JAMES FETZER

JFK: Was Oswald in the doorway, after all?

2012-01-27T15:19:00.000-08:00

JFK: Was Oswald in the doorway, after all?

James Fetzer

After publishing "JFK: What we know now that we didn't know then", I encountered the remarkable work of Dr. Ralph Cinque, who had seen something that no one else had noticed in nearly 50 years of study on the assassination of JFK, namely: that, in relation to the long-standing debate over the identity of the man in the doorway in the famous Altgens photograph, usually referred to as "Doorway Man", between Lee Oswald, the accused assassin of JFK, and Billy Lovelady, a co-worker who looked a great deal like him, it is not the FACES in the Altgens that matter, but their SHIRTS! I had noticed that the face of a figure in the Altgens had been obfuscated, which led me to infer that this must be Oswald, but his detailed and painstaking analysis of the differences between the shirt that Doorway Man was wearing and the shirts that Oswald and Lovelady were wearing persuaded me that he was right and that, unless Lovelady was wearing Oswald's shirt, the man in the doorway was Lee.

In the Altgens, you can see (1) the through-and-through hole in the windshield; (2) Doorway Man; (3) the broom-closet window of a uranium mining company that was a CIA asset, from which three shots appear to have been fired; and (4) the open door of the LBJ security detail, suggesting prior knowledge of what was to come. The man to the left of Doorway Man, wearing a fedora, resembles Jack Ruby; while the face and shirt of another figure to DM's left/front (right/front facing him) have been obfuscated or removed. A debate of long-standing has endured over whether DM was Lee Oswald or his co-worker, Billy Lovelady. We believe the face was "tweaked" or even moved to Doorway Man to obfuscate Oswald's presence, but the shirts tell the tale.

For those who review our more extensive study and look at all the evidence, if they scroll down to "Once more, with feeling!", where we have Doorway Man on the left and Lovelady on the right, where above Doorway Man is Oswald, I think anyone can see that the shirt on Doorway Man has been "touched up" but still does not resemble the checkered shirt on Lovelady; and it is obvious that Doorway Man is NOT wearing the striped shirt he (Lovelady) told the FBI he was wearing that day. But it very strongly resembles the shirt on Oswald, which was loose-fitting like Doorway Man and unlike Lovelady in either shirt. Lee tugged at the neck of his shirt, which gave it a "vee" like appearance, which is more visible in some photographs than in others. Lovelady's has no "vee".

Here is a diagrammatic summary of the witness reports that I take to be credible. There are lots of inconsistencies in the record, where some witnesses were intimidated, others had their testimony changed, and still others were never called at all. While we all know that there can be endless debate about exactly who said what when, these are the three that I take to be accurate reports, where I have overlaid the witness reports of his locations on a drawing from Gerald Posner's CASE CLOSED (1992):

We also have the handwritten and typed notes of Detective Will Fritz interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald, which reflect that he told Fritz he was "out with Bill Shelley in front", which I believe for several reasons, including that Lee was working for the FBI as an informant and had a history with ONI and the CIA, where I am inclined to believe that he expected he was going to be exonerated. During his interview, he also told Fritz, when shown one of the backyard photographs, that it was his face on someone else's body. Jim Marrs and I have written about this in "Framing the Patsy: The Case of Lee Harvey Oswald", which appears on Veterans Today with other recent JFK articles of mine.

In addition, in relation to the time line, an excellent, concise post has appeared by Richard Hocking:

Posted Yesterday, 04:14 PM

"From a Timeline perspective, it was possible for Oswald to be on the
front steps at the time of the shooting (as he told Fritz). Carolyn
Arnold's interview with Anthony Summers (1978) places Oswald behind
the double doors at the entrance as late as 12:25. The next sighting
in the testimony is Baker and Truly in the 2nd floor lunch room at
about 12:31:30. That leaves open the possibility that Oswald could
have been on the steps at the time of the shooting and then gone
inside after the shots were fired.

"On a side note, Oswald said he was on the steps with Shelley. That
raises several interesting points:

1. If Oswald was not on the steps, how did he know where Shelley was?
Oswald may have seen him there at 12:25, but that is no guarantee that
Shelley would have stayed there.

2. Oswald is giving Fritz information that can be cross-checked with
another witness. He is now relying on Shelley to provide verification
for his alibi at the time of the shooting. Why would Oswald put
himself in this position unless he thought Shelley would back him up?

If, otoh, Oswald was making up a story, why not say he was behind
everyone on the steps where no one noticed him? That would have
eliminated the possibility of being contradicted by another witness."

Finally, when I learned about the Fritz interrogation notes--which had actually been released by the ARRB back in 1997 but which I had only discovered a few months ago--I took another look at the Altgens and discovered that the face of the man to his left/front (right/front, viewing the photograph) had been obliterated, I inferred that this must have been Oswald. That was my position when Ralph and I came into contact. When, in the course of our exchange, I discovered that THE SHIRT AS WELL AS THE FACE of the other man had been obliterated it was obvious that there had to have been features of the shirt that need to be obscured, which led me to reconsider my position. As he and I began discussing his research on the shirts, I realized that he had noticed something that no one else had noticed before him--that the shirts, not the faces, were the key to resolving the issue.

As we all know, virtually nothing about the assassination can be known with certainty. It is almost always a matter of probabilities and likelihoods. When you put together the timeline with what Lee told Fritz (about being out front with Bill Shelly), given Richard Hocking's observations, especially in light of the obfuscation of the Altgens, the likelihood that he was there is the reason why the had to change the photograph becomes very strong. Why else, after all, would they have bothered with a crowd shot--unless someone was there who should not have been, where the only person who fits that bill is Lee Harvey Oswald. So the key to appraising this situation is to ask, "What is the probability of altering this photo and obfuscating images if Oswald had not been there?" Approximately zero.

The features that Ralph has identified in the style, the lapel, the lay, the fit, and the buttons have convinced me that he is right and that the man in the doorway IS wearing Oswald's shirt. Lovelady, of course, turned out to have a checkered shirt and a vertically striped shirt, both of which were rather distinctive. The complementary argument that I have advanced is that Doorway Man is also NOT wearing Lovelady's checkered shirt, much less his vertically striped shirt, which may have been on Lovelady but cannot have been on Doorway Man. DM's shirt has a rather loose fit and unusual features. Oswald's shirt has a rather loose fit and unusual features. Lovelady's shirt fits snugly and has no unusual features--other than its pattern. So they had to try to make Oswald's shirt look more like Lovelady's, but did so with only limited success, which was how Ralph could detect their differences and fashion his argument. Others may disagree, but he has convinced me.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is the editor of Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003).

IRAN: Is this what NATO has in store?

2012-01-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

IRAN: Is this what NATO has in store?

Christof Lehmann, James Fetzer and Joshua Blakeney

In “USA: Massive Transports of Military Equipment”, Christof Lehmann, the first author, has reported the stunning videos taken by Mr. Andrew Tuckman on 19 January 2012, who began filming this after a dozen or so train cars went by on a stretch of track south of Santa Cruz, California. "Where are the military vehicles going? Why are they being shipped? What could this possibly be for? Barack Obama, what are you up to? We want answers….”

James Fetzer, the second author, contacted an associate with extensive military experience, who identified them as “woodland camouflage M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles with a few HEMTT refueling trucks. They don't appear to have been modernized since they would have been repainted TAN. They may be going to an exercise for the California National Guard--or worse going into STORAGE because the U.S. Army has gone STUPID and is pissing away its cross-country maneuver war-fighting powers in favor of foot-slogging victims with hand weapons from wheeled trucks, which are easily blown up by land mines on roads/trails.”

Video of transportation of military equipment

Christof replied that, “from a soldier’s perspective I can follow your reasoning, of course. There are some modifications I would like you to consider, however -- which is based on what we are getting via Russian Intelligence Chatter -- that the US is modifying its tank warfare tactics to adopt a kind of Blitzkrieg approach such as the Germans were using. For that, of course, you need superior tanks and a vast quantity of armored vehicles – both tanks and armored personnel carriers with reasonable fighting ability. All that equipment is perfect for that.”

James asked, “Where do you and Russian intel believe they are going to be used? I would not rule that out”, and he replied, “They didn´t indicate where, other than hinting that Syria and Iran were the probable targets.” According to a reliable source within the European NATO admiralty, moreover, it would not be entirely off target to state that NATO could use Libya as a staging area for an attack on Syria or Iran, where a confrontation with Iran probably would include the use of neutron weapons after the initial confrontational stages after initial "provocations"-–no doubt, including a “false flag” attack and an escalation by NATO--neutron weapons would be most likely used to take out both the Iranian Navy and Iran’s missile capabilities.

The second and third authors have written about the use of the USS Vincennes as an ideal “false flag” target because, on 3 July 1988, the Vincennes had shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all of the 290 civilian passengers on board, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. This would be an ideal vessel for the staged provocation as it could be easily sold to the world as having been Iranian retribution for the 1988 downing of Flight 655, where the evident lack of motive for Iran to provoke the US and Israeli military titans would be replaced by the perceived goal of revenge. No one would stop to ask themselves why Iran would thereby invite its own national annihilation.

