in Sturgis’ involvement in false “phase-one” stories portraying Oswald as part of a Communist Cuban conspiracy.43

In spreading these “phase-one” stories in 1963, Sturgis was joined by a number of Cubans who were part of the CIA-supported army in Central America of Manuel Artime. Artime’s base in Costa Rica was closed down in 1965, allegedly because of its involvement in drug trafficking.44 In the 1980s some of these Cuban exiles later became involved in drug-financed support activities for the Contras.45

The political mentor of Artime’s MRR movement was future Watergate plotter Howard Hunt; and Artime in 1972 would pay for the bail of the Cuban Watergate burglars. The drug money-launderer Ramón Milián Rodríguez has claimed to have delivered $200,000 in cash from Artime to pay off some of the Cuban Watergate burglars; later, in support of the Contras, he managed two Costa Rican seafood companies, Frigorificos and Ocean Hunter, that laundered drug money.46

It is alleged that Hunt and McCord had both been involved with Artime’s invasion plans in 1963.47 It was I believe no accident that the organization of Hunt’s protégé Artime became enmired in drug trafficking. Hunt, I have argued elsewhere, had been handling a U.S. drug connection since his 1950 post in Mexico City as OPC (Office of Policy Coordination) chief.48

But McCord not only had a past in the anti-Castro activities of 1963, he was also part of the nation’s emergency planning network that would later figure so prominently in the background of Iran-Contra and 9/11. McCord was a member of a small Air Force Reserve unit in Washington attached to the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP); assigned “to draw up lists of radicals and to develop contingency plans for censorship of the news media and U.S. mail in time of war.”49 His unit was part of the Wartime Information Security Program (WISP), which had responsibility for activating “contingency plans for imposing censorship on the press, the mails and all telecommunications (including government communications) [and] preventive detention of civilian ‘security risks,’ who would be placed in military ‘camps.’”50 In other words, these were the plans that became known in the 1980s as the Doomsday Project, the Continuity of Government planning on which Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld worked together for twenty years before 9/11.

A Common Denominator for Structural Deep Events: Project Doomsday and COG

McCord’s participation in an emergency planning system dealing with telecommunications suggests a common denominator in the backgrounds of almost all the deep events we are considering. Oliver North, the Reagan-Bush OEP point man on Iran-Contra planning, was also involved in such planning; and he had access to the nation’s top secret Doomsday communications network. North’s network, known as Flashboard,  “excluded other bureaucrats with opposing viewpoints…[and] had its own special worldwide antiterrorist computer network, … by which members could communicate exclusively with each other and their collaborators abroad.”51

Flashboard was used by North and his superiors for extremely sensitive operations which had to be concealed from other dubious or hostile parts of the Washington bureaucracy. These operations included the illegal shipments of arms to Iran, but also other activities, some still not known, perhaps even against Olof Palme’s Sweden.52 Flashboard, America’s emergency network in the 1980s, was the name in 1984-86 of the full-fledged Continuity of Government (COG) emergency network which was secretly planned for twenty years, at a cost of billions, by a team including Cheney and Rumsfeld. On 9/11 the same network was activated anew by the two men who had planned it for so many years.53

But this Doomsday planning can be traced back to 1963, when Jack Crichton, head of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit of Dallas, was part of it in his capacity as chief of intelligence for Dallas Civil Defense, which worked out of an underground Emergency Operating Center. As Russ Baker reports, “Because it was intended for ‘continuity of government’ operations during an attack, [the Center] was fully equipped with communications equipment.”54 A speech given at the dedication of the Center in 1961 supplies further details:

This Emergency Operating Center [in Dallas] is part of the National Plan to link Federal, State and local government agencies in a communications network from which rescue operations can be directed in time of local or National emergency. It is a vital part of the National, State, and local Operational Survival Plan.55

Crichton, in other words, was also part of what became known in the 1980s as the Doomsday Project, like James McCord, Oliver North, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney after him. But in 1988 its aim was significantly enlarged: no longer to prepare for an atomic attack, but now to plan for the effective suspension of the American constitution in the face of any emergency.56 This change in 1988 allowed COG to be implemented in 2001. By this time the Doomsday Project had developed into what the Washington Post called “a shadow government that evolved based on long-standing ‘continuity of operations plans.’”57

It is clear that the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP, known from 1961-1968 as the Office of Emergency Planning) supplies a common denominator for key personnel in virtually all of the structural events discussed here. This is a long way from establishing that the OEP itself (in addition to the individuals discussed here) was involved in generating any of these events. But I believe that the alternative communications network housed first in the OEP (later part of Project 908) played a significant role in at least three of them: the JFK assassination, Iran-Contra, and 9/11.

This is easiest to show in the case of 9/11, where it is conceded that the Continuity of Government (COG) plans of the Doomsday Project were implemented by Cheney on 9/11, apparently before the last of the four hijacked planes had crashed.58 The 9/11 Commission could not locate records of the key decisions taken by Cheney on that day, suggesting that they may have taken place on the “secure phone “ in the tunnel leading to the presidential bunker – with such a high classification that the 9/11 Commission was never supplied the phone records.59 Presumably this was a COG phone.

It is not clear whether the “secure phone” in the White House tunnel belonged to the Secret Service or (as one might expect) was part of the secure network of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA). If the latter, we’d have a striking link between 9/11 and the JFK assassination. The WHCA boasts on its Web site that the agency was “a key player in documenting the assassination of President Kennedy.”60  However it is not clear for whom this documentation was conducted, for the WHCA logs and transcripts were in fact withheld from the Warren Commission.61

The Secret Service had installed a WHCA portable radio in the lead car of the presidential motorcade.62 This in turn was in contact by police radio with the pilot car ahead of it, carrying DPD Deputy Chief Lumpkin of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit.63 Records of the WHCA communications from the motorcade never reached the Warren Commission, the House Committee on Assassinations, or the Assassination Records Review Board.64 Thus we cannot tell if they would explain some of the anomalies on the two channels of the Dallas Police Department. They might for example have thrown light upon the unsourced call on the Dallas Police

tapes for a suspect who had exactly the false height and weight recorded for Oswald in his FBI and CIA files.65

Today in 2011 we are still living under the State of Emergency proclaimed after 9/11 by President Bush. At least some COG provisions are still in effect, and were even augmented by Bush through Presidential Directive 51 of May 2007. Commenting on PD-51, the Washington Post reported at that time,

After the 2001 attacks, Bush assigned about 100 senior civilian managers [including Cheney] to rotate secretly to [COG] locations outside of Washington for weeks or months at a time to ensure the nation’s survival, a shadow government that evolved based on long-standing “continuity of operations plans.”66

Presumably this “shadow government” finalized such long-standing COG projects as warrantless surveillance, in part through the Patriot Act, whose controversial provisions were already being implemented by Cheney and others well before the Bill reached Congress on October 12.67 Other COG projects implemented included the militarization of domestic surveillance under NORTHCOM, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Project Endgame—a ten-year plan to expand detention camps at a cost of $400 million in fiscal year 2007 alone.68

I have, therefore, a recommendation for the Occupy movement, rightfully incensed as it is with the plutonomic excesses of Wall Street over the last three decades. It is to call for an end to the state of emergency, which has been in force since 2001, under which since 2008 a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team has been stationed permanently in the United States, in part to be ready “to help with civil unrest and crowd control.”69

Democracy-lovers must work to prevent the political crisis now developing in America from being resolved by military intervention.

Let me say in conclusion that for a half century American politics have been constrained and deformed by the unresolved matter of the Kennedy assassination. According to a memo of November 25 1963, from Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, it was important then to persuade the public that “Oswald was the assassin,” and that “he did not have confederates.”70 Obviously this priority became even more important after these questionable propositions were endorsed by the Warren Report, the U.S. establishment, and the mainstream press. It has remained an embarrassing priority ever since for all succeeding administrations, including the present one. There is for example an official in Obama’s State Department (Todd Leventhal), whose official job, until recently, included defense of the lone nut theory against so-called “conspiracy theorists”71

If Oswald was not a lone assassin, then it should not surprise us that there is continuity between those who falsified reports about Oswald in 1963, and those who distorted American politics in subsequent deep events beginning with Watergate. Since the deep event of 1963 the legitimacy of America’s political system has become vested in a lie — a lie which subsequent deep events have helped to protect.72

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, and The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War.

His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan.

His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html  

Peter Dale Scott is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

Notes

1 Tim Weiner, “The Pentagon’s Secret Stash,” Mother Jones Magazine Mar-Apr 1992, 26.

2 J.A. Myerson “War Is a Force That Pays the 1 Percent: Occupying American Foreign Policy,” Truthout, November 14, 2001, link. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 6, etc.

3 Scott, Road to 9/11, 22, 29, 98.

4 Scott, Road to 9/11, 22, 97.

5 Scott, Road to 9/11, 21, 51-52; Kristol as quoted in Lewis H. Lapham, “Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, a Brief History,” Harper’s Magazine, September 2004, 36.

6 E.g. Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 204-05.

7 Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy, 354.

8 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II, 30-33; Scott, The War Conspiracy, 387; Scott, American War Machine, 152.

9 Clarence M. Kelley, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City, MO:

Andrews, McMeel, and Parker, 1987), 268, quoted in Scott, The War Conspiracy (2008), 389.

10 Scott, Deep Politics, 275; Scott, Deep Politics II, 80, 129n; HSCA Critics Conference of 17 September 1977, 181, link. Stringfellow worked under Jack Revill in the Vice Squad of the DPD Special Services Bureau. As such he reported regularly to the FBI on such close Jack Ruby associates as James Herbert Dolan, a “known hoodlum and strong-arm man” on the FBI’s Top Criminal list for Dallas (Robert M. Barrett, FBI Report of February 2, 1963, NARA#124-90038-10026, 12 [Stringfellow]; cf. NARA#124-10212-10012, 4 [hoodlum], NARA#124-10195-10305, 9 [Top Criminal]). Cf. 14 WH 601-02 Ruby and Dolan]. Robert Barrett, who received Stringfellow’s reports to the FBI, had Ruby’s friend Dolan under close surveillance; he also took part in Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theater, and claimed to have seen DPD Officer Westbrook with Oswald’s wallet at the site of the Tippit killing [Dale K. Myers, With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit (Milford, MI: Oak Cliff Press, 1998), 287-90]).

11 It was sent for information to Washington, which received it three days later (Scott, Deep Politics, 275; Scott, Deep Politics II, 80, 129n; Scott, War Conspiracy, 382).

12 Warren Commission Exhibit 1778, 23 WH 383. (Marina’s actual words, before mistranslation, were quite innocuous: “I cannot describe it [the gun] because a rifle to me like all rifles” (Warren Commission Exhibit 1778, 23 WH 383; discussion in Scott, Deep Politics, 168-72).

13 Stringfellow himself was the source of one other piece of false intelligence on November 22: that Oswald had confessed to the murders of both the president and Officer Tippit (Dallas FBI File DL 89-43-2381C; Paul L. Hoch, “The Final Investigation? The HSCA and Army Intelligence,” The Third Decade, 1, 5 [July 1985], 3),

14 9 WH 106; Scott, Deep Politics, 275-76; Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 119-22.

15 Rodney P. Carlisle and Dominic J. Monetta, Brandy: Our Man in Acapulco (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 1999), 128.

16 Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1 May 1963, NARA #202-10002-10018, 12. Cf. pp. 15-16: “The United States should intervene militarily in Cuba and could (a) engineer provocative incidents ostensibly perpetrated by the Castro regime to serve as the cause of invasion…”

17 Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 568; James A. Nathan, The Cuban missile crisis revisited, 283; Waldron and Hartmann, Legacy of Secrecy, 9.

[18 Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1 May 1963, NARA #202-10002-10018, 12.

19 “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” NARA #202-10002-10018, 20. I see nothing in this document indicating that the President should be notified that these “fabricated provocations” were false. On the contrary, the document called for “compartmentation of participants” to insure that the true facts were not leaked (“Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” NARA #202-10002-10018, 19).

20 Quoted in Baker, Family of Secrets, 122. One of these, DPD Detective John Adamcik, was a member of the party which retrieved a blanket said to have contained Oswald’s rifle; and which the Warren Commission used to link Oswald to the famous Mannlicher Carcano. Adamcik was later present at Mamantov’s interview of Marina about the rifle, and corroborated Mamantov’s account of it to the Warren Commission. There is reason to believe that Mamantov’s translation of Marina’s testimony was inaccurate (Scott, Deep Politics, 268-70, 276).

21 See James Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008).

22 9/11 Commission Report, 259, 271; Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower:

Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), 352–54 (FBI agent).

23 James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday, 2004, 224. For a fuller account of the CIA’s withholding before 9/11, see Kevin Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots; Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski, “Insiders Voice Doubts about CIA’s 9/11 Story,” Salon, October 14, 2011, link.

24 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 7-12, 142-47, etc.

25 Scott, American War Machine, 203.

26 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 371, cf. 95. Quite independently, Richard Clarke, the former White House Counterterrorism Chief on 9/11, has charged that “There was a high-level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share information” (Rory O’Connor and Ray Nowosielski, “Insiders Voice Doubts about CIA’s 9/11 Story,” Salon, October 14, 2011).

27 Coll, 467-69.

28 Fenton, Disconnecting the Dots, 107-08.

29 James Bamford, Body of Secrets, 201. Cf. Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 200, citing John Prados, The Hidden History of the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995), 51.

30 “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 1, 1963, JCS 2304/189, NARA #202-10002-10018, link.

31 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 280.

32 Public Law 90-331 (18 U.S.C. 3056); discussion in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L.

Hoch, and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (New York: Random

House, 1976), 443–46.

33 Army intelligence agents were seconded to the Secret Service, and at this time there was a great increase in their number. The Washington Star later explained that “the big build-up in [Army] information gathering…did not come until after the shooting of the Rev. Martin Luther King” (Washington Star, December 6, 1970; reprinted in Federal Data Banks Hearings, p. 1728).

34 George O’Toole, The Private Sector (New York: Norton, 1978), 145, quoted in

Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 278–79.

35 Scott, Road to 9/11, 52-53.

36 Scott, Road to 9/11, 53-54.

37 Scott, Road to 9/11, 50-64.

38 Peter Dale Scott, “Northwards without North,” Social Justice (Summer 1989). Revised as “North, Iran-Contra, and the Doomsday Project: The Original Congressional Cover Up of Continuity-of-Government Planning,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, February 21, 2011.

39 Scott, Road to 9/11, 132.

40 Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, and Jane Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 13 (Contras); Richard Coll, Ghost Wars, 93-102 (mujahedin).

41 Richard Coll, Ghost Wars, 457-59, 534-36,

42 According to testimony from CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters, only “Hunt and McCord had ever been CIA full-time employees. The others [including Sturgis] were contract employees for a short duration or a longer duration” (Watergate Hearings, 3427). Cf. Marshall, Scott, and  Hunter, The Iran-Contra Connection, 45 (casino owners).

43 Peter Dale Scott, “From Dallas to Watergate,” Ramparts, December 1973; reprinted in Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch, and Russell Stetler, The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond, 356, 363.

44 Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-Up, 20.

45 Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 25-32, etc.

46 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs, and the Press  (London: Verso, 1998), 308-09; Martha Honey, Hostile Acts: U.S. Policy in Costa Rica in the 1980s (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994), 368 (Frigorificos).

47 Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974), 96-97.

48 Scott, American War Machine, 51-54. Hunt helped put together what became the drug-linked World Anti-Communist League. Artime’s Costa Rica base was on land whose owners were part of the local WACL chapter (Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 87, 220).

49 Woodward and Bernstein, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974), 23

50 Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda (New York: Random House, 1984), 16, citing Department of Defense Directive 5230.7, June 25, 1965, amended May 21, 1971.

51 Peter Dale Scott, “North, Iran-Contra, and the Doomsday Project: The Original Congressional Cover Up of Continuity-of-Government Planning,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, February 21, 2011. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, “Northwards Without North: Bush, Counterterrorism, and the Continuation of Secret Power.” Social Justice (San Francisco), XVI, 2 (Summer 1989), 1-30; Peter Dale Scott, “The Terrorism Task Force.” Covert Action Information Bulletin, 33 (Winter 1990), 12-15.

52 Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 140-41, 242 (Iran, etc.); Ola Tunander, The secret war against Sweden: US and British submarine deception in the 1980s, 309 (Sweden).

53 Scott, Road to 9/11, 183-87.

54 Russ Baker, Family of Secrets, 121.

55 “Statement by Col. John W. Mayo, Chairman of City-County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission at the Dedication of the Emergency Operating Center at Fair Park,” May 24, 1961, link.

Six linear inches of Civil Defense Administrative Files are preserved in the Dallas Municipal Archives; a Finding Guide is viewable online here.  I hope an interested researcher may wish to consult them.

56 Scott, Road to 9/11, 183-87.

57 Washington Post, May 10, 2007.

58 9/11 Report, 38, 326, 555n9; Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, 224.

59 Scott, Road to 9/11, 226-30. A footnote in the 9/11 Report (555n9) says:

“The 9/11 crisis tested the U.S. government’s plans and capabilities to ensure the continuity of constitutional government and the continuity of government operations. We did not investigate this topic, except as needed to understand the activities and communications of key officials on 9/11. The Chair, Vice Chair, and senior staff were briefed on the general nature and implementation of these continuity plans.”

The other footnotes confirm that no information from COG files was used to document the 9/11 report. At a minimum these files might resolve the mystery of the missing phone call which simultaneously authorized COG, and (in consequence) determined that Bush should continue to stay out of Washington. I suspect that they might tell us a great deal more.

60 “White House Communications Agency,” Signal Corps Regimental History, link.

61 The Warren Commission staff knew of the WHCA presence in Dallas from the Secret Service (17 WH 598, 619, 630, etc.).

62 Statement of Secret Service official Winston Lawson, 17 WH 630 (WHCA radio).

63 Pamela McElwain-Brown, “The Presidential Lincoln Continental SS-100-X,” Dealey Plaza Echo, Volume 3, Issue 2, 23, link (police radio); Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 272-75 (Lumpkin).

64 In the 1990s the WHCA supplied statements to the ARRB concerning communications between Dallas and Washington on November 22 (NARA #172-10001-10002 to NARA #172-10000-10008).  The Assassination Records Review Board also attempted to obtain from the WHCA the unedited original tapes of conversations from Air Force One on the return trip from Dallas, November 22, 1963. (Edited and condensed versions of these tapes had been available since the 1970s from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas.) The attempt was unsuccessful: “The Review Board’s repeated written and oral inquiries of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes.” See Assassinations Records Review Board: Final Report, chapter 6, Part 1, 116, link. In November 2011 AP reported that Gen. Chester Clifton’s personal copy of the Air Force One recordings was being put up for sale, with an asking price of $500,000 (AP, November 15, 2011, link).

65 See Scott, War Conspiracy (2008), 347-48, 385-87.

66 Washington Post, May 10, 2007.

67 Dick Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York: Threshold Editions, 2011), 348: “One of the first efforts we undertook after 9/11 to strengthen the country’s defenses was securing passage of the Patriot Act, which the president signed into law on [sic] October 2001.” Cf. “The Patriot Act, which the president signed into law on October 2001,″ link; “Questions and Answers about Beginning of Domestic Spying Program; link.

68 Scott, Road to 9/11, 236-45; Peter Dale Scott, “Is the State of Emergency Superseding our Constitution? Continuity of Government Planning, War and American Society,” November 28, 2010, http:/1/japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3448.

69 “Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1,” Army Times, September 30, 2008, link. As part of the Army’s emergency plan GARDEN PLOT in the 1960s, there were until 1971 two brigades (4,800 troops) on permanent standby to quell unrest.

70 “Memorandum for Mr. Moyers” of November 25, 1963, FBI 62-109060, Section 18, p. 29, link. Cf. Nicholas Katzenbach, Some of It Was Fun (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008), 131-36.

71 Leventhal’s official title is (or was) “Chief of the Counter-Misinformation Team, U.S. Department of State” (link). In 2010 the U.S. State Department “launched an official bid to shoot down conspiracy theories….The “Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation” page… insists that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F Kennedy alone, and that the Pentagon was not hit by a cruise missile on 9/11” Daily Record [Scotland], August 2, 2010, (link). The site still exists here, (“Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored.”) The site still attacks 9/11 theories, but a page on the Kennedy assassination has been suspended (link). Cf. Robin Ramsay, “Government vs Conspiracy Theorists: The official war on “sick think,” Fortean Times, April 2010, link; “The State Department vs ‘Sick Think’

The JFK assassination, 9/11, and the Tory MP spiked with LSD,” Fortean Times, July 2010, link; William Kelly, “Todd Leventhal: The Minister of Diz at Dealey Plaza,” CTKA, 2010, link.

72 For Nixon’s sensitivity concerning the Kennedy assassination, and the way this induced him into some of the intrigues known collectively as Watergate, see e.g. Scott, Hoch, and Stetler, The Assassinations, 374-78; Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-up (Santa Barbara, CA: Open Archive Press, 1993), 33, 64-66.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. He hosts the podcast ‘Active Measures’ with Alex Rubinstein. He has contributed to the GrayZone and Mint Press News and he also has a substack at kitklarenberg.com. His work exposing state crimes against democracy has made him an honoree for the 2022 Indy Media Awards.

In the September 13^th edition of Global Research News Hour, host Michael Welch asked Klarenberg to explain some of the aspects of 9/11 that investigators today should not shirk. He also elaborated on the stock market activity in both the 9/11 attacks and the October 7 attacks on Israel that may have predicted terrorist behaviour.

Global Research: The Office of Military Investigations found that CIA and FBI veterans affirmed that the agencies using the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate were trying to contact and recruit these two hijackers, Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar, as assets. People who a year later used planes as an act of terrorism. Talk about that aspect of 9-11 because I think it is fascinating.

Kit Klarenberg: There were people within, I guess you could call it the 9-11 truth movement, although I don’t personally consider myself a member of any movement, apart from the movement for humanity perhaps.

In effect, for years, independent researchers and journalists had been raising very obvious questions about whether the CIA had a relationship with some of the hijackers via the Saudi Intelligence services. Not least because of the very strange confirmed behaviour by the CIA around the two hijackers you mentioned, which is Hazmi and Mihdhar. So they entered the US despite the fact that the CIA and NSA knew that they were coming.

They shouldn’t have been allowed to get in in the first place and they had multi-entry visas to the US. And when they landed, the numerous FBI officials, just a bit of background, there was something called Alec Station, which was the CIA’s anti-Bin Laden and anti-Al Qaeda unit. Now this had FBI agents posted to it.

When they found out that Hazmi and Mihdhar were members of Al Qaeda and who were flagged as potentially very dangerous terrorists, said we want to inform our superiors in FBI headquarters about this. And they were blocked. They were consistently blocked from doing so.

And there are all sorts of indications that Alec Station sought to obfuscate and mislead the FBI about the presence of these two known Al Qaeda operatives on US soil. Now, not long after arrival, as in within minutes of their arrival at Los Angeles International Airport, they bump into, apparently by happenstance, Omar al-Bayoumi, who was this kind of very shady Saudi government employee who doesn’t seem to have done much very obvious work for the Saudi government, but it appears was receiving an enormous amount of money from the House of Saud. Now, the FBI, years later, set up something called Operation Encore, which was an investigation into potential potential Saudi connections to the 9-11 attacks.

And they concluded there was a 50-50 chance that Bayoumi, and by extension Saudi Arabia, had detailed advanced knowledge of the 9-11 attacks. Now, this was sat on until, I believe it was 2021, when the Biden administration released a tranche of Operation Encore documents. But the point is, is this this spy talk released court filing, it has all sorts of information on how, yes, the CIA had a relationship, a liaison relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar via the Saudi Intelligence services.

Now, this raises all sorts of questions, namely, why did it take so long for this to be confirmed? The filing offers some explanation for this, which is that the CIA and the FBI just lied, despite well knowing about this rather dark handshake, which raises the obvious prospect that the pair, if not other hijackers, were working for the CIA on the day of the attacks. Now, yeah, I would recommend your listeners read my article, and indeed the hyperlinked court filing in full, because it is full of completely dynamite disclosures. Yes, that kind of beg for a re-investigation of who knew what and about 9-11 in advance.

But also, yes, whether there was some degree of direction and control over the hijackers, whether they knew or didn’t know by the CIA. It’s all quite extraordinary. But if nothing else, we know for a fact now that, yes, there was a relationship with two of the hijackers.

The CIA sought to conceal this for reasons unclear. I think more widely, it’s kind of remarkable. I remember very well where I was and what I was doing on 9-11 when I was 12.

But the entire event has been rather forgotten. I mean, this was the start.

GR: Well, you mentioned that a lot, that there are memory holes in the stuff that they’ve known about, and they’ve just kind of forgotten it.

I mean, you mentioned in the article about Hani Hanjour, he had a demonstrably bad record of flying, and yet here he is executing the perfect downwards corkscrew flight into the Pentagon with precision that the vast majority of pilots don’t possess the skill to accomplish. And yet he was able to do it on September 11th, one of the many conflicting narratives that we have your term memory hole in the past 20 years.

KK: Yeah, and I think that Hani Hanjour is, I mean, I would suggest, and that’s what my investigation includes, was a very likely candidate for another 9-11 hijacker who was working for the CIA.

Now, I mean, the mainstream media has even reported on the oddity of Hanjour being the worst flight school pupil that his teachers had ever seen. And in written exams, he would take hours to answer a question that students typically completed in just 20 minutes. He was unable to control a single-engine Cessna during practical tests, and the sense among the teachers with whom he crossed paths was he shouldn’t be in the air under any circumstances.

Now, yes, as you mentioned, he performs this perfect descending corkscrew turn about 330 degrees from around 7,000 feet in the air while travelling over 500 miles per hour to come perfectly level with a pedestrian road leading up to the Pentagon, flying just over a metre above the ground, knocking over lampposts en route, and then crashing into a wing of the Pentagon, which is disused. The only people killed were largely maintenance workers who were reconstructing this section of the Pentagon. There were no senior staff harmed in this.

And, yes, this raises the very obvious question of what the hell actually happened, because the official story of the worst pilot trainee teachers had ever seen doing this seems not only implausible, but impossible. And, I mean, this is a door that a large number of people, including, I might add, people within independent media, don’t want opened because it raises all sorts of crazy questions about, you know, what were the planes being remotely flown? Was it actually not a plane at all, but something rather different, such as a missile? I mean, I think that, yes, there is an aversion to exploring this stuff because it is speculative, and I can understand that as someone who works overwhelmingly based on primary source documentary evidence in the form of leaked and declassified files. Yeah, but, I mean, those explanations do seem, you know, rather more compelling and plausible than Hanjour flying it himself.

Now, I mean, there are all sorts of other debates which, again, people don’t particularly want to go near about controlled demolition and etc. I do think at this stage, when we are 23 years removed from this, the risk of people getting into very serious trouble for probing these areas, not least because, yes, the world has kind of moved on and this catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor, in the phrase of the Project for a New American Century, has been rather forgotten, despite the world-changing consequences it ushered in. This is the kind of stuff that we need to be looking at.

GR: On the days immediately before 9/11, there were ‘put’ options placed on United and American airlines, the airplanes that were hijacked, suggesting a terrorist attack involving the airlines might happen. In an article you wrote in December of last year, you wrote about similarly strange behaviour of Israeli stock immediately before October 7, likewise suggesting a similar planned terrorist attack. Could you comment on how people other than Hamas might have profited from this knowledge, that the government would have known and therefore this was an attack that was allowed to happen on purpose?

KK: Yeah, sure.

I mean, I do think that, I mean, I’ve mentioned the kind of empirical case for 9-11 being a conspiracy. Yeah, one of the most compelling things is that pointing in that direction is the fact that there was widespread, extremely suspicious trading in the months and weeks and days leading up to 9-11, and which implied foreknowledge. Now, there are multiple academic papers which conclude that, yes, that the activity such as betting on, investing large amounts of money in stocks that did well out of 9-11, such as Raytheon, the defence contractor, and betting against stocks that did badly, such as United Airlines out of 9-11.

There was an enormous amount of activity in both directions, which suggested that people knew the attack was coming and they sought to profit from it. And they did to a large extent. I mean, to give you an example on just one, on September 10th, 2001, which is a day before this, the purchase of Raytheon shares soared sixfold.

And then a week later, their value had almost doubled. So, I mean, there are coincidences and there are also not coincidences. But I think that I kind of had this in mind when I read this very interesting academic study, which concluded that there was suspicious trading on Israeli stocks, again, both positive and negative trading, as it were, in the days preceding October 7th last year.

Now, the paper has a number of very revealing graphics, which show the enormous spikes going from almost zero, if not total zero, to hundreds of thousands of trades being made in the days on Israeli stocks that were damaged by October 7th. But what’s even more compelling, and again, you might be tempted to dismiss that as coincidence, is that the paper also finds similar patterns in the trading of Israeli stocks in April 2023. This is right when, and this has been reported in the mainstream media, Hamas was planning to execute what happened on October 7th originally.

Shorting activity on the Israeli ETF since October, 2022

But they got cold feet because they sensed that the Israelis were onto them. So they dropped their plans. Now, I mean, again, this can hardly be considered a coincidence.

But at both times when an attack was expected, and indeed an attack was executed, there is a similar level of deeply suspicious, unprecedentedly high stock market activity related to Israeli stocks. Now, I mean, this is a point that I made in my Mint Press article, which you mentioned, which is that, yeah, there are countless indications which have been confirmed in the mainstream that the Israeli military and Israeli Intelligence services knew that something was coming. And, you know, I got a lot of flak in certain circles for suggesting when this began that they knew what was coming.

And this has just been amply confirmed by subsequent disclosures.

GR: Well, there have been like Egyptian intelligence, and they’d also sent information to them about the possibility of attack. And Israeli Mossad, I mean, they have all sorts of transmitters all along the – I mean, I think they said something like a former IDF operative said that a cat couldn’t get across without notifying it.

And yet, according to an interview I did, I guess, late in spring or something, they found they were all – like they were completely caught off guard. So it all seems like, you know, in terms of the position of the troops and so on and so forth. So that all sort of further corroborates the possibility that they let it happen on purpose.

And this was with the goal of, you know, creating this incident where they would have their own war on terrorism, so-called, right?

KK: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it’s like, you know, I mean, I’ve been covering events in Gaza and the West Bank for many, many, many years. And it’s like, you know, Israel has formed doing this, where there are several examples, such as in the lead up to Operation Protective Edge in 2014 or Operation Cast Lead in 2008, where the Palestinian leadership was in peace talks with Israel.

And then at the very last minute, there are a series of Israeli provocations. Hamas responds with rather flaccid rocket attacks. And then this is used as a pretext for not only sabotaging peace negotiations, but carpet bombing Gaza.