The latest intel that I have received is that the USS Vincennes, far from having been scrapped, has been in the Mediterranean Sea and lobbing shells to test the “Iron Dome” the US has been constructing to save Israel from destruction when the waves of missiles are directed her way after an assault on Iran! As The New York Times (17 January 2012) has recently reported, the major joint US/Israeli op that had been planned has subsequently been cancelled, where some have inferred that it was because they could no longer target the Vincennes. My latest info is that she has been replaced by the USS Enterprise, an aging nuclear-powered carrier that has suffered the effects of long-term radiation exposure to its steel and appears to be the replacement target of choice.

The use of a neutron weapon might initially seem implausible but, during a long interview with Christopher Busby, “New Bombs and War Crimes in Fallujah”, the second author learned that the epidemic of serious birth defects he was studying in Fallujah were not caused by exposure to depleted uranium, as everyone had up to that point expected, but by exposure to enriched uranium, which appears to have come from a new kind of neutron bomb, which may even have been used to convert the Twin Towers from 500,000 tons of steel and concrete into millions of cubic yards of very fine dust. So we have evidence that the weapon to which the admiral referred does exist.

Attacks on the nuclear energy plants in Iran—of which there appear to be as many as eighty (80) distributed across the country—has been estimated to bring about 1,000,000 deaths of Iranians outright, with another 35,000,000 premature deaths expected as the cloud of contamination sweeps across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India--and may contaminate all of Earth. In “5 minutes to the self-immolation of the Israeli Empire”, as the author explains, the Zionists really sincerely believe Israel has the right to all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates River in Iraq. “They believe they have the right to destroy every Muslim nation that would say ‘No’ to Zionist insanity. Why should America suffer self-immolation because Israel thinks national suicide just like at Masada is a wonderful idea?”

Some of Iran's principal nuclear sites

American politicians appear to be following suit. GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rich Santorum, for example, have called for a “first strike” against Iran, even though there is no hard evidence that Iran has any nuclear weapons or any intention of developing them. They appear to be massively ignorant of history, since Iran has not attacked any other nation in 300 years. Not only that, but Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and allowed IAEA inspectors into its facilities. Israel, by comparison, has 200-600 nuclear bombs, has not signed the NPT, and will not allow inspectors into its facilities.

Were either of these candidates successful in reaching the nation’s highest office, they would take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. But according to the Constitution, treaties have the same status under the law as the Constitution itself. These candidates appear to be oblivious of the consideration that the Hague Convention of 1899, the Kellogg-Briand Peace Treaty of 1928, and even the UN Charter obligate the US to the peaceful resolution of disputes with other countries, where a “first strike” is only permissible in response to an “imminent threat”. No one believes, even remotely, that Iran represents an imminent threat. By endorsing a first strike, therefore, these candidates are demonstrating their willingness to violate the Constitution and the oath of office they would have sworn to uphold.

In the light of recent reports (1) of the re-deployment of 12,000 US troops from Malta to Libya, reported in an article by Cynthia McKinney, (2) the ongoing covert war against Syria by NATO as well as against Iran, (3) the tense military situation between NATO countries, Syria, Iran, and (4) recent messages about Russian and Chinese military being on alert, we have considered it to be incumbent upon us to publish the videos of military equipment transportation and we ask for citizens of NATO countries to report any significant troops movements in any NATO country to nsnbc at this address: nsnbc.wordpress(at)gmail.com

References:

“Why is President Obama sending 12000 troops to Libya?”, Cynthia McKinney. nsnbc. http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/why-is-president-obama-sending-12-000-u-s-troops-to-libya/

“Wider Middle East and Global War Imminent?”, Christof Lehmann, nsnbc. http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/wider-middle-east-and-global-war-imminent/

Christof Lehmann established nsnbc as an alternative news-medium on 28 August 2011 to break corporate or state-controlled media’s embargo on truth.

James Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Joshua Blakeney is a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge, member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Staff Writer at Veterans Today.

Review of Hamas by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell

2012-01-19T12:21:00.000-08:00

Review of Hamas by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell (2010 Polity Press)

by Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall

Beverly Milton-Edwards is Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. Steven Farrell, who has dual British-Irish citizenship, is Middle East Correspondent for The New York Times.

Hamas is about the militant Palestinian group which was democratically elected to run the Palestinian Authority in 2006. The main value of the book is the rich context it provides regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which is totally absent from the mainstream media. Hamas clearly documents the role Israel played in promoting the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Palestine. The book also emphasizes the essential role foreign financial assistance plays in perpetuating this war – with the US heavily backing Israel and other Islamic states backing occupied Palestine.

According to Milton-Edwards and Farrell, Israel’s motives in backing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine were identical to those of the US in Afghanistan and Anwar Sadat in Egypt. In all cases, the goal of supporting the Islamic fundamentalism was to counter the secular Arab leftists and nationalists who controlled most Middle East states prior to 1967. The US and its allies had enormous concerns that that the leaders in power would form a single Arab economic or political block that would thwart US corporate and strategic interests.

Milton-Edwards and Farrell trace the origins of Hamas to the decision by the Muslim Brotherhood to open offices in Palestine in the 1940s, when it was still under the British Mandate. As a condition of their World War I defeat, the old Ottoman (Turkish) empire was divided up among European powers. In 1947 Britain surrendered control of Palestine, and the UN partitioned it into Jewish and Palestinian Arab states. Outraged that Jews, who represented on 32% of the population were awarded 56% of Palestine, in 1949 Syria, Egypt and Jordan joined with Palestinian jihadists, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, in declaring war on Israel.

In the resulting settlement, Palestinian Arabs lost even more territory, forcing 726,000 refugees to flee to neighboring states. Gaza, to the west of Israel, came under Egyptian control. Jordan, to Israel’s east, assumed control of the West Bank. The king of Jordan, an autocratic totalitarian ruler, immediately closed the West Bank offices of the Muslim Brotherhood and placed their members under close police surveillance.

Hamas Green Flags

In the 1967 six day war, Egypt, Jordan and Syria attacked Israel and were once again defeated. The West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli military occupation, while Israel banned the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and forced Yasar Arafat and other PLO leaders to flee into exile.

Israel Turns a Blind Eye to Mijamma Violence

Prior to 1973, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood saw its primary role as performing charitable works and speaking out against the liberal Westernized culture Palestinian youth brought back when they went to university in Egypt. In 1973 they formed a new organization Al-Mijamma ‘al-Islami (The Islamic Center), under the leadership of a charismatic wheelchair bound cleric named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

Mijamma’s ultimate goal was to reclaim Palestinian land and homes Israel had seized in 1947 and 1967. However they felt the first step in building a militant resistance organization was to re-establish Palestine as an Islamic society. Thus despite considerable anti-Israeli rhetoric, their main focus was on islamization, which they approached by teaching, preaching and setting up community institutions to provide food and other social services to impoverished Palestinian families.

Initially their political attacks (demonstrations, street ambushes, attacks on homes and offices) were limited to so-called Israeli “collaborators” and individuals linked with the PLO and other secular and leftist groups and institutions. This included teaching and medical associations. However once they assumed control of the Islamic University of Gaza in 1973, they began harassing and expelling female students who refused to wear Islamic dress, as well as beating up men who spoke out against these activities.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin

Israel, which governed both the West Bank and Gaza after 1967, turned a blind eye to this lawless violence. They only provided direct financial aid to the Islamic Academy in Hebron, where many of Hamas’s military leaders would receive their training. Yet in 1978 Israel granted official recognition to Mijamma, allowing it to meet openly and publicly, at a time when all other Palestinian parties were banned as illegal terrorist organizations.

The Birth of Hamas

During the 1987 insurrection known as the Intifada, Mujamma renamed itself Hamas. Their founding document, which disputes Israel’s right to establish a religious state on Palestinian territory, is full of references to common anti-Semitic conspiracies. In addition to quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a proven forgery), it blames “the Jews” for the French revolution, the Communist revolution and secret societies like the Freemasons, Rotary Club and Lions.

Nevertheless despite their full participation alongside the PLO in the Intifada, Israel continued to allow foreign money to flow freely to Hamas, while they continued to freeze PLO assets. Likewise Israel allowed Hamas to keep their schools open in Gaza, while they force West Bank Palestinian schools to close.

Victims of Operation Castlead

In 1990, Israel finally began cracking down on Hamas, following the murder of two Israeli soldiers. Their leader Sheikh Hassan was arrested, tried and imprisoned. Three years later, Israel illegally (under international law) deported 400 Hamas members, following the kidnapping of an Israeli border guard.

Meanwhile the PLO, Hamas’s rival, made the tragic mistake of endorsing Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. This resulted in the suspension of all aid the PLO previously received from wealthy Gulf oil states.

Why the PLO Abandoned Armed Struggle

Hamas makes it strikingly clear that money and public opinion polls have influenced Palestine Liberation Army (PLO) and Hamas policies far more than lofty political goals. The primary reason the PLO abandoned their pledge, in 1993, to liberate Palestine through armed struggle was that they were nearly bankrupt with the loss of their Gulf donors. Their decision to negotiate a peace with Israel made them enormously unpopular with one million Gazan refugees. Still intent on returning to the lands they had lost in Israel, they had no interest whatsoever in creating a Palestinian state.

Bulldozing Palestinian homes

The response from Hamas was to issue a fatwa (death sentence issued by Islamic religious leaders) against the Fatah-led PLO. Determined to derail the negotiations, they also launched a massive campaign of violence, incorporating or the first time a new tactic known as “martyrdom” (i.e. suicide) bombings. Each martyrdom bombing resulted in a payment of approximately $25,000 to the suicide bomber’s family, financed mainly by Saddam Hussein and Saudi Arabia.

The Creation of the Palestinian Authority

The 1993 negotiated settlement, known as the Oslo Accords, granted the West Bank and Gaza limited autonomy under Israeli military control. It also created the Palestinian Authority (PA), a shrewd move the US and Israel employed to split and crush the Palestinian resistance. By making the Palestinian leadership the civil authority, they shifted much popular anger away from Israel and towards the PLO.
Arafat and the PLO leadership returned from exile to run the Palestinian Authority (PA). Owing to a continuing embargo by Gulf donors, Arafat had to lay off hundreds of public sector workers and slash social services to prevent a total meltdown of the Palestinian economy.

Demolished Palestinian homes

Israel, meanwhile, made Arafat responsible for controlling Hamas militants. His solution was to put thousands of them in prison and torture them. There were numerous reports of prisoners being beaten, forced to shave their beards and sodomized with coke bottles. Moreover PA security services routinely blackmailed families, with offers to release prisoners in return for bribes of $10,000 or more. All this occurred as Israel was continuing to destroy Palestinian homes and olive trees to build more Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.

The Second Intifada

In 2000, Palestinian anger at their extreme poverty and repression boiled over in armed insurrection, the second Intifada. In 2002, the Saudis put forward a peace proposal which would have normalized Israel’s relations with the Arab world in return for their withdrawal from the occupied territories. As before Hamas, which still demanded the right of return (to their homelands in Israel) for all exiled Palestinians, tried to derail peace negotiations with a wave of sniper attacks and car and suicide bombings. These were directed against the PLO security services, Jewish settlers in Palestine and civilians inside Israel. Instead of retaliating against Hamas, Israel punished Arafat by sending tanks into the West Bank to bombard his headquarters, commencing a military siege that kept him prisoner until he died in 2004.

Hamas Enters Electoral Politics

Hamas boycotted the January 2005 presidential elections, giving the Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas an easy victory. In May 2005, the Hamas leadership made a controversial decision to pursue direct political power by standing candidates in Gaza and West Bank local body elections. They did so in parallel with militant attacks on Israel. Following Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal of Israeli settlers and soldiers from Gaza in August 2005, this included Qassam rocket attacks on Israeli border towns.

Operation Castlead

Hamas never expected to win the parliamentary elections in January 2006, a success Milton-Edwards and Farrell attribute to widespread disgust, both in the West Bank and Gaza, with Fatah/PLO corruption and inefficiency. Refusing to recognize the Hamas victory, Mahmood Abbas installed his own non-elected parliament in the West Bank. He also refused to relinquish Fatah-controlled security posts to the new Hamas government. Israel, meanwhile, froze funds needed to pay PA officials in Gaza. When Europe and the US also froze Palestinian developmental assistance, Hamas had no choice but to turn to Iran for training, weapons and financial aid.

The Failed CIA Coup

After a brief experiment with a “unity” government, in which Fatah and Hamas ruled jointly, the CIA and Abbas launched an 18 month military coup, determined to dislodge Hamas from power in Gaza. In June 2006, Hamas came out the victor, employing 16,000 fighters to force 70,000 CIA-backed members of Abbas’ Preventive Security Organization to flee Gaza.

Hamas Drops in the Opinion Polls

By June 2008, their popularity waning owning to brutal sanctions and shortages of food, medicine and other necessities, Hamas was in the exact same situation as Fatah in 1993. In desperation they agreed to a temporary ceasefire (ending suicide bombings and Qassam rocket attacks), on condition Israel end their embargo. Hamas honored the ceasefire for six months, despite Israel’s failure to end their economic blockade. In December 2008, Hamas broke the ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel.

Cleaning Up Castlead

The book ends with a description of Operation Castlead, which Israel launched against Gaza in retaliation. Castlead destroyed or damaged nearly every Palestinian security installation, killed 1,300 Palestinians (including 900 civilians) and destroyed hundreds of homes and business institutions.

Milton-Edward’s and Farrell’s chronology ends here. The book finishes with the ironic observation that while Castlead was a military victory of sorts for Israel, it had the perverse effect of restoring Gazan residents’ confidence in Hamas. At the end of 2008, they were near an all time high in public opinion polls

Stuart Bramhall is a prolific author and journalist, who maintains several web sites, including "The Most Revolutionary Act". She currently resides in New Zealand and has also been interviewed twice by Jim Fetzer on "The Real Deal", on 7 February 2001 and on 10 August 2011.

IRAN: US/Israeli "False Flag" attack may be underway

2012-01-14T10:29:00.000-08:00

Jim Fetzer and Joshua Blakeney

Several warnings of an imminent “false flag” attack by the Israeli-influenced United States on one of its own warships, which will be attributed to Iran, have been reported by several reliable sources. In recent years “false-flag” terrorism has been utilized multiple times by US and Israeli political actors to provide pretexts for otherwise unjustifiable, anti-Islamic military excursions. The plan is to justify an all-out assault on Iran based upon a new fabricated “Pearl Harbor”.

Israel is the primary motivator behind the attempts to destabilize Iran. US traditional foreign policy was one of attempting to foster stability in the Middle East for oil markets. The Zionist impulse, conversely, is to destabilize all potential regional hegemons and carve the Middle East up into ethno-religious statelets. Thus, since the fraudulent events of 9/11, we’ve seen a policy of Middle East disintegration being pursued by Israeli-influenced American politicians. Indeed, recently released CIA memos reveal that Mossad agents have been posing as CIA agents and conscripting anti-Iranian terrorists.

Former Israeli intelligence officer, Avi Perry, startlingly wrote in a January 9th Jerusalem Post article of a forthcoming “ ‘Pearl Harbor’ scenario, in which Iran [will] launch…a “surprise” attack on the US navy,” giving the US “the perfect rationalization to finish them [Iran] off.” Tellingly, Perry chose to put the word “surprise” in quotation marks. Is Perry telling us something?
Perry asserts: “[an] Iranian attack on an American military vessel will serve as a justification and a pretext for a retaliatory move by the US military against the Iranian regime.” However, Perry identifies “a US aircraft carrier” as the likely target of this imagined Iranian attack.

USS Vincennes returns to San Diego (October 1988)

We beg to differ. There are major indications that the vessel of choice is to be the USS Vincennes. The fourth USS Vincennes (CG-49) is a US Navy Ticonderoga class Aegis guided missile cruiser. On July 3, 1988, the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilian passengers on board, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children.

This would be an ideal vessel for the staged provocation as it could be easily sold to the world as having been Iranian retribution for the 1988 downing of Flight 655. That way the evident lack of motive for Iran to provoke the US and Israeli military titans will be replaced by a perceived “motive.” No one will stop to ask themselves why Iran would thereby invite its own national annihilation.

If we were to believe the Wikipedia version of history, the Vincennes has already been scrapped. The Wikipedia article for the Vincennes states, “The Vincennes was completely scrapped by 23 November 2011.” If that were true it could not be used as the target of this “false-flag” attack. Yet we have photographic and testimonial evidence suggesting otherwise.

The USS Vincennes afloat in Puget Sound. The ship has an orange hue.

It cannot have been "completely scrapped" and still be afloat in Puget Sound.

A reliable source interviewed by one of us has brought us up to speed on the latest developments:

“We now know what that INACTIVE Ticonderoga class AEGIS missile cruiser got towed out of here under cover of darkness for. It’ll likely be the sacrificial lamb that starts the war with Iran….

“Why else would they move it when all the rest sit at a buoy here for months before they finally leave to be sunk?

“I told this to a former 9/11 Truth person back when that ship got moved that it was likely to be used for a FALSE FLAG attack. Well, we’ll soon see if I was right about this one.”

Since the ship left Puget Sound in the dead of night about two months ago, it’s most probable location today is at the 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain for safe keeping until the time comes for its deployment. The ship would have been refurbished and repainted and provided with remote control capabilities.

“That is the only location in the region outside of Haifa Harbor where she could probably be at least partially concealed by cocooning the superstructure to make it less obvious who she is. Meanwhile, the US Navy is compiling a list of casualties based upon deceased sailors, very much as was the case on 9/11,” we were advised.

Former Israeli false-flag attacks, such as on the USS Liberty in 1967, and the Argentine attacks in 1992 and in 1994, demonstrate Israel’s willingness to attack US targets, on the one hand, and its own people, on the other. It’s highly probable that, having shipped the Vincennes into an acceptable location, that the Mossad, which has also been implicated in the events of 9/11, would do the rest of the dirty work. Or the United States, which has become Israel’s lackey, might blow up one of its own ships, which would be a literal and a figurative sign of how low the US has sunk.

YouTube

“As a Marine Corps officer, I swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic”, Jim Fetzer observes. “Neither I nor any other officer I know ever swore allegiance to the State of Israel. Our leaders are not only betraying our own Constitution but have turned our nation into a servant of an unworthy, brutal and tyrannical master, who couldn’t care less about the best interests of American citizens–and our own leaders not only permit this to happen but actually promote it.”

In light of recent “deep political events” in Iran, including the recent murder of Iranian nuclear physicist Professor Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, it would not be surprising if the US and Israel were to raise the ante by implementing a fraudulent trigger incident, which may very well ignite World War III.