Now, as well, I think that you’ve got to bear in mind that, like, not long before this, Azerbaijani authorities carried out an almost total ethnic cleansing in Artsakh, which is this was now formerly Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijanians moved in and said, well, and told the 200,000 strong population, if you don’t leave immediately, we’re going to massacre you all. So, of course, they left.

Now, that was assisted by the Israelis, and it received not a wink of criticism in the Western mainstream at all. So we must ask ourselves, was that a motivating factor for Netanyahu to think, right, well, I’m just going to carry out my own, like, you know, total ethnic cleansing? I mean, and that is what has happened. It’s I mean, another data point within this that just sticks in my mind a lot, which is there is a veteran British client journalist called Robert Peston.

He’s a British journalist. He, on October 8th, published a very notable post on X or Twitter, as it was previously called. And he said that British Intelligence sources had told him that the Hamas’ strike on Israel the previous day was going to evolve into a full blown regional war in West Asia as destabilizing to global security as Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

And it stated that this crisis would spread well, that his intelligence sources stated that this crisis will spread well beyond the Middle East. And we are in the early stages of a conflict with ramifications for much of the world. Now, this was posted about 24 hours after Hamas breached Gaza’s concentration camp walls.

How did his British intelligence sources know this unless they wanted this to happen, were planning for this to happen and intended for the grand regional war that they spoke of to happen? Because at that point, the Israeli government hadn’t even announced a response, really, beyond dispatching Israeli occupation force operatives en masse to massacre people. There was no sense that there was going to be, I mean, we’re almost a year into this, of the Israeli occupation forces going into Gaza routinely and jousting with Hamas. And it goes on and on.

And it looks like Hezbollah and Israel any day now could end up in a full blown hot war. Like, you know, it’s really, really, really suspicious. And I think that in a very basic way as well, Netanyahu has all sorts of domestic political problems, including the fact that he is being investigated for corruption.

The second that he’s out of office, he’s probably going to jail. Now, in that context where on a micro and macro level, you feel like your time is running out. And I do think that the genocide in Gaza has exposed all sorts of structural problems within Israel, namely that it’s a settler colonial population.

And so they’ve had a population collapse. A large number of people have fled home to the countries they’re actually born in. Their economy has been ravaged by this.

They’re having zero tourism, which was a big major economic sector for them. Their tech sector, because the apparent fallibility of their security systems was amply demonstrated on October 7th, are suffering big time. Yeah.

I mean, these were already kind of existing issues. And I think that in terms of drawing the U.S. deeper into this and other Western powers as a kind of grand last hurrah, was Netanyahu’s only option from a personal and just wider geopolitical perspective. So the reasons for allowing this to go ahead couldn’t be writ larger.

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First published by Global Research on September 18, 2023

*** 

 

 

Abstract 

Seventeen equatorial and Southern-Hemisphere countries were studied (Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay), which comprise 9.10 % of worldwide population, 10.3 % of worldwide COVID-19 injections (vaccination rate of 1.91 injections per person, all ages), virtually every COVID-19 vaccine type and manufacturer, and span 4 continents.

In the 17 countries, there is no evidence in all-cause mortality (ACM) by time data of any beneficial effect of COVID-19 vaccines. There is no association in time between COVID-19 vaccination and any proportionate reduction in ACM. The opposite occurs. 

All 17 countries have transitions to regimes of high ACM, which occur when the COVID-19 vaccines are deployed and administered. Nine of the 17 countries have no detectable excess ACM in the period of approximately one year after a pandemic was declared on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization (WHO), until the vaccines are rolled out (Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Philippines, Singapore, Suriname, Thailand, Uruguay). 

Unprecedented peaks in ACM occur in the summer (January-February) of 2022 in the Southern Hemisphere, and in equatorial-latitude countries, which are synchronous with or immediately preceded by rapid COVID-19-vaccine-booster-dose rollouts (3rd or 4th doses). This phenomenon is present in every case with sufficient mortality data (15 countries). Two of the countries studied have insufficient mortality data in January-February 2022 (Argentina and Suriname). 

Detailed mortality and vaccination data for Chile and Peru allow resolution by age and by dose number. It is unlikely that the observed peaks in all-cause mortality in January-February 2022 (and additionally in: July-August 2021, Chile; July-August 2022, Peru), in each of both countries and in each elderly age group, could be due to any cause other than the temporally associated rapid COVID-19-vaccine-booster-dose rollouts. Likewise, it is unlikely that the transitions to regimes of high ACM, coincident with the rollout and sustained administration of COVID-19 vaccines, in all 17 Southern-Hemisphere and equatorial-latitude countries, could be due to any cause other than the vaccines. 

Synchronicity between the many peaks in ACM (in 17 countries, on 4 continents, in all elderly age groups, at different times) and associated rapid booster rollouts allows this firm conclusion regarding causality, and accurate quantification of COVID-19-vaccine toxicity. 

The all-ages vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR), which is the ratio of inferred vaccine-induced deaths to vaccine doses delivered in a population, is quantified for the January-February 2022 ACM peak to fall in the range 0.02 % (New Zealand) to 0.20% (Uruguay). In Chile and Peru, the vDFR increases exponentially with age (doubling approximately every 4 years of age), and is largest for the latest booster doses, reaching approximately 5 % in the 90+ years age groups (1 death per 20 injections of dose 4). Comparable results occur for the Northern Hemisphere, as found in previous articles (India, Israel, USA). 

We quantify the overall all-ages vDFR for the 17 countries to be (0.126 ± 0.004) %, which would imply 17.0 ± 0.5 million COVID-19 vaccine deaths worldwide, from 13.50 billion injections up to 2 September 2023. This would correspond to a mass iatrogenic event that killed (0.213 ± 0.006) % of the world population (1 death per 470 living persons, in less than 3 years), and did not measurably prevent any deaths. 

The overall risk of death induced by injection with the COVID-19 vaccines in actual populations, inferred from excess all-cause mortality and its synchronicity with rollouts, is globally pervasive and much larger than reported in clinical trials, adverse effect monitoring, and cause-of-death statistics from death certificates, by 3 orders of magnitude (1,000-fold greater). 

The large age dependence and large values of vDFR quantified in this study of 17 countries on 4 continents, using all the main COVID-19 vaccine types and manufacturers, should induce governments to immediately end the baseless public health policy of prioritizing elderly residents for injection with COVID-19 vaccines, until valid risk-benefit analyses are made.

Introduction 

All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting and epidemiologically characterizing events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge or collapse in deaths from any cause.

Such data can be collected by jurisdiction or geographical region, by age group, by sex, and so on; and it is not susceptible to reporting bias or to any bias in attributing causes of death in the mortality itself

(Aaby et al., 2020; Bilinski and Emanuel, 2020; Bustos Sierra et al., 2020; Félix-Cardoso et al., 2020; Fouillet et al., 2020; Kontis et al., 2020; Mannucci et al., 2020; Mills et al., 2020; Olson et al., 2020; Piccininni et al., 2020; Rancourt, 2020; Rancourt et al., 2020; Sinnathamby et al., 2020; Tadbiri et al., 2020; Vestergaard et al., 2020; Villani et al., 2020; Achilleos et al., 2021; Al Wahaibi et al., 2021; Anand et al., 2021; Böttcher et al., 2021; Chan et al., 2021; Dahal et al., 2021; Das-Munshi et al., 2021; Deshmukh et al., 2021; Faust et al., 2021; Gallo et al., 2021; Islam, Jdanov, et al., 2021; Islam, Shkolnikov, et al., 2021; Jacobson and Jokela, 2021; Jdanov et al., 2021; Joffe, 2021; Karlinsky and Kobak, 2021; Kobak, 2021; Kontopantelis et al., 2021a, 2021b; Kung et al., 2021a, 2021b; Liu et al., 2021; Locatelli and Rousson, 2021; Miller et al., 2021; Moriarty et al., 2021; Nørgaard et al., 2021; Panagiotou et al., 2021; Pilkington et al., 2021; Polyakova et al., 2021; Rancourt et al., 2021a, 2021b; Rossen et al., 2021; Sanmarchi et al., 2021; Sempé et al., 2021; Soneji et al. 2021; Stein et al., 2021; Stokes et al., 2021; Vila-Corcoles et al., 2021; Wilcox et al., 2021; Woolf et al., 2021; Woolf, Masters and Aron, 2021; Yorifuji et al., 2021; Ackley et al., 2022; Acosta et al., 2022; Engler, 2022; Faust et al., 2022; Ghaznavi et al., 2022; Gobiņa et al., 2022; He et al., 2022; Henry et al., 2022; Jha et al., 2022; Johnson and Rancourt, 2022; Juul et al., 2022; Kontis et al., 2022; Kontopantelis et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2022; Leffler et al., 2022; Lewnard et al., 2022; McGrail, 2022; Neil et al., 2022; Neil and Fenton, 2022; Pálinkás and Sándor, 2022; Ramírez-Soto and Ortega-Cáceres, 2022; Rancourt, 2022; Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2022b; Razak et al., 2022; Redert, 2022a, 2022b; Rossen et al., 2022; Safavi-Naini et al., 2022; Schöley et al., 2022; Sy, 2022; Thoma and Declercq, 2022; Wang et al., 2022; Aarstad and Kvitastein, 2023; Bilinski et al., 2023; de Boer et al., 2023; de Gier et al., 2023; Demetriou et al., 2023; Donzelli et al., 2023; Haugen, 2023; Jones and Ponomarenko, 2023; Kuhbandner and Reitzner, 2023; Lytras et al., 2023; Masselot et al., 2023; Matveeva and Shabalina, 2023; Neil and Fenton, 2023; Paglino et al., 2023; Rancourt et al., 2023; Redert, 2023; Schellekens, 2023; Scherb and Hayashi, 2023; Šorli et al., 2023; Woolf et al., 2023). 

We have previously reported several cases in which anomalous peaks in all-cause mortality (ACM) are temporally associated with rapid COVID-19 vaccine-dose rollouts and cases in which the start of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign coincides with the start of a new regime of sustained elevated mortality; in India, Australia, Israel, USA, and Canada, including states and provinces (Rancourt, 2022; Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2022b, 2023). 

These studies allowed us to make the first quantitative determinations of the vaccine-dose fatality rate (vDFR), which is the ratio of inferred vaccine-induced deaths to vaccine doses administered in a population, based on excess-ACM evaluation on a given time period, compared to the number of vaccine doses administered in the same time period.

The all-ages all-doses value of vDFR was typically approximately 0.05 % (1 death per 2,000 injections), with an extreme value of 1 % for the special case of India (Rancourt, 2022). Our work, using extensive data for Australia and Israel, has also shown that vDFR is exponential with age (doubling every 5 years of age), reaching approximately 1 % for 80+ year olds (Rancourt et al., 2023). 

The clearest example is that of a relatively sharp ACM peak occurring in January-February 2022 in Australia, which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of Australia’s dose 3 of the COVID-19 vaccine; occurring in 5 of 8 of the Australian states and in all of the more-elderly age groups (Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2023).

In contrast, often one must contend with the confounding effect of the intrinsic seasonal variation of ACM; however, in this case for Australia, the said January-February 2022 peak occurs at a time in the intrinsic seasonal cycle when one should have a stable (Southern Hemisphere) summer low or summer trough in ACM. There are no previous examples of such a peak in the summer in the historic record of ACM for Australia (Rancourt et al., 2022a).

Few national jurisdictions have the kind of extensive age-stratified mortality and vaccination data available for Australia and Israel. Two other such jurisdictions are Chile and Peru. Here, we show that Chile and Peru, like Australia, has a relatively sharp ACM peak occurring in January-February 2022, which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of Chile’s dose 4 and Peru’s dose 3 of the COVID-19 vaccine, respectively, occurring for all of the more-elderly age groups. 

This shared feature between Chile, Peru and Australia led us to look for more examples of the January-February 2022 ACM-peak phenomenon in the Southern Hemisphere and in equatorial regions. Equatorial countries have no summer and winter seasons and no seasonal variations in their ACM patterns. We found the same phenomenon everywhere that data was available (Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Uruguay), although incomplete for Bolivia and not as distinctive for New Zealand. Here, we report on those findings. 

Data

The sources of mortality and vaccine-administration data are given in Appendix A: Sources of mortality and vaccination data. 

Appendix B: Examples of all-cause mortality and vaccination data contains examples of the data: all-ages national ACM by time (week or month), from 2015 to 2023, and all-ages all-doses vaccine administration by week, using Y-scales starting from zero, for the 17 countries considered in the present study: Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay.

Figure 1 shows the said 17 countries considered, in relation to the equator on a world map. 

Figure 1: World map showing the 17 countries considered in the present study, in relation to the equator and the tropics ― Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Malaysia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Suriname, Thailand, and Uruguay. 

Method to Detect Time Transitions to

Regimes of High All-Cause Mortality 

We implement the following method developed by one of us (JH) for detecting changes in regime in ACM data by time (day, week, month, quarter). 

One is interested in detecting transitions in time (as one advances in time from a stable historic period) to regimes of “higher than usual” or “higher than recent” ACM, which may be associated with the declaration of a pandemic or with rollouts of vaccines. Although the trained eye can detect such transitions in the raw ACM by time data itself, it is useful to apply a statistical transformation, which is designed to largely eliminate the confounding difficulty of seasonal variations in ACM, which occur in non-equatorial countries. 

Since the dominant period of the seasonal variations in ACM is 1 year, and since we wish to detect changes moving forward in time, we adopt the following approach. We apply a 1-year backward moving average to the ACM by time data. Each point in time of the 1-year backward moving average is simply the average ACM for the year ending at the said point in time, and we plot this moving average by time. Changes in regime of ACM then appear as breaks (in slope or value) in the moving average by time. 

Note that the 1-year backward moving average method produces one significant but easily discerned artifact: Relatively large and sharp peaks in ACM give rise to artificial drops in the moving average at one year ahead of (later than) the said relatively large and sharp peaks in ACM. 

Methods to Quantify vDFR from All-Cause Mortality 

4.1 Historical-trend baseline for a period (or peak) of mortality (Method 1) 

Our first method (Method 1) for quantification of vDFR by age group (or all ages) and by vaccine dose number (or all doses) is as follows (Rancourt et al., 2022a, 2023), here improved to adjust for systematic seasonal effects: 

i. Plot the ACM by time (day, week, month) for the age group (or all ages) over a large time scale, including the years prior to the declared pandemic. 

ii. Identify the date (day, week, month) of the start of the vaccine rollout (first dose rollout) for the age group (or all ages). 

iii. Note, for consistency, that the ACM undergoes a step-wise increase to larger values near the date of the start of the vaccine rollout.

iv. Integrate (add) ACM from the start of the vaccine rollout to the end of available data or end of vaccinations (all doses), whichever comes first. This is the basic integration time window used in the calculation, start to end dates. 

v. Apply this window and this integration over successive and non-overlapping equal-duration periods, moving as far back as the data permits. 

vi. Start each new integration window at the same point in the seasonal cycle as the start of the basic integration window for the vaccine period, even if this introduces gaps between successive integration periods. 

vii. Plot the resulting integration values versus time, and note, for consistency, that the value has an upward jog, well discerned from the historic trend or values, for the vaccination period. 

viii. Extrapolate the historic trend of integrated values into the vaccination period. The difference between the measured and extrapolated (historic trend predicted) integrated values of ACM in the vaccination period is the excess mortality associated with the vaccination period. 

ix. The extrapolation, in practice, is achieved by fitting a straight line to chosen pre-vaccination-period integration points. 

x. If too few points are available for the extrapolation, giving too large an uncertainty in the fitted slope, then impose a slope of zero, which amounts to using an average of recent values. In some cases, even a single point (usually the point for the immediately preceding integration window) can be used. 

xi. The error in the extrapolated value is most often overwhelmingly the dominant source of error in the calculated excess mortality. Estimate the “accuracy error” in the extrapolated value as the mean deviation of the absolute value difference with the fitted line (mean of the absolute values of the residuals) for the chosen points of the fit. This error is a measure of the integration-period variations from all causes over a near region having an assumed linear trend. 

xii. The said “accuracy error” is generally larger than the “precision error” (or statistical error) in the extrapolated value, as it represents the year-to-year variability of the integrated ACM in the integration window in the years prior to the Covid or vaccination periods. 

xiii. If there are too few integration windows in the available normal years prior to the peak or region of interest to obtain a good estimate of the historic year-to-year variability, or if the statistical errors in the integrated values are relatively large, then make use of the statistical errors to best estimate the needed uncertainty. 

xiv. Apply the same integration window (start-to-end dates during vaccination) to count all vaccine doses administered in that time. 

xv. Depending on particular circumstances in the data, it may be necessary to use different integration bounds (different windows) for the ACM and for the vaccine administration. We saw no need for this, and we did not try to implement or test such an optimization. 

xvi. Define vDFR = (vaccination-period excess mortality) / (vaccine doses administered in the same vaccination period). Calculate the uncertainty in vDFR using the estimated error in vaccination-period excess mortality. 

The same method is adapted to any region of interest (such as a peak in ACM) of sub-annual duration, by translating the window of integration (of the region of interest) backwards by increments of one year. 

The above-described method is robust and ideally adapted to the nature of ACM data. Integrated ACM will generally have a small statistical error. 

A large time-wise integration window (e.g., for the entire vaccination period) mostly removes the difficulty arising from intrinsic seasonal variations; and this difficulty is further solved by starting each new integration window at the same point in the seasonal cycle as the start of the basic integration window for the vaccine period (point-vi, above).

The historic trend is analysed without introducing any model assumptions or uncertainties beyond assuming that the near trend can be modelled by a straight line, where justified by the data itself. Such an analysis, for example, takes into account year to year changes in age-group cohort size arising from the age structure of the population. The only assumption is that a locally linear near trend for the unperturbed (ACM-wise unperturbed) population is realistic. 

While the above method is designed for cases (jurisdictions) in which there is no evidence in the ACM data for mortality caused by factors other than the vaccine rollouts, such as Covid measures (treatment protocols, societal impositions, isolation and so forth; since no excess mortality occurs in the pre-vaccination period of the Covid period), it can be readily adapted to cases in which mortality in the vaccination period is confounded by additional (Covid period) causal factors that cannot be ruled out. 

One approach is simply to adapt the above method to calendar years, irrespective of whether excess mortality occurs prior to the COVID-19 vaccine rollouts. One obtains excess ACM by calendar year, relative to the expected value from the historic trend deduced by linear extrapolation from a chosen range of yearly ACM values for < 2020 (for years prior to 2020, when the 11 March 2020 announcement of a pandemic was made). One then compares the excess ACM for 2020 and for 2021. In many (most) countries, there was essentially no COVID-19 vaccination in 2020, and a rapid rollout essentially started in January 2021. 

Special Case of a Single Historic Integrated Point (Method 2) 

In cases in which it is not possible or practical to obtain more than one integration value for the needed extrapolation (steps v to ix, above), rather than assume a zero slope for the extrapolation (step x, above), the following second method (Method 2) can be applied.

If Y(−1) is the sole historic integrated point, then simply take the needed extrapolated value, Y(0), to be: 

Y(0) = Y(−1) + m ΔT W    (1)

where m is the slope of the best-straight-line fit through the original ACM by time unit (day, week, month…) versus numbered time unit, ΔT is the number of time units between Y(0) and Y(−1) (i.e., between the start of the Y(0) integration window and the start of the Y(−1) integration window), and W is the inclusive width of the integration window in number of time units. 

This assumes that the ACM by time varies on a straight line, notwithstanding seasonal variations, on the near segment used to obtain the best-straight-line fit. 

The resulting excess mortality for the integration window or period, xACM(0), is then: 

xACM(0) = ACM(0) − Y(0)      (2)

where ACM(0) is the integrated ACM in the period of interest. 

The statistical error (standard deviation) in xACM(0) is then given by: 

sig(xACM(0)) = sqrt [ ACM(0) + Y(−1) + (ΔT W sig(m))2 ]      (3)

where sig(m) is the nominally statistical error in m. 

If there is no seasonal variation in ACM, as occurs in equatorial-latitude jurisdictions, then sig(m) is the actual statistical error in m. With seasonal variations in ACM, sig(m) extracted from the least squares fitting to a straight line does not have a simple  meaning. In this case, sig(m) will incorporate uncertainty arising from seasonal variations, and increases with increasing amplitude of the seasonal variation. 

Application of the Methods to the Specific Countries 

The parameters for applying the methods (Methods 1 and 2) to the data are given in Appendix C: Technical and specific information for applications of the methods to the data. 

Click here to read the full report.

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Twenty-three years ago: 9/11 was  a criminal undertaking based on countless lies and fabrications. On September 11, 2024, we commemorate the tragic events of 9/11.

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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Featured image is from The Land Destroyer Report

A NATO invasion of nuclear Russia is currently underway, and the world is unaware that it is in World War III, as reported by Megatron (14 August 2024).

The Kursk region of Russia is currently full of NATO weapons, troops, logistics, and more, many of them destroyed. See map, below.

 

Ukrainian aims to destabilize Russia with Kursk incursion. (BingMaps/Institute For The Study Of War/USA TODAY)

Video footage comes out of dozens of NATO vehicles, air defense systems, tanks and more; even if destroyed and captured by Russian forces in the Kursk Region.

The Kiev forces of about 11,600 under guidance of NATO troops have not managed to conquer the city of Kurchatov and its nuclear power plant. Apparently, President Zelensky used all of Kiev’s remaining troops, plus extra Polish (NATO) forces. 

Russian General Apti Alaudinov noted that the purpose of invading the Kursk Region was to secure a strong position for upcoming negotiations with Russia. However, with Kiev’s and their western masters’ defeat, the Kiev Regime signed their own death warrant. 

Kiev’s losses are more than 2,000.

General Allaudin further predicts that the Kiev Special Operation will be terminated by the end of 2024, with a total victory of the Russian Army, and the surrender of the Kiev Regime and its masters in Washington and London. (Borzzikman Aug 15, 2024)

Whether surrender by the west will actually happen, remains to be seen. It is not a habit of the west, even in terminal conditions, losing face – thus, more aggressions, perhaps of a NATO direct attack on Russia, is a possibility.

At this point, President Putin still refuses to declare war, although Russia’s territory has been invaded and Russians are killed on their territory by NATO forces. And more direct NATO attacks may be planned. For now, Washington is getting away with “murder”; literally. 

Step by step, Washington and its NATO partners have been crossing one red line after the other.

• First, NATO weapons in Ukraine;
• then NATO troops un Ukaine;
• then F-16 fighter jets in Ukraine;
• then NATO soldiers commanding the sophisticated weaponry supplied by the west;
• then NATO troops on Russian territories; then NATO drones and aircraft attacking Russian targets on Russian territory – and finally NATO troops attempting taking over an entire Russian district, taking Russian prisoners, killing Russians.

Airports across Russia have been constantly bombed for several weeks by NATO drones. 

On August 9, 2024, Russian state media reported an explosion, followed by fire at the Russian air base in the Lipetsk region, around 280 kilometers from the border with northeastern Ukraine, as if Ukraine / NATO forces attacked the airfield, and destroyed a warehouse and several other facilities with guided aerial bombs; guided by NATO experts. 

Some speculate that Kiev / NATO may have used a small tactical nuclear weapon. There is however no proof for such an aggression, and Russia remains silent.

According to Russian military, their own (Russian) offensive involved around 1,000 troops and more than two dozen armored vehicles and tanks. See this. (This page was removed by Google, saying the Moscow Times page does not exist anymore – the link is shown, to demonstrate western censoring).

The Russian army is constantly advancing in the Donbass, defending the Russian speaking population from the cowardly Azov-Nazi attacks that killed in the last 10 years about 18,000 people, most of them women and children. 

Russia, on her own territory receives heavy and painful blows from NATO weapons. NATO is everywhere, with communication, logistics and NATO command.

Over 35 countries are investing hundreds of billions in tax payers’ money to supply Ukraine with weapons to carry out these deadly strikes against Russia – on Russian territory, with NATO soldiers, whom the west likes to call “foreign mercenaries”. 

Some 80 years after WWII, when Russia defeated Nazi-Germany, German tanks – given to Ukraine – are again rolling through the Kursk region, where the decisive battle took place; the battle by which Russia defeated Nazi-Germany saving the West from German fascism. 

But fascism today is ticking and is well alive, reminiscing the times of the 1940’s. Now neo-fascism is emanating from Ukraine, an erstwhile ally of Nazi-Germany – the Bandera’s Azov Battalions – that killed tens if not hundreds of thousands of Russians during WWII.

Mr. Putin was adamant eradicating Nazism in Ukraine, making Ukraine a neutral and NATO-free country, a key condition for Peace negotiations. 

Many people are still under the illusion that Russia is in a minor military conflict with Ukraine, not realizing that this proxy-war Washington-NATO against Russia is far more dangerous than the WWII situation in 1943.

NATO is attempting to gradually creating brigades in Eastern Europe, aiming at confronting Russia.

It is a game of observation, “how far can we go”, while carefully watching Russia’s reaction. The difficulties they may have, is manning the brigades with soldiers, as young Europeans are unwilling to die for western warmongers and profits of western war industries. 

According to Megatron, there is a high probability that NATO may eventually intend to invade Belarus.

Did Mr. Putin and his advisers miscalculate NATO’s boldness, hoping that they will not cross from Ukraine into Russian territories, to avoid further escalation?

What now, that all the Red Lines have been crossed – and that more than once?

In a recent statement, former Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, said Russia should no longer hold back: 

“From this moment, the [Kiev] Special Military operation should become openly exterritorial in nature,” Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, argued in a post on Thursday.

“We can and should go further into what still exists as Ukraine. To Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev. To Kiev and further. There should be no restrictions in terms of recognized borders.” See this.

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If President Putin is holding out for even more western / NATO aggressions on Russian territory, it may be that he has a strong response in store, one that cannot be accused as a response to a “false flag”, because what Kiev-NATO are doing on Russian territories is clearly no “false flag”, but pure provocation. 

Russia has the military capacity to wipe out simultaneously western decision and military centers, as well as financial hubs, with ultra-precise, supersonic tactical nuclear weapons, keeping the loss of life to a minimum, but disabling western power structures.

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One Month Before Global Research’s Anniversary

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 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.

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AI translation into Japanese

***

爆弾：日本の元内務大臣が予防接種を受けていない人に謝罪：「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

ミシェル・チョスドフスキーによる入門ノート

Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky

In Japan, the mRNA vaccine was launched in February 2021 allegedly as a means to protect the Japanese people against a non-existent “killer virus”.

More than 206 million doses had already been administered. The Japanese population was not informed regarding the dangers of the mRNA vaccine.

In December 2021, Japan’s Ministry of Health authorized booster shots of  Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, pointing to the “low rate of side effects such as myocarditis”. 

According to Japan’s Ministry of Heath’s early advisory (which was similar to that applied in numerous countries):

“The Government recommends that people get vaccinated because the benefits of vaccination are greater than the risk of side reactions.” (emphasis added)

The foregoing is misleading as pointed out in the Former Minister of Internal Affairs Kazuhiro Haraguchi’s courageous statement:

“‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones”

「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

“They are trying to block our freedom, our resistance, our power. But we will never lose.”

Haraguchi issued a rallying call for action.

He urged the people to stand united in challenging the government and its questionable decisions.

“Let’s overthrow this government,”

he proclaimed, emphasizing the need for change and accountability.

He called on legislators to continue fighting for the people’s lives and freedoms, “Let’s make it happen,” he concluded.

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Excess Mortality (Japan) (2020-2022)

In Japan, the vaccine was launched in early 2021.

A 2021 report by Japan’s Ministry of Education confirms that suicide among Japanese schoolchildren had hit a record high during the 2020 school year.  The report from the Ministry of Education suggests that

“the pandemic has caused changes in the school and family environment and had an impact on children’s behavior”. (For details see chapter 6 of  Michel Chossudovsky’s book)

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A  note on my book entitled: 

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

first published in Japanese in April 2022.

In English it is available in E-book form. (See below).

I remain indebted to the Japanese publisher which brought out and promoted my book despite political pressures  and an atmosphere of censorship.  My thanks to both the Publisher and to the Translator.

The fraudulent narrative concerning the Covid “Vaccine” is collapsing in different parts of the World.

In California, 9th Circuit Court Rules that COVID-19 mRNA Injections Are Not “Vaccines”.  

In Germany, the Health authorities  have acknowledged the devastating nature and impacts of the Covid lockdowns, the mandatory wearing of the face mask, and the experimental mRNA “vaccines”.

Global Research has from the outset provided an extensive daily coverage of the devastating impacts of the “vaccine”. Our objective is to SAVE LIVES. 

In solidarity with the people of Japan.

In solidarity with people all over the World. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 11, June 24, 2024

 

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Kazuhiro Haraguchi, the former Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs, has become the first major politician to apologize to the unvaccinated for the tsunami of deaths occuring among the vaccinated population.

His presentation  starts 7’o”

Earlier this week, huge numbers of Japanese citizens took to the streets to protest against the crimes against humanity perpetrated by globalist organizations such by World Health Organization (WHO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) during the pandemic.

During an opening speech at the protests, Haraguchi delivered a powerful and emotional apology for the huge numbers of deaths now occurring as a result of the deadly mRNA roll-out.

Haraguchi began by addressing the grief and loss felt by families who have lost loved ones who were coerced into taking the COVID jab. With a deep sense of sincerity, he extended his condolences and took responsibility for the failings of those in power. “I apologize to all of you. So many have died, and they shouldn’t have,” he said.

Thelibertybeacon.com reports: One of the key points in Haraguchi’s speech was his criticism of the ban on Ivermectin, a drug developed by Dr. Satoshi Omura, which he believed could have played a significant role in combating the pandemic. Haraguchi questioned the motives behind the ban, suggesting that economic interests were prioritized over public health. “Why? Because they are cheap. They don’t want it because it will interfere with the sales of the vaccines,” he argued. This statement drew loud applause from the crowd, many of whom felt that corporate profits had taken precedence over human lives.

Haraguchi then shared a deeply personal story about his own health struggles. After receiving vaccines, he developed a severe illness, specifically a rapidly progressing form of cancer. “This time last year, I had neither eyebrows nor hair. Two out of the three supposed vaccines I received were lethal batches,” he revealed. This candid account of his battle with cancer, which included significant physical changes like hair loss, struck a chord with the audience. He recounted an incident where his appearance became a point of distraction in the Diet, with an opponent focusing more on his wig than the issues at hand.

Adding to the conversation, Haraguchi disclosed that he was not the only member of Japan’s National Diet (legislature) to suffer adverse effects from vaccines. He mentioned that three of his colleagues had been severely affected, with some even hospitalized. “They are falling to pieces, some hospitalized. But they don’t speak up,” he explained. This revelation underscored a broader issue: the reluctance or inability of public figures to discuss their personal health challenges openly.

Haraguchi was particularly passionate about the attempts to silence those who question current policies and government actions. He recounted a recent incident where he was banned from speaking on Channel 3 after an interview with its president. 

“The other day, I spoke with the President of Channel 3, and I was banned. They are trying to silence our voices,” he stated. This attempt to censor dissenting voices highlighted a critical concern about freedom of speech and expression. Haraguchi urged the audience to remain steadfast in their resolve, saying,

“They are trying to block our freedom, our resistance, our power. But we will never lose.”

In the conclusion of his speech,

Haraguchi issued a rallying call for action. He urged the people to stand united in challenging the government and its questionable decisions. “Let’s overthrow this government,” he proclaimed, emphasizing the need for change and accountability. He called on legislators to continue fighting for the people’s lives and freedoms, “Let’s make it happen,” he concluded.

The protest that is happening right now (31st May 2024), which aims to draw tens of thousands of participants, marked a significant moment in the global discourse about pandemic management and health policies. Haraguchi’s speech, filled with personal anecdotes and strong criticisms, resonated deeply with the attendees.

Read this

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爆弾：日本の元内務大臣が予防接種を受けていない人に謝罪：「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

ミシェル・チョスドフスキーによる入門ノート

Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky

私の著書『 世界的なコロナ危機、人類に対するグローバルクーデター』  は、2022年4月に日本語で初めて出版されました。英語版は電子書籍の形で入手できます。

政治的圧力と検閲にもかかわらず私の本を出版してくれた日本の出版社には今でも感謝しています。

出版社と翻訳者に感謝します。

日本では、存在しない「殺人ウイルス」から日本人を守る手段として、mRNAワクチンが2021年2月に発売されたとされている。

すでに2億600万回以上が投与された。日本 国民はmRNAワクチンの危険性について知らされていなかった。

2021年12月、 日本の厚生労働省は 「心筋炎などの副作用の発生率が低い」ことを指摘し、モデルナ社とファイザー社のワクチンの追加接種を承認した。

日本の保健省の初期勧告によると（これは多くの国で適用されているものと同様でした。

「ワクチン接種のメリットは副反応のリスクよりも大きいため、 政府は人々にワクチン接種を推奨しています。」 （強調追加）

原口一博氏の勇気ある発言が指摘しているように、上記は誤解を招くものである。

「『あなたは正しかった。ワクチンは何百万人もの私たちの愛する人を殺している』」

新型コロナウイルスの「ワクチン」に関する欺瞞的な物語は、世界のさまざまな地域で崩壊しつつある。

カリフォルニア州の 第9巡回裁判所は、COVID-19 mRNA注射は「ワクチン」ではないとの判決を下した。

ドイツ では 、保健当局が、新型コロナウイルス対策のロックダウン、マスク着用義務、実験的なmRNA「ワクチン」の壊滅的な性質と影響を認めている。

日本の人々と連帯して。

世界中の人々と連帯します。

ミシェル・チョスドフスキー、グローバル・リサーチ、2024 年 6 月 11 日

 

日本の元総務大臣である原口一博氏は、ワクチン接種者の間で津波による死亡者が発生したことについて、ワクチン未接種者に謝罪した最初の主要政治家となった。

 

今週初め、大勢の日本国民が、パンデミックの最中に世界保健機関（WHO）や世界経済フォーラム（WEF）などのグローバリスト組織が犯した人道に対する罪に抗議するため街頭に出た。

原口氏は抗議活動の冒頭演説で、致命的なmRNAの流出の結果として現在発生している膨大な数の死者について力強く、感情的に謝罪した。

原口氏はまず、新型コロナウイルスのワクチン接種を強制され愛する人を失った遺族が感じている悲しみと喪失感について語った。 氏は心から哀悼の意を表し、権力者の失策の責任を認めた。  「皆さんにお詫びします。多くの人が亡くなりましたが、亡くなるべきではなかったのです」と氏は述べた。

Thelibertybeacon.com の報道によると、原口氏の演説の要点の一つは、 大村智博士が開発した イベルメクチンの禁止に対する批判だった。同氏は、この薬がパンデミック対策に大きな役割を果たせたと考えていた。原口氏は禁止の背後にある動機に疑問を呈し、公衆衛生よりも経済的利益が優先されたと示唆した。「なぜかって？ 安いからだ。ワクチンの売り上げに支障が出るから嫌がるんだ」と同氏は主張した。この発言は、企業の利益が人命よりも優先されたと感じていた聴衆から大きな拍手を浴びた。

原口氏はその後、自身の健康問題に関する非常に個人的な話をした。 ワクチン接種後、深刻な病気、具体的には急速に進行する癌を発症した。 「去年の今頃は、眉毛も髪の毛もありませんでした。私が受けた3つのワクチンのうち2つは致死的なワクチンでした」と彼は明かした。脱毛などの著しい身体的変化を含む癌との闘いについてのこの率直な話は、聴衆の共感を呼んだ。彼は、国会で彼の外見が気を散らす原因となり、対立候補が目の前の問題よりも彼のかつらに注目したという出来事を語った。

会話に加えて、原口氏は、 ワクチンによる副作用に苦しんだ日本の国会議員は自分だけではないことを明らかにした。同氏は、同僚3人が重篤な影響を受け、中には入院した人もいると述べた。 「彼らはバラバラになっていて、中には入院している人もいる。しかし、彼らは声を上げません」と彼は説明した。この暴露は、公人が個人の健康問題について公然と話し合うことに消極的である、あるいはそれができないという、より広範な問題を浮き彫りにした。

原口氏は、現在の政策や政府の行動に疑問を抱く人々を黙らせる試みに特に情熱を注いだ。同氏は、チャンネル3の社長とのインタビュー後にチャンネル3での発言を禁止された最近の出来事について語った 。  「先日、私はチャンネル 3 の社長と話をしましたが、私は禁止されました。彼らは私たちの声を黙らせようとしている」と彼は述べた。反対意見を検閲するこの試みは、言論と表現の自由に対する重大な懸念を浮き彫りにした。原口氏は聴衆に対し、「彼らは私たちの自由、私たちの抵抗、私たちの力を阻止しようとしている。しかし、私たちは決して負けません。」

原口氏は演説の最後に、行動を起こすよう呼びかけた。 政府とその疑わしい決定に異議を唱えるために国民が団結するよう促した。  「この政府を打倒しよう」と宣言し、変革と説明責任の必要性を強調した。議員らに国民の命と自由のために戦い続けるよう呼びかけ、「実現させよう」と締めくくった。

現在（2024年5月31日）行われている抗議活動は、数万人の参加を目指しており、パンデミック管理と健康政策に関する世界的な議論において重要な瞬間を刻んだ。個人的な逸話と強い批判に満ちた原口氏の演説は、参加者の心に深く響いた。

これを読む。

 

 

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Having cut his teeth in the mainstream media, including stints at the BBC, Sean witnessed the corruption within the system and developed a burning desire to expose the secrets that protect the elite and allow them to continue waging war on humanity. Disturbed by the agenda of the elites and dissatisfied with the alternative media, Sean decided it was time to shake things up. Knight of Joseon (https://joseon.com)

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First published on October 5, 2023

If an experimental vaccine were to damage the heart and immune system in a significant number of individuals who received it, it is possible that it could lead to a decline in the overall population size.

This could occur for several reasons.

• First, damage to the heart could lead to an increase in cardiovascular diseases, which are a leading cause of mortality worldwide. This could result in a higher number of deaths among individuals who received the vaccine.
• Second, damage to the immune system could leave individuals more susceptible to other infections and diseases, which could also contribute to an increase in mortality.
• Last, but by no means least, the negative impacts of the vaccine on fertility and reproductive health could lead to a decline in the number of births, further contributing to a decline in the overall population size.

If such a vaccine were to be developed and distributed, it could potentially lead to depopulation due to increased mortality and decreased fertility.

Unfortunately, the world has found itself in a situation where powerful institutions and Governments have coerced millions of people into getting an experimental Covid-19 vaccine that causes all of the ill-fated effects mentioned above.

Official Government reports and confidential Pfizer documents prove it.

Therefore, you are witnessing mass depopulation unfold before your very eyes.

The push for mass Covid-19 vaccination was never about combating a virus. It was about reducing the global population.

This goal aligns with the interests of certain powerful corporations and individuals who stand to benefit from a smaller, more manageable population now that AI is advanced enough to replace hundreds of millions of workers.

Regardless of the specific cause, the implications of what is currently occurring in the real world are significant.

Millions Have ‘Died Suddenly’

Did you know that data on excess deaths in 15% of the world’s countries can be found on the website of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)?

This includes major countries like the USA, Canada, and the UK.

Additionally, we were able to extract even more up-to-date data on 28 European countries from EuroMOMO.

All of this information has been provided to the OECD and EuroMOMO by each country’s Government organizations, such as the Centers for Disease Control in the USA and the Office for National Statistics in the UK.

The following chart illustrates the disturbing trend of excess deaths in the “Five Eyes” countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US) as well as 27 other European countries –

Are you aware of the staggering number of excess deaths that have occurred in the US and Europe in recent years?

In 2021, the US saw almost 700,000 excess deaths, with another 360,000 excess deaths by November 11th, 2022.

Europe had a similarly alarming 382,000 excess deaths in 2021, with 309,000 excess deaths by November 2022.

And these figures don’t even include Ukraine!

Shockingly, even countries like New Zealand, Australia, and Canada have seen excess deaths that have not decreased since the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine.

The following chart illustrates the disturbing trend of overall excess deaths in Australia in 2020, 2021, and up to week 30 of 2022 –

Did you know that the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine in Australia led to a shocking 747% increase in excess deaths, from 1,303 in 2020 to 11,042 in 2021?

And the situation has only gotten worse since then.

By the end of July 2022, there were a staggering 18,973 excess deaths in Australia – a 1,356% increase from 2020.

That’s more excess deaths in 7 months than in the previous two years combined.

And the situation in the US is similarly alarming –

Are you aware of the disturbing trend of excess deaths in the US following the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine?

By week 38 of 2022, 1,700 more people had died compared to the same time in 2020, and by week 38 of 2021, a shocking 109,000 more people had died compared to the same time in 2020.

These numbers indicate that rather than decreasing, deaths have actually increased following the vaccine rollout.

The following two charts illustrate the total excess deaths in the “Five Eyes” and Europe since the beginning of 2021 when the Covid-19 vaccine was introduced –

Did you know that over 1.8 million excess deaths have occurred in the “Five Eyes” and most of Europe since the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine?

This shocking figure includes over 1 million excess deaths in the US and over 690,000 excess deaths in Europe according to the Centers for Disease Control and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as well as significant numbers of excess deaths in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

The official narrative that the vaccine is safe and effective and would reduce the number of deaths is completely contradicted by these figures, which suggest that the Covid-19 vaccines may be the main cause of the excess deaths.

Children / Teens & Young Adults Have ‘Died Suddenly’

Did you know that excess deaths among children aged 0 to 14 in Europe skyrocketed by a staggering 755% between January and September 2022, according to official data?

This alarming increase, which has prompted the European Union to launch an investigation, occurred despite efforts by EuroMOMO to downplay the figures.

It’s worth noting that the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine was approved for use in children by the European Medicines Agency on 28th May 2021. Which was week 21 of 2021.

Then excess deaths “only “coincidentally” began to be recorded from week 22 once this emergency use authorisation was granted.

Overall, excess deaths rose 630% since the vaccine’s approval for use in children by September of 2022.

It’s a sad reality that despite the mounting evidence pointing to the clear danger of Covid-19 vaccinations for children, it is highly unlikely that authorities will acknowledge this risk.

Tragically, the significant increase in excess deaths among children in Europe since the European Medicines Agency emergency approved the vaccine for use in this population is likely to be dismissed as just another “coincidence” in the long list of such occurrences since the start of the pandemic.

It’s vital that we continue to examine and scrutinize the data to ensure that the health and well-being of our children are protected.

Did you also know that according to official figures quietly published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), nearly half a million children and young adults died by October 9th 2022 in the USA since the Food & Drug Administration first granted emergency use authorization for a Covid-19 vaccine?

This heartbreaking development has resulted in nearly 118,000 excess deaths compared to the 2015-2019 average.

The figures also reveal that there have been 7,680 more excess deaths among children and young adults in 2022 so far compared to the same time frame in 2020, at the height of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the worst year for deaths among 0 to 44-year-olds was 2021, with 291,461 excess deaths in total, nearly 60,000 more than occurred in 2020.

According to the official CDC figures, this increase was mainly due to a mysterious sudden rise in deaths among children and young adults starting around week 31 of 2021.

It’s a heartbreaking reality that nearly half a million people aged 0 to 44 have died since week 51 of 2020, resulting in a staggering 117,719 excess deaths compared to the 2015-2019 five-year average.

According to official data, the average life expectancy in the USA was 77.28 years as of 2020.

If we are to believe the official narrative that Covid-19 is a deadly disease, then it’s perhaps understandable that 231,987 children and young adults up to the age of 44 died in 2020, resulting in 40,365 excess deaths as an unfortunate consequence of this alleged disease.

However, if we are to accept the official narrative that Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective, how do we explain the further increase in deaths among children and young adults in both 2021 and 2022?

It’s worth noting that millions of Americans were pressured into getting the vaccines, and millions of parents were similarly coerced into forcing their children to receive the injections.

The answer is clear: the official narrative is a blatant lie. The Covid-19 vaccines are neither safe nor effective.

The hard-to-find data provided by the CDC only hints at this disturbing trend of young American deaths, but further data published by the UK Government confirms it.

For example, a report published on July 6th, 2022 by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, a government agency, provides further evidence of the danger of these vaccines.

The report is titled ‘Deaths by Vaccination Status, England, 1 January 2021 to 31 May 2022‘, and it can be accessed on the ONS site here, and downloaded here.

Have you seen Table 2 of the report by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, which contains the monthly age-standardized mortality rates by vaccination status by age group for deaths per 100,000 person-years in England up to May 2022?

If not, you should take a look, because the figures it contains are truly disturbing.

We’ve taken the data provided by the ONS for January to May 2022 and created the following chart, which illustrates the devastating consequences of the mass Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

The chart shows the monthly age-standardized mortality rates by vaccination status among 18 to 39-year-olds for Non-Covid-19 deaths in England between January and May 2022.

It’s clear from this data that the risks associated with these vaccines cannot be ignored.

It’s a disturbing trend: in every single month since the start of 2022, partly vaccinated and double vaccinated 18-39 year-olds have been more likely to die than unvaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds.

The situation has been particularly dire for triple-vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds, whose mortality rate has worsened month by month since the mass Booster campaign that took place in the UK in December 2021.

In January, triple-vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds were slightly less likely to die than unvaccinated individuals in this age group, with a mortality rate of 29.8 per 100,000 among the unvaccinated and 28.1 per 100,000 among the triple-vaccinated.

However, from February onwards, triple-vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds were 27% more likely to die than unvaccinated individuals, with a mortality rate of 26.7 per 100k among the triple-vaccinated and 21 per 100k among the unvaccinated.

The situation worsened even further by May 2022, with triple vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds 52% more likely to die than unvaccinated individuals in this age group, with a mortality rate of 21.4 per 100k among the triple vaccinated and 14.1 among the unvaccinated.

The partly vaccinated also fared poorly, with May seeing partly vaccinated 18 to 39-year-olds 202% more likely to die than unvaccinated individuals in this age group.

The report by the UK’s Office for National Statistics also includes mortality rates for children, although the UK government attempted to conceal this data.

The following chart shows the mortality rates by vaccination status per 100,000 person-years among children aged 10 to 14 in England for the period 1st January 2021 to 31st May 2022 –

According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, the mortality rate for Covid-19 deaths among unvaccinated children aged 10 to 14 is 0.31 per 100,000 person-years.

However, for one-dose vaccinated children, the mortality rate is 3.24 per 100,000 person-years, and for triple-vaccinated children, the mortality rate is an alarming 41.29 per 100,000 person-years.

The situation is no better when it comes to non-Covid-19 deaths. The all-cause death mortality rate is 6.39 per 100,000 person-years among unvaccinated children and slightly higher at 6.48 among partly vaccinated children.

However, the rate worsens with each additional injection: the all-cause death mortality rate is 97.28 among double-vaccinated children and an alarming 289.02 per 100,000 person-years among triple-vaccinated children.

This means, according to the UK government’s own official data, double-vaccinated children are 1422% or 15.22 times more likely to die of any cause than unvaccinated children, while triple-vaccinated children are 4423% or 45.23 times more likely to die of any cause than unvaccinated children.

The data provided by the Office for National Statistics, which is age-standardized and rates per 100,000 population, is definitive proof that Covid-19 vaccines increase a person’s risk of death.

It’s no surprise, then, to learn that a secret CDC report confirms that nearly half a million American children and young adults have died following the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, resulting in nearly 118,000 excess deaths compared to the 2015-2019 five-year average.

You Only Have One Heart & It Will Not Regenerate

The potential consequences of a COVID-19 vaccine that harms the heart are dire. If such a vaccine were widely distributed and administered to a significant portion of the population, it could lead to millions of sudden deaths.

The heart is a vital organ that plays a critical role in maintaining the body’s proper functioning, so any adverse effects on it could have disastrous consequences.

Unfortunately, at least two Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna do exactly this, and they have now been administered to millions of people multiple times, and it is likely that these vaccines are responsible for the millions of excess deaths recorded worldwide since their rollout.

The risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can lead to sudden death if not treated, is a serious concern when it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine. This is especially true for young and healthy adults and children, who may not experience any symptoms of myocarditis until the condition has progressed to a severe stage.

Symptoms of myocarditis can include chest pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, and abnormal heart rhythms, and if left untreated, it can result in heart failure, cardiac arrest, and sudden cardiac death.

This is likely why an investigation of official figures published by Public Health Scotland in April 2022 found that there has been a 67% increase compared to the historical average in the number of people aged 15 to 44 experiencing heart attacks, cardiac arrest, myocarditis, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases since this age group was offered the Covid-19 vaccine.

Unfortunately, a study conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shown that the risk of myocarditis following mRNA COVID vaccination is around 133x greater than the background risk in the population.

This means Covid vaccination increases the risk of suffering myocarditis, an autoimmune disease causing inflammation of the heart, by 13,200%.

It is clear from the data presented that the Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have had a significant impact on the health of millions of people worldwide.

The potential adverse effects on the heart, including myocarditis and an increased risk of heart attacks, cardiac arrest, and other cardiovascular diseases, could lead to a significant number of sudden deaths if these vaccines are widely distributed and administered to a significant portion of the population.

Additionally, the high number of excess deaths that have occurred since the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccines suggests that these vaccines may be contributing to a larger trend of depopulation.

Excess deaths refer to the number of deaths above what would normally be expected in a given population, and the fact that there have been millions of excess deaths in the “Five Eyes” countries and Europe since the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine is a cause for concern.

The potential consequences of depopulation are far-reaching and could have significant impacts on society, including economic disruption and a decrease in the overall population size. It is imperative that further research is conducted to understand the true extent of the impact of the Covid-19 vaccines on population health and to ensure that any future vaccines are thoroughly tested and deemed safe before being distributed.

Obviously, it stands to reason that more people need to be dying than are being born for depopulation to take place. And unfortunately, confidential Pfizer documents confirm this is now our reality.

The Confidential Pfizer Documents

The data contained in this document is alarming and raises serious concerns about the safety of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine during pregnancy and lactation. According to the data, there have been numerous cases of pregnant women experiencing adverse reactions to the vaccine, including miscarriages, stillbirths, and other serious complications.

Furthermore, the data suggests that the vaccine may also pose risks to breastfeeding infants. There have been numerous reports of infants experiencing adverse reactions to the vaccine when it is passed to them through their mother’s milk.

These findings are extremely concerning and highlight the need for further research into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines during pregnancy and lactation. If the risks associated with these vaccines are not properly addressed, it could have significant implications for fertility rates and overall population numbers.

It is imperative that authorities take these concerns seriously and conduct thorough investigations into the safety of Covid-19 vaccines during pregnancy and lactation. The health and well-being of both mothers and their children must be a top priority.

Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has been linked to a high number of adverse reactions in pregnant women. According to the company’s own data, of the 270 known cases of exposure to the vaccine during pregnancy, 46% of the mothers (124) experienced an adverse reaction.

Of these, 75 were considered serious, including uterine contractions and fetal death.

This means that 58% of the mothers who reported adverse reactions suffered a serious event. These troubling findings raise concerns about the safety of the vaccine for pregnant women and highlight the need for further research.

It is alarming that Pfizer’s own data shows that 124 out of 270 pregnant women who were exposed to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine experienced an adverse reaction. Of those, 75 were considered serious, including fetal death.

It is also concerning that Pfizer has no information on the outcomes of 238 out of 270 pregnancies. These figures raise serious questions about the safety of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant women and their fetuses.

The findings of another Pfizer study on Wistar Han rats show that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine accumulates in the ovaries over time.

The ovaries are a pair of female glands that produce eggs and the female hormones estrogen and progesterone.

The study, which can be found in the list of confidential Pfizer documents published by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under a court order, administered a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine to 21 female and 21 male rats.

The researchers measured the concentration of total radioactivity in the blood, plasma, and tissues of the rats at various points after the injection was administered. The accumulation of the vaccine in the ovaries raises concerns about its potential impact on fertility and reproductive health.

One of the most concerning findings from the study on the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine is the fact that it accumulates in the ovaries over time.

In the first 15 minutes following injection, the total lipid concentration in the ovaries measured 0.104ml, but this increased to 1.34ml after just one hour, 2.34ml after four hours, and 12.3ml after 48 hours.

While the scientists conducting the study did not continue their research beyond 48 hours, it’s unclear whether this concerning accumulation continued.

These findings raise serious questions about the potential long-term effects of the Pfizer vaccine on fertility and reproductive health.

But according to data published by Public Health Scotland, the number of people suffering from ovarian cancer has significantly increased in 2021 compared to the previous year and the 2017-2019 average.

This could potentially be linked to the accumulation of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in the ovaries, as found in a study on rats.

Newborn baby deaths in Scotland have also reached a critical level for the second time in just seven months, according to official figures.

The rate of neonatal deaths in March 2022 was 4.6 per 1,000 live births, a 119% increase from the expected rate of deaths.

This means the neonatal mortality rate exceeded an upper warning threshold known as the “control limit” for the second time following the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines to women / pregnant women.

The last time it exceeded this limit was in September 2021, when neonatal deaths per 1,000 live births reached 5.1. These levels are on par with those typically seen in the late 1980s.

At the time, PHS said the fact that the upper control limit has been exceeded “indicates there is a higher likelihood that there are factors beyond random variation that have contributed to the number of deaths that occurred”.

This news is shocking and raises serious concerns about the safety of Covid-19 vaccines.

Increased Mortality

It’s alarming to see in figures found in a report published by the UK Government titled ‘Deaths by Vaccination Status, England, 1 January 2021 to 31 May 2022‘, and it can be accessed on the ONS site here, and downloaded here, that in every single month between January and May of 2022, individuals aged 18 to 39 who were either partly or fully vaccinated were more likely to die from non-Covid causes compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.

The situation is particularly dire for triple-vaccinated individuals, whose mortality rates have only worsened month after month since the widespread booster campaign in December 2021.

These shocking figures, provided by the UK’s Office for National Statistics, confirm that the Covid-19 vaccines significantly increase a person’s risk of death.

It’s clear that the vaccines are not only failing to protect individuals, but they are actively causing harm. It’s crucial that action is taken to halt their distribution and investigate the true dangers they pose.

But this situation isn’t isolated to 18 to 39-year-olds. It’s common among every single age group.

The following two charts show the monthly age-standardised mortality rates by vaccination status for non-Covid-19 deaths in England between January and May 2022 for all age groups –

You can read a full investigation of the above figures broken down by age group here.

Depopulation by COVID-19 Vaccination

The potential consequences of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign are alarming and could lead to depopulation on a global scale.

The heart is a vital organ and any adverse effects on it could have devastating consequences. This is especially true for young and healthy adults and children, as myocarditis may not cause any symptoms until the condition has progressed to a severe stage.

Data from Pfizer reveals that 46% of pregnant women who received the vaccine suffered adverse reactions, with 58% experiencing serious adverse events ranging from uterine contraction to fetal death.

Moreover, studies have shown that the vaccine accumulates in the ovaries over time, raising concerns about its potential impact on fertility.

Official figures also reveal that mortality rates are highest among the vaccinated and lowest among the unvaccinated population in every age group.

With all of this evidence, it is clear that the Covid-19 vaccination campaign could have serious consequences for the future of humanity.

But Why?

There are various reasons that some people may want to depopulate the planet.

One reason could be overpopulation, as some people believe that the earth’s resources are being depleted at an unsustainable rate due to the increasing population.

Other people may argue that depopulation is necessary due to the negative impact that humans have had on the environment, and reducing the population could help mitigate some of these problems.

Some people may also advocate for depopulation due to concerns about the impact of climate change, as a smaller population would likely lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, some people may simply believe that a smaller population would be more manageable and easier to control, and may advocate for depopulation for this reason.

Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates are two powerful figures who have expressed support for the idea of depopulation through various means, including vaccination.

Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, has argued that reducing the global population would be beneficial for the environment and the economy, and has suggested that advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence could play a role in achieving this goal.

Similarly, Bill Gates has stated that vaccination campaigns can be used to reduce the population, and has funded numerous initiatives that promote vaccination as a means of controlling population growth.

So it should now begin to make sense as to why powerful figures like Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab have been advocating for widespread vaccination campaigns.

The push for mass Covid-19 vaccination isn’t about combating a virus, but about reducing the global population.

This goal aligns with the interests of certain corporations and individuals who stand to benefit from a smaller, more manageable population.

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“I was asked a wide variety of questions about my political beliefs, why I write, think and say the things that I do. But also specific questions about my reporting and also just completely insane queries about my relationship, or indeed GrayZone’s relationship, with the FSB – which is to say Russia’s federal security service. Of course, these were ludicrous and I almost laughingly dismissed them as the rubbish that they were. And then I am asked, “Why are you reacting so strongly?” “

– Kit Klarenberg, relating to his interrogation by UK authorities. (from this week’s interview.)

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Listeners to the Global Research News Hour, and visitors to its partner website Global Research have probably become aware of charges by critics that both these media outlets have a tendency to spit out numerous “conspiracy theories.” Such behaviour casts blame for incidents on elements within U.S., Canada, the UK, and their fellow guardians of the “international rules-based order” (the “good guys”) and letting the real villains (Russia, China, Iran, etc) get away with wrongdoing.

Some examples explored herein include counter-narratives arguing potential government complicity in events such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the major political assassinations of the 1960s, and 9/11. [1]

In his 2013 book Conspiracy Theory in America, Florida State University political scientist Lance deHaven-Smith wrote:

I introduced the concept of State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD) to displace the term “conspiracy theory.” I say displace rather than replace because SCAD is not another name for conspiracy theory; it is a name for the type of wrongdoing about which the conspiracy theory label discourages us from speaking. Basically, the term “conspiracy theory” is applied pejoratively to allegations of official wrongdoing that have not been substantiated by public officials themselves. [2]

When it comes to the task of daring to allege wrongdoing in international affairs on the part of today’s paladins of virtue, and having ample room and sources to back up your argument, few today could match a new super-duper investigative snooper like Kit Klarenberg.

Klarenberg, who has written for a number of publications, puts out intriguing articles on both old and breaking stories at a rate of at least once a week. Former citizen of the United Kingdom currently living in Serbia, much of his work specializes on the actions of United Kingdom intelligence operations. Of particular note, in 2022, he dug up dirt on the left-wing journalist Paul Mason who was colluding with British Intelligence and targeting academics and other people who were putting out the “wrong” points about the Ukraine War. [3]

This was a story that got the attention of this radio host, and evidently also the attention of several UK security people concerned about people putting out the wrong story!

This week, on the Global Research News Hour, Kit Klarenberg appears on the show as a feature guest to chat about some of the feature story topics in his analytical arsenal, from 9/11 and the October 7 attacks on Israel, to the UK based race rioting of last month, to the moment when he was detained by authorities and had his rights as we know them completely thrown away.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in MintPress News, The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone.  His work has been published at Global Research. His substack is kitklarenberg.com

(Global Research News Hour Episode 440)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the man who as the UK’s Chief Prosecutor made the decisions to prosecute and imprison and keep in prison Julian Assange, is now on September 13th visiting the White House in order to persuade U.S. President Joe Biden to enable Ukraine to use NATO missiles to strike deep inside Russia, including The Kremlin, which is less than 317 miles from Ukraine’s border.

On September 12th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had issued the following warning about this potential decision:

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Here is the transcript:

Answer to a question from a media representative

After his speech at the plenary session of the United Cultures Forum, Vladimir Putin answered a question from a media representative.

September 12, 2024 18:55 Saint Petersburg

Question: Over the last few days, we have seen and heard how at a very high level in Great Britain and the United States, the topic has been discussed that the Kiev regime will be able to strike deep into Russian territory with long-range Western weapons. And, apparently, this decision is either about to be made, or, apparently, has already been made. This is, of course, an extraordinary thing. I wanted to ask you to comment on what is happening.

V. Putin: There is an attempt to substitute concepts. Because we are not talking about allowing or prohibiting the Kiev regime from striking Russian territory. It is already striking with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But when we are talking about using high-precision long-range weapons of Western manufacture, it is a completely different story.

The thing is – I have already spoken about this, and any experts will confirm this both here and in the West – the Ukrainian army is not capable of delivering strikes with modern high-precision long-range systems of Western manufacture. It cannot do this. This is only possible using intelligence data from satellites, which Ukraine does not have, this data is only from satellites of either the European Union or the United States – in general, from NATO satellites. This is the first thing.

The second and very important, perhaps the key, is that flight assignments for these missile systems can, in fact, only be entered by NATO military personnel. Ukrainian military personnel cannot do this.

So it’s not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It’s a question of deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict or not.

If this decision is made, it will mean nothing less than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct participation, and this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict.

This will mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries are fighting with Russia. And if this is so, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created for us.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Eric’s Substack.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

 

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance. Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack” ? Or Was it “A False Flag”.

In the words of Philip Giraldi: 

“As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.” 

A Tissue of Lies 

“A Tissue of Lies” has served to justify the killing in the Gaza Strip of more than 35,000 civilians, of which 70% are women and children coupled with total destruction and an endless  string of atrocities. 