YouTube

Because of the pervasiveness of US-Israeli deceptions, an increasing number of public intellectuals are awakening to the prospect of these fraudulent events BEFORE THEY HAPPEN, as appears to be the case with this initiative. We can’t be certain about all of this, because we are on the outside, looking in. Perhaps the USS Vincennes actually has been scrapped. But on this point the world can rest assured: they haven’t scrapped the plan!

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Joshua Blakeney is a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge, member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Staff Writer at Veterans Today.

Fallujah Babies: Under a New Kind of Siege

2012-01-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

Fallujah babies: Under a new kind of siege

NOTE: This serves as a sequel to my interview with Leuren Moret and Christopher Busby on "The Real Deal", which was published as "New bombs and war crimes in Fallujah", Veterans Today (3 November 2011).

Doctors and residents blame US weapons for catastrophic levels of birth defects in Fallujah's newborns.

Dahr Jamail (6 January 2012)

Congenital abnormalities have mushroomed in the wake of devastating US sieges in Fallujah in 2004 [EPA]

Fallujah, Iraq - While the US military has formally withdrawn from Iraq, doctors and residents of Fallujah are blaming weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorous used during two devastating US attacks on Fallujah in 2004 for what are being described as "catastrophic" levels of birth defects and abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, a paediatric specialist at Fallujah General Hospital, has taken a personal interest in investigating an explosion of congenital abnormalities that have mushroomed in the wake of the US sieges since 2005.

"We have all kinds of defects now, ranging from congenital heart disease to severe physical abnormalities, both in numbers you cannot imagine," Alani told Al Jazeera at her office in the hospital, while showing countless photos of shocking birth defects.

As of December 21, Alani, who has worked at the hospital since 1997, told Al Jazeera she had personally logged 677 cases of birth defects since October 2009. Just eight days later when Al Jazeera visited the city on December 29, that number had already risen to 699.

"There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we've never seen them until now," she said. "So when I describe it all I can do is describe the physical defects, but I'm unable to provide a medical term."

'Incompatible with life'

Most of these babies in Fallujah die within 20 to 30 minutes after being born, but not all.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed was born in October 2007. His clinical diagnosis includes dilation of two heart ventricles, and a growth on his lower back that doctors have not been able to remove.

Four-year-old Abdul Jaleel Mohammed has birth defects and health problems that his family blames on depleted uranium exposure from the 2004 US military attacks on Fallujah [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

Abdul has trouble controlling his muscles, struggles to walk, cannot control his bladder, and weakens easily. Doctors told his father, Mohamed Jaleel Abdul Rahim, that his son has severe nervous system problems, and could develop fluid build-up in his brain as he ages, which could prove fatal.

"This is the first instance of something like this in all our family," Rahim told Al Jazeera. "We lived in an area that was heavily bombed by the Americans in 2004, and a missile landed right in front of our home. What else could cause these health problems besides this?"

Dr Alani told Al Jazeera that in the vast majority of cases she has documented, the family had no prior history of congenital abnormalities.

Alani showed Al Jazeera hundreds of photos of babies born with cleft palates, elongated heads, a baby born with one eye in the centre of its face, overgrown limbs, short limbs, and malformed ears, noses and spines.

She told Al Jazeera of cases of "thanatophoric dysplasia", an abnormality in bones and the thoracic cage that "render the newborn incompatible with life".

Rahim said many of his relatives that have had babies after 2004 are having problems as well.

"One of them was born and looks like a fish," Rahim said. "I also personally know of at least three other families who live near us who have these problems also."

For now, the family is worried how Abdul will fare in school when he is enrolled next year. Maloud Ahmed Jassim, Abdul's grandfather, added, "We've seen so many miscarriages happen, and we don't know why."

"The growth on his back is so sensitive and painful for him," Rahim said. "What will happen in school?"

Jassim is angered by a lack of thorough investigations into the health crisis.

"Why is the government not investigating this," he asked. "Western media seem interested, but neither our local media nor the government are. Why not?"

In April 2011, Iraqi lawmakers debated whether the US attacks on the city constituted genocide. Resolutions that called for international prosecution, however, went nowhere.

Scientific proof

Alani, along with Dr Christopher Busby, a British scientist and activist who has carried out research into the risks of radioactive pollution, collected hair samples from 25 parents of families with children who have birth defects and sent them to a laboratory in Germany for analysis.

Alani and Busby, along with other doctors and researchers, published a study in September 2011 from data obtained by analysing the hair samples, as well as soil and water samples from the city.

Mercury, Uranium, Bizmuth and other trace elements were found.

The report's conclusion states:

"Whilst caution must be exercised about ruling out other possibilities, because none of the elements found in excess are reported to cause congenital diseases and cancer except Uranium, these findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases. Questions are thus raised about the characteristics and composition of weapons now being deployed in modern battlefields."

"As doctors, we know Mercury, Uranium and Bismuth can contribute to the development of congenital abnormalities, and we think it could be related to the use of prohibited weapons by the Americans during these battles," Alani said.

"Findings suggest the enriched Uranium exposure is either a primary cause or related to the cause of the congenital anomaly and cancer increases," says a recent scientific report on the incidence of birth defects in Fallujah [Dr Samira Alani]

"I made this link to a coroner's inquest in the West Midlands into the death of a Gulf War One veteran... and a coroner's jury accepted my evidence," he told Al Jazeera.

"It's been found by a coroner's court that cancer was caused by an exposure to depleted uranium," Busby added, "In the last 10 years, research has emerged that has made it quite clear that uranium is one of the most dangerous substances known to man, certainly in the form that it takes when used in these wars."

In July 2010, Busby released a study that showed a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in Fallujah since the 2004 attacks. The report also showed the sex ratio had declined from normal to 86 boys to 100 girls, together with a spread of diseases indicative of genetic damage similar to but of far greater incidence than Hiroshima.

Dr Alani visited Japan recently, where she met with Japanese doctors who study birth defect rates they believe related to radiation from the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

She was told birth defect incidence rates there are between 1-2 per cent. Alani's log of cases of birth defects amounts to a rate of 14.7 per cent of all babies born in Fallujah, more than 14 times the rate in the affected areas of Japan.

A contaminated country?

In Babil Province in southern Iraq, the head of the Babil Cancer Centre, Dr Sharif al-Alwachi, said cancer rates have been escalating at alarming rates since 2003, for which he blames the use of depleted uranium weapons by US forces during and following the 2003 invasion.

"The environment could be contaminated by chemical weapons and depleted uranium from the aftermath of the war on Iraq," Dr Alwachi told Al Jazeera. "The air, soil and water are all polluted by these weapons, and as they come into contact with human beings they become poisonous. This is new to our region, and people are suffering here."

The US and UK militaries have sent mixed signals about the effects of depleted uranium, but Iraqi doctors like Alwachi and Alani, and along with researchers, blame the increasing cancer and birth defect rates on the weapon.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his Geiger counter was "screaming" because "the indicator went beyond the range".

Alani explained that she is the only doctor in Fallujah registering cases of congenital abnormalities.

Dr Samira Alani, who has been working as a pediatrician at Fallujah General Hospital since 1997, has registered 699 cases of birth defects in Fallujah babies since late 2009 [Dahr Jamail/Al Jazeera]

"We have no system to register all of them, so we have so many cases we are missing," she said. "Just yesterday a colleague told me of a newborn with thanatophoric dysplasia and she did not register it. I think I only know of 40-50 per cent of the cases because so many families have their babies at home and we never know of these, and other clinics are not registering them either."

The hospital where Alani does her work was constructed in the Dhubadh district of Fallujah in 2008. According to Alani, the district was bombed heavily during the November 2004 siege.

"There is also a primary school that was built nearby, and from that school alone three teachers developed breast cancer, and now two of them are dead," Alani said. "We get so many cases from this area, right where the hospital is."

Even with a vast amount of anecdotal evidence, the exact cause of the health crisis in Fallujah is currently inconclusive without an in-depth, comprehensive study, which has yet to be carried out.

But despite lack of governmental support, and very little support from outside Iraq, Alani is determined to continue her work.

"I will not leave this subject", she told Al Jazeera. "I will not stop."

This article is republished from Aljazzera (6 January 2012), where the original includes a video titled, "US invasion leaves lasting Iraqi scars".

ME & LEE Reviewed by Stuart Bramhall

2012-01-05T10:26:00.000-08:00

Me & Lee: How I came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald
Judyth Vary Baker (2010 TrineDay)

"They thought they could frighten Judyth Vary Baker into silence. And for decades they succeeded. But it’s too late to shut her up now. She’s already blown the whistle! And she did it for her friend Lee Oswald. Judyth’s story is a dark odyssey of disease, murder and betrayal, but it is one laced with innocence, hope and love." —Edward T. Haslam

Review by Stuart Bramhall

Me & Lee is a memoir by the only surviving member of a top secret New Orleans research team (also described at length in Ed Haslam’s 2007 Dr. Mary’s Monkey – which I have also reviewed) which attempted, in 1963, to develop a biologic warfare agent to assassinate Castro. Baker’s memoir has a forward by Haslam (see * below) and an afterward by longtime assassination researcher Jim Marrs. It’s also extensively footnoted and cross referenced with photos, news clippings and other documents from Baker’s personal records, Warren Commission testimony, and other records from the JFK archives.

A science prodigy, Judyth Vary Baker was only nineteen when she joined this project. The major strength of Lee & Me is the author’s ability to capture the naive idealism behind Baker’s determination to “conquer” cancer. As much a character study as an expose, the book portrays to perfection the blind, headstrong idealism typical of many young people manipulated into joining off-the-books intelligence-security activities.