The Cat is out of the bag. Netanyahu has tacitly acknowledged that it was “A False Flag” which was intent upon justifying a carefully planned genocidal attack against Palestine: 

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this candid statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians? 

On that same day of October 7, 2023 Netanyahu launched a carefully planned military operation against the Gaza Strip entitled “State of Readiness For War”.  

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance.

Had  “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” been a “surprise attack” as parroted by the media, Netanyahu’s “State of Readiness For War” could not have been carried out (at short notice) on that same day, namely October 7, 2023. 

South Africa’s  Legal Procedure against The State of Israel 

On January 11, 2024, The Republic of South Africa  presented to The Hague World Court, a carefully formulated Legal Procedure against the State of Israel predicated on  The Genocide Convention.

This legal procedure, however, has not contributed to repealing the ongoing genocide and saving the lives of tens of thousands of civilians.

I should mention that the False Flag issue –which constitutes a crime against humanity– was casually ignored by the ICJ.

Our suggestion is that  an investigation followed by a legal procedure pertaining to the “False Flag” should be undertaken.

The heads of State and heads of government who have endorsed Israel’s Genocidal Acts are from a legal standpoint complicit. 

The ICJ Judgement was contradictory. The Presiding Judge (former legal advisor to Hillary Clinton) was in conflict of interest: 

The ICJ Judgment of January 26, 2024 assigns the Netanyahu government representing the State of Israel –accused by the Republic of South Africa of genocide against the People of Palestine– with a mandate to “take all measures within its power” to “prevent and punish” those responsible for having committed “Genocidal Acts”. (under Article IV of the Genocide Convention)

Sounds contradictory? What the ICJ judgment intimates –from a twisted legal standpoint– is that Netanyahu’s Cabinet which was “appointed” to implement  the “prevent and punish” mandate cannot be accused of having committed “Genocidal Acts”.

See

“Fake Justice” at The Hague: The ICJ “Appoints” Netanyahu to “Prevent” and “Punish” Those Responsible for “Genocidal Acts”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 24, 2024

 

Our intent is to provide a broad and detailed understanding of the false flag issue pertaining to Palestine

The titles of the videos, articles and texts presented below:  

1. Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”? They Let it Happen? Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?, by Dr. Philip Giraldi. 
2. Video: ICJ Hearings in The Hague, 
3. Text of Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum. Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland
   
4. Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, Interview. Michel Chossudovsky with Caroline Mailloux
5. “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”, by Michel Chossudovsky
6. Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor? But Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”, by Philip Giraldi 

 

In solidarity with the People of Palestine.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 11, 2024, September 14, 2024

 

Part I

Is the Gaza-Israel Fighting “A False Flag”?

They Let it Happen?

Their Objective Is “to Wipe Gaza Off the Map”?

by Dr. Philip Giraldi 

October 8, 2023

Am I the only one who read about a speech given by Netanyahu or someone in his cabinet about a week ago in which he/they in passing referred to a “developing security situation” which rather suggests (to me) that they might have known about developments in Gaza and chose to let it happen so they can wipe Gaza off the map in retaliation and, possibly relying on the US pledge to have Israel’s “back,” then implicating Iran and attacking that country.

I cannot find a link to it, but have a fairly strong recollection of what I read as I thought at the time it would serve as a pretext for another massacre of Palestinians.

As a former intelligence officer, I find it impossible to believe that Israel did not have multiple informants inside Gaza as well as electronic listening devices all along the border wall which would have picked up movements of groups and vehicles.

In other words, the whole thing might be a tissue of lies as is often the case.

And as is also ALWAYS the case Joe Biden is preparing to send some billions of dollars to poor little Israel to pay for “defending” itself.

 

 Part II

VIDEO. ICJ Hearings in The Hague

January 2024

ICJ Hearings 

1. January 11, 2024. Click Here to View the ICJ Hearings,

2. January 12, 2024. Israel’s Legal Team’s response to South Africa, ICJ The Hague at 10 am. Video in Real Time 

3. Video: South Africa’s Closing Argument against Israel for Genocide. January 11 Hearing at the World Court

 

Part III

Israel’s Secret Intelligence Memorandum

Planning the Forcible Exclusion of Palestinians from Their Homeland

by Michel Chossudovsky

October 2023

 

An official “secret” memorandum authored by Israel’s  Ministry of Intelligence “is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula”, namely to a refugee camp in Egyptian territory. There are indications of Israel-Egypt negotiations  as well as consultations with the U.S. 

The 10-page document, dated Oct. 13, 2023, bears the logo of the Intelligence Ministry … assesses three options regarding the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip … It recommends a full population transfer as its preferred course of action. … The document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the ministry, has been translated into English in full here on +972.

See below, click here or below to access complete document (10 pages)

For further details and analysis see:

“Wiping Gaza Off the Map”: Israel’s “Secret” Intelligence Memorandum “Option C” by Michel Chossudovsky

 

Part IV 

Video: “False Flag. Wiping Gaza Off the Map”

Interview: Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux 

October 17, 2023

 

To comment or access Rumble 

 

 

 

 

Part V 

“False Flag”. Wiping Gaza Off the Map

by

Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

October 12, 2023

 .

Introduction

.

Early Saturday October 7, 2023, Hamas launched “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” led by Hamas’ Military Chief Mohammed Deif. On that same day, Netanyahu confirmed a so-called “State of Readiness For War”.  

Military operations are invariably planned well in advance (See Netanyahu’s January 2023 statement below). Was “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm” a “surprise attack” ?

U.S. intelligence say they weren’t aware of an impending Hamas attack. 

“One would have to be almost hopelessly naïve to buy the corporate state media line that the Hamas invasion  was an Israeli “intelligence failure”. Mossad is one of, if not the, most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet.”

Did Netanyahu and his vast military and intelligence apparatus (Mossad et al) have foreknowledge of the Hamas attack which has resulted in countless deaths of Israelis and Palestinians.

Was a carefully formulated Israeli plan to wage an all out war against Palestinians envisaged prior to the launching by Hamas of  “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm”? This was not a failure of Israeli Intelligence, as conveyed by the media. Quite the opposite. 

Evidence and testimonies suggest that the Netanyahu government had foreknowledge of the actions of Hamas which have resulted in hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian deaths. And “They Let it Happen”:

“Hamas fired between 2-5 thousand rockets at Israel and hundreds of Israeli are dead, while dozens of Israelis were captured as prisoners of war. In the ensuing air response by Israel, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Gaza.” (Stephen Sahiounie)  

This was Not a “Surprise Attack”

Was the Hamas Attack a “False Flag”? 

“I served in the IDF 25 years ago, in the intelligence forces. There’s no way Israel did not know of what’s coming.

A cat moving alongside the fence is triggering all forces. So this??

What happened to the “strongest army in the world”?

How come border crossings were wide open?? Something is VERY WRONG HERE, something is very strange, this chain of events is very unusual and not typical for the Israeli defense system.

To me this suprise attack seems like a planned operation. On all fronts. 

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say that this feels like the work of the Deep State.  

It feels like the people of Israel and the people of Palestine have been sold, once again, to the higher powers that be. 

(Statement by Efrat Fenigson, former IDF intelligence,  October 7, 2023, emphasis added)

Ironically, the media (NBC) is now contending that the “Hamas attack bears hallmarks of Iranian involvement”

History: The Relationship between Mossad and Hamas

What is the relationship between Mossad and Hamas? Is Hamas an “intelligence asset”? There is a long history. 

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin. It was supported at the outset by Israeli intelligence as a means to weaken the Palestinian Authority:

“Thanks to Mossad, (Israel’s “Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks”), Hamas was allowed to reinforce its presence in the occupied territories. Meanwhile, Arafat’s Fatah Movement for National Liberation as well as the Palestinian Left were subjected to the most brutal form of repression and intimidation.

Let us not forget that it was Israel, which in fact created Hamas. According to Zeev Sternell, historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, “Israel thought that it was a smart ploy to push the Islamists against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO)”. (L’Humanité, translated from French)

The links of Hamas to Mossad and US intelligence have been acknowledged by Rep. Ron Paul in a statement to the U.S Congress: “Hamas Was Started by Israel”?

“You know Hamas, if you look at the history, you’ll find out that Hamas was encouraged and really started by Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat… (Rep. Ron Paul, 2011)

What this statement entails is that Hamas is and remains “an intelligence asset”, namely “an “asset” to intelligence agencies”

See also the WSJ (January 24, 2009) “How Israel helped to Spawn Hamas”. 

Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. (WSJ, emphasis added)

 

“The Hamas Partnership” is confirmed by Netanyahu

 

“The Cat is Out of the Bag”

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” he [Netanyahu] told a meeting of his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” (Haaretz, October 9, 2023, emphasis added)

Does this statement not suggest that Netanyahu and his military-intelligence apparatus are responsible for the killings of innocent Israeli civilians? 

“Support” and “Money” for Hamas. 

“Transferring Money to Hamas” on behalf of Netanyahu is confirmed by a Times of Israel October 8, 2023 Report: 

“Hamas was treated as a partner to the detriment of the Palestinian Authority to prevent Abbas from moving towards creating a Palestinian State. Hamas was promoted from a terrorist group to an organization with which Israel conducted negotiations through Egypt, and which was allowed to receive suitcases containing millions of dollars from Qatar through the Gaza crossings.” (emphasis added)

.

The Dangers of Military Escalation?

 

Let us be under no illusions, this “false flag” operation is a complex military-intelligence undertaking, carefully planned over several years, in liaison and  coordination with US intelligence, the Pentagon and NATO. 

In turn, this action against Palestine is already conducive to a process of military escalation which potentially could engulf a large part of Middle East.

Israel is a de facto member NATO (with a special status) since 2004, involving active military and intelligence coordination as well as consultations pertaining to the occupied territories.

Military cooperation with both the Pentagon and NATO is viewed by Israel’s Defence Force (IDF) as a means to “enhance Israel’s deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria.”

The premise of NATO-Israel military cooperation is that “Israel is under attack”. Does Israel’s agreement with the Atlantic Alliance “obligate” NATO “to come to the rescue of Israel” under the doctrine of “collective security” (Article 5 of the Washington treaty)?

In recent developments, U.S. military deployments in the Middle East are ongoing allegedly to avoid escalation.

According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:

There is always the risk that nations and/or organisations hostile to Israel will take try to take advantage. And that includes, for instance, organisations like Hezbollah or a country like Iran. So this is a message to countries and organisations hostile to Israel that they should not try to utilise the situation. And the United States have deployed, or has deployed more military forces in the region, not least to deter any escalation or prevent any escalation of the situation. (NATO Press Conference, Brussels, October 12, 2023, emphasis added) 

Netanyahu’s “New Stage”

“The Long War” against Palestine

 

Netanyahu’s stated objective, which constitutes a new stage in the 75 year old war (since Nakba, 1948) against the people of Palestine is no longer predicated on “Apartheid” or “Separation”. This new stage –which is also directed against Israelis who want peace— consists in “total appropriation” as well as the outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland:

“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me [Netanyahu]: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” (Netanyahu January 2023. emphasis added)

We bring to the attention of our readers the incisive analysis of  Dr. Philip Giraldi pointing to the likelihood of a “False Flag’”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, October 8, 2023, Above text updated on October 12, 2023

.

 

Part VI

Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor?

But Who Actually Did What to Whom?

“This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

by

Dr Philip Giraldi

October 16, 2023

.

“As a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.”

It’s amazing how America’s thought-controlled media is able to come up with a suitable narrative almost immediately whenever there is an international incident that might be subject to multiple interpretations.

***

Since 1948 Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes,

has occupied nearly all of the historic Palestine, has empowered its army to kill thousands of local people, and

has more recently established an apartheid regime that even denies that Palestinian Arabs are human in the same sense that Jews are.

Netanyahu-allied government minister Ayelet Shaked memorably has called for Israel not only to exterminate all Palestinian children, whom she has described as “little snakes,” but also to kill their mothers who gave birth to them.

But when the Arabs strike back against the hatred that confronts them with their limited resources it is Israel that is described as the victimand the Palestinians who are dehumanized and portrayed as the “terrorists.”

Media in the US and Europe were quick to label the Hamas offensive breaching the formidable Israeli border defenses as “Israel’s 9/11” or even “Israel’s Pearl Harbor” to establish the context that the Israelis have been on the receiving end of an “unprovoked” attack by a cruel and heartless enemy.

Israel has responded to the attack with a heavy bombardment of Gaza that has destroyed infrastructure, including hospitals and schools, while also cutting off food supplies, water and electricity.

It has demanded that residents of north Gaza, all 1.1 million of them, evacuate to make way for a possible ground offensive but there is nowhere to go as all the borders are closed, and the United Nations is calling it a demand with “devastating humanitarian consequences.” Journalist Peter Beinart has commented “This is a monstrous crime. It’s happening in plain view, with US support.”

And the United States government is indeed typically on the same page as Israel. President Joe Biden, citing fabricated stories about dead Jewish babies, speaks of how Israel has a “duty” to defend itself, while the Palestinians somehow have no right to protect themselves at all, much less to rise up against their persecutors in a struggle for freedom.

And Washington has also unhesitatingly chosen to directly involve itself in the conflict, completely on the side of the Jewish state, asserting repeatedly that “Israel has a right to defend itself” and telling the Israelis that “we have your back” while also dispatching two aircraft carrier groups to the scene of the fighting as well as the 101^st Airborne to Jordan and increasing the readiness of Marines stationed in Kuwait.

The White House could have taken more aggressive steps to encourage a ceasefire and talks but has chosen instead to issue essentially toothless calls to let the trapped civilians escape while also backing a devastating Israeli military response.

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

Israel is also hosting the worthless and brain dead Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin who will be providing advice along the lines of his insightful comment that Hamas is “evil” and “worse than ISIS.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is already in Jerusalem, announcing that the US is there to support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unity government “as long as America exists” after first saying “I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew.”

Blinken’s explicit association of his personal religion with his official role as a representative of the US government makes clear that a key element in why he is there is because he is “a Jew.” Perhaps he should recuse himself from policy making involving Israel as being “a Jew” would not appear to be a United States national interest and is likely to produce irrational responses to developing situations.

If all of this sounds a lot like Ukraine it should, except that in Ukraine the US and NATO are fighting against Russia, which is being demonized for occupying what is claimed Ukrainian territory, whereas in Palestine they are supporting the occupier of actual Palestinian territory, Israel.

Funny thing that, and the word “hypocrisy” comes immediately to mind. As it turns out, however, I am somewhat on the same page as much of the media, agreeing that the Hamas incursion is something like 9/11, though I am sure that my take would not be found acceptable to the CNN Jake Tappers of this world.

My thinking is that Israel knew in advance about 9/11 in the United States due to its extensive spying network and chose not to share the information because it was to their advantage not to do so.

Indeed, a pleased Netanyahu even stated several years later that “9/11 was a good thing because it made the United States join us in our fight.”

That the attacks killed 3,000 Americans did not bother the Israeli government as Israel has a long history of killing Americans when it can benefit from so doing, starting with the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 which killed 34 sailors.

So too in this case in Gaza, Netanyahu may have decided to encourage an unexpected development, making it like 9/11, that would enable him to escalate and “mow the grass” as the Israelis put it, in the remainder of Arab Palestine.

And bear in mind that the actual incident that triggered the uprising was a rampage involving at least 800 Israeli settlers in and around the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, beating pilgrims and destroying Palestinian shops, all without any interference from the nearby Israeli security forces. The rioting was clearly allowed and even encouraged by the government.

Drawing on my experience as a former on-the-ground intelligence officer, I am somewhat convinced that this was likely more like a false flag operation rather than a case of institutional failure on the part of the Israelis.

Israel had an extensive electronic and physical wall backed by soldiers and weaponry that completely surrounded Gaza on the landward side, so effective that it was claimed that not even a mouse could get in.

The Mediterranean side of Gaza was also tightly controlled by the Israeli Navy and boats to and from Gaza were completely blocked.

Egypt tightly controlled the southern part of Gaza bordering on the Sinai. So Gaza was under 24/7 complete surveillance and control at all times. Israeli military intelligence also certainly had a network of recruited informants inside Gaza who would report on any training or movements, easy enough to do when you can approach people who are starving and make them an offer they cannot refuse just for providing information on what they see and hear.

And then there was a warning from the Egyptian government to Israel ten days before the Hamas attack, with Egypt’s Intelligence Minister General Abbas Kamel personally calling Netanyahu and sharing intelligence suggesting that the Gazans were likely to do “something unusual, a terrible operation.” Other media accounts reveal how Hamas trained and practiced their maneuvers publicly. There were also assessments made by US intelligence, which were shared with Israel, suggesting that something was afoot. So, given all of the evidence, there likely was no intelligence failure to anticipate and counter the Hamas attack but rather a political decision made by the Israeli government that knew what might be coming and chose to let it proceed to provide a casus belli to destroy Gaza, vowing that “Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” and then go on from there. And “from there” might well include Lebanon, Syria and Iran, possibly with the assistance of the United States to do the heavy lifting. Iran in particular is already being blamed by the usual suspects as a party involved in the Hamas attack, so far without any evidence whatsoever, which is typical of how these stories evolve.

Image: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visits Al-Aqsa, 3 January (Social Media)

And Israel has moved far to the right politically to such an extent that it might appreciate a little ethnic cleansing to demonstrate its seriousness. Netanyahu and other senior government officials in his cabinet have recently been making passing references to a “developing security situation” in the country to justify the intensifying of the raids by the army against Palestinian towns and refugee camps. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He has been exploiting his position to call in particular for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza, which is precisely what is happening. Gaza might be of particular interest to Ben-Gvir and others as it uniquely shelters an armed and organized resistance in the form of Hamas, which, oddly, was founded with the support of Israel to split the Palestinian political resistance with Fatah controlling the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza.

There is another issue relating to the recent fighting that one would like to know the answer to, namely how did Hamas get its weapons in the first place?

Some were clearly manufactured from parts and scrap but others were sophisticated and, as Gaza is blockaded on all sides, smuggling them in becomes problematical. One argument is that they were supplied by Iran and others to be brought in by tunnels, but the tunnels on two sides would end up in Israel and on the third side in Egypt. The fourth side is the Mediterranean Sea. So how did they arrive? Is there a possible triple or even quadruple cross taking place with different parties lying to each other? And should there be concerns that after the American armada arrives off the coast of Gaza there just might be some kind of false flag incident engineered by Netanyahu that will involve Washington directly in the fighting?

And there is what amounts to a related issue that should be of concern to everyone in the US and generically speaking the “Western world” where human rights are at least nominally respected. The message from almost all Western governments is that Israel has a carte blanche to do whatever it likes even when it involves war crimes to include mass forced displacement or genocide. In this case, the coordinated government-media response which is intended to protect Israel from any criticism almost immediately began circulating fabricated tales of atrocities while also delivering a hit on freedom of speech and association. President Biden, who should be trying to defuse the crisis, is instead adding fuel to the flames, saying of Hamas that “Pure, unadulterated evil has been unleashed on the earth!”

In Florida the arch Zionist stooge Governor Ron Desantis met with Jewish leaders in a synagogue to announce draconian measures against Iran to include sanctions on companies that are in any way linked to that country. One might point out that those businesses have done nothing wrong and Desantis also called for “eradication of Hamas from the earth.” His intellectual depth was at the same time revealed when he said the US should not take in any Gazan refugees because they are “antisemites.”

And in South Carolina, America’s favorite he/she Senator Lindsey Graham is calling for a US attack on Iran as well as declaring the war against Hamas to be “a religious war” and urging the Israeli army to invade Gaza and do “Whatever the hell you have to do to” to “level the place.”

And the Europeans are equally spineless in their deference to Israel. The Israeli president declared the that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, and not long after that top European Union representatives met with him to offer their unqualified support. Meanwhile in France, the spineless and feckless government of Emmanuel Macron has sought to outlaw any gathering that expresses support for Palestinian rights.

And in the UK, the Home Secretary Suella Braverman has proposed criminalizing any protest against Israeli actions or anything in support of Palestine to include banning any public display of the Palestinian national flag, which she regards as a “criminal offense toward the Jewish community in Britain.”

She has also said that “I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as: ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.” Berlin’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has also classified the use of the expression as a “criminal offense.” The manner in which most Western political elites are lining up unquestionably and even enthusiastically behind Israel and its craven leaders’ desire for bloody vengeance is truly shocking but comes as no surprise.

Beyond the issue of Gaza itself, some in Israel are arguing that Netanyahu has personally benefitted from the unrest through the creation of the national unity government which has ended for the time being the huge demonstrations protesting his judicial reform proposals. If all of this comes together politically as it might in the next several weeks, we could be seeing the initial steps in what will develop into the complete ethnic cleansing of what was once Palestine, in line with Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” So all of the former Palestine is now a land to be defined by its Jewishness where Jews are in full control and are free to do whatever they want without any objection, referred to by the Israeli government as “an exclusive right to self-determination.” And it has all possibly been brought to fruition by the enablement provided by the current developments in Gaza.

The original source of Dr. Giraldi’s October 16, 2023 article. 

Gaza Strikes Back. It’s Another 9/11 or Pearl Harbor but Who Actually Did What to Whom? “This Was More Likely a False Flag Operation”

By Philip Giraldi, October 16, 2023

***

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The following article published twenty years ago, in August 2004 refutes the 9/11 Commission script as to what actually happened on the planes.

Much of this  detailed information was based on alleged cell phone conversations between passengers and family members. Yet the technology to use a cell phone on a plane above 8500 feet did not exist in September 2001.  

A revised version of the article was subsequently published as a chapter in my book entitled America’s “War on Terrorism”, Montreal 2005, which can be ordered directly from Global Research   

“We Have Some Planes”

The 9/11 Commission’s Report provides an almost visual description of the Arab hijackers. It depicts in minute detail events occurring inside the cabin of the four hijacked planes.

In the absence of surviving passengers, this “corroborating evidence”, was based on passengers’ cell and air phone conversations with their loved ones. According to the Report, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was only recovered in the case of one of the flights (UAL 93).

Focusing on the personal drama of the passengers, the Commission has built much of its narrative around the phone conversations. The Arabs are portrayed with their knives and box cutters, scheming in the name of Allah, to bring down the planes and turn them “into large guided missiles”

(Report, Chapter 1, http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf ).

The Technology of Wireless Transmission

The Report conveys the impression that cell phone ground-to-air communication from high altitude was of reasonably good quality, and that there was no major impediment or obstruction in wireless transmission.

Some of the conversations were with onboard air phones, which contrary to the cell phones provide for good quality transmission. The report does not draw a clear demarcation between the two types of calls.

More significantly, what this carefully drafted script fails to mention is that, given the prevailing technology in September 2001, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to place a wireless cell call from an aircraft traveling at high speed above 8000 feet:

“Wireless communications networks weren’t designed for ground-to-air communication. Cellular experts privately admit that they’re surprised the calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they lasted as long as they did. They speculate that the only reason that the calls went through in the first place is that the aircraft were flying so close to the ground

(http://www.elliott.org/technology/2001/cellpermit.htm)

Expert opinion within the wireless telecom industry casts serious doubt on “the findings” of the 9/11 Commission. According to Alexa Graf, a spokesman of AT&T, commenting in the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks:

“it was almost a fluke that the [9/11] calls reached their destinations… From high altitudes, the call quality is not very good, and most callers will experience drops. Although calls are not reliable, callers can pick up and hold calls for a little while below a certain altitude”

 (http://wirelessreview.com/ar/wireless_final_contact/)

New Wireless Technology

While serious doubts regarding the cell calls were expressed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, a new landmark in the wireless telecom industry has further contributed to upsetting the Commission’s credibility. Within days of the release of the 9/11 Commission Report in July, American Airlines and Qualcomm, proudly announced the development of a new wireless technology –which will at some future date allow airline passengers using their cell phones to contact family and friends from a commercial aircraft (no doubt at a  special rate aerial roaming charge)

(see https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2004/07/15/american-airlines-and-qualcomm-complete-test-flight-evaluate-cabin-mobile)

“Travelers could be talking on their personal cellphones as early as 2006. Earlier this month [July 2004], American Airlines conducted a trial run on a modified aircraft that permitted cell phone calls.” (WP, July 27, 2004)

 

Note The Date: : July 14, 2004  [Almost 3  Years Later] 

 

Aviation Week (07/20/04) described this new technology in an authoritative report published in July 2004:

“Qualcomm and American Airlines are exploring [July 2004] ways for passengers to use commercial cell phones inflight for air-to-ground communication. In a recent 2-hr. proof-of-concept flight, representatives from government and the media used commercial Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) third-generation cell phones to place and receive calls and text messages from friends on the ground.

For the test flight from Dallas-Fort Worth, the aircraft was equipped with an antenna in the front and rear of the cabin to transmit cell phone calls to a small in-cabin CDMA cellular base station. This “pico cell” transmitted cell phone calls from the aircraft via a Globalstar satellite to the worldwide terrestrial phone network”

Needless to say, neither the service, nor the “third generation” hardware, nor the “Picco cell” CDMA base station inside the cabin (which so to speak mimics a cell phone communication tower inside the plane) were available on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The 911 Commission points to the clarity and detail of these telephone conversations.

In substance, the Aviation Week report creates yet another embarrassing hitch in the official story.

The untimely July American Airlines / Qualcomm announcement acted as a cold shower. Barely acknowledged in press reports, it confirmed that the Bush administration had embroidered the cell phone narrative (similar to what they did with WMDs) and that the 9/11 Commission’s account was either flawed or grossly exaggerated.

Altitude and Cellphone Transmission

According to industry experts, the crucial link in wireless cell phone transmission from an aircraft is altitude. Beyond a certain altitude which is usually reached within a few minutes after takeoff, cell phone calls are no longer possible.

In other words, given the wireless technology available on September 11 2001, these cell calls could not have been placed from high altitude.

The only way passengers could have got through to family and friends using their cell phones, is if the planes were flying below 8000 feet. Yet even at low altitude, below 8000 feet, cell phone communication is of poor quality.

The crucial question: at what altitude were the planes traveling, when the calls were placed?

While the information provided by the Commission is scanty, the Report’s timeline does not suggest that the planes were consistently traveling at low altitude. In fact the Report confirms that a fair number of the cell phone calls were placed while the plane was traveling at altitudes above 8000 feet, which is considered as the cutoff altitude for cell phone transmission.

Let us review the timeline of these calls in relation to the information provided by the Report on flight paths and altitude.

United Airlines Flight 175

United Airlines Flight 175 departed for Los Angeles at 8:00:

 “It pushed back from its gate at 7:58 and departed Logan Airport at 8:14.”

The Report confirms that by 8:33, “it had reached its assigned cruising altitude of 31,000 feet.” According to the Report, it maintained this cruising altitude until 8.51, when it “deviated from its assigned altitude”:

“The first operational evidence that something was abnormal on United 175 came at 8:47, when the aircraft changed beacon codes twice within a minute. At 8:51, the flight deviated from its assigned altitude, and a minute later New York air traffic controllers began repeatedly and unsuccessfully trying to contact it.”

And one minute later at 8.52, Lee Hanson receives a call from his son Peter.

[Flight UAL 175] “At 8:52, in Easton, Connecticut, a man named Lee Hanson received a phone call from his son Peter, a passenger on United 175. His son told him: “I think they’ve taken over the cockpit—An attendant has been stabbed— and someone else up front may have been killed. The plane is making strange moves. Call United Airlines—Tell them it’s Flight 175, Boston to LA.

Press reports confirm that Peter Hanson was using his cell (i.e it was not an air phone). Unless the plane had suddenly nose-dived, the plane was still at high altitude at 8.52. (Moreover, Hanson’s call could have been initiated at least a minute prior to his father Lee Hanson picking up the phone.)

Another call was received at 8.52 (one minute after it deviated from its assigned altitude of 31,000 feet). The Report does not say whether this is an air phone or a cell phone call:

Also at 8:52, a male flight attendant called a United office in San Francisco, reaching Marc Policastro. The flight attendant reported that the flight had been hijacked, both pilots had been killed, a flight attendant had been stabbed, and the hijackers were probably flying the plane. The call lasted about two minutes, after which Policastro and a colleague tried unsuccessfully to contact the flight.

It is not clear whether this was a call to Policastro’s cell phone or to the UAL switchboard.

At 8:58, UAL 175 “took a heading toward New York City.”:

“At 8:59, Flight 175 passenger Brian David Sweeney tried to call his wife, Julie. He left a message on their home answering machine that the plane had been hijacked. He then called his mother, Louise Sweeney, told her the flight had been hijacked, and added that the passengers were thinking about storming the cockpit to take control of the plane away from the hijackers.

At 9:00, Lee Hanson received a second call from his son Peter:

It’s getting bad, Dad—A stewardess was stabbed—They seem to have knives and Mace—They said they have a bomb—It’s getting very bad on the plane—Passengers are throwing up and getting sick—The plane is making jerky movements—I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane—I think we are going down—I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building—Don’t worry, Dad— If it happens, it’ll be very fast—My God, my God.

The call ended abruptly. Lee Hanson had heard a woman scream just before it cut off. He turned on a television, and in her home so did Louise Sweeney. Both then saw the second aircraft hit the World Trade Center.50 At 9:03:11, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. All on board, along with an unknown number of people in the tower, were killed instantly.”

American Airlines Flight 77

American Airlines Flight 77 was scheduled to depart from Washington Dulles for Los Angeles at 8:10… “At 8:46, the flight reached its assigned cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.”

At 8:51, American 77 transmitted its last routine radio communication. The hijacking began between 8:51 and 8:54. As on American 11 and United 175, the hijackers used knives (reported by one passenger) and moved all the passengers (and possibly crew) to the rear of the aircraft (reported by one flight attendant and one passenger). Unlike the earlier flights, the Flight 77 hijackers were reported by a passenger to have box cutters. Finally, a passenger reported that an announcement had been made by the “pilot” that the plane had been hijacked….

On flight AA 77, which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon, the transponder was turned off at 8:56am; the recorded altitude at the time the transponder was turned off is not mentioned. According to the Commission’s Report, cell calls started 16 minutes later, at 9:12am, twenty minutes before it (allegedly) crashed into the Pentagon at 9.32am:

” [at 9.12] Renee May called her mother, Nancy May, in Las Vegas. She said her flight was being hijacked by six individuals who had moved them to the rear of the plane.”

According to the Report, when the autopilot was disengaged at 9:29am, the aircraft was at 7,000 feet and some 38 miles west of the Pentagon. This happened two minutes before the crash.

Most of the calls on Flight 77 were placed between 9.12am and 9.26am,  prior to the disengagement of automatic piloting at 9.29am.  The plane could indeed have been traveling at either a higher or a lower altitude to that reached at 9.29. Yet, at the same time there is no indication in the Report that the plane had been traveling below the 7000 feet level, which it reached at 9.29am.

At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. [using an airphone]

(Report p 7, see http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch1.pdf )

United  Airlines Flight 93

UAL flight 93 was the only one of the four planes that, according to the official story, did not crash into a building. Flight 93 passengers, apparently:”alerted through phone calls, attempted to subdue the hijackers. and the hijackers crashed the plane [in Pennsylvania] to prevent the passengers gaining control.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_flight_93 ). Another version of events, was that UAL 93 was shot down.

According to the Commission’s account:

“the first 46 minutes of Flight 93’s cross-country trip proceeded routinely. Radio communications from the plane were normal. Heading, speed, and altitude ran according to plan. At 9:24, Ballinger’s warning to United 93 was received in the cockpit. Within two minutes, at 9:26, the pilot, Jason Dahl, responded with a note of puzzlement: “Ed, confirm latest mssg plz—Jason.”70 The hijackers attacked at 9:28. While traveling 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio, United 93 suddenly dropped 700 feet. Eleven seconds into the descent, the FAA’s air traffic control center in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the aircraft….”

At least ten cell calls are reported to have taken place on flight 93.

The Report confirms that passengers started placing calls with cell and air phones shortly after 9.32am, four minutes after the Report’s confirmation of the plane’s attitude of 35,000 feet. In other words, the calls started some 9 minutes before the Cleveland Center lost UAL 93’s transponder signal (9.41) and approximately 30 minutes before the crash in Pennsylvania (10.03)

“At 9:41, Cleveland Center lost United 93’s transponder signal. The controller located it on primary radar, matched its position with visual sightings from other aircraft, and tracked the flight as it turned east, then south.164 “

This suggests that the altitude was known to air traffic control up until the time when the transponder signal was lost by the Cleveland Center. (Radar and visual sightings provided information on its flight path from 9.41 to 10.03.)

Moreover, there was no indication from the Report that the aircraft had swooped down to a lower level of altitude, apart from the 700 feet drop recorded at 9.28. from a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet:

“At 9:32, a hijacker, probably Jarrah, made or attempted to make the following announcement to the passengers of Flight 93:“Ladies and Gentlemen: Here the captain, please sit down keep remaining sitting.

We have a bomb on board. So, sit.” The flight data recorder (also recovered) indicates that Jarrah then instructed the plane’s autopilot to turn the aircraft around and head east. The cockpit voice recorder data indicate that a woman, most likely a flight attendant, was being held captive in the cockpit. She struggled with one of the hijackers who killed or otherwise silenced her.

Shortly thereafter, the passengers and flight crew began a series of calls from GTE airphones and cellular phones. These calls between family, friends, and colleagues took place until the end of the flight and provided those on the ground with firsthand accounts. They enabled the passengers to gain critical information, including the news that two aircraft had slammed into the World Trade Center.77…At least two callers from the flight reported that the hijackers knew that passengers were making calls but did not seem to care.

The hijackers were wearing red bandanas, and they forced the passengers to the back of the aircraft.80 Callers reported that a passenger had been stabbed and that two people were lying on the floor of the cabin, injured or dead—possibly the captain and first officer. One caller reported that a flight attendant had been killed.81 One of the callers from United 93 also reported that he thought the hijackers might possess a gun. But none of the other callers reported the presence of a firearm. One recipient of a call from the aircraft recounted specifically asking her caller whether the hijackers had guns.

The passenger replied that he did not see one. No evidence of firearms or of their identifiable remains was found at the aircraft’s crash site, and the cockpit voice recorder gives no indication of a gun being fired or mentioned at any time.

We believe that if the hijackers had possessed a gun, they would have used it in the flight’s last minutes as the passengers fought back.82 Passengers on three flights reported the hijackers’ claim of having a bomb. The FBI told us they found no trace of explosives at the crash sites. One of the passengers who mentioned a bomb expressed his belief that it was not real. Lacking any evidence that the hijackers attempted to smuggle such illegal items past the security screening checkpoints, we believe the bombs were probably fake. During at least five of the passengers’ phone calls, information was shared about the attacks that had occurred earlier that morning at the World Trade Center. Five calls described the intent of passengers and surviving crew members to revolt against the hijackers. According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane. They decided, and acted. At 9:57, the passenger assault began. Several passengers had terminated phone calls with loved ones in order to join the revolt. One of the callers ended her message as follows:

“Everyone’s running up to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” The cockpit voice recorder captured the sounds of the passenger assault muffled by the intervening cockpit door. Some family members who listened to the recording report that they can hear the voice of a loved one among the din.

We cannot identify whose voices can be heard. But the assault was sustained. In response, Jarrah immediately began to roll the airplane to the left and right, attempting to knock the passengers off balance. At 9:58:57, Jarrah told another hijacker in the cockpit to block the door. Jarrah continued to roll the airplane sharply left and right, but the assault continued. At 9:59, Jarrah changed tactics and pitched the nose of the airplane up and down to disrupt the assault. The recorder captured the sounds of loud thumps, crashes, shouts, and breaking glasses and plates.

At 10:00:03, Jarrah stabilized the airplane. Five seconds later, Jarrah asked, “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” A hijacker responded, “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.” The sounds of fighting continued outside the cockpit. Again, Jarrah pitched the nose of the aircraft up and down.At 10:00:26, a passenger in the background said, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!” Sixteen seconds later, a passenger yelled,“Roll it!” Jarrah stopped the violent maneuvers at about 10:01:00 and said, “Allah is the greatest! Allah is the greatest!” He then asked another hijacker in the cockpit,“ Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?” to which the other replied, “Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.” The passengers continued their assault and at 10:02:23, a hijacker said, “Pull it down! Pull it down!” The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them. The airplane headed down; the control wheel was turned hard to the right.

The airplane rolled onto its back, and one of the hijackers began shouting “Allah is the greatest. Allah is the greatest. ”With the sounds of the passenger counterattack continuing, the aircraft plowed into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 580 miles per hour, about 20 minutes’ flying time from Washington D.C. Jarrah’s objective was to crash his airliner into symbols of the American Republic, the Capitol or the White House. He was defeated by the alerted, unarmed passengers of United”

The Mysterious Call of Edward Felt from UAL 93

Earlier coverage of the fate of UAL 93 was based in part on a reported cell call from a passenger named Edward Felt, who managed to reach an emergency official in Pennsylvania. How he got the emergency supervisor’s number and managed to reach him remains unclear.

The call was apparently received at 9.58 am, eight minutes before the reported time of the crash at 10.06 am in Pennsylvania:

“Local emergency officials said they received a cell phone call at 9.58 am from a man who said he was a passenger aboard the flight. The man said he had locked himself in the bathroom and told emergency dispatchers that the plane had been hijacked. “We are being hijacked! We are being hijacked!” he was quoted as saying. A California man identified as Tom Burnett reportedly called his wife and told her that somebody on the plane had been stabbed. “We’re all going to die, but three of us are going to do something,” he told her. “I love you honey.”

The alleged call by Edward Felt from the toilet of the aircraft of UAL 93 was answered by Glenn Cramer, the emergency supervisor in Pennsylvania who took the call.

It is worth noting that Glenn Cramer was subsequently gagged by the FBI.” (See Robert Wallace`s incisive analysis published in Sept 2002 by the Daily Mirror, (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/WAL403A.html ).

Ironically, this high profile cell call by Ed Felt, which would have provided crucial evidence to the 9/11 Commission was, for some reason, not mentioned in the Report.

American Airlines Flight 11

Flight 11 took off at 7:59.  Just before 8:14. The Report outlines an airphone conversation of flight attendant Betty Ong and much of the narrative hinges upon this airphone conversation

There are no clear-cut reports on the use of cell phones on Flight AA11.  According to the Report, American 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8.46.

Concluding Remarks

A large part of the description, regarding the 19 hijackers relies on cell phone conversations with family and friends.

While a few of these calls (placed at low altitude) could have got through, the wireless technology was not available. On this issue, expert opinion within the wireless telecom industry is unequivocal.

In other words, at least part of the Commission’s script in Chapter 1 on the cell phone conversations, is fabricated. 

According to the American Airline / Qualcomm [2004] announcement, the technology for cell phone transmission at high altitude will only be available aboard commercial aircraft in 2006. This is an inescapable fact.

In the eyes of public opinion, the cell phone conversations on the Arab hijackers is needed to sustain the illusion that America is under attack.

The “war on terrorism” underlying the National Security doctrine relies on real time “evidence” concerning the Arab hijackers. The latter personify, so to speak, this illusive “outside enemy” (Al Qaeda), which is threatening the homeland.

Embodied into the Commission’s “script” of 911, the narrative of what happened on the plane with the Arab hijackers is therefore crucial. It is an integral part of the Administration’s disinformation and propaganda program. It constitutes a justification for the anti-terror legislation under the Patriot acts and the waging of America’s pre-emptive wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.

 Note: Emphasis added (bold) 

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America’s “War on Terrorism”

Michel Chossudovsky’s book can be order directly from Global Research. Click link. to order

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ANNEX

The 9/11 Report’s Footnotes on the Cell Phone Conversations

70. On FDR, see NTSB report,“Specialist’s Factual Report of Investigation—Digital Flight Data Recorder” for United Airlines Flight 93, Feb. 15, 2002; on CVR, see FBI report,“CVR from UA Flight #93,” Dec. 4, 2003; Commission review of Aircraft Communication and Reporting System (ACARS) messages sent to and from Flight 93 (which indicate time of message transmission and receipt); see UAL record, Ed Ballinger ACARS log, Sept. 11, 2001. At 9:22, after learning of the events at the World Trade Center, Melody Homer, the wife of co-pilot Leroy Homer, had an ACARS message sent to her husband in the cockpit asking if he was okay. See UAL record,ACARS message, Sept. 11, 2001.

71. On FDR, see NTSB report,“Specialist’s Factual Report of Investigation—Digital Flight Data Recorder” for United Airlines Flight 93, Feb. 15, 2002; on CVR, see FBI report,“CVR from UA Flight #93,” Dec. 4, 2003; FAA report,“Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001,” Sept. 17, 2001; NTSB report, Air Traffic Control Recording—United Airlines Flight 93, Dec. 21, 2001.

72.The 37 passengers represented a load factor of 20.33 percent of the plane’s seating capacity of 182, considerably below the 52.09 percent for Flight 93 on Tuesdays in the three-month period prior to September 11 (June 11–September 4, 2001). See UAL report, Flight 93 EWR-SFO load factors, undated. Five passengers holding reservations for Flight 93 did not show for the flight.All five were interviewed and cleared by the FBI. FBI report,“Flight #93 ‘No Show’ Passengers from 9/11/01,” Sept. 18, 2001.

73. INS record,Withdrawal of Application for Admission for Mohamed al Kahtani,Aug. 4, 2001.

74. See FAA regulations,Admission to flight deck, 14 C.F.R. § 121.547 (2001);UAL records, copies of boarding passes for United 93, Sept. 11,2001.One passenger reported that ten first-class passengers were aboard the flight. If that number is accurate, it would include the four hijackers. FBI report of investigation, interview of Lisa Jefferson, Sept. 11, 2001;UAL record, Flight 93 passenger manifest, Sept. 11, 2001.All but one of the six passengers seated in the first-class cabin communicated with the ground during the flight, and none mentioned anyone from their cabin having gone into the cockpit before the hijacking.Moreover, it is unlikely that the highly regarded and experienced pilot and co-pilot of Flight 93 would have allowed an observer into the cockpit before or after takeoff who had not obtained the proper permission. See UAL records, personnel files of Flight 93 pilots. For jumpseat information, see UAL record,Weight and Balance Information for Flight 93 and Flight 175, Sept. 11, 2001;AAL records, Dispatch Environmental Control/Weekly Flight Summary for Flight 11 and Flight 77, Sept. 11, 2001.

75. Like Atta on Flight 11, Jarrah apparently did not know how to operate the communication radios; thus his attempts to communicate with the passengers were broadcast on the ATC channel. See FBI report,“CVR from UA Flight #93,” Dec. 4, 2003.Also, by 9:32 FAA notified United’s headquarters that the flight was not responding to radio calls.According to United, the flight’s nonresponse and its turn to the east led the airline to believe by 9:36 that the plane was hijacked. See Rich Miles interview (Nov. 21, 2003); UAL report, “United dispatch SMFDO activities—terrorist crisis,” Sept. 11, 2001.

76. In accordance with FAA regulations, United 93’s cockpit voice recorder recorded the last 31 minutes of sounds from the cockpit via microphones in the pilots’ headsets, as well as in the overhead panel of the flight deck. This is the only recorder from the four hijacked airplanes to survive the impact and ensuing fire.The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175 were not found,and the CVR from American Flight 77 was badly burned and not recoverable. See FBI report,“CVR from UA Flight #93,”Dec. 4, 2003; see also FAA regulations, 14 C.F.R. §§ 25.1457, 91.609, 91.1045, 121.359; Flight 93 CVR data. A transcript of the CVR recording was prepared by the NTSB and the FBI.

77. All calls placed on airphones were from the rear of the aircraft. There was one airphone installed in each row of seats on both sides of the aisle.The airphone system was capable of transmitting only eight calls at any one time. See FBI report of investigation, airphone records for flights UAL 93 and UAL 175 on Sept. 11, 2001, Sept. 18, 2001.

78.FAA audio file, Cleveland Center, position Lorain Radar; Flight 93 CVR data; FBI report, “CVR from UA Flight #93,” Dec. 4, 2003.

79. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Todd Beamer, Sept. 11, 2001, through June 11, 2002; FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Sandy Bradshaw, Sept. 11, 2001, through Oct. 4, 2001.Text messages warning the cockpit of Flight 93 were sent to the aircraft by Ed Ballinger at 9:24. See UAL record, Ed Ballinger’s ACARS log, Sept. 11, 2001.

80.We have relied mainly on the record of FBI interviews with the people who received calls. The FBI interviews were conducted while memories were still fresh and were less likely to have been affected by reading the accounts of others or hearing stories in the media. In some cases we have conducted our own interviews to supplement or verify the record. See FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham,Sandy Bradshaw,Marion Britton,Thomas Burnett, Joseph DeLuca,Edward Felt, Jeremy Glick,Lauren
Grandcolas, Linda Gronlund, CeeCee Lyles, Honor Wainio.

81. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Thomas Burnett, Sept. 11, 2001; FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Marion Britton, Sept. 14, 2001, through Nov. 8, 2001; Lisa Jefferson interview (May 11, 2004); FBI report of investigation, interview of Lisa Jefferson, Sept. 11, 2001; Richard Belme interview (Nov. 21, 2003).

82. See Jere Longman, Among the Heroes—United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back (Harper-Collins, 2002), p. 107; Deena Burnett interview (Apr. 26, 2004); FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Jeremy Glick, Sept. 11, 2001, through Sept. 12, 2001; Lyzbeth Glick interview (Apr. 22, 2004). Experts told us that a gunshot would definitely be audible on the CVR. The FBI found no evidence of a firearm at the crash site of Flight 93. See FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 11).The FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site. FBI report, “Knives Found at the UA Flight 93 Crash Site,” undated.

83. FBI response to Commission briefing request no. 6, undated (topic 11); FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from Jeremy Glick, Sept. 11, 2001, through Sept. 12, 2001.

84. See FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from United 93.

85. FBI reports of investigation, interviews of recipients of calls from United 93. For quote, see FBI report of investigation, interview of Philip Bradshaw, Sept. 11, 2001; Philip Bradshaw interview (June 15, 2004); Flight 93 FDR and CVR data.At 9:55:11 Jarrah dialed in the VHF Omni-directional Range (VOR) frequency for the VOR navigational aid at Washington Reagan National Airport, further indicating that the attack was planned for the nation’s capital.

Kiev já não esconde o seu desespero para ser autorizado a atacar alvos na “Rússia profunda”. Depois de vários pedidos falhados de autorização por parte dos EUA, o regime pediu às autoridades britânicas que apoiassem a sua exigência, alegando que a medida é necessária para que a Ucrânia alcance os seus objectivos estratégicos na guerra. Londres não está em posição de autorizar ou não tais ataques sem consenso prévio com os americanos, mas a sede por uma escalada de tensões faz com que Kiev aja de forma irracional.

O primeiro-ministro ucraniano, Denis Shmyhal, pediu ao secretário dos Negócios Estrangeiros do Reino Unido, David Lammy, que apoiasse a exigência da Ucrânia de usar mísseis de longo alcance contra a Rússia. Lammy estava em visita oficial a Kiev juntamente com Antony Blinken. Alguns analistas ocidentais esperavam que a viagem de Blinken visasse precisamente anunciar uma autorização pública para estes ataques, mas nenhuma mudança na posição americana foi declarada até agora.

Durante uma reunião com o oficial britânico, Shmyhal disse:

“Nós [ucranianos] esperamos que o equipamento de longo alcance para ataques no território do nosso inimigo seja alcançado. Esperamos sua ajuda e apoio nesta questão.”

Lammy parecia desconfortável com o pedido, pois as palavras soavam como uma clara tentativa de criar um “lobby” e pressionar os EUA a aceitarem as exigências da Ucrânia. Lammy evitou dar uma resposta conclusiva sobre o assunto, mas um dia antes do encontro com Shmyhal já havia deixado claro que decisões estratégicas não seriam anunciadas na viagem.

“É extremamente importante que nós (Lammy e Blinken) viajemos juntos para ouvir dos nossos homólogos ucranianos e do Presidente Zelensky a sua avaliação da situação no terreno e das suas necessidades (…) Seria, no entanto, bastante errado comentar os detalhes das questões operacionais num fórum como este, porque a única pessoa que poderia beneficiar é Putin, e não faremos nada para lhe dar qualquer vantagem na sua invasão ilegal”, disse Lammy.

Na mesma linha, Blinken confirmou que o objetivo da viagem é apenas ouvir as exigências e necessidades ucranianas, sem tomar qualquer decisão no momento. Ele disse que tudo o que for discutido durante a viagem será relatado aos governos americano e britânico após o final da expedição, e qualquer possível decisão será tomada apenas posteriormente – o que implica que qualquer esforço ucraniano de “autorização” é inútil para agora.

“Um dos objetivos da viagem que faremos juntos é ouvir diretamente da liderança ucraniana, incluindo o presidente Zelensky, sobre como exatamente os ucranianos veem as suas necessidades neste momento, quais os objetivos e o que podemos fazer para apoiar essas necessidades (..) Tudo o que posso dizer é que ouviremos atentamente os nossos parceiros ucranianos, ambos apresentaremos relatórios ao primeiro-ministro e ao presidente Biden nos próximos dias, e prevejo plenamente que isto é algo que eles abordarão quando nos encontrarmos na sexta-feira”, disse Blinken.

Entretanto, Londres parece disposta a mudar o foco das exigências da Ucrânia. O Reino Unido anunciou novas sanções contra navios que supostamente trabalham para contornar o embargo ao petróleo russo. Lammy comentou a medida durante a sua visita a Kiev, descrevendo-a como uma espécie de vitória estratégica para o lado ucraniano ocidental. Ele disse que as sanções poderiam infligir sérios danos à economia russa, dificultando assim os seus esforços militares. Lammy parece simplesmente querer que Kiev veja tais medidas “moderadas” como “suficientes” e pare de pedir políticas militares crescentes.

“A Rússia foi forçada a gastar mais de oito mil milhões de dólares (6 mil milhões de libras) para acumular esta frota. Mas com os petroleiros sancionados ociosos e incapazes de carregar petróleo, estamos determinados a fazer do investimento de Putin um passo em falso dispendioso para o Kremlin”, acrescentou Lammy.

Alguns analistas acreditam que Blinken e Lammy “autorizaram” secretamente os ataques profundos durante a viagem. Não há provas que apoiem esta afirmação até agora, mas seria uma medida suicida das potências ocidentais. Se Kiev começar a lançar tais ataques a partir de agora, Moscou terá a certeza de que tal autorização foi dada. Neste cenário, a Rússia seria forçada a responder de forma incisiva, o que resultaria numa escalada generalizada de violência.

Washington e Londres querem, sem dúvida, a guerra, mas não querem ser alvo de uma ação retaliatória da Rússia, uma vez que nenhum dos lados beneficiaria de uma guerra aberta ou nuclear. Se Kiev utilizar estas armas contra o território russo profundo, os EUA e o Reino Unido alegarão muito provavelmente que não deram qualquer autorização, deixando o regime ucraniano assumir sozinho a responsabilidade.

Pedir ajuda a Londres é inútil, uma vez que os britânicos nunca tomariam uma decisão sem comunicação prévia com os EUA. Londres e Washington atuam juntas em todos os seus movimentos. O desespero de Kiev para gerar a escalada e a internacionalização está a impedir que as autoridades ucranianas percebam que não há sentido estratégico nas suas ações. “Pressionar” os seus patrões internacionais é um esforço inútil, uma vez que a Ucrânia, como agente por procuração, deve seguir ordens e não exigir nada.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : Regime de Kiev pede apoio de Londres em ataques com mísseis de longo alcance, InfoBrics, 12 de Setembro de 2024.

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, membro da Associação de Jornalistas do BRICS, pesquisador do Centro de Estudos Geoestratégicos, especialista militar.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://x.com/leiroz_lucas

 

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

First posted on September 29, 2021

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For more than ten years, meetings have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to Reduce the Size of the World’s Population culminating with the 2020-2023 Covid crisis.

Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation” is an integral part of the so-called Covid mandates including the lockdown policies and the mRNA “vaccine”. 

Flash back to 2009. According to the Wall Street Journal: “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population”.

In May 2009, the Billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the home of the president of The Rockefeller University in Manhattan.

This Secret Gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves “The Good Club”. 

Among the participants were the late David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg  Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and many more. 

In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the Sunday Times reported: (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that

“Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.”

The emphasis was not on population growth (i.e Planned Parenthood) but on “Depopulation”, i.e,. the reduction in the absolute size of the World’s population.

To read complete WSJ article click here.

According to the Sunday Times report :

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

…

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.

Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest.  …

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.(Sunday Times)

Shrinking The World’s Population

The media reports on the May 5, 2009 secret gathering focussed on the commitment of “The Good Club” to “slowing down” the growth of the World’s population.

“Shrink the World Population” (the WSJ Title) goes far beyond Planned Parenthood which consists in “Reducing the Growth of World Population”. It consists in “Depopulation”, namely reducing the absolute size of the World’s  Population, which ultimately requires reducing the rate of birth (which would include reduced fertility) coupled with a significant increase in the death rate.

Secret Meeting: At the Height of the H1N1 Pandemic

On April 25, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) headed by Margaret Chan declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). And a couple of weeks later, the “Good Club” met in NYC at the height of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic which turned out to be a scam.

It is also worth noting that at very outset of the H1N1 crisis in April 2009, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, London was advising Bill Gates and the WHO:  “40 per cent of people in the UK could be infected [with H1N1] within the next six months if the country was hit by a pandemic.”

Sounds familiar? That was the same Neil Ferguson (generously supported by the Gates Foundation) who designed the coronavirus Lockdown Model (launched on March 11, 2020). As we recall, that March 2020 mathematical model was based on “predictions” of 600,000 deaths in the UK.  

And now (Summer- Autumn 2021) a third authoritative “mathematical model” by the same “scientist” (Ferguson) was formulated to justify a “Fourth Wave Lockdown”. 

Saving Lives to Achieve “Depopulation”

Was an absolute “reduction” in World population contemplated at that May 2009 secret meeting? 

A few months later,  Bill Gates in his TED presentation (February 2010) pertaining to vaccination, confirmed the following;

“And if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that [the world population] by 10 or 15 percent”.

According to Gates’ statement, this would represent  an absolute reduction of the World’s population (2010) of the order of 680 million to 1.02 billion.

(See quotation on Video starting at 04.21. See also screenshot of Transcript of quotation)

TED Talk at 04:21:

“The Good Club” Then and Now

The same group of billionaires who met at the May 2009 secret venue at the Rockefeller University in Manhattan, have been actively involved from the outset of the Covid crisis in designing the lockdown policies applied Worldwide including the mRNA vaccine and the WEF’s “Great Reset”.

The mRNA vaccine is not a project of a UN intergovernmental body (WHO) on behalf the member states of the UN: It’s a private initiative. The billionaire elites who fund and enforce the Covid Vaccine Project Worldwide are Eugenists committed to Depopulation.

 

As the entire US-led political West continues to lag decades behind Russia in hypersonic weapons, it keeps using various coping mechanisms to “explain” the gap.

This ranges from rather pathetic claims that Moscow “stole American hypersonic technologies” (they must’ve all been stored on a single hard drive that was snatched by the SVR over 40 years ago and the US hasn’t recovered ever since) to the laughable “need for perfectionism in the minds of American engineers”.

And while Washington DC is “perfecting” technologies it doesn’t have (remember, because the evil Russians stole them), the Kremlin is putting its very real hypersonic weapons to good use. Continuing months of unprecedented kill streaks with its long-range strike systems, Russia just obliterated hundreds of NATO personnel in Ukraine, forcing the world’s most vile racketeering cartel to send dozens of aircraft to Poland and Romania.

These are used to collect the casualties and send them off to their home countries. Numerous reports indicate there are hundreds of dead and wounded. The NATO personnel were stationed in Poltava and Lvov. The Kiev regime tried hiding and downplaying these losses, insisting that “50 people were killed” and that a “neighboring hospital was also struck”. Citing local sources, the New York Times reported that the “missiles struck with an unforgiving quickness: The Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported that the gap between the sounding of warning sirens and the strike was so short that many people were killed on their way to shelter”. Interestingly, the label “people” is often used to conceal the fact that these were NATO personnel. It’s also unclear where the Kiev regime’s air defenses were, otherwise fabled for their “50,000% interception rates” of Russian missiles, drones and other long-range precision strike weapons.

However, even the mainstream propaganda machine had to admit that the Kremlin targeted military assets. However, they still tried hiding the fact these were NATO personnel, calling them “cadets of the Poltava Institute of Military Communications in what marks a first in terms of targeting such a large gathering of soon to be commissioned officers”. Kiev keeps pushing a sob story about “classes and teaching underway at the military academy” when two 9M723 hypersonic missiles used by the “Iskander-M” struck. Ukrainian MP Oleksiy Goncharenko lamented that “the cadets” had only two minutes to leave the building, saying that it’s impossible to escape from “the sixth floor of some building and you need to run downstairs”. I’ve already covered the topic of just how little time a group of soldiers would have to leave a building after a hypersonic weapon such as the 3M22 “Zircon” is fired.

Some sources are claiming the missile strike wiped out at least 700 troops, nearly all of whom were specialists in ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) and EW (electronic warfare). Reports indicate that many of the neutralized NATO personnel were Swedes, sent to train Ukrainian personnel to use the Saab 340 AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning & Control) aircraft, two of which were promised by Stockholm and are supposed to be delivered in the near future.

Interestingly, Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom resigned in the immediate aftermath of the strike and announced that he’s retiring from politics. The two events aren’t necessarily related, but the timing is quite peculiar. However, that wasn’t the end of NATO’s troubles in Ukraine, as Russian hypersonic weapons continued raining down on other military targets in the country, particularly those with high concentration of foreign troops.

Namely, another Russian long-range precision strike targeted Lvov in Western Ukraine. The city is the capital of the homonymous oblast (region). A lot of critical military facilities are located in the area, including the infamous Yavoriv training camp, notorious for accommodating various Neo-Nazi units and foreign mercenaries, as well as NATO personnel.

The Russian military reported that the 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” missile systems armed with the 9-S-7760 air-launched hypersonic missiles were used in the strike. Poland said it scrambled fighter jets because the area is quite close to its border. According to Reuters, “Polish and allied aircraft were scrambled for the third time in eight days to closely monitor the inbound projectiles, and were ready to intercept them in the event the missiles approached Polish airspace”. However, there’s nothing they could really do against hypersonic missiles.

Back in May, Moscow also used its hypersonic weapons to wipe out NATO personnel in Yavoriv, less than 15 km from the Polish border. The strike came right after speculation that the so-called “no-fly zone” (NFZ) could be established over Western Ukraine. For quite some time, Warsaw has been demanding that NATO starts shooting down Russian missiles. However, such proposals have been rejected repeatedly, as the world’s most vile racketeering cartel doesn’t have the backbone to fight Moscow directly and is doing so only through proxies, be it terrorists and extremists (including Islamic radicals) or entities such as the Neo-Nazi junta. Despite desperate attempts to portray it otherwise, NATO simply doesn’t have the means to intercept Russian hypersonic weapons. In the meantime, Moscow continues to obliterate overhyped Western-made systems all across NATO-occupied Ukraine.

This includes the now regular hunt for platforms such as the HIMARS and M270/MARS, as well as dozens of long-range strikes on all sorts of high-priority targets. Since late July, when I made a list of reports about the latest strikes (at the time), there have been numerous other attacks, destroying hundreds of NATO-sourced assets.

This includes strikes reported by Daily Journal and Military Watch Magazine, both on July 26. The MWM covered another one on July 28, as well as several more in August (here, here, here and here), while the South Front has been the most diligent in reporting about this in the last month or so, providing video evidence for around a dozen strikes (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Numerous other sources also reported on similar strikes (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), which includes almost exclusively those with video evidence.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Did Putin Just Issue the Most Serious Warning to Date?

By Drago Bosnic, September 13, 2024

Both the United States and United Kingdom have given the go-ahead for the use of their long-range missiles against targets deeper within Russia. For Washington DC, those are longer-range ATACMS missiles, while it’s the “Storm Shadow” air-launched cruise missile for London.

Towards an “Oppressive Digital New World Order”. UN “World for the Future” Conference, 22-23 September 2024. Borderless “Enslavement Package”, Digital Control Over 8 Billion People

By Peter Koenig, September 11, 2024

This digital enslavement package will be adopted under almost complete exclusion of the public, of people like you and me. Most parliaments and governments worldwide have apparently already agreed to it, so that the presentation and the so-called discussion during the UN Annual Conference is a sheer fig leaf, a mere farce.

9/11 Analysis: Where Was Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 12, 2024

Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts on September 10, 2001 were confirmed by a CBS News Report. Osama had been hospitalized on September 10th, 2001, one day before the 9/11 attacks. How on earth could he have coordinated the attacks from his hospital bed in a heavily guarded Pakistani military hospital located in Rawalpindi?

Putting an End to Biden’s Ceasefire Sabotage

By Mike Whitney, September 13, 2024

The main obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza is not Israel or Hamas. It’s the United States. Here’s what you need to know: The Security Council approved the Biden-authored ceasefire deal on June 10, 2024.