Baker’s High School Cancer Research

It was obvious from an early age that Baker had a brilliant mind. Thanks to her extreme precociousness and heavy government emphasis on science education (to “catch up” with the Soviet space program), her high school provided her special premises to convert a science fair project into a long term study of techniques to accelerate cancer growth in mice. Thanks to Florida Senator George Smathers, she came to the attention of national cancer researchers. This led to her recruitment, after one year of college, by the prominent anti-Castro, anti-communist Dr. Alton Ochsner of Tulane University. Baker’s role was to assist cancer researcher Dr. Mary Sherman in a project that was sold to Baker as an effort to develop a vaccine against SV-40. The latter was a monkey virus which contaminated the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines given to children between 1955 and 1963.

Baker arrives in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 and discovers that she will be conducting research in CIA pilot David Ferrie’s apartment, rather Dr. Sherman’s lab. Moreover her assignment isn’t to work on a vaccine, but to help create a virus capable of causing “galloping” cancer. Her job consists of harvesting fifty or more mice every week that have been injected with SV-40 viruses mutated by exposure to radiation. She then grinds up the most aggressive tumors, suspends them in calf serum medium and centrifuges them to extract the viruses. She then transports them to Dr. Sherman’s lab to be re-exposed to high intensity radiation.

Baker’s Relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald

Baker unexpectedly meets Lee Harvey Oswald during this period, who will serve as her escort, riding the bus with her to and from work. In addition to her lab research, Ochsner asks her to take a cover job at the Reily Coffee Company, where her immediate boss is a former FBI agent, who is also heavily involved with the anti-Castro movement. Oswald also seems to be instrumental in persuading Baker to overcome her scruples about her biological warfare research, by revealing there is a right-wing/Mob/CIA/anti-Castro Cuban plot to kill JFK that might be derailed if they succeed in removing Castro from power. The line Oswald, Ferrie and Sherman give her that if Castro is assassinated, the different factions will start jockeying for power over Cuba and this will split the coalition.

Baker’s cover at Reily Coffee Company is that of secretary, though her main role is to ensure that Oswald, who also has a cover job at Reilly’s, gets his time card clocked in and out when he’s in the field. Both spend most of their time at their top secret jobs. Baker, who is mainly at Ferrie’s apartment dissecting mice, is never totally clear what Oswald’s assignment is. She describes him as getting regular payments from the FBI and CIA, as well as unemployment checks from a former job in Texas. He seems to be a kind of errand boy, both for the CIA and the Mafia. Oswald has relatives with the Mob and introduces Baker to New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. The Mafia has lost lucrative Cuban casinos in the revolution and is an eager participant in various conspiracies to get rid of Castro. Oswald also introduces her to Jacob “Sparky” Rubenstein (also known as "Jack Ruby"), whom Oswald has known from childhood.

Inside the Head of Lee Harvey Oswald

I have been reading JFK assassination literature since 1990. Of all the books I have read, Lee & Me provides the most insight into Oswald’s personality and his knowledge of the assassination conspiracy. As Baker portrays him, he comes across as an immature, bookish geek who liked to check out James Bond spy thrillers and quote from obscure literary works. He admitted to Baker that he was ashamed of hitting his wife Marina (for insulting his manhood) but seemed unable to stop. He also had strong personal views about civil rights and routinely sat in the rear, the colored section of buses. In 1963, the South was still militantly segregated. I can see how this might have been extremely irritating to his right wing, racist superiors.
Oswald’s CIA role in New Orleans

According to Baker, he was very much aware that his CIA handlers didn’t trust him following his return from the Soviet Union. He told Baker that fake defectors were never fully trusted, owing to the possibility they might have became double agents. Oswald was never given the name of the CIA officer running the anti-Castro project he was working for. Oswald only knew him as Mr. B and that he was CIA station chief in Mexico. According to Oswald, this pattern of being assigned a number of minor, unrelated tasks without being clear who he was working for was typical for agents suspected of being “dangles” (double agents). Baker states he only learned his superior’s real name a few days before the assassination. In their last phone conversation, Oswald revealed the man’s name was David Atlee Phillips. In 1963 Phillips was CIA Chief of Cuban Operations. In 1954 he played a major role in the CIA coup against Arbenz in Guatemala.

Baker mentions that Oswald helped to organize a shipment of weapons smuggled into New Orleans for the anti-Castro Cubans the CIA was training as paramilitaries. She also talks about an assignment in which Oswald posed as a pro-Castro member of Fair Trade for Cuba to collect names of Castro sympathizers to turn over to the FBI. He was also identified as the agent who would smuggle the fatal viruses into Cuba. This meant that Baker had to train him to change the culture medium necessary to keep them alive.

Baker is Fired from the Project

Eventually Sherman, Ferrie and Baker succeed in isolating a tumor virus capable of producing “galloping” cancer (killing them in weeks, rather than months) in mice. They then inject it into marmoset, rhesus and African green monkeys, where it proves to be equally virulent. In August 1963, Clay Shaw (the CIA contractor district attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted in 1967 for his involvement in the JFK assassination), Oswald and Ferrie transport the virus to the East Louisiana State Mental Hospital, to inject it into a “volunteer” from the Angola Penitentiary. Baker is initially told the patient already suffers from terminal cancer. She subsequently learns that he’s perfectly healthy. It also becomes clear from the blood samples she’s asked to analyze for cancer cells that numerous volunteers have been injected with the lethal virus.

Baker writes an angry memo informing Ochsner that this type of experimentation on human subjects is unethical. He immediately terminates her from the project and threatens her life if she has any further contact with Oswald. By this point the two of them have become lovers. Although Baker returns to Florida with her husband, she and Oswald make plans to leave their respective spouses and elope to Mexico after Oswald smuggles the fatal virus into Cuba.

Oswald Realizes He is Being Set Up

Oswald, meanwhile learns that his assignment is changed, that he is only to transport the virus to Mexico City and hand it off to a second courier. When his contact fails to show in Mexico City, he makes a desperate attempt to get a Cuban visa to deliver the virus himself, which is denied. He is now genuinely concerned about his own safety. The information he possesses makes him a clear liability to the people he works for unless they have a specific use for him. He becomes convinced, at this point, that they are trying to set him up to look like a pro-Castro agent in the plot against JFK.

Despite the promise he has been given to be transferred to Mexico City, his superiors order him to return to Dallas to spy on “right wing nuts” interested in killing Kennedy. He and Baker continue to maintain phone contact, using pay phones and a complex phone wheel they use to synchronize call scheduling. On October 19th, Oswald is invited to join the assassination conspiracy – planned for three alternative locations – Miami (a right-wing informant blows the whistle on the Miami plot and Kennedy forgoes a motorcade to be transported by helicopter), Chicago and Dallas. Oswald plays along, believing he can pass details of the conspiracy to trusted FBI agents who can foil the assassination attempts.

Following the records release under the 1992 JFK Act, it was learned that a tip-off regarding an assassination threat caused the secret service to cancel JFK’s November 2nd visit to Chicago. Oswald told Baker back in 1963 that he was responsible for this tip off. On November 16, he told her that he also passed information regarding the Dallas assassination plot to an FBI contact. Oswald’s wife Marina later confirmed this in a letter to the Chairman of the JFK Assassination Records Review Board. According to an FBI clerk Garrison interviewed during his investigation, the FBI contact telexed the information to the Dallas FBI field office, where it mysteriously vanished.

Validating Baker's Story

Edward Haslam, author of Dr. Mary’s Monkey, has exhaustively investigated her story and defends her for the following reasons:

1. He has confirmed her identity and her claims about doing cancer research in high school through the microfilm file at The Bradenton Herald, while employed there managing their market research.

2. He has sighted the W2 slip she provides for her period of employment at the Reily Coffee Company and confirms that they are genuine.

3. He has personally interviewed Anna Lewis, wife of CIA agent David Lewis, who worked with Oswald, Jack Martin and Guy Bannister in New Orleans’ anti-Castro movement. She confirms that Baker and Oswald were romantically involved in 1963.

I found this book quite convincing and very well documented. It was affecting to read of Judyth's horror at seeing the man she loved shot down by another man she had met in New Orleans. Research by experts on the assassination have established that Lee was framed and that the efforts to implicate him to the exclusion of other parties were based upon fabricated evidence, including the so-called "back yard" photographs. It is clear that justice has not been done to Lee, Judyth, or the American people.

* To protect her five children, Baker kept silent about her involvement with Oswald until her last child left home in 1998, she broke her silence. Her revelations on the Internet provoked a firestorm of controversy, both from pro-conspiracy researchers and Warren Commission diehards, who accuse her of fabricating her story from the wealth of detail on the JFK assassination circulating on the Internet.

Judyth Vary Baker maintains a blog at http://judythbaker.blogspot.com/ And fifteen interviews with her can be found on-line at JamesFetzerNews.

The History of MIT's Blatant Suppression of Cold Fusion

2011-12-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

The History of MIT's Blatant Suppression of Cold Fusion

A stunning report written by the late Eugene Mallove details the efforts of professors, researchers, and even the former President of MIT to squash cold fusion at all costs. If you have any doubt that Pons and Fleischmann had enemies desperately trying to discredit them, this article will erase it! A funeral party or wake to mock cold fusion was held by biased hot fusion scientists at MIT before their experiment to replicate Pons and Fleischmann's results was even complete!