The Insane Recklessness of Collective Biden. Towards a Third World War?

By Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, September 13, 2024

I cannot say how close we are to midnight on the nuclear war watch. But a Third World War fought at least initially with conventional weapons is now just days, at most weeks away.

The Great Ozempic Scam. Big Pharma and the Causes of Obesity. The Importance of Natural Foods. Promoting Healthy Eating

By A Midwestern Doctor, September 12, 2024

In early 2023, a private conference with pharmaceutical industry leaders and investors highlighted anti-obesity and Alzheimer’s drugs as the next big money-makers and had the FDA head as its keynote speaker.

51 Years Ago: Chile, September 11, 1973: The Ingredients of a Military Coup

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 11, 2024

The main objective of the US-supported military coup in Chile was ultimately to  impose the neoliberal economic agenda.  The latter, in the case of Chile, was not imposed by external creditors under the guidance of the IMF. “Regime change” was enforced  through a covert military intelligence operation, which laid the groundwork for the military coup.

For around a month, the political West has been threatening Iran with “swift and severe consequences” if it delivers any surface-to-surface missiles to Russia. There have been various reports about Iranian short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) supposedly on their way to Moscow, including the likes of “Fath-360”, “Fateh-110” and “Zolfaghar”.

Some sources, such as the Duran, report that Iranian parliamentarians have confirmed that the deal is already ongoing, although there’s no official confirmation on the exact types of missiles that are being delivered. However, EU/NATO seem to be particularly concerned by this prospect. Tehran has been quite successful in developing a plethora of ballistic missiles, ranging from SRBMs to IRBMs (intermediate-range ballistic missiles), providing the country with a coverage that goes beyond the Middle East.

Some mainstream propaganda machine outlets insist that the said missiles have already been delivered, although repeated threats from NATO could indicate that the deliveries are yet to start. EU officials say the deal is allegedly “imminent”, while some military sources report that it has already been confirmed. The political West decided to impose additional sanctions on Iran, while simultaneously delivering long-range strike capabilities to the Neo-Nazi junta.

What’s more, top-ranking US officials are sending somewhat mixed signals about giving the Kiev regime the right to hit targets deeper within Russia, with President Joe Biden saying that he’s “working on it”, while Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Volodymyr Zelensky that these long-range strikes “won’t be game changers”. Either way, the political West’s endless hypocrisy is glaringly obvious once again.

On the other hand, the question arises, why is Russia even acquiring missiles from Iran? It’s a well-known fact that Moscow is wholly unsurpassed in top-notch missile systems, be it in range, speed, maneuverability, etc. However, since the INF Treaty limitations were imposed in 1987, the Kremlin eliminated the vast majority of its unprecedented arsenal of missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km. After the United States unilaterally withdrew from the said treaty in 2019, both countries started working on the reintroduction of these weapons. However, this is a long-term process that will take years, while Russia needs more affordable equivalents to fill the gap now. In decades after the (First) Cold War, its only new SRBM system was the “Iskander”. Albeit unrivaled among land-based platforms, particularly with its 9M723 hypersonic missile, it’s somewhat costly.

This means that the “Iskander-M” system is generally reserved for high-priority targets, while it’s also likely that the Russian military is stocking up for a possible confrontation with NATO. However, there’s a growing need for more affordable massed tactical and operational level strikes. Numerous reports indicate that North Korean missiles are already being used in this capacity, specifically the KN-23 (officially the “Hwasong-11Ga”, but more popularly known as the “Kimskander”). However, although cheaper than the 9M723, this missile is still more expensive than Iranian SRBMs which fill a very important niche role at ranges below 300 km (or 500 in the case of “Zolfaghar”). Combined with Russian ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets and improved guidance systems, these could be far deadlier than in Iranian service.

Moscow and Tehran already have a very successful military cooperation, particularly when it comes to drones. The most prominent of these are certainly the “Shahed-131” and “Shahed-136”, better known as “Geranium-1” and “Geranium-2” in Russian service. These unmanned systems provide the Kremlin with a robust and cost-effective alternative to its advanced cruise missiles, allowing for massed saturation strikes across the entire territory under the Kiev regime’s control.

In addition, there’s an important economic aspect of Russian-Iranian cooperation, as these deals usually boil down to barter trade, thus eliminating the US dollar as a financial medium between the two countries. Moscow is also providing Tehran with top-notch aircraft such as the Su-35, a critically important segment in the much-needed modernization of the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF).

These deals between the Kremlin and Tehran are particularly frustrating to the political West, as they’re completely incapable of stopping or at least disrupting them. This cooperation also exposes the Neo-Nazi junta’s absurd lies about their alleged “success in shooting down” Russian missiles. Namely, the illogic of their claims was already apparent, but it’s even more obvious when it comes to Iranian missiles, as these are less advanced, but there’s still panic in both Kiev and Brussels that they’re coming to Russia. Had the junta really been so successful in downing Moscow’s missiles, it wouldn’t even bat an eye over Tehran’s. However, it’s quite usual for the political West and its vassals and satellite states to be completely delusional and hypocritical. The US is crying foul because its adversaries are working together while it’s threatening all of them simultaneously.

It should also be noted that NATO is terrified of the prospect of Russia getting even more precision strike options. Namely, Moscow has been very successful in obliterating the personnel of the world’s most vile racketeering cartel all across NATO-occupied Ukraine, so the Russian military having more (and cheaper) missiles for this purpose is surely sounding many alarms.

In addition, there’s solid evidence that the Kremlin will deliver advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems to Tehran, which is directly undermining US/NATO’s strike options against Iran. It can be expected that the multipolar world will increase coordination in order to push back against the political West’s aggression against the entire world. This will surely frustrate the US and its vassals and satellite states, but it’s a must if the globe is to become a fairer and safer place for everyone.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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Featured image: Two IRGC missiles, Dezful (missile) front and Zolfagar Basir missile rear, on a Zulfaqar missile launcher, at an IRGC Air Force exhibition in Tehran. (By M. Sadegh Nikgostar / Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

When the special military operation (SMO) was launched to end the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, Russian President Vladimir Putin was very clear about the direct involvement of any third parties.

This has prevented the political West from taking direct action in support of the Kiev regime, but it still didn’t prevent it from doing everything else in its power to avert the complete defeat of the puppets in Kiev. In fact, they even sent former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to sabotage the already signed peace deal that would’ve ended the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict a couple of weeks after the SMO started.

Several high-ranking Western officials admitted this in the last two and a half years, including monstrous war criminals such as Victoria Nuland. Even former top-ranking Neo-Nazi junta officials such as Oleksiy Arestovych lamented that the deal was beneficial to both sides, but the US-led political West had other plans.

However, while making sure as many Ukrainians as possible die a pointless death in a perfectly avoidable war with a military superpower, NATO also keeps trying to probe Russia’s reaction to various levels of indirect involvement of third parties. This includes everything from sabotage operations and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) support for the Kiev regime to terrorism and guiding NATO-sourced weapons to kill Russian soldiers and even civilians in some cases. Expectedly, Moscow is furious, but it’s still trying to keep its cool, as a direct response could easily result in global thermonuclear annihilation. However, Russian patience is regularly mistaken for weakness in the political West, which is why they keep sending ever more advanced weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta. After initially giving mixed signals about this, it seems the political West has now decided to take things up a notch (or a thousand).

Image: An ATACMS missile being launched from an M270 MLRS (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Namely, both the United States and United Kingdom have given the go-ahead for the use of their long-range missiles against targets deeper within Russia. For Washington DC, those are longer-range ATACMS missiles, while it’s the “Storm Shadow” air-launched cruise missile for London. In previous months, UK PM Keir Starmer said that he supports such strikes, only for the British military to deny such reports. The US is doing something similar, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin telling Zelensky that long-range strikes “won’t be a game changer” against Moscow.

Perhaps the political West is trying to use these sorts of intentionally misleading and contradictory statements as a Pilatian way to avoid responsibility for any escalation. However, President Putin just made it very clear that such a strategy is futile and that NATO will be held accountable. Namely, in a short interview with Russian state media, he actually said there will be a direct response.

“What we are seeing is an attempt to use a straw man argument. Because this is not a question of whether the Kiev regime is allowed or not allowed to strike targets on Russian territory. It is already carrying out strikes using unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But using Western-made long-range precision weapons is a completely different story,” Putin said, adding: “The fact is that – I have mentioned this, and any expert, both in our country and in the West, will confirm this – the Ukrainian army is not capable of using cutting-edge high-precision long-range systems supplied by the West. They cannot do that. These weapons are impossible to employ without intelligence data from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This can only be done using the European Union’s satellites, or US satellites – in general, NATO satellites. This is the first point.”

“The second point – perhaps the most important, the key point even – is that only NATO military personnel can assign flight missions to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. Therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not. It is about deciding whether NATO countries become directly involved in the military conflict or not,” he continued and concluded: “If this decision is made, it will mean nothing short of direct involvement – it will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are parties to the war in Ukraine. This will mean their direct involvement in the conflict, and it will clearly change the very essence, the very nature of the conflict dramatically. This will mean that NATO countries – the United States and European countries – are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

⚡️The use of Western high-precision long-range weapons against Russia will mean direct participation of NATO countries in military operations in Ukraine — Putin

The Ukrainian army cannot strike with modern Western-made high-precision long-range systems, said President Vladimir… pic.twitter.com/0kKBAzsbw7

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) September 12, 2024

This is the message, the be-all and end-all warning that should be taken as seriously as possible. In the last two and a half years, Russia has drastically changed its long-range strike strategy, as well as its nuclear doctrine, including recently, putting emphasis on its unrivaled strategic arsenal. The Kremlin simply needs to be ready to use its world-class thermonuclear weapons to secure basic Russian national interests. On the other hand, this is yet another neocolonial war for the political West, which simply wants to continue its parasitical existence at the expense of the entire world’s peace, prosperity and sustainable development. In order to put a final stop to this, Russia is working together with other superpowers, such as China, and various regional actors, such as Iran and North Korea. At Moscow’s helm, Putin is critically important to the rest of the globe as one of the leaders of the free world, which is why the political West even tried to assassinate him.

In fact, only two days after the attempt on his life, Foreign Policy, one of the most prominent outlets of the mainstream propaganda machine even published a piece titled “Would the US Consider Assassinating Putin?”, further confirming what Pepe Escobar, a colossus in geopolitical analytics, told me during an online meeting concerning this and several other important topics. It is only thanks to Putin’s unrivaled patience, self-control and cool-headedness did we not see monstrosities such as the RS-28 “Sarmat” launched immediately at all major NATO capitals. However, it seems the political West is determined to make sure exactly this happens, as they keep poking the Bear and trying to force it to respond as violently as possible. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for… And indeed, if the US, UK and other pathologically Russophobic countries and entities keep doing this, the consequences might be global and permanent.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is a screenshot from the Twitter/X video 

I cannot say how close we are to midnight on the nuclear war watch. But a Third World War fought at least initially with conventional weapons is now just days, at most weeks away.

I look at what my peers are saying on the most watched youtube channels, and they seem comforted that the Ukraine war is unsustainable for Zelensky’s army given the ongoing massacre of the forces they deployed in their Kursk gambit, today said to be over 10,000 men dead or grievously wounded.

Meanwhile the Russian offensive in Donbass is reported both by Russians and by Western media to be accelerating, with more towns being captured each day and the number of square kilometers of Ukrainian territory ‘liberated’ there in the past month already roughly matching the 1,000 that Ukrainian elite forces captured in Russia’s Kursk oblast over the same period.

Of course, these two conquests are incomparable: the Ukrainians have a tenuous hold on land they cannot fortify so as to keep given that their supply lines from the border are under constant deadly attack from the air and from Russian artillery, whereas the Russian advance along the Donbass battle lines is pulverizing long standing Ukrainian fortified positions and is about to totally disrupt the logistics that permit the Ukrainian forces to stay in the Donbass.

These same peers have highlighted the destruction of Ukraine’s best present and future cadres in electronic warfare by Russia’s missile strike this past week on the military communications institute in Poltava which is today said to have killed 700 Ukrainian and NATO personnel.

However, this seeming turning point in Russia’s favor is, as we speak, setting the stage for one further absolutely desperate and reckless act by the Biden administration to deprive Russia of its well earned victory by escalating the conflict to a world war.

What I have in mind is the near certainty that the United States and Britain have just agreed to give the Zelensky regime permission to use the long-range missiles which have been delivered to Ukraine, certainly including Storm Shadow and likely also the 1500 km range stealth missile known as JASSM to strike deep into the Russian heartland, and so ‘to bring the war to Russia’ as the Zelensky gang put it.

That is the sense of the trip this week by Secretary of State Blinken to Kiev and of the visit to the White House on Friday by British Prime Minister Starmer.

Collective Biden is doing this in the full knowledge that the Russians have issued direct threats of attack on the United States and other countries involved in strikes on its heartland using such Western supplied and directed weapons. However patient and averse to a hot war with NATO President Putin may be, he will have no choice but to rise to the challenge.

Meanwhile, peers who know a great deal about current affairs in the Middle East, in particular former British diplomat Alastair Crooke, have in their latest interviews on youtube said flatly that the United States has given Israel the go-ahead to launch a full-blown war on Lebanon. The nod from Washington was expressed by the reminder to Netanyahu that the aircraft carriers and other U.S. vessels now stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean cannot remain there indefinitely, so if he has something to do, he should proceed without delay.

Hence the Israeli prime minister’s public directive to the IDF a day ago to move on Lebanon. Should this happen, the tinderbox that is the Middle East today may well catch fire. The interested parties in countering the atrocities that Israel has been committing in Gaza and most recently also in the West Bank now take in even very moderate and restrained Jordan, as well as Turkey and Egypt. Of course; it will be very difficult for Iran to stay out of the conflict, which in one way or another will also bring in Iran’s newly declared strategic partner or ally, Russia.

In this way a presently localized conflict in the Middle East can in a flash become a regional war that in a further flash becomes a second front to the war between the United States and Russia which I foretold above when speaking about Ukraine.

These considerations of what may well happen in the immediate days ahead cannot bring joy to anyone. There will be no победа (victory) or слава (glory) for any of the parties to the coming conflagration. Only massive destruction and loss of life.

[Collective Biden is the term which Russian talk show hosts have applied to the US leadership given that the presidency assumed a collective form when the physical Joe Biden slipped into deep senility this past couple of years.]

*

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Featured image: Secretary Antony J. Blinken looks on as President Joe Biden shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., July 11, 2024. (Official State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy)

[originally published by Global Research in September 2009]

At 5:21 in the afternoon of 9/11, almost seven hours after the Twin Towers had come down, Building 7 of the World Trade Center also came down. The collapse of this building was from the beginning considered a mystery. [1]

The same should have been true, to be sure, of the collapse of the Twin Towers. But they had been hit by planes, which had ignited big fires in them, and many people assumed this combination of causes to be sufficient to explain why they came down.

But WTC 7 had not been hit by a plane, so it was apparently the first steel-framed high-rise building in the known universe to have collapsed because of fire alone. New York Times writer James Glanz quoted a structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the question, “why did 7 come down?” [2]

From a purely scientific perspective, of course, there would have been an obvious answer. Scientists, presupposing the regularity of nature, operate on the principle that like effects generally imply like causes. Scientists are, therefore, loathe to posit unprecedented causes for common phenomena. By 9/11, the collapse of steel-framed high-rises had become a rather common phenomenon, which most Americans had seen on television. And in every one of these cases, the building had been brought down by explosives in the process known as controlled demolition. From a scientific perspective, therefore, the obvious assumption would have been that WTC 7 came down because explosives had been used to remove its steel supports.

However, the public discussion of the destruction of the World Trade Center did not occur in a scientific context, but in a highly charged political context.

America had just been attacked, it was almost universally believed, by foreign terrorists who had flown hijacked planes into the Twin Towers, and in response the Bush administration had launched a “war on terror.” The idea that even one of the buildings had been brought down by explosives would have implied that the attacks had not been a surprise, so this idea could not be entertained by many minds in private, let alone in public.

This meant that people had to believe, or at least pretend to believe, that Building 7 had been brought down by fire, even though, as Glanz wrote: “[E]xperts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” [3] And so, this building’s collapse had to be considered a mystery – insofar as it was considered at all.

But this was not much. Although WTC 7 was a 47-story building, which in most places would have been the tallest building in the city, if not the state, it was dwarfed by the 110-story Twin Towers. It was also dwarfed by them in the ensuing media coverage. And so, Glanz wrote, the collapse of Building 7 was “a mystery that . . . would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world,” if the Twin Towers had not also come down. [4] As it was, however, the mystery of Building 7’s collapse was seldom discussed.

For those few people who were paying attention, the mysteriousness of this collapse was not lessened by the first official report about it, which was issued by FEMA in 2002. This report put forward what it called its “best hypothesis” as to why the building collapsed, but then added that this hypothesis had “only a low probability of occurrence.” [5]

This FEMA report, in fact, increased the mystery, thanks to an appendix written by three professors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This appendix reported that a piece of steel from WTC 7 had melted so severely that it had gaping holes in it, making it look like a piece of Swiss cheese. [6] James Glanz, pointing out that the fires in the building could not have been hot enough to melt steel, referred to this discovery as “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.”[7]

The task of providing the definitive explanation of the collapse of WTC 7 was given to NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Although NIST had been expected to issue its report on this building along with its report on the Twin Towers, which came out in 2005, it did not. NIST then continued to delay this report until August of 2008, at which time it issued a Draft for Public Comment.

1. NIST’s Denial of Evidence for Explosives

At a press briefing, Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator, declared that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery.” Also, announcing that NIST “did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down,” [8] he said: “[S]cience is really behind what we have said.” [9] In the remainder of this lecture, I will show that both of those statements were false.

NIST and Scientific Fraud

With regard to the question of science: Far from being supported by good science, NIST’s report repeatedly makes its case by resorting to scientific fraud.

Before going into details, let me point out that, if NIST did engage in fraudulent science, this would not be particularly surprising. NIST is an agency of the US Department of Commerce. During the years it was writing its World Trade Center reports, therefore, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration. In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists put out a document charging this administration with “distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.” By the end of the Bush administration, this document had been signed by over 15,000 scientists, including 52 Nobel Laureates and 63 recipients of the National Medal of Science. [10]

Moreover, a scientist who formerly worked for NIST has reported that it has been “fully hijacked from the scientific into the political realm,” with the result that scientists working for NIST “lost [their] scientific independence, and became little more than ‘hired guns.’”11 Referring in particular to NIST’s work on the World Trade Center, he said everything had to be approved by the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget—“an arm of the Executive Office of the President,” which “had a policy person specifically delegated to provide oversight on [NIST’s] work.” [12]

One of the general principles of scientific work is that its conclusions must not be dictated by nonscientific concerns – in other words, by any concern other than that of discovering the truth. This former NIST employee’s statement gives us reason to suspect that NIST, while preparing its report on WTC 7, would have been functioning as a political, not a scientific, agency. The amount of fraud in this report suggests that this was indeed the case.

According to the National Science Foundation, the major types of scientific fraud are fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. There is no sign that NIST is guilty of plagiarism, but it is certainly guilty of fabrication, which can be defined as “making up results,” and falsification, which means either “changing or omitting data.” [13]

The omission of evidence by NIST is so massive, in fact, that I treat it as a distinct type of scientific fraud. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said in his 1925 book, Science and the Modern World: “It is easy enough to find a [self-consistent] theory . . . , provided that you are content to disregard half your evidence.” The “moral temper required for the pursuit of truth,” he added, includes “[a]n unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account.” [14]

NIST, however, seemed to manifest an unflinching determination to disregard half of the relevant evidence.

Physical Evidence of Explosives

Some of the evidence ignored by NIST is physical evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7.

Swiss-Cheese Steel: I will begin with the piece of steel from WTC 7 that had been melted so severely that it looked like Swiss cheese. Explaining why it called this “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,” James Glanz wrote: “The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” [15] Glanz’s statement was, in fact, quite an understatement. The full truth is that the fires in the building could not have brought the steel anywhere close to the temperature – about 1,482°C (2,700°F) – needed for it to melt. [16]

The professors who reported this piece of steel in the appendix to the FEMA report said: “A detailed study into the mechanisms [that caused] this phenomenon is needed.”[17] Arden Bement, who was the director of NIST when it took on the WTC project, said that NIST’s report would address “all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report.” [18]
But when NIST issued its report on WTC 7, it did not mention this piece of steel with the Swiss-cheese appearance. Indeed, NIST even claimed that not a single piece of steel from WTC 7 had been recovered. [19]

This piece of steel, moreover, was only a small portion of the evidence, ignored by NIST, that steel had melted.

Particles of Metal in the Dust: The Deutsche Bank building, which was right next to the Twin Towers, was heavily contaminated by dust produced by their destruction. But Deutsche Bank’s insurance company refused to pay for the clean-up, claiming that this dust had not resulted from the destruction of the WTC. So Deutsche Bank hired the RJ Lee Group to do a study, which showed that the dust in the Deutsche Bank was WTC dust, which had a unique signature. Part of this signature was “Spherical iron . . . particles.” [20] This meant, the RJ Lee Group said, that iron had “melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.” [21] The study even showed that, whereas iron particles constitute only 0.04 percent of normal building dust, they constituted almost 6 percent of WTC Dust – meaning almost 150 times as much as normal. [22]

The RJ Lee study also found that temperatures had been reached “at which lead would have undergone vaporization” [23] – meaning 1,749°C (3,180°F). [24]

Another study was carried out by the US Geological Survey, the purpose of which was to aid the “identification of WTC dust components.” Besides also finding iron particles, the scientists involved in this study found that molybdenum had been melted. This finding was especially significant, because this metal does not melt until it reaches 2,623°C (4,753°F). [25]

NIST, however, did not mention either of these studies, even though the latter one was carried out by another US government agency.

NIST could not mention these studies because it was committed to the theory that the WTC buildings were brought down by fire, while these studies clearly showed that something other than fire was going on in those buildings.

Nanothermite Residue: What was that? A report by several scientists, including chemist Niels Harrit of the University of Copenhagen, showed that the WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite, which – unlike ordinary thermite, which is an incendiary – is a high explosive. This report by Harrit and his colleagues, who included Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan, did not appear until 2009, [26] several months after the publication of NIST’s final report in November 2008.

But NIST, as a matter of routine, should have tested the WTC dust for residue of explosives, such as nanothermite. The Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations put out by the National Fire Protection Association says that a search for evidence for explosives should be undertaken whenever there has been “high-order damage.” Leaving no doubt about the meaning of this term, the Guide says:

High-order damage is characterized by shattering of the structure, producing small, pulverized debris. Walls, roofs, and structural members are splintered or shattered, with the building completely demolished. [27]

That description applied to the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7. The next sentence – “Debris is thrown great distances, possibly hundreds of feet” – applied to the destruction of the Twin Towers, a fact that NIST had to admit in order to explain how fires were started in WTC 7. [28] So NIST should have looked for signs of explosives, such as nanothermite.

But when asked whether it had, NIST said No. A reporter asked Michael Newman, a NIST spokesman, about this failure, saying: “[W]hat about that letter where NIST said it didn’t look for evidence of explosives?” Newman replied: “Right, because there was no evidence of that.” “But,” asked the reporter “how can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?” Newman replied: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’ money.” [29] (You couldn’t make this stuff up.)

When Shyam Sunder, who headed up NIST’s investigation of the WTC buildings, gave his press conference in August of 2008 – at which he announced that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” – he began by saying:

Before I tell you what we found, I’d like to tell you what we did not find. We did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down. [30]

By making this point first, Sunder indicated that this was NIST’s most important conclusion – just as it had been NIST’s most important conclusion about the Twin Towers. However, although Sunder claimed that this conclusion was based on good science, a conclusion has no scientific validity if it can be reached only by ignoring half the evidence.

Molten Metal: In addition to the ignored evidence already pointed out, NIST also, in its investigation of the WTC, ignored reports that the rubble contained lots of molten metal – which most people described as molten steel. For example, firefighter Philip Ruvolo, speaking of the Twin Towers, said: “You’d get down below and you’d see molten steel, molten steel, running down the channel rails, like you’re in a foundry, like lava.” [31]

Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction, which was involved in the clean-up operation, said that he saw pools of “literally molten steel.” [32]

However, when John Gross, one of the main authors of NIST’s reports, was asked about the molten steel, he said to the questioner: I challenge your “basic premise that there was a pool of molten steel,” adding: “I know of absolutely no . . . eyewitness who has said so.”[33]

However, in addition to Ruvolo and Tully, the eyewitnesses who said so included:

•          Leslie Robertson, a member of the engineering firm that designed the Twin Towers. [34]

•          Dr. Ronald Burger of the National Center for Environmental Health. [35]

•          Dr. Alison Geyh of The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, who headed up a scientific team that went to the site shortly after 9/11 at the request of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. [36]

•          Finally, the fact that “molten steel was also found at WTC 7” was added by Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc., which was involved in the clean-up. [37]

And yet John Gross suggested that no credible witnesses had reported molten steel. That appears to have been a gross lie.

Testimonial Evidence for Explosives

Besides ignoring physical evidence that explosives had been used, NIST also ignored testimonial evidence.

NIST’s Twin Towers Report: In its 2005 report on the Twin Towers, NIST ignored dozens of testimonies provided by reporters, police officers, and WTC employees, along with 118 testimonies provided by members of the Fire Department of New York. [38] NIST even explicitly denied the existence of these reports, saying that there “was no evidence (collected by . . . the Fire Department of New York) of any blast or explosions” that would have suggested that explosives were going off. [39]

However, when a group of scholars including scientists and a lawyer called NIST on this false statement, NIST refined its meaning, saying:

NIST reviewed all of the interviews conducted by the FDNY of firefighters (500 interviews). . . . Taken as a whole, the interviews did not support the contention that explosives played a role in the collapse of the WTC Towers. [40]

So, although NIST had said in its report that there was no testimonial evidence for explosives, it now seemed to be saying that, because only 118 out of 500 reported explosions, the testimonies, “taken as a whole,” do not support the idea that explosions were going off, so that NIST had been justified in claiming that there was no testimonial evidence to support the idea that explosives had been used.

Imagine an investigation of a murder on the streets of San Francisco. Of the 100 people who were at the scene at the time, 25 of them reported seeing Pete Smith shoot the victim. But the police release Pete Smith, saying that, taken as a whole, the testimonies did not point to his guilt. That would be NIST-style forensic science.

Reports from People Outside WTC 7: NIST continued this approach in its WTC 7 report. There had been several credible reports of explosions. A reporter for the New York Daily News, said:

[T]here was a rumble. The building’s top row of windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth floor popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray. [41]

NYPD officer Craig Bartmer said:

I was real close to Building 7 when it fell down. . . . [A]ll of a sudden. . . I looked up, and . . . [t]he thing started pealing in on itself. . . . I started running . . . and the whole time you’re hearing “boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.” [42]

Reports from Hess and Jennings from Inside WTC 7: Besides ignoring these and other reports of explosions made by people outside Building 7, NIST distorted the testimony of two highly credible men who were inside: Michael Hess, who was New York City’s corporation counsel, and Barry Jennings, the deputy director of the Emergency Services Department of the New York City Housing Authority.

Immediately after the North Tower was struck that morning, both men followed the instruction that, whenever there was an emergency, they were to meet Major Giuliani at his Emergency Management Center on the 23rd floor of Building 7. The North Tower was struck at 8:46, so they would have arrived at about 9:00. They found, however, that everyone had left. Calling to find out what they should do, Jennings was told to get out of the building immediately. So, finding that the elevator would not work (the electricity had evidently been knocked out at 9:03 by the airplane strike on the South Tower), they started running down the stairs. But when they got to the 6th floor, there was a huge explosion, which blew the landing out from under them and blocked their path. They went back up to the 8th floor, broke a window, and signaled for help.

Firemen came to rescue them, Jennings said, but then ran away. Coming back after a while, the firemen again started to rescue them, but then ran away again. They had to run away the first time, Jennings explained, because of the collapse of the South Tower, which occurred at 9:59, and the second time because of the North Tower collapse, which occurred at 10:28. On that basis, Jennings told Dylan Avery in an interview in 2007, he knew that, when that big explosion occurred, “both buildings were still standing.” Finally, when the firemen returned after the second tower collapsed, Hess and Jennings were rescued.

This must have been sometime between 11:00 and 11:30, because at 11:57, Hess gave an on-the-street interview several blocks away. Jennings also gave an on-the-street interview. Both men reported that they had been trapped for some time – Hess specified “about an hour and a half.”

This story obviously was very threatening to NIST. It was going to claim that, when Building 7 came down at 5:21 that afternoon, it did so solely because of fires. There were no explosives to help things along.

But here were two city officials reporting that a big explosion had gone off pretty early in the morning, evidently before 9:30. In his interview for Dylan Avery, moreover, Jennings said that the big explosion that trapped them was simply the first of many. He also said that when the firefighter took them down to the lobby, he saw that it had been totally destroyed – it was, he said, “total ruins, total ruins.” Jennings also that, when he and the firefighter were walking through this lobby, they were “stepping over people.” [43]

Jennings’s testimony contradicted the official story, according to which there were no explosions in WTC 7 and no one was killed in this building. What would NIST do?

NIST’s Treatment of the Hess-Jennings Testimony: NIST simply ignored Jennings’ report about the lobby and, with regard to the time that Hess and Jennings got trapped, followed the line that had taken by Rudy Giuliani in a 2002 book, according to which the event that Hess and Jennings took to be an explosion within WTC 7 was simply the impact of debris from the collapse of the North Tower.

But that collapse did not occur until 10:28, whereas the event described by Hess and Jennings had occurred at least an hour earlier.

Also, Jennings said that the South Tower as well as the North Tower was still standing when the event he called an explosion occurred, and that is surely what he told NIST when it interviewed him (as well as Hess) in the Spring of 2004.

Another problem was that Hess had said that they had been trapped for “about an hour and a half.” If the event that trapped them did not happen until almost 10:30, as NIST claims, then they would not have been rescued before noon. And sure enough, in an Interim Report on WTC 7 put out by NIST in 2004, it claimed that Hess and Jennings had been rescued “[a]t 12:10 to 12:15 PM.” But that is clearly false, given the fact that Hess was being interviewed several blocks away before noon. [44]

NIST would, of course, deny that it had distorted Jennings’ testimony. But when we sent a Freedom of Information Act request to NIST to obtain a copy of the Hess and Jennings interviews, NIST declined on the basis of a provision allowing for exemption from FOIA disclosure if the information is “not directly related to the building failure.” [45] NIST thereby suggested that a report of a massive explosion within the building would be irrelevant to determining the cause of its failure. Using such an obviously phony reason seemed to be NIST’s way of saying: There’s no way we’re going to release those interviews.