The History of MIT's Blatant Suppression of Cold Fusion

By Hank Mills with Sterling D. Allan
Pure Energy Systems News

Due to the fact that commercially-ready cold fusion technologies like Andrea Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) exist and can produce kilowatts of power, I'm not too interested in previous systems from years ago that could only produce a couple watts of power (or less). However, I am very interested in the events that took place immediately after the birth of Cold Fusion in 1989, when Pons and Fleischmann announced the existence of their technology to the world. Although cold fusion systems at the time were not ready for the market place, they proved the effect was real -- a fact the establishment could not allow the public to accept.

Immediately after the announcement was made, the "mainstream" scientific community went on the attack. The late Eugene Mallove was in the middle of it, being employed at MIT in the news office -- before resigning in protest of the institution's misconduct. In a featured article for Infinite Energy Magazine, Mallove detailed exactly what took place that led to his resignation, and the depth of hatred that many professors at MIT had for Pons and Fleischmann's work. The article titled, "MIT and Cold Fusion: A Special Report" also looks at how the replication performed by the institution's Plasma Fusion Center actually did produce positive results, how data from the experiment was altered by unknown individuals at least twice, and how the hot fusion scientists in charge of such tests were far too biased to conduct proper research.

The article is the most detailed piece of documentation I have ever seen in regards to the early years of the war against cold fusion. If you think the suppression Pons and Fleischmann faced was bad, you don't have a clue until you have read this article.

The Replication Attempt

To start with, those in charge of the replication attempt were members of the MIT Plasma Fusion Center. Their work with hot fusion Tokamak brought the university many millions of dollars in funding from the government, and maintained their job security. If cold fusion were to be accepted as a real phenomenon, it could have made hot fusion research appear to be near worthless.

The question in the minds of representatives in Washington, DC would have been, "Why should the taxpayers finance the construction of giant reactors to experiment with hot fusion reactions that produce nuclear waste and lethal amounts of radioactivity, when cold fusion research only requires a small fraction of the funding, while producing no waste and little radioactivity?"

In the minds of the MIT professors, such as MIT Plasma Fusion Center Director Ronald R. Parker, that question could never be allowed to cross the minds of those that paid for their employment. So in an effort to belittle cold fusion research so no one would take it serious, the members of his department (including some scientists from others) took every opportunity they could to attack Pons and Fleischmann. For example, consider how....

A funeral party or "Wake for Cold Fusion" was held by the Plasma Fusion Center, before their replication test of Pons and Fleischmann's setup was even complete. They held another such party afterwards.

Mugs belittling cold fusion were given out by Ron Parker, the head of the MIT hot fusion research group, who was supposed to be doing serious research to determine if cold fusion was a reality or not. The mugs read, "The Utah University: Department of Fusion Confusion" and had mocking instructions for cold fusion on the back.

Ron Parker would use the test results to discredit cold fusion, while at a celebration of the death of cold fusion stated to Eugene Mallove (after being shown evidence in support for cold fusion) stated that the data from the MIT replication was "worthless."

How examination of the data from MIT's replication showed obvious evidence of tampering. In fact, the corrected data showed excess heat. Yet it was still used to discredit cold fusion research for many years.

How the former President of MIT, Charles Vest, refused to order an investigation into how the Plasma Fusion Center handled the replication, and their obviously unscientific behavior -- such as partying for the death of something instead of doing unbiased research. Even worse, years later he signed onto a Department of Energy report stating that cold fusion did not deserve funding for research, yet hot fusion deserved millions of additional dollars and was a "bargain."

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest were ignored from the very start. For example, those who had the strongest need for cold fusion to be proven not to work (hot fusion scientists), were tasked with the replication of the effect. It would be like giving a cigarette company the order to conduct a study on the reality of lung cancer, or the lumber industry the job of determining the usefulness of industrial hemp. What the hot fusion scientists were going to say was obvious!

How some scientists were so closed minded they stated that if cold fusion was real, Pons and Fleischmann should be dead from radiation poisoning. In addition, some scientists went so far as to personally attack them. In one case, a scientist stated that even if a thousand tests showed excess heat, that the results would not vindicate Pons and Fleischmann.

“Words to Eat”

MIT Professor Ronald George Ballinger may hold the all time record for making a foolish statement against cold fusion. He wrote in 1991: “It would not matter to me if a thousand other investigations were to subsequently perform experiments that see excess heat. These results may all be correct, but it would be an insult to these investigators to connect them with Pons and Fleischmann.”

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the article is how Ronald R. Parker and Ronald G. Ballinger had a phone call with Nick Tate of the Boston Herald in 1989. They were talking to him about a potential story about cold fusion, hoping that he would write a hit piece. In their conversation, which is transcribed in the article, Parker uses the fraud word in his description of their work. He also talks about how he is setting up another "blast" against cold fusion with Bob Bazell, a reporter with NBC.

When Tate reported in the Boston Herald on May 1 that the MIT scientists had called Pons and Fleishmann's work a "possible fraud" and "scientific schlock", Pons and Fleishmann were viciously attacked at the meeting of the American Physical Society. In a retrospective piece written in 1991, Tate asserted that: "Some say those comments set the tone for the national criticism of the Utah work that followed."

Meanwhile, when Tate's article in the Boston Herald revealed that Parker had described Pons and Fleishmann's work as being a "possible fraud" and "scientific schlock", Parker rushed to deny he had made such statements. Probably, he realized that in his rush to discredit cold fusion he had crossed the line, and committed slander. In order to avoid possible legal repercussions, in a media advisory from the MIT News Office, Parker specifically denied making such assertions to Tate during their telephone conversation. However, Tate had recorded the phone call, and therefore had rock solid evidence that Parker had made those statements. Years later, Tate allowed Eugene Mallove to listen to the recording, which revealed the truth about what was said. It was too late, the damage to cold fusion's reputation was done.

Where things stand

In summary, Mallove's article paints a damning picture of MIT scientists and professors hell-bent on discrediting cold fusion. Out of desperation to protect hot fusion research, they went so far as to tell blatant lies, alter data, hurl personal insults, conduct celebrations of the "death" of cold fusion, and organize journalists to write hit pieces to try and dismiss Pons and Fleischmann's work in the public eye. Then the leadership of MIT turned away and ignored the misconduct and potentially criminal behavior, even when they were specifically alerted to it. Years later, these same individuals (working in other positions with the DOE and DOD) continued to promote the idea that cold fusion was "garbage."

If you want to know the TRUTH about why it has taken twenty plus years for a commercial cold fusion technology to be developed, you should read this article. It is a tragedy beyond measure that an institution like MIT would allow such inappropriate behavior. Everyone involved has blood on their hands from all the people on this planet that have died due to the suppression of this technology. Literally, due to their suppression of cold fusion, children have needlessly starved, millions have suffered dehydration due to a lack of clean water, the environment has been trashed, and the global economy has been almost destroyed.

If the suppression of cold fusion by MIT had never happened, we might not even have an energy crisis today!

And this is but one of many such stories about the suppression saga from 1989.

The suppression from back then has had phenomenal staying power due to the brainwashing that pronounced "cold fusion" to be "junk science," no matter what, despite thousands of replications worldwide, with several making significant gains toward marketplace viability, and the E-Cat actually reaching the marketplace on October 28 of this year with a 1 MW unit. So now, when people attack Andrea Rossi's E-Cat, it's hard to tell whether they are acting as a function of that brainwashing, or as a present-day disinformation agent, or if they have honest misgivings of a scientific basis.

Gratefully, Rossi keeps moving forward despite these negative statements.

A few individuals in the mainstream are coming around and waking up to the reality of cold fusion, like NASA's Dennis Bushnell who claims cold fusion is the number one most promising alternative energy technology on the planet. However, to protect hot fusion research, protect the status quo, and to keep the public from realizing how the scientific community suppressed cold fusion, he calls the phenomena LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions). In addition, he claims there is no fusion in cold fusion, in order to try and make the technology seem more mundane, and more acceptable.

There were enemies of mankind in 1989 that wanted to prevent the proliferation of cold fusion, and there are still such enemies today. Reading about how cold fusion research was attacked from the very start can help us prepare for attacks from these in the future.

We cannot let greedy, selfish, and power-hungry monsters and their countless minions suppress cold fusion for another twenty years or more. There are too many lives at risk. Simply put, the future of our civilization is at stake.

Hank Mills has contributed a large number of stories to Pure Energy Systems web site at PES.com.

Sterling D. Allan is the Founder and CEO of PES Network, Inc., and of the New Energy Congress.

Is the "War on Drugs" as phony as the "War on Terror"?

2011-12-28T12:32:00.000-08:00

by Jim Fetzer

The former Chief Psychiatrist for the FBI, Alen J. Salerian, M.D., of The Salerian Center for Neuroscience & Pain (formerly, The Washington Center for Psychiatry), Washington, DC, has been blowing the whistle on false statistics being disseminated by the Center of Disease Control (CDC), which are being used to justify the “War on Drugs”, which criminal elements within the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) appear to be enforcing by conducting their own “War on Physicians” who are attempting to change the nation’s drug laws for the benefit of the people. The physicians who have dedicate themselves to exposing this charade and to doing something about it by creating “The Pain Relief Network” on-line and by organizing “The Pain Brain Festival” in Washington, D.C., have not been dealt with kindly. Indeed, there is reason to believe that, this past week end, some of them may have been killed.

The exposure of these false statistics threatens to undermine the “War on Drugs”, which undoubtedly would have the effect of encouraging the legalization of drugs, reduce if not evaporate the vast profits accrued through the sale of illegal drugs, and thereby diminish if not completely destroy the wealth and power of the major drug cartels, including of the CIA, widely regarded as the largest drug dealing organization the world has ever known, which appears to me to have led to the harassment and even death of physicians across America whose only offense has been to assist their patients in coping with pain, where, if treated as a medical rather than a criminal problem, could be dealt with relatively easily and cheaply and improve the lives of millions worldwide. But it also would dramatically reduce the profits that are derived from the “War on Drugs”, which, alas, appears to be as phony as the “War on Terror”. Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds, who died in a plane crash this past weekend, were members of the Board of Physicians Against Cruelty to Humans with Imperfect Brains. Byers was also the organization's legal counsel.

The Contrived Statistics

Alen J. Salerian, M.D.

From recent correspondence between me and Dr. Salerian, whose credentials are impeccable, it is obvious that he, too, has become a target of DEA's dirty war on doctors. On 3 March 2011, his home in Bethesda, Maryland, where I have stayed during visits with Alen and his wife, Judy, was raided by a heavily armed force of DEA agents wearing bullet-proof vests and brandishing automatic weapons, who intimidated his wife and daughter, Chloe, ransacking his home and taking his computers on the fabricated ground that his bank account reflected a $100,000 transaction, which was for medical equipment but which the agents claimed was for dealing drugs, which is quite a stretch for a man who was the Chief Psychiatrist for the FBI.

The real reasons, however, appear to be much different, where Dr. Salerian has been doing everything he can to expose the fact that, over the past 10 years, 2,000 doctors lost their licenses and were forced to exile or jail. Sadly, DEA's dirty campaign is based upon false CDC statistics. And, in collaboration with other dedicated physicians, he has been promoting awareness of more effective ways to cope with pain, which would have the consequence of promoting the legalization of drugs, once the treatment of pain using drugs is properly viewed as a medical problem rather than a criminal offense. Here are some of the most important points he makes about the fabrication of evidence:

* The CDC wrongly and unscientifically claims that the U.S. has a major problem with a drug epidemic that is killing all of us. The numbers, however, suggest just the opposite. We do not have an epidemic of prescribed narcotic-associated overdoses, deaths and epidemics. Because of CDC’s misleading statistics, even the New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major media outlets have been broadcasting governmental misrepresentations of this phantom epidemic.

* Not a week passes when a group of pain doctors are arrested with their photos broadcast around the world as they are being chained and sent to prison with ridiculous allegations of drug trafficking. On 20 November 2011, for example, Dr. Michael Stanley Johnston and some 18 other doctors and pharmacists in Georgia were arrested and offices raided.

* Statistics reveal that in 2008, which is the last year CDC reviewed the numbers, the number of deaths from prescribed narcotics was 7,500, which represents 0.2% of total deaths and one-third less than motorcycle deaths and about the same or less than accidental drowning and suffocation-related deaths.

A pie chart reveals the relative infrequency of deaths from prescribed narcotics as opposed to deaths from other causes:

Are they Accidental?

Are these CDC errors accidental? Unfortunately, the CDC has consistently disseminated wrongful information. The message from CDC, our guardian of public health with vibrant drawings, charts and numbers, have been alarming. "My God, I can't believe doctors would be so irresponsible," Chloe, my daughter, uttered in response to the November 2011 issue of CDC's “Policy Impact Alert“ about prescription painkiller overdoses. The headlines of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control were probing on their face: “What do we know of painkiller deaths?” and “What does CDC recommend?” Two unmistakable CDC messages were therein conveyed:

A. A deadly epidemic of pain medications, ODs and deaths evidenced by the tripling death rates in the last 10 years.

B. The culprits were mostly bad doctors prescribing too much and too often pain medications.

This CDC publication appears to be consistent with the message of the New England Journal of Medicine, 18 November 2010, authored by Susan Okie, "A Flood of Opioids, a Rising Tide of Deaths," and similar stories that have appeared in The Washington Post April and November 2011 and in The New York Times April 2011. The truth and CDC message clash. The following is the reality:

* Prescription pain medications are not associated with 99.9% of U.S. deaths totaling 2.4 million in 2007, which is consistent with the total number of 12,000 deaths attributable to painkillers. Prescription pain medications, moreover, are not associated with 94% of 194,000 manmade sudden deaths or human behavior associated deaths, where these numbers are actually drawn from CDC's own statistics, which means that the CDC’s own data, properly understood, refutes the CDC’s conclusions.

* CDC publications, moreover, refer to methadone as addictive and dangerous. Neither is true. Methadone by nature and with its well-documented long half-life is not associated with euphoric influence and, in general, is not subject to abuse. However, its beneficial effects help people with withdrawal symptoms and assist millions who are struggling with addictions to morphine-like substances.

What is going on?

Collectively, the CDC errors are consistent with a major misinterpretation of statistics with a profoundly erroneous and negative impact on Americans who suffer from various painful mental and physical conditions. And this is actually the important point because the same month that CDC publishes and DEA reinforces the November 2011 message of an epidemic devastating United States, a branch of NIH, the Institute of Medicine, has an alert: 116 million Americans have been untreated partly due to an artificially caused shortage of pain doctors.

DEA's war has been based upon CDC's statistics disseminated to the New England Journal of Medicine, New York Times and Washington Post. It is easy to manipulate statistics and to declare phantom wars. Or phantom victories as it happened in London in 1854 during the dreadful cholera epidemic. The determination of the epidemic was wrongly attributed to the removal of a pump on Broad Street in London. Later a more careful analysis would reveal that the ending of the epidemic had nothing to do with the removal of the pump because the decline of deaths had preceded September 8, 1854 when the pump was removed.

There are a lot of lessons to learn from London and CDC errors and a lot of innocent victims to save such as the doctors recently arrested in Atlanta, Georgia some 18 of them or another group of doctors and pharmacists arrested in Florida, some 25 of them earlier. Both groups were accused of narcotic trafficking and contributing to this deadly epidemic. If we study the numbers carefully, it is not the doctors, but CDC chiefs and DEA bosses who properly should be targets of public inquiry and Justice Department investigation. It should be borne in mind that, in the last analysis, this is not about blame or investigations. This is about medical science, practice in accord with the Hippocratic oath and what is good for people to create a better world. Public integrity is of essence of our survival.

The Pain/Brain Festival

One of the most stunning indications that something is drastically wrong was manifest by the subversion—which might more accurately be described as sabotaging—of a public event, “Festival Pain Brain”, which was to last for exactly five minutes and one second on 4 September 2011 in front of the Lincoln Memorial. This event had been approved by the White House and the District of Columbia and was expected to draw 20,000 or more to recognize the importance of alleviating pain to enhance human health and well-being around the world. But apparently powerful forces were at work subverting this event by deploying multiple methods that are not normally features of events in Washington, D.C.

The actions that were taken to sabotage this event were extraordinary: 10,000 butterflies that had been ordered for this occasion did not arrive; busloads of citizens who came from distant locations to participate were intercepted and not allowed to enter the city; the tires of the car that was leading a procession to the Lincoln Memorial were slashed. All of this was truly unexpected for a five minute and one second event to acknowledge the important of the reduction of pain. But the DEA has also assaulted and harassed Vanessa Mullins, M.D., who along with Alen Salerian was responsible for organizing this event, where DEA agents broke down the door to her home and arrested her for having prescription narcotics prescribed by Dr. Salerian in her possession, which led her incarceration overnight as (what I take to have been) an obvious act of intimidation intended to discourage her from participating in any program of this kind. More severe consequences, I fear, may have been meted out to others who have not “gotten the message”.

The Columbus Plan Crash

A plane crash near Columbus, OH, brought about the deaths of Kevin Byers, 54, his mother, Eudora Beyers, 78, and Siobhan Reynolds, 50. Kevin was piloting the plane, which crashed near the Vinton County Airport. “According to Kevin Byers' Columbus law firm's website, he defended physicians, dentists, pharmacists and nurses against state licensing boards, federal agencies and private practice overseers. He also represented pain patients who were having difficulty receiving appropriate treatment. Reynolds was an advocate for chronic pain patients and formed the advocacy group Pain Relief Network.” When I contacted Jeff Barron of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, who wrote this story, he advised me that he had no additional information about the details of the crash, but suggested that I contact the Jackson, OH, office of the Ohio State Patrol. I spoke with the outpost commander, who stated it had been turned over the FAA.

Kevin Byers and Siobhan Reynolds were founding member of Doctors for Equal Rights for Brain Pain, which Alen Salerian founded to promote equal rights for people with mental and physical pain, of which I am also an honorary founding member. Byers and Reynolds were Dr. Salerian's lawyers. Another article from KAKE News in Kansas, mentioned that the plane was approaching the runway but ended up along a road parallel to the airport, while focusing on Siobhan Reynolds. According to KAKE News,

For the last decade, Reynolds had worked as an advocate for patients suffering chronic pain and the doctors who attempted to treat them with high-dose prescription pain medications. She began her crusade after her husband, a chronic pain patient, died while moving across country seeking a doctor to threat his condition. Reynolds founded the Pain Relief Network to help support others who she believed were victim's of undertreatment of pain.