The BBC Helps Out: In any case, NIST’s attempt to neutralize the testimony of Barry Jennings was aided by the BBC, which interviewed Jennings and then, obviously, changed the timeline, so that the narrator, with her reassuring voice, could say:

“At 10:28, the North Tower collapses. . . . This time, Tower 7 takes a direct hit from the collapsing building. . . . Early evidence of explosives were just debris from a falling skyscraper.” [46]

Mike Rudin, who produced this BBC program, recently telephoned me to discuss the possibility of interviewing me about my little book, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? [47] I told him that I had a book coming out shortly about WTC 7 and that, after seeing it, he probably would not want to interview me. When he asked why, I said because I pointed out that he had obviously distorted the timeline of Jennings’s account. When he denied this, I said, OK, show me the uncut, unedited interview. If this interview had showed that Rudin had not distorted the timeline, I would have told the world. Rudin, however, declined to allow me to see the unedited interview. [48]

This BBC program had appeared in July of 2008. The first version of NIST’s final report – its Draft for Public Comment – was to be released at a press briefing on August 21, at which time Sunder would announce that the mystery of the collapse of WTC 7 had been solved.

The Death of Barry Jennings: Two days prior to that, Barry Jennings died – and died very mysteriously. No one has been willing to provide any information as to how or why this 53-year-old man had died. Dylan Avery, trying to find out something, hired a private investigator – reputed to be one of the best in the state of New York – to find out what she could. He used his credit card to pay her a considerable fee. Within 24 hours, however, Avery received a message from her, saying:

Due to some of the information I have uncovered, I have determined that this is a job for the police. I have refunded your credit card. Please do not contact me again about this individual.

This is not the response one would expect, Avery observed, if she had merely found that Jennings had passed away “innocently in a hospital.” [49] The dedication page on my book says: “To the memory of Barry Jennings, whose truth-telling may have cost him his life.”

Be that as it may, his death was very convenient for NIST, which now did not need to fear that Jennings might hold his own press conference to say that NIST had lied about his testimony.

The BBC Helps Out Again: The death of Jennings was also convenient for the BBC, which could now put out a second version of its program on WTC 7, this time including Michael Hess.

In the first version, the BBC had pretended that Jennings had been in the building all by himself. Even though Jennings would say, “We did this, and then We did that,” the BBC spoke only of Jennings, never mentioning the fact that Hess was with him.

But in the new version, which was aired at the end of October 2008, Hess was the star. While admitting that, back on 9/11, he had “assumed that there had been an explosion in the basement,” he said: “I know now this was caused by the northern half of Number 1 [the North Tower] falling on the southern half of our building,” exactly what Giuliani had said in his book. It is no surprise that Hess supported Giuliani’s account, given the fact that since 2002 Hess has been Giuliani’s business partner.

In spite of the fact that Hess could in no way be considered an impartial witness, Mike Rudin portrayed him as such. On his BBC blog, Rudin said that some “self-styled truthers” had charged that the BBC, in presenting Barry Jennings’ testimony, had “misrepresented the chronology.” But, Rudin said triumphantly, Michael Hess, “In his first interview since 9/11 . . . confirms our timeline.”

But Hess’s account could be said to “confirm” the BBC timeline only if it were a credible account. In my book, however, I show that it is riddled with problems, so that anyone can easily see that he was lying. [50]

2. NIST’s Own Theory of WTC 7’s Collapse

Thus far, I have spoken about the first half of my book, which deals with NIST’s negative claim, namely, that it had found no evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7. NIST could make this argument, I have pointed out, only by committing two kinds of scientific fraud: Ignoring relevant evidence and falsifying evidence – in this case, the testimony of Barry Jennings.

The second half of my book deals with NIST’s own theory as to how fire brought the building down. To develop such a theory, NIST had to falsify and fabricate data on a possibly unprecedented scale. And yet, after all of that, it had to violate one of the basic principles of science: Thou shalt not affirm miracles.

You perhaps know the cartoon about this. A physics professor has filled several boards with mathematical equations, at the bottom of which we read: “Then a miracle happens.” In science, you cannot appeal to miracles, whether explicitly, or only implicitly – by implying that some basic principle of physics has been violated. And yet that is what NIST does.

Fabrication of Evidence

But before describing its miracle story, I will point out three especially obvious examples of scientific fraud committed by NIST before it resorted to this desperate expedient. These examples all involve fabrication.

No Girder Shear Studs: NIST’s explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse starts with thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand.

A steel beam on the 13th floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder attached to Column 79 to break loose. Having lost its support, Column 79 failed, and this failure started a chain reaction, in which all 82 of the building’s steel columns failed. [51]

Without getting into the question of whether this is even remotely plausible, let us just focus on the question: Why did that girder fail?

It failed, NIST said, because it was not connected to the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote:

In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders.

Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.

This point was crucial to NIST’s answer to a commonly asked question: Why did fire cause WTC 7 to collapse, when fire had never before brought down steel-framed high-rise buildings, some of which had had much bigger and longer-lasting fires? NIST’s answer was: differences in design.

One of those crucial differences, NIST stated repeatedly, was “the absence of [girder] shear studs that would have provided lateral restraint.”

But this was a fabrication on NIST’s part. How can we know this? All we need to do is to look at NIST’s Interim Report on WTC 7, which it had published back in 2004, before it had developed its theory of girder failure.

This report stated that girders as well as the beams had been attached to the floor by means of shear studs. [52]

We have here as clear a case of fabrication as one will see, with NIST simply making up a fact in order to meet the needs of its new theory.

The Raging Fire on Floor 12 at 5:00 PM: NIST also contradicted its “interim report” in telling a lie about the fire in the building. NIST claims that there were very big, very hot fires covering much of the north face of the 12th floor at 5:00 PM. This claim is essential to NIST’s explanation as to why the building collapsed 21 minutes later. However, if you look back at NIST’s interim report, published before it had developed its theory, you will find this statement:

Around 4:45 PM, a photograph showed fires on Floors 7, 8, 9, and 11 near the middle of the north face; Floor 12 was burned out by this time.

Other photographs even show that the 12th floor fire had virtually burned out by 4:00. And yet NIST now claims that fires were still going strong at 5:00 PM. [53] We have here another clear case of fabrication.

Shear Stud Failure: A third case of fabrication involves shear studs again – this time the shear studs that connected to the steel beams to the floor slab.

NIST claims that, due to the failure of that crucial girder discussed earlier, the floor beams were able to expand without constraint. But each of these beams was connected to the floor slab by 28 high-strength shear studs. These studs should have provided plenty of restraint.

They would have, except for the fact, NIST tells us, that they all broke.

Why did they break? Because of what NIST calls “differential thermal expansion,” which is simply a technical way of saying that, in response to the heat from the fires, the steel beams expanded more than the floor slabs did.

But why would that have been the case? Steel and concrete have virtually the same “coefficient of thermal expansion,” meaning that they expand virtually the same amount in response to heat. If that were not the case, reinforced concrete – that is, concrete reinforced with steel – would break up when the weather got very hot or very cold. NIST itself points out that “steel and concrete have similar coefficients of thermal expansion.”

So why does NIST claim that the shear studs broke because of differential thermal expansion?

To understand this point, you need to understand that NIST’s theory is an almost totally computer-based theory. NIST fed various variables into a computer program, which then supposedly told it how WTC 7 would have reacted to its fires. So, what did NIST feed into its computer that caused it to say that the steel would have expanded so much more than the concrete slab that all of the shear studs would have broken?  The answer is given in this bland statement:

No thermal expansion or material degradation was considered for the concrete slab, as the slab was not heated in this analysis.

When I first read this statement, I had to rub my eyes. Surely, I thought, I have mis-read the statement, because a few pages earlier, NIST had said: “differential thermal expansion occurred between the steel floor beams and concrete slab when the composite floor was subjected to fire.” The “composite floor,” by definition, is the steel beams made composite with the floor slab by means of the shear studs. So NIST had clearly said, in stating that the composite floor had been subjected to fire, that both the steel beams and the concrete slab had been heated.

But then in the eye-rubbing passage, NIST said: When doing its computer simulation, it told the computer that only the steel beams had been heated; the concrete floor slab was not. [54]

So of course the steel beams would have expanded, while the floor slabs stayed stationary, thereby causing the sheer studs to break, after which the steel beams could expand like crazy and bump into Column 79, which then causes the whole building to come down.

A comic book version of the official story of 9/11 has been published. [55] This was an exercise in redundancy, because the official reports already are the comic book version of what happened on 9/11. In any case, I come now to NIST’s miracle.

NIST’s Miracle

Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had almost from the first been pointing out that WTC 7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, at least virtually so.

NIST’S Denial of Free Fall: In NIST’s Draft for Public Comment, it denied this, saying that the time for the upper 18 floors to collapse “was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles.”

Implicit in this statement is that any assertion that the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with physical principles – that is, the principles of physics.

Explaining why not, Shyam Sunder said at a technical briefing:

[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent [longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous.

Chandler’s Challenge: However, high-school physics teacher David Chandler challenged Sunder’s denial at this briefing, pointing that Sunder’s 40 percent claim contradicts “a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity.”

The following week, Chandler placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that “for about two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall.”

Finally, Chandler wrote a comment to NIST, saying: “Acknowledgment of and accounting for an extended period of free fall in the collapse of WTC 7 must be a priority if the NIST is to be taken seriously.”

NIST Admits Free Fall: Amazingly, NIST did acknowledge free fall in its final report. It tried to disguise it, but the admission is there on page 607. Dividing the building’s descent into three stages, it describes the second phase as “a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds]. “Gravitational acceleration” is a synonym for free fall acceleration.

So, after presenting 606 pages of descriptions, testimonies, photographs, graphs, analyses, explanations, and mathematical formulae, NIST on page 607 says, in effect: “Then a miracle happens.”

Why this would be a miracle was explained by Chandler, who said: “Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion.”

The implication of Chandler’s remark is that, by the principles of physics, the upper portion of Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have otherwise provided resistance, and only explosives of some sort could have removed them.

If they had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second or two, a miracle would have happened.

That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one “that has no structural components below it” to offer resistance. Having stated in August that free fall could not have happened, NIST also stated that it did not happen, saying: “WTC 7 did not enter free fall.”

But then in November, while still defending the same theory, which rules out explosives and thereby rules out free fall, NIST admitted that, as an empirical fact, free fall happened. For a period of 2 and a fourth seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7 was characterized by “gravitational acceleration (free fall).”

Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, meaning a violation of a law of physics, NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the physical principles. In its Draft put out in August, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis of the collapse was “consistent with physical principles.” One encountered this phrase time and time again. In its final report, however, this phrase is no more to be found.

NIST thereby admitted, for those with eyes to see, that its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives were used, is not consistent with the principles of physics. [56]

And yet the mainstream press will not report this admission. So the press continues to support the notion that anyone who questions the official reports on 9/11 is unfit for public service. [57]

Conclusion

The 9/11 Truth Movement has long considered the collapse of Building 7 to be the Achilles’ heel of the official story about 9/11 – the part of this story that, by being most vulnerable, could be used to bring down the whole body of lies.

My latest book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and False, shows that the official account of this building is indeed extremely vulnerable to critique – so vulnerable that, to see the falsity of this account, you need only to read NIST’s attempt to defend it, noting the obvious lies in NIST’s report and its violations of basic principles of physics.

I hope that my book will indeed help bring down that body of lies that some of us call the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory, according to which al-Qaeda hijackers, by flying planes into two buildings of the World Trade Center, brought down three of them – an obviously false conspiracy theory that is still being used, among other things, to kill women, children, and other innocent people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Notes

1. This is a slightly revised version of a lecture presented at the 9/11 Film Festival at Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, California, September 10, 2009. It is based on David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Northampton, Mass., Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009).

2. James Glanz, “Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf), Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence.”

6. Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf).

7. James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “A Search for Clues in Towers’ Collapse,” New York Times, February 2, 2002
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DE153DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).  

8. Shyam Sunder, “Opening Statement,” NIST Press Briefing, August 21, 2008
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).

9. Quoted in “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” USA Today, August 21, 2008
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).
  

10. Union of Concerned Scientists, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Federal Policymaking”
(www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/scientists-sign-on-statement.html) .

11. “NIST Whistleblower,” October 1, 2007 (http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/10/former-nist-employee-blows-whistle.html).

12. Ibid. 

13. “What is Research Misconduct?” National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, New Research Misconduct Policies
(http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). Although this document is undated, internal evidence suggests that it was written in 2001.

14. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; New York: Free Press, 1967), 187.

15. Glanz and Lipton, “A Search for Clues in Towers’ Collapse.”

16. The melting point of iron is 1,538°C (2,800°F). Steel, as an alloy, comes in different grades, with a range of melting points, depending on the percent of carbon (which lowers the melting point), from 1,371°C (2,500°F) to 1,482°C (2,700° F); see “Melting Points of Metals”
(http://www.uniweld.com/catalog/alloys/alloys_melting.htm).

17. Barnett, Biederman, and Sisson, “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” C-13.

18. Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Testimony before the House Science Committee Hearing on “The Investigation of the World Trade Center Collapse,” May 1, 2002 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/bement.htm). In the quoted statement, the name “FEMA” replaces “BPAT,” which is the abbreviation for “Building Performance Assessment Team,” the name of the ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.

19. “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” updated December 18, 2008
(http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html).

20. RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature,” Expert Report, May 2004
(http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf), 11.

21. RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology,” December 2003 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf), 17. On the differences between the 2003 and 2004 studies, see my discussion in The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (Northampton, Mass., Olive Branch (Interlink Books], 2009), 40-41.

22. RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature Study” (2003), 24.

23. Ibid., 21.

24. WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/lead/physics.html).

25. WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html). Although the scientists involved with this USGS study discovered the molybdenum, they did not mention it in their report. Knowledge of their discovery was obtained only by means of a FOIA request. See The Mysterious Collapse, 44-45.

26. Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen, “Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009/2: 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).

27. National Fire Protection Association, 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 Edition
(http://www.interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp), Section 18.3.2.

28. See The Mysterious Collapse, 142-44.

29. Jennifer Abel, “Theories of 9/11,” Hartford Advocate, January 29, 2008 (http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=5546).  

30. Sunder, “Opening Statement.”

31. Ruvolo is quoted in the DVD “Collateral Damages” (http://www.allhandsfire.com/page/AHF/PROD/ISIS-COLL). For just this segment plus discussion, see Steve Watson, “Firefighter Describes ‘Molten Metal’ at Ground Zero, Like a ‘Foundry,’” Inforwars.net, November 17, 2006
(http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/firefighter_describes_molten_metal_ground_zero_like_foundry.htm).  

32. Quoted in Christopher Bollyn, “Professor Says ‘Cutter Charges’ Brought Down WTC Buildings,” American Free Press.net, May 1 & 8, 2006
(http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cutter_charges_brought_down_wt.html).  

33. “NIST Engineer, John Gross, Denies the Existance [sic] of Molten Steel”
(http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en).  

 

34. James Williams, “WTC a Structural Success,” SEAU News: The Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah, October 2001
(http://www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf).

35. Quoted in Francesca Lyman, “Messages in the Dust: What Are the Lessons of the Environmental Health Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11?” National Environmental Health Association, September 2003
(http://www.neha.org/9-11%20report/index-The.html).

36. “Mobilizing Public Health: Turning Terror’s Tide with Science,” Magazine of Johns Hopkins Public Health, Late Fall 2001
(http://www.jhsph.edu/Publications/Special/Welch.htm).

37. Quoted in Bollyn, “Professor Says ‘Cutter Charges’ Brought Down WTC Buildings.”

38. For the FDNY testimonies, see Graeme MacQueen, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers,” Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 2/August 2006 (http://www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Article_5_118Witnesses_WorldTradeCenter.pdf): 49-123. For a brief discussion of these and other testimonies, see The Mysterious Collapse, 75-82.

39. NIST, “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” 2006 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Q. 2. For discussion, see The Mysterious Collapse, 77.

40. NIST, “Letter of Response to Request,” September 27, 2007, published in Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol. 17/November 2007
(http://www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/NISTresponseToRequestForCorrectionGourleyEtal2.pdf).

41. This statement (by Peter Demarco) is quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), 97.

42. Bartmer’s statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, “NYPD Officer Heard Building 7 Bombs,” Prison Planet, February 10, 2007
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/100207heardbombs.htm).  

43. For documentation of these points about the testimonies of Hess and Jennings, see The Mysterious Collapse, 84-92.

44. For discussion and documentation of NIST’s treatment of the testimonies of Hess and Jennings, see The Mysterious Collapse, 92-94.

45. Letter of August 12, 2009, from Catherine S. Fletcher, Freedom of Information Act Officer, NIST, to a FOIA request of August 8, 2009, from Ms. Susan Peabody, for “[t]he complete texts of NIST’s 2004 interviews of Michael Hess and Barry Jennings, which are cited in NIST NCSTAR 1-8… , 109, n.380, as ‘WTC 7 Interviews 2041604 and 1041704.’”  

46. For discussion and documentation of the BBC’s treatment of Hess and Jennings in the first version of its program, see The Mysterious Collapse, 95-99.

47. David Ray Griffin, Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009).

48. Telephone conversation, September 1, 2001.

49. See The Mysterious Collapse, 98-99.

50. For documentation and discussion of the second version of the BBC’s show, including the problems in Hess’s testimony, see The Mysterious Collapse, 99-104.

51. See The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.

52. For documentation and discussion of NIST’s claim about the lack of girder shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15. 

53. See The Mysterious Collapse, 187-88.

54. For discussion and documentation of this point about failed shear studs, see The Mysterious Collapse, 217-21. As I point out in the book the contradictions between NIST’s final report and its 2004 interim report, involving the 4:45 fire and both claims about shear studs, were discovered by Chris Sarns.

55. Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006).

56. For documentation and discussion of this point about free fall, see The Mysterious Collapse, 231-41.

57. I am referring to the fact that Van Jones, who had been an Obama administration advisor on “green jobs,” felt compelled to resign due to the uproar evoked by the revelation that he had signed a petition questioning the official account of 9/11. The view that this act made him unworthy was perhaps articulated most clearly by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. After dismissing as irrelevant the other reasons that had been given for demanding Jones’s resignation, Krauthammer wrote: “He’s gone for one reason and one reason only. You can’t sign a petition demanding … investigations of the charge that the Bush administration deliberately allowed Sept. 11, 2001 – i.e., collaborated in the worst massacre ever perpetrated on American soil – and be permitted in polite society, let alone have a high-level job in the White House. Unlike the other stuff … , this is no trivial matter. It’s beyond radicalism, beyond partisanship. It takes us into the realm of political psychosis, a malignant paranoia that, unlike the Marxist posturing, is not amusing. It’s dangerous….You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier – a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice” (Charles Krauthammer
, “The Van Jones Matter,” Washington Post, September 11, 2009  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html   

Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, has made several statements during the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, particularly concerning the use of Western-supplied long-range precision weapons. His remarks suggest that if NATO provides Ukraine with high-precision, long-range weapons and assists in their operation, it would amount to direct participation in military operations against Russia.

According to Putin, this would fundamentally change the nature of the conflict, elevating it from a regional war between Russia and Ukraine to a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.

This article delves into Putin’s rationale behind these claims, the technological and geopolitical factors at play, and the broader implications for NATO-Russia relations and global security.

The Context: Ukraine’s Use of Western Weapons

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the West has increasingly supplied Ukraine with military aid, including advanced weapons systems, in response to Ukraine’s requests for support in defending itself. The types of military aid have evolved from anti-tank weapons and small arms to more sophisticated systems such as High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), long-range artillery, and drones.

However, one of the most sensitive aspects of this aid has been the potential delivery of long-range precision weapons, such as missile systems that could strike targets deep within Russian territory. Putin’s assertion that Ukraine lacks the indigenous capability to operate such weapons without direct NATO involvement centers around two key points:

1. Access to High-Precision Targeting Data: High-precision, long-range missile strikes typically require advanced satellite data for targeting. Putin has claimed that Ukraine does not have its own satellite reconnaissance infrastructure that is sophisticated enough to carry out precision strikes with long-range Western weapons. He suggests that NATO would have to provide Ukraine with real-time intelligence, including satellite imagery, in order to guide these strikes effectively.

2. Operational Expertise: Putin also argues that the complexity of using these advanced weapons, particularly in terms of setting flight paths and inputting targeting data, would necessitate NATO military personnel’s involvement. According to him, Ukrainian forces alone may not possess the capability to independently operate such advanced systems without NATO assistance.

NATO’s Involvement: An Escalation in Putin’s View

Putin’s statements underscore the Russian perspective that any direct assistance by NATO in terms of operational control, intelligence support, or targeting input crosses a critical threshold. If NATO becomes directly involved in conducting or facilitating military operations via these high-precision strikes, it would effectively mean that NATO forces are waging war against Russia, according to Putin. This would mark a significant escalation in the conflict, transforming it from a proxy war to a direct conflict between NATO and Russia, with far-reaching consequences.

In Putin’s words, if NATO helps Ukraine carry out such strikes, “it will change the very essence, the nature of the conflict, and it will mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia.” This claim taps into long-standing concerns about the expansion of the Ukraine conflict into a broader war that could potentially involve nuclear-armed NATO members and Russia.

NATO’s Stance and Western Military Aid

NATO has been careful to stress that its support to Ukraine is defensive in nature and designed to help Ukraine protect its territorial integrity. Western countries, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, and several EU member states, have provided substantial amounts of military aid, but they have also emphasized that they are not directly involved in the war. Western leaders have generally framed their involvement as military assistance rather than direct participation in hostilities.

For example, U.S. and European officials have maintained that their military support is designed to help Ukraine defend itself against aggression, not to strike Russian territory. The Biden administration has been particularly cautious in limiting the types of weapons sent to Ukraine, often declining to supply systems that could easily strike deep into Russia, although this position has gradually evolved as the war has progressed.

However, many Western military systems, such as the HIMARS and long-range artillery, have been pivotal in allowing Ukraine to hit Russian military positions in occupied Ukrainian territories. Some of these strikes have targeted Russian logistics hubs, ammunition depots, and command centers far behind the frontlines, often using Western-provided intelligence.

Satellite Data and Intelligence Sharing

One of the more complex elements of Putin’s argument revolves around the issue of satellite data. It is well known that Western nations, particularly the United States, have provided Ukraine with satellite imagery and real-time intelligence to aid in their military operations. This has included tracking the movements of Russian troops and equipment, as well as identifying high-value targets for strikes.

Putin’s claim that Ukraine lacks the capacity to carry out precision strikes without NATO satellite data is a recognition of the role that Western intelligence plays in the conflict. Although Ukraine does not have its own satellite network capable of the level of surveillance that NATO’s assets can provide, Western nations have given Ukraine access to data from commercial and military satellites, as well as reconnaissance drones. While these intelligence-sharing activities stop short of direct involvement in military operations, they blur the lines between mere support and active participation.

Legal and Geopolitical Implications

Putin’s characterization of NATO’s involvement as “direct participation” is not just rhetoric. Under international law, direct military involvement by a state in another state’s conflict can trigger mutual defense obligations or escalate the conflict into a wider war. Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty states that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all members. If Russia were to interpret NATO’s involvement in the war as direct participation, it could theoretically respond by targeting NATO assets, risking a broader conflict.

For NATO, avoiding a direct war with Russia has been a key objective. While NATO members want to ensure that Ukraine is capable of defending itself, they also wish to avoid provoking Russia into a military response that could escalate into a direct confrontation between nuclear-armed powers. This has resulted in a delicate balancing act, with NATO providing substantial support to Ukraine while refraining from actions that could be interpreted as direct engagement in the war.

Conclusion

Vladimir Putin’s warnings about NATO’s involvement in Ukraine, specifically regarding the use of long-range precision weapons, highlight the delicate and dangerous nature of the conflict. While NATO has taken steps to support Ukraine, including the provision of advanced weaponry and intelligence, it has been careful to frame this assistance as indirect, defensive support rather than direct participation in the conflict.

Putin’s statements reflect both a recognition of NATO’s significant role in shaping the battlefield and an attempt to deter further escalation by signaling that any deeper involvement by NATO would change the conflict’s nature. His rhetoric also serves as a warning that Russia could respond forcefully if it believes NATO is moving beyond providing support to Ukraine and engaging in direct military operations against Russia.

As the conflict continues, the risk of miscalculation remains high, particularly as both sides escalate their rhetoric and military actions. The stakes are enormous, and any shift toward direct NATO involvement, even if unintended, could have profound consequences for European and global security.

*

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Putin’s Statements on NATO and Ukraine Conflict: “Putin warns Ukraine use of long-range arms will put NATO at war with Russia” (See this)

Western Military Support for Ukraine: “Western military aid to Ukraine – statistics & facts” (See this)

NATO’s Article 5 and Military Strategy: “Collective defence and Article 5” (See this)

Featured image is from The Cradle

State Duma, the lower house of parliamentarians, and the Federation Council, the upper chamber of legislators, voted to declare and approve the ‘special military operation’ in the Ukraine, which categorically aims at de-militarizing and de-nazifying the former Soviet republic. The Russia-Ukraine conflict began on 24 February 2022, and has shown explicit sign of endless militarized venture on Ukraine. It has, so far, had devastating implications and impacts, destabilized the global economic system, with majority of countries in the Global South calling for peaceful resolution to the conflict between these two former Soviet republics who, after the Soviet collapse, have attained their political independence.

In this interview, Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu at the Faculty of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania), where he also serves as a Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and as Director of the Centre for African Studies, discusses aspects of strategy and approach by the BRICS association (China, India and South Africa) in pursuing common, comprehensive and sustainable security, and most importantly how BRICS members can peacefully resolve the conflict differences between Russia and Ukraine through dialogue and consultation. Here are the interview excerpts.

Kester Kenn Klomegah (KKK): Russia-Ukraine conflict has raged on since late February 2022, and now the main question is why BRICS, an informal association, has not so far been successful in brokering peace?

Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu (PSM): BRICS is indeed an informal association of states. Its unity and its capacity to act collectively in order to impose an alternative international order to the one still led by the Western states has been repeatedly overestimated. It would be more accurate to portray BRICS as a heteroclite group made of states with different capabilities and interests, with different historical allies and foes. Between China, an autocratic state who has been trying since the 2010s to openly challenge the USA’s still quasi-hegemonic status in the global world, and Brazil, a semi-consolidated democracy aspiring to emerge as an important semi-peripheral power in the Southern hemisphere, there are definitely less resemblances than differences. Their exhibited anti-Westernism – which is only for the time being in the case of Brazil – can barely hide the fundamental differences between the world’s views of these two states, and the same can be said about almost all the other BRICS countries taken two by two. 

For all these reasons, the BRICS states have initially regarded the Russian invasion of Ukraine in a rather different light – as an opportunity to vassalize Russia and to indisputably become the main counter-hegemon (by China), as a fait divers or as another war (by South Africa), as a historical revenge against the US-led order (by Brazil), as source of potential conflict and unrest (by India). It was only after the attempts of reconciliation that these states found a common position with regard to this conflict, mainly revolving around the idea of a negotiated peace. But the fact that Russia belongs to this international association is a major delegitimizing factor which prevents BRICS to look like an independent international peacemaker. 

KKK: In its several declarations and communiques, BRICS has collective stated ‘political dialogue’ and ‘mechanism of diplomacy’ in resolving political crisis and conflicts. Are these methods, dialogue and diplomacy, working in the case of Russia-Ukraine conflict?

PSM: For such methods to work, it would be necessary that all the parties involved in the conflict genuinely believe that they could lose if the war continues, and that they cut a favorable deal if peace is achieved. None of these conditions if fulfilled, as Russia continues its advancement in Donbass and its attacks against the critical infrastructural system and Ukraine succeeded to occupy parts of the Russian territory and to strike deeper into the country. Under these circumstances, all the current attempts to make peace are rather show-offs meant to legitimize the peacemakers. China is the main champion of such attempts, sometimes more or less implicitly in the name of BRICS. But all these attempts of China (not only in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian war) were seen by the “beneficiaries” as being tactical moves of Beijing in the effort to reinforce its position of diplomatic actor rather than some genuine steps towards achieving peace. As a whole, BRICS lacks the degree of unity that could put enough pressure on the states in conflict to force them to search for peace and is perceived in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war as being too close to the interests of Russia in a more or less transparent way.

KKK: How do you assess efforts made by China, India and South Africa during these past two years? And what are your views and interpretations of the proposal, which underlined ‘constructive role’ in the process for another future Peace Summit by India?

PSM: Unlike China, India seems to play a different card, as it displays a much more subtle intention to legitimize itself as a major international actor and a more genuine concern for achieving peace, in a Gandhi-like claimed tradition. Criticized for his domestic national-populism, Prime-Minister Modi has recently succeeded to play a more convincing international role, especially thanks to his efforts to support the creation of the favorable conditions for the initiation of a dialogue between Ukraine and Russia. India has no interest to see a victorious Russia and a triumphing China, whose friendship with its rival, Pakistan, has been a constant concern for New Delhi. So, once again, BRICS do not act as a group. Instead, India’s more balanced attitude has created the premises for a more consensual environment of international negotiations around the Russian-Ukrainian war. Which doesn’t mean that peace is guaranteed. But which means that the individual efforts of some of the BRICS countries could be more efficient than the hesitant actions of the group as a whole. 

KKK: Can BRICS use its boastful numerical strength (as more 40 countries have been listed awaiting ascension) and to stand tall with reverberating voices on the platform, particularly during the forthcoming XVII BRICS Summit in October, to attempt brokering peace between Russia and Ukraine? 

PSM: Given their profiles and their international stances, the new members of BRICS who joined in 2024 (Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates) offer a wider global coverage to the association but also increase the potential disunion when critically important collective decisions will be needed. As the 2024 Summit will take place in Russia, which is even in its friends’ eyes the country which started the war against Ukraine, any attempt to issue a common declaration in favor of peace and reconciliation will be deprived of credibility. However, Russia will try to use the momentum to claim that there is international support for its actions. But this is precisely the opposite of today’s efforts of countries such as India or the Emirates, which will not appreciate the confiscation of the summit to push the individual agenda of the Kremlin.

In conclusion, BRICS could have worked as a peace broker if it was: (1) genuinely animated by the same universal values, (2) more united around some clear common goals, and (3) exterior to the conflicts it claims to mediate. As it is today, it only allows for the temporary advancement of some of its members’ agendas.

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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.

Are Washington’s Voting Rights on the UN Security Council at Risk? “…a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.”