Kevin Byers

When Dr. Schneider and his wife Linda were charged with over-prescribing pain pills, Reynolds moved to Kansas to publicize the case. Reynolds' actions prompted federal investigators to open a criminal investigation into her and the Pain Relief Network.

Reynolds lost the case and was forced to release her personal communication with doctors, patients and attorneys. The ruling eventually led her to dissolve the Pain Relief Network.

Their report provides a text-book illustration of the “War on Physicians” that Dr. Salerian has been attempting to publicize. The most telling article about here death, however, comes from American Thinker, which included a passage from an article in Reason Magazine:

She began her advocacy following the death of her husband. She believed that his death was hastened by the inexplicable rules and regulations governing the dispensing of pain medication. She defended doctors who defied the government to prescribe opiates to dying patients in order to relieve their agony. This got her in trouble with a vindictive prosector, Tanya Treadway, who carried out a grand jury investigation of her organization, the Pain Relief Network.

Siobhan Reynolds

What was it that so offended Treadway? Reynolds organized protests in response to Treadway's prosecution of Kansas doctor Stephen Schneider. She talked to his patients and urged them to tell their stories. Her group sponsored a billboard in Wichita that proclaimed "Dr. Schneider never killed anyone." It produced a documentary that dramatized the conflict between drug control and pain control. In short, Reynolds vigorously exercised her First Amendment rights, and she did so in a way that discomfited people in power, highlighting the human impact of their decisions. Treadway's effort to intimidate Reynolds is a tribute to her courage, persistence, and effectiveness.

No one is saying that these issues are not complicated and that dealing honestly and forthrightly with them isn't fraught with the possibility of unintended consequences. But the relief of pain, if viewed as a medical problem and not a criminal problem, is relatively easy, cheap, and would improve the quality of life of millions around the world.

Based upon my own investigation of the plane crash that took the life of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and gave control of the Senate to the GOP, which enabled George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to pursue their “War on Terror” by invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, the use of a plane crash to take out your political opponents is virtually fail-safe. Unless the crash site is declared to be a crime scene, it cannot be investigated as the scene of a crime. In the case of the Wellstone crash, the Attorney General, who was then John Ashcroft, simply declined to declare it a crime scene, where the NTSB only investigated non-criminal hypotheses about the cause of the crash, namely: the weather, the plane, and the pilots.

As I have explained, although the NTSB never considered the alternatives, such as the use of a small bomb, a gas canister, or a high-tech weapon, the evidence substantiates that this was a deliberate take-down, where in that case a high-tech weapon was involved. The stakes revolving around the “War on Drugs” are no less serious than those revolving around the “War on Terror”. We have been conned before and this looks to me like another instance in which the CIA bears ultimate responsibility and is using the CDC and the DEA as its instruments of harassment and intimidation—and may now have brought about three more deaths.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota where he taught on its Duluth campus.

After 10 years, US blames Iran for 9/11

2011-12-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

After 10 years, US blames Iran for 9/11
Sat Dec 24, 2011 1:21PM GMT

Interview with James Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Madison.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/217477.html

A US judge has signed a judgment that finds Iran, the Taliban and al-Qaeda responsible for 9/11, counter to the FBI's official reports relating to the incident.

Press TV talks with James Fetzer, founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth in Madison about why Iran has only now been included in the list ten years after the fact and why Saudi Arabia was excluded from the list even though 15 of the alleged highjackers were from Saudi Arabia according to the FBI list. Mr. Fetzer outlines numerous facts and references that indicate a strong involvement by Israel in 9/11, but Israel is also not listed on the US default judgment. What follows is a newly corrected transcript of the interview.

Press TV: This filing and leveling of charges against Iran in a US court seems to be a habit for the US recently. To begin with - Is it legal to charge another country without representation?

James Fetzer: It's of dubious legality and the finding is quite preposterous on its face. When President Ahmadinejad addressed the UN and called for a new investigation suggesting that the US and Israel were involved in 9/11, the New York Times was besieged with letters claiming that al-Qaeda was responsible. So who was it - Iran or al-Qaeda?

Fifteen of the alleged highjackers were from Saudi Arabia - So why not Saudi Arabia? Well... they're our friends - Let's blame it on Saddam Hussein. Even George W. Bush would eventually admit that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Independent investigations by the Senate and The Pentagon concluded that there was no collusion between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

The FBI would eventually admit that it had no hard evidence tying Osama Bin Laden to 9/11. The 9/11 Commission report is an elaborate fabrication. Elias Davidsson has shown there's no proof any of the hijackers were aboard any of those planes. David Ray Griffin has shown that all of the phone calls from the four flights were faked. Colonel George Nelson US Air Force (retired) has observed that of the millions of uniquely identifiable component parts from each of those planes, the US is yet to produce even one.

Two of those flights were not even scheduled to fly that day - flights 11 and 77. And I have FAA registration data showing that the planes corresponding to flights 93 and 175 were not deregistered until 28 September 2005. Which raises the question - How can planes that were not in the air have crashed? And, how can planes that have crashed still be in the air four years later?

Indeed, Pilots for 9/11 Truth has now confirmed that flights 93 and 175 were far away from the locations of their alleged crashes at the time on September 11th.

The situation is a manifest absurdity.

Press TV: Maybe Iran should have you represent them in this New York court. Do you think that with all the evidence you just cited, they'll admit it?

James Fetzer: There's an evasion of responsibility here. In fact, multiple investigations by independent journalists have revealed that Israel, the MOSSAD, played a key role on 9/11 that includes research by Alan Sabrosky, Christopher Bollyn, Wayne Madsen; there are websites devoted to this, 'Rediscover 9/11' for example. Look up "the dancing Israelis"; look up "Urban Moving Systems"; look up "ICTS" and you'll find ample indication that Israel was profoundly involved in 9/11.

Press TV: Let's go with the line our other guest is saying about Israel in terms of wanting regional countries to be added to this list and also at the same time, from what I understood, for them to have friction between each other - throwing Saudi Arabia against Iran, pitting themselves against each other through this court case. Do you agree with that?

James Fetzer: Yes I do agree with that and the representatives of the American Enterprise Institute have now acknowledged that the issue with Iran has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, but rather with it having an increasingly strong sphere of influence in the Middle East.

Israeli newspaper are publishing that this court decision transforms our understanding of 9/11, but that's complete and utter rubbish.

Steve Pieczenik who was a high official of the government in five different administrations has observed that he was told by a high-ranking military officer, whom I believe to have been General Richard Myers, that 9/11 was an inside job and that Osama Bin Laden died in December of 2001.

At some point these lies and charades have to come to an end. The US is making itself look idiotic by presenting all of these claims; pinning all of these tails on the donkey; all of these countries. We might as well have heard that Libya was responsible for 9/11 - or maybe next it will be Russia or China. The situation is ridiculous.

James Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

DR. MARY'S MONKEY Reviewed by Stuart Bramhall

2011-12-22T12:17:00.000-08:00

Dr. Mary’s Monkey
Edward T. Haslam (2007 TrineDay)

How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics

Review by Stuart Bramhall

Dr Mary’s Monkey is far more important for the light it sheds on the current epidemic of breast and other soft tissue cancers than on the JFK assassination. Haslam’s book provides a detailed history of how the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines administered to three million baby boomers were accidentally contaminated with a cancer causing monkey virus known as Simian Virus 40 (SV-40). It also describes the massive cover-up initiated by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and American Cancer Society, who continued administering the vaccine after they learned it was contaminated.

Wild Claims of Cancer by Injection

Dr. Mary’s Monkey also lends credibility to Jack Ruby’s claim that injection with a cancer causing virus was responsible for the “galloping” lung cancer that developed suddenly in 1967, after he was granted a new trial, and killed him within three months. For many years, assassination researchers have claimed that Bob Marley developed “galloping” brain cancer from a nail covered with cancer-causing viruses (his second assassination attempt).

The book, with a forward by long time assassination researcher Jim Marrs, the author of Crossfire (1989), is essentially a memoir, augmented with detailed documentary evidence. It skillfully interweaves the history of SV-40 with new information about the New Orleans right wing anticommunist and anti-Castro community Lee Harvey Oswald worked with in 1963, when pay slips and other records reveal he was on the payroll of both the FBI and CIA. Haslam focuses considerable attention on David Ferrie, the CIA pilot played by Joe Pesci in Oliver Stone’s "JFK". who helped organize Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs invasion and other anti-Castro activities. Haslam establishes that it was Ferrie, one of Oswald’s long time friends and mentors, who first recruited him into intelligence work when he joined Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol troop as a high school student.

Why Did Ferrie Keep 100s of Mice?

Haslam’s memoir also clears up a mystery that has troubled assassination researchers for 35 years – namely the discovery, by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, that Ferrie was performing medical research on hundreds of mice he kept in his apartment (Garrison describes this in his 1967 Playboy interview http://www.jfklancer.com/Garrison4.html). Garrison, the only prosecutor to indict any of the assassination co-conspirators (CIA-contractor Clay Shaw), discovered the mice when Ferrie died suddenly under mysterious circumstances, just as Garrison was about to arrest him.

Haslam’s detailed endnotes refer mainly to Warren Commission evidence released under the 1992 JFK Records Act and more recent Freedom of Information Act records; the secret files of ex-FBI agent Guy Bannister (who also had an off-the-books assignment in the anti-Castro movement); interviews with witnesses who knew Dr Mary Sherman, who was conducting secret SV-40 research at Tulane at the time of her murder; the official police report: a detailed