The main obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza is not Israel or Hamas. It’s the United States. Here’s what you need to know: The Security Council approved the Biden-authored ceasefire deal on June 10, 2024. (Three months ago) US diplomats assured the other members of the Security Council that Israel supported the agreement. That claim turned out to be false. Israel does not back the deal and refuses to implement its provisions. Even so, the so-called Biden Plan passed the Council in the form of Resolution 2735. Here’s a summary of the agreement:

By resolution 2735 … the 15-member organ noted that the implementation of this proposal would enable the following outcomes to spread over three phases, the first of which would include an immediate, full and complete ceasefire with the release of hostages; the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed; the exchange of Palestinian prisoners; withdrawal of Israeli forces from the populated areas in Gaza; the return of Palestinian civilians to their homes; and the safe and effective distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale throughout Gaza. Adopting Resolution 273 5, United Nations

There’s no ambiguity here, the Council’s demands are clear. Both parties to the conflict are required to implement the provisions of the resolution that are “binding” under international law.

Hamas has agreed to comply with resolution 2735 while Israel has refused. In short, the United States and Hamas are on the same side of the ceasefire issue.

In order to confuse the public about Israel’s refusal, the Biden administration has continued to oversee negotiations in Cairo and Doha (with Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US) to create the impression that negotiations are ongoing. But they’re not ongoing. This is a farce that is being used to conceal Israel’s rejection of the UN-backed ceasefire. The US is an accomplice in that deception.

Presently, the public is convinced that if Israel and Hamas could hammer out a compromise on the Philedephi corridor, then a settlement would be possible. But this too is misleading because the ceasefire resolution has already been thoroughly debated and approved by the Council. Besides, the Philedephi corridor appears nowhere in the text of resolution 2735 which makes it a moot point. Russia’s envoy to the UN Security Council summed it up like this last week:

the Israeli leadership, unfortunately, continues to regard the negotiations merely as a “smoke screen”, which helps to distract the attention of the international community from Israel’s military solution to the Palestinian issue. This is evidenced not only by West Jerusalem’s actions on the ground, but also by the recent remarks of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who stated that he would not stop the military action in the Strip. We still see no indication that Israel’s military cabinet has any intention to change this policy Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN

This is an accurate account of what is currently taking place. The US is assisting Israel in pulling the wool over the eyes of the public to escape accountability for the ongoing rampage and to make it appear as though they have a genuine interest in resolving the 10-month-long dispute. But there is no interest in resolving the dispute, in fact, Netanyahu has stated repeatedly that Israel will not stop the hostilities and will not withdraw Israeli troops from Gaza. There is no gray area here. It is a blunt refusal to comply with the UN mandate.

Naturally, members of the Security Council have responded to these developments with frustration and anger. They can see now that they were misled by the Biden administration which hoped to put pressure on Israel by pushing their deal through the UNSC. Now that the plan has blown up in their faces, the US is back to its old tricks of providing cover for Israel regardless of the offense. Here’s more from the Russian envoy Dmitri Polyanskiy:

Colleagues, how much longer are we going to remain idle, while American would-be mediators continue putting on a show and feeding us empty promises that their diplomatic efforts “on the ground” will bring speedy results? The reality is that f or 10 months now, Washington has basically held the entire Council hostage, threatening to use their veto and preventing us from taking tough and unambiguous decisions either on the Palestinian issue and a ceasefire in Gaza, or on advancing the Middle East peace process as a whole…

If Resolution 2735 is not being implemented, let’s pass a new document, which would send an unequivocal message to the “spoilers” that they will definitely bear the consequences of what they are doing. And let us provide our resolution with a toolbox that would help stop violence, regardless of the whims of any party to the conflict. It is also of critical importance that Washington finally ceases its multi-billion-dollar military assistance to Israel, which is being used to annihilate Palestinian civilians.How many more victims are needed for the Council to act in line with its mandate and stop following blindly the lead of the United States and Israel? Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the UN

US 'held UNSC hostage for 10 months' threatening to use the veto and preventing Council from taking action on Palestine issue – Russian rep to UN#Russia #UN #UNSC #Palestine #Gaza #Israel #Hamas #22agosto #22ago #news #video pic.twitter.com/5mZQcamfzu

— Viory Video (@vioryvideo) August 22, 2024

Dmitri Polyanskiy addresses the UN Security Council

So, you can see that the temperature is rising at the Security Council and that many of the members are at wit’s-end with Washington’s antics. Polyanskiy spoke for many of the members when he closed his statement with this blistering rebuke:

Everyone in this chamber is perfectly aware of the fact that it is the United States that bears the main responsibility for what is happening now in Gaza.

That sums it up perfectly.

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It’s worth noting, that US diplomats that have participated in recent negotiations in Cairo and Doha have not even kept Security Council members up-to-date on the details of those meetings. It’s a rogue operation headed by American officials who have no authority to modify the existing ceasefire agreement and who (shockingly) are conducting these gatherings without representatives from Hamas. The whole thing is a cynical fraud that bears a striking resemblance to Zelensky’s Peace confab in Switzerland that excluded Russia. One fake peace conference begets another.

Dmitri Polyanskiy again—While initially we discussed the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave, Israel now insists on maintaining its presence in the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors.The Security Council gave its consent to completely different parameters of the agreements, which means that these demands are a direct violation of the provisions of the aforementioned Security Council resolution. The American mediators, unfortunately, are openly playing along with their ally in its consistent violation of UNSC resolutions

This is how the Biden administration is helping Israel dodge its obligations under the terms of the current UNSC-backed ceasefire. Blinken is conducting a masterclass in deception.

(To the broader issue) Israel’s 10-month-long bloodbath in Gaza has left many people wondering why the world needs a Security Council if it cannot provide security for the people who are most in need?

It’s a good question and one that challenges the credibility of an institution that aspires to be “the guarantor of global security” but is incapable of taking action even when a genocide is unfolding right under its nose.

Of course, the source of the problem is not hard to identify. It’s the same permanent member that repeatedly vetoed ceasefire proposals one-after-another until it pushed through its own hybrid version that had no chance of being implemented. We’re talking about the United States of Obstruction, the lone member of the Council that acts exclusively in the interest of its genocidal ally in Tel Aviv. The other members of the Council are faced with the daunting task of either removing the US from the Security Council altogether (so they can enforce their ceasefire resolution through sanctions, peacekeepers or other punitive measures) or finding a way to force the US to abstain from voting on issues related to the current conflict. But are either of these even possible?

Yes, they are, but they won’t be achieved easily. Even so, the Council cannot simply ignore its special role in international relations because one member consistently abuses the system by preventing the UN doing its job of preserving peace and security around the world.

The rules for expelling a member of the Security Council make it almost impossible to do so. So, while Chapter 18 of United Nation’s Charter says a member can be removed from UN Security Council if two thirds of the General Assembly vote against that member; the Security Council can prevent the matter from ever reaching the General Assembly. It’s a Catch 22.

Article 108

Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council. United Nations Charter, Chapter XVIII: Amendments

Legal scholars have also argued that Article 6 of the UN Charter could be interpreted in a way that would allow a member to be removed, but, so far, it has not been used successfully in that regard.

Article 6—A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

The only member of the UN to ever be successfully removed was Taiwan in 1971, which ” was formally expelled from the United Nations by a vote of the General Assembly and replaced by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which had taken power in Beijing at the end of the country’s civil war in 1949.

The ROC government had fled to the island of Taiwan with millions of refugees as the communists took power but continued to hold the seat of “China” at the UN and was a permanent member of the Security Council with veto power. Despite being exiled, officials in Taipei had the support of the US thanks to fears in the West that communism might sweep through Asia….

The “Resolution on Admitting Peking,” also known as Resolution 2758, called for member states to “restore” the rights of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing as the “only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations.”After years of trying at the behest of Chinese ally Albania, the resolution finally passed in the General Assembly Taiwan taps on United Nations’ door, 50 years after departure, Aljazeera

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The removal of Taiwan is not at all comparable to the situation with the United States today. Besides, expulsion might not even be the preferred tool for dealing with the US problem. If the objective is simply to allow the Council the flexibility it needs to perform the tasks for which it was created, then the focus should be on ways to prevent US obstruction. It is US obstructionism that prevents the Security Council from doing its job, enforcing its resolutions, putting an end to this senseless war, and bringing justice to the Palestinian people. If that can be achieved while retaining Washington’s place on the Council, then that would be a desirable outcome. But is possible?

It is, according to board member of the UN Association-San Francisco chapter, Dan Becker. Here’s what he says:

In the United Nations Charter, the very sentence that establishes the Security Council’s permanent-five veto power ends — surprisingly — in these nine words: “. . . a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting.”

Let’s allow the phrase to sink in for a moment before acknowledging that there is indeed a host of conditions, requirements, litmus tests and hoops to jump through before the phrase can be invoked and applied to a resolution.

But at the same time, it’s also crucial and a bit remarkable to remember that the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — are not exempt. They must abstain as well. So, there it is, this little-known mechanism hiding in plain sight in Article 27 (3)….

An abridged history, according to Security Council Report, an independent publication, explains the requirements needed to invoke this clause:

“Abstentions under Article 27 (3) are mandatory only if all of the following conditions apply: the decision falls under Chapter VI or Article 52 (3) of Chapter VIII; the issue is considered a dispute; a Council member is considered a party to the dispute; and the decision is not procedural in nature.”
…
Second is the claim that the U.S. is a “party to the dispute” in Gaza. This is usually invoked because of the sheer mass of arms provided to Israel by Washington… The issue is hotly debated. But some of the many studies regarding this topic are quite exhaustive and keep the claim quite reasonable….

it’s not an academic exercise. Any ability to force a P5 member to abstain should be examined carefully. All eyes are on the U.S. right now, and the suspense is palpable. …
The principle behind this mechanism is clear to any school child. It appeals to our ultimate common sense. If you’re involved in a dispute, under certain situations you should be required to abstain from voting for resolutions about the dispute….

It’s not as if the clause hasn’t been used in the past, most often in the early years of the U.N.

Further examination of the Security Council Report document above clearly shows 12 times that the mandate has been successfully invoked, and 14 times where it was raised or considered but failed. Nevertheless, at one time it was alive and kicking….

The power of digging into this issue has the potential to reap large rewards now and down the line. It could change the calculus in the Council. ….So let’s dust off this phrase in Article 27(3): ” . . . a party to a dispute shall abstain from voting,” carefully study its limits and restrictions, and then make a noise sooner rather than later. Gaza & UN Veto Power, Dan Becker, Consortium News

Let us acknowledge that no “knight in shining armor” is going to sweep into Gaza and save the Palestinians from Israel’s sadistic rampage. That’s not going to happen. The only way this conflict can be brought to a close is if the international community aggressively pursues a strategy in which Washington is sidelined while Israel is isolated, sanctioned and gradually coerced into compliance. UN Security Council Resolution 2735 has already been approved. Now it must be enforced.

Addendum: Extraordinary testimony by human rights activist Yuli Novak to the UN Security Council

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Listen to the full speech of our executive director, Yuli Novak, yesterday at the UNSC.

"During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets. They feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government. They have understood, perhaps for the first time,… pic.twitter.com/aMRf9rTOD9

— B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) September 5, 2024

“Since Israel was founded, its guiding logic has been to promote Jewish supremacy over the entire territory under its control. Yuli Novak, executive Director of B’Tselem

It is an honor to address the Security Council today …. on the state of human rights in Israel-Palestine.

During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets. They feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government. They have understood, perhaps for the first time, that the Israeli government does not want to return the hostages in a deal, but to continue the war indefinitely.

To understand the Israeli government’s criminal conduct over the last 11 months, you have to understand the overall goal of this regime. Since Israel was founded, its guiding logic has been to promote Jewish supremacy over the entire territory under its control. The current government guidelines state: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all parts of the land of Israel. In the criminal Hamas led attack on October 7, 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 were taken hostages. Since that day all Israelis have been living in great fear. Our government is cynically exploiting our collective trauma to violently advance its project of cementing Israeli control over the entire land. To do that, it is waging war on the entire Palestinian people – committing war crimes almost daily”.

In Gaza, this has taken the form of expulsion, starvation, killing and destruction on an unprecedented scale. This goes beyond revenge. Israel is using the opportunity to promote an ideological agenda making Gaza uninhabitableas this council has found repeatedly, a vast part of Gaza’s homes and infrastructure has been completely destroyed by driving Palestinians out of entire areas and displacing millions Israel is laying the groundwork for long-term control of Gaza. This could lead to the reestablishment of Israeli settlements there.

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the government is exploiting the situation to make irreversible changes. Since October, Israel has killed 640 Palestinians including at least 140 minors. Settlers are attacking Palestinians and carrying out pogroms in broad daylight with the support of the government. …

Recently the military launched a huge operation aimed at damaging infrastructure that served hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. The international community did not stop Israel’s policy of massive harm to civilians in Gaza. Now this cruel policy is spilling over to the West Bank. The war on Palestinians is also happening in prisons. Since October, Israel has arrested thousands of Palestinians and held them in inhumane conditions. Last month we published a report called “Welcome to Hell” which shows the shocking pattern of abuse that amounts to torture. The government of Israel has used the war to turn Israeli prisons into a network of torture camps for Palestinians. This violence is possible because Israel has enjoyed impunity for decades. As long as this impunity continues, the killing and destruction will continue and expand. and fear will continue to rule the land.

The international community has failed its duty to protect civilians. 4 UN Security Council resolutions on the Gaza conflict did not lead to a lasting ceasefire or free the hostages. The risk of regional escalation has grown. Diplomatic efforts did not stop the mass killing of civilians or end the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The Council must acknowledge this failure and take effective action to compel Israel and Hamas to immediately and permanently cease all hostilities. But de-escalation is only the first step. It is time for the Council to address the opinion of the International Court of Justice on the illegality of Israel’s entire occupation and settlement project. Every day that this Council does not act on the call to end the occupation and apartheid, is another day you are abandoning us, the people of this land who are suffering and dying in tens of thousands needlessly under a cruel and unjust apartheid regime.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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To View the videos scroll down to Appendix A 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Television Coverage Compiled

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

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

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

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

Table 1: Television Coverage Compiled

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

Here is an example of eyewitness reporting:

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

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

Narrative Reporting

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

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

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

Here is an example of narrative reporting:

George Stephanopoulos, ABC, 12:27 PM:

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

Source-based Reporting

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

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

Here is an example of source-based reporting:

Pat Dawson, NBC, 11:55 AM:

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

Non-Explosion Reporters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Table 2A: Eyewitness Reporting by Explosion Reporters

Table 2B: Narrative Reporting by Explosion Reporters

*These reporters also engaged in eyewitness reporting.

Table 2C: Source-based Reporting by Explosion Reporters

*These reporters also engaged in narrative reporting.

Table 2D: Non-Explosion Reporters

How Reporters Reported the Twin Towers’ Destruction

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

***

Appendix A: Statements by 36 Explosion Reporters

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

1. George Stephanopoulos, ABC

12:27 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

2. Cynthia McFadden, ABC

5:56 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

3. Harold Dow, CBS

10:05 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

4. Tom Flynn, CBS

11:03, Eyewitness Reporting

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

5. Mika Brzezinski, CBS

11:15 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

6. Pat Dawson, NBC

11:55 AM, Source-based Reporting

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

3:02 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

7. Anne Thompson, NBC

12:43 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

8. Aaron Brown, CNN

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

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:02 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

9. Rose Arce, CNN

10:29 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:50 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

12:26 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

10:43 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10. Patty Sabga, CNN

10:57 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:59 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

11. Alan Dodds Frank, CNN

11:07 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

12. David Lee Miller, Fox News

10:01 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:32 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

13. Rick Leventhal, Fox News

10:05 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

10:06 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:12 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

14. Ashleigh Banfield, MSNBC

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

Jansing: “What are you seeing, Ashleigh?”

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

Jansing: “Could you feel it?”

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

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

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

Jansing: “Are they running?”

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

10:54 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

10:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

1:35 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

1:36 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

1:37 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

15. Rick Sanchez, MSNBC

10:52 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

11:26 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

12:07 PM, Source-based Reporting

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

12:09 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

11:52 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

11:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

11:55 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

17. Ron Insana, CNBC

12:41 PM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

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

18. Bob Pisani, CNBC

2:42 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

19. N.J. Burkett, WABC

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

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

20. Michelle Charlesworth, WABC

10:10 AM, Eyewitness and Narrative Reporting

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

21. Nina Pineda, WABC

10:17 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

Lori Stokes: “Was there sound?”

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

10:18 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

10:19 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

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

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

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

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

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

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

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

22. Cheryl Fiandaca, WABC

10:38 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

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

23. Joe Torres, WABC

Unknown Air Time, Eyewitness Reporting

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

24. Carol Marin, CBS Reporter appearing on WCBS

10:59 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

John Slattery: “Where were you at the time?

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

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

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

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

25. John Slattery, WCBS

11:44 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

26. Marcella Palmer, WCBS

Unknown time, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

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

27. Vince DeMentri, WCBS

Unknown time, Narrative Reporting

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

28. Walter Perez, WNBC

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:00 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:27 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

29. Kristen Shaughnessy, NY1

9:59 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

10:42 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

10:43 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

10:45 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

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

30. Andrew Siff, NY1

10:12 AM, Eyewitness Reporting

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

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

31. John Schiumo, NY1

10:18 AM, Narrative Reporting

“There’s another explosion as we speak!”

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

32. Andrew Kirtzman, NY1

11:11 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

11:12 AM, Narrative Reporting

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

33. Jack Kelley, USA Today

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

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

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

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

34. First Unidentified Reporter at Giuliani and Pataki Press Conference

2:43 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

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

2:44 PM, Narrative Reporting 

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

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

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

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

36. Second Unidentified Reporter at Giuliani and Pataki Press Conference

2:54 PM, Narrative Reporting

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

---

Appendix B: Statements by Four Non-Explosion Reporters

1. Don Dahler, ABC

10:00 AM

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

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

Jennings: “Thanks very much, [Don].”

Dahler: “It has completely collapsed.”

Jennings: “The whole side has collapsed?”

Dahler: “The whole building has collapsed!”

Jennings: “The whole building has collapsed?”

Dahler: “The building has collapsed.”

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

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

10:02 AM

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

Dahler: “Peter?”

Jennings: “Yes, Dan.”

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

Jennings: “Thanks, Don, very much.”

2. Drew Millhon, ABC

11:09 AM

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

3. Bob Bazell, NBC

10:08 AM

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

4. John Zito, MSNBC

10:36 AM

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

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

---

Appendix C: Borderline Cases

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

1. Minah Kathuria, NBC

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

10:11 AM

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

2. Brian Palmer, CNN

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

10:41 AM

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

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

3. Maria Bartiromo, CNBC

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

10:14 AM

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

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

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

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

Bartiromo: “No, I don’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

10:49 AM

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

12:24 PM

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

1:01 PM

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

1:37 PM

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

2:42 PM

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

*

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

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

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World leaders will convene later this month in New York to discuss proposals that critics believe will enshrine global digital ID and online censorship and give the United Nations (U.N.) secretary-general unprecedented emergency powers.

Proposals to be discussed at the 79th U.N. General Assembly include the Pact for the Future, described by the U.N. as an “opportunity to create international mechanisms that better reflect the realities of the 21st century and can respond to today’s and tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities.”

The proposed Pact for the Future encompasses 11 policy proposals. These include proposals for the establishment of a U.N. “Emergency Platform” and a “Global Digital Compact,” and policy proposals on “Information Integrity” and “Transforming Education.”

Also among the U.N.’s proposals is the “Declaration on Future Generations.”

Under these proposals, the secretary-general would have “standing authority” to declare “an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach.”

Discussions for the Pact for the Future will take place under the auspices of the Summit of the Future, described as “a high-level event, bringing world leaders together to forge a new international consensus on how we deliver a better present and safeguard the future.”

The proposals are part of “Our Common Agenda,” an initiative described as “the Secretary-General’s vision for the future of global cooperation.”

‘Lack of Checks and Balances Is Very Worrying’

Critics of the proposals warned The Defender that they threaten personal and health freedom, will grant the U.N. unprecedented powers and may lead to an internationally binding treaty.

Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst said the U.N. is attempting to attain “more executive power.”

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender, “What the secretary-general is trying to do is an end run around the United Nations charter and delegate to himself all the powers he can possibly assume.”

“The lack of checks and balances is very worrying. The member states will have very little or no power,” Terhorst said, noting that these proposals are drawing increasing opposition as they threaten national sovereignty.

The emergency powers and other proposals contained in the pact may have ominous consequences for humanity, Boyle warned.

“The most pernicious [outcomes] would certainly be extremely dangerous vaccines that probably would violate the Nuremberg Code on medical experimentation, such as these mRNA vaccines, and then also censorship, outright censorship for anyone who dissents,” Boyle said.

Other experts warned the U.N. is not being fully transparent.

According to independent journalist James Roguski, “The U.N. is not being fully transparent about the process leading up to the Summit of the Future. At this time, a consensus agreement has not been reached and the status of the three documents has not been honestly presented to the general public.”

Roguski noted that a fourth revision of the Global Digital Compact was drafted Aug. 27 but “has not been made publicly available on the U.N. website.”

And according to Dr. Meryl Nass, founder of Door to Freedom, the pact “puts the U.N. ‘at the center’ of international affairs, giving the U.N. unspecified powers.” It contains no definitions for the terms used, “allowing it to be interpreted later in ways citizens may not like.”

A Means of ‘Turbocharging’ the ‘Great Reset’?

Critics also connected the U.N.’s proposals to the agendas of other international organizations, such as the World Economic Forum (WEF), which promoted the “Great Reset” and “Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

“In spirit, the Summit and Pact for the Future is a relaunch of the Great Reset,” said Tim Hinchliffe, publisher of The Sociable. “Both talk about reshaping our world, which includes a desire to transform the financial system and to implement global governance surrounding issues such as climate change, healthcare and all things related to the SDGs” (Sustainable Development Goals).

“While the WEF has no direct, authoritative or legislative power to carry out its agendas, the Pact for the Future would be signed by member states whose governments wield actual executive and legislative powers,” Hinchliffe said.

“What they are trying to do is to take the WEF agenda … and turn it into solid international law and from there into solid domestic law,” Boyle said.

According to Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda,” the U.N.’s proposals “have been written in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the ‘global governance’ regime that it aims to establish.”

Rectenwald said the proposals involve “accelerating the achievement of the SDGs” and represent the U.N.’s continued “attempt to establish a global socialist world system that is ‘inclusive’ and ‘equitable.’”

“‘Inclusion’ is achieved through such technological means as closing the ‘digital divide,’ which depends on the universal adoption of a digital identity system. Digital identity is the means by which one is ‘included’ and without which one essentially does not exist. Thus, there is to be nothing outside the system — i.e., totalitarian governance,” Rectenwald said.

Global Digital Compact Calls for Digital IDs, Vaccine Passports

Accompanying the Pact for the Future is a proposal for “A Global Digital Compact — an Open, Free and Secure Digital Future for All.”

Published May 2023, the proposed compact sets out “principles, objectives and actions for advancing an open, free, secure and human-centred digital future, one that is anchored in universal human rights and that enables the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

However, the compact contains proposals for the introduction of digital ID, “digital public goods” and “digital product passports,” and calls for “addressing disinformation” and preventing the “misuse” of online tools.

“With digital ID, it is easier for governments to censor and threaten voices with a different opinion,” Terhorst said. “In the U.N. proposals, suppressing ‘disinformation’ or ‘hateful speech’ is mentioned. Who is to decide what information is right and what is wrong?”

“Information Integrity on Digital Platforms” policy brief goes further, specifically addressing “threats to information integrity,” such as so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation.” It also calls for “empirically-backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge,” but does not clarify how this “consensus” would be determined.

Similarly, a policy brief on “Transforming Education,” proposes “incorporating practices that strengthen the ability of learners and teachers to navigate the increasing flow of false and fake information.”

The compact also proposes “Novel platform-based vaccine technologies and smart vaccine manufacturing techniques … to produce greater numbers of higher-quality vaccines.”

Terhorst said the goal of digital ID is to introduce global vaccine passports that would “overrule the right of everyone to say no to a vaccination.”

Hinchliffe noted that the U.N. has “established principles for a ‘Code of Conduct‘ that calls on not just member states, but private groups such as stakeholders, digital platforms, advertisers, and news media to crush narratives that go against the U.N. and the SDGs.”

Secretary-general ‘Trying to Set Himself Up as the UN Dictator’

According to Boyle, the U.N. secretary-general is “supposed to function as a secretary in charge of the secretariat,” but these proposals are trying to “set himself up as the U.N. dictator.” He noted that the U.N. is composed of six independent organs, but said these proposals may usurp their independence.

“He would have authority over them and arguably could exert authority over U.N. specialized agencies like the World Health Organization. That ties in with the International Health Regulations and the Pandemic Treaty,” Boyle said.

Boyle argued that by specifically referring to the Pact for the Future as a “pact,” the U.N. is intentionally “trying to turn this into an international treaty that is binding” under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

“If you call it a pact … that would clearly fall within the terms of the Vienna Convention,” Boyle said.

“We’re in the fight of our lives here. The world has to be alerted to the dangers of this pact.”

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

If I were to describe our present geopolitical situation in ten words or less it would be “Genocide in the foreground, world war looming in the background.”

While attention is justifiably focused on the present horrors in Gaza and the imminent possibility that it could spark another war in the middle east, the world’s power structures are once again dividing themselves up into two increasingly intimate alliance groups with an increasingly hostile and militaristic posture toward each other.

As Ukraine loses more and more territory and soldiers to Russia, both Washington and Kyiv are demonstrating an openness to ramping up attacks on a nuclear superpower in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Meanwhile, Russia and China are growing more and more intimate in preparation for future aggressions from the US power alliance.

Antiwar’s Dave Decamp has a few articles out right now which highlight this disturbing trend simmering in the background amid the waking nightmare in the foreground, on top of all the other dangerous escalations we’ve been discussing in this space.

Blinken Signals US Will Allow Long-Range Strikes in Russia With NATO Missiles
British sources indicated that the US and the UK have already decided to lift restrictions but won't announce it yet
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Ukraine #Russia #NATO #Britain https://t.co/KQRcTS7uLd pic.twitter.com/pE9sKnBUrT

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) September 11, 2024

In “Blinken Signals US Will Allow Long-Range Strikes in Russia With NATO Missiles,” DeCamp writes the following:

“On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly hinted that the US was preparing to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US and NATO missiles to support long-range strikes inside Russian territory, which would mark a significant escalation of the proxy war.

“Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv alongside UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Blinken said he discussed the issue of ‘long-range fires’ with Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky and said he would bring the discussion back to Washington. He said President Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will discuss the issue when they meet this Friday.

“Signaling the US is ready to support long-range strikes in Ukraine, Blinken said, ‘Speaking for the United States, from day one, as you’ve heard me say, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we’ll continue to do that.’”

DeCamp highlights new reports in the mainstream press that “there’s already been a decision made in private to allow Ukraine to use British-provided missiles inside Ukraine” and that “the White House is finalizing plans to expand the area where Ukraine can hit inside Russia using US and British-provided missiles,” as well as recent statements from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul that the Biden administration appears poised to allow long-range strikes deep into Russian territory.

Putin: Supporting Long-Range Strikes on Russian Territory Would Put NATO ‘at War With Russia’
POLITICO reports the US is preparing to expand where #Ukraine can hit inside #Russia with US and British missiles
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Putin #NATO https://t.co/o431r0NsDo pic.twitter.com/HdqkXS559w

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) September 12, 2024

Russia, needless to say, has not responded kindly to these comments. In “Putin: Supporting Long-Range Strikes on Russian Territory Would Put NATO ‘at War With Russia’,” DeCamp writes the following:

“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday strongly warned the US against allowing Ukraine to use NATO missiles in long-range strikes inside Russian territory, saying the move would put the Western military alliance ‘at war with Russia.’

“Putin’s comments came after POLITICO reported that the White House was finalizing plans to expand the areas inside Russia where Ukraine can use US and British-provided missiles.

“‘This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,’ Putin told a TV reporter, according to AFP. ‘It would mean that NATO countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia. If that’s the case, then taking into account the change of nature of the conflict, we will take the appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face.’

“He added that supporting long-range Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory is ‘a decision on whether NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not.’”

And it is here worth noting another article DeCamp published earlier this month on comments made by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, who said that Russia is preparing to change its nuclear doctrine in response to western aggressions relating to the war in Ukraine.

Russia Says It Could ‘Combine’ With China If Both Face Threat From the US
The comment comes as Russia is conducting major naval exercises with Chinese participation
by Dave DeCamp@DecampDave #Russia #China https://t.co/5TguBSWGCj pic.twitter.com/V70k9WchjS

— Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) September 12, 2024

Finally, in “Russia Says It Could ‘Combine’ With China If Both Face Threat From the US,” DeCamp provides more information on this horrifying direction we appear to be headed:

“Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that Russia’s partnership with China is not aimed at any third country, but the two countries could ‘combine’ to respond to threats from the US.

“‘I would like to remind you that Moscow and Beijing will respond to double containment by the United States with double counteraction,’ Zakharova said when asked about US plans to deploy a Typhon missile system to Japan for several months, according to Reuters.

…

“‘It is clear that both Russia and China will react to the emergence of additional and very significant missile threats, and their reaction will be far from being political, which has also been repeatedly confirmed by the two countries,’ Zakharova said.

“Zakharova’s comments come amid large-scale Russian naval drills that the Russian military said involve over 90,000 personnel, 400 warships and submarines, and 120 aircraft. China is participating in the Pacific portion of the drill with three Chinese ships and 15 planes.

“Russia and China have increased their military cooperation in recent years directly in response to the similar pressure the two countries have been facing from the US and its allies. Zakharova insisted the relationship is defensive in nature.”

As we’ve discussed many times here, the US has been militarily encircling China in ways it would never tolerate from a foreign threat anywhere near its own borders, in much the same way the US and its allies knowingly provoked the war in Ukraine by amassing military threats on Russia’s border.

There’s so much going on in the world right now, and the US-centralized empire is doing so many terrible things, but every once in a while I think it’s important to highlight the fact that all these individually awful things are just the mundane daily manifestations of a power structure that has us on a trajectory toward a final global confrontation that would make them all look like a picnic in the park. 

Status quo politics are quite literally driving us to armageddon. Freeing ourselves from these murderous tyrants is swiftly moving beyond the morally correct thing to do for the sake of the empire’s victims around the world, to an existentially urgent action we must take for our own self-preservation. 

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In zwei Wochen will unsere Regierung einem globalen Pakt für Digitalzwang zustimmen

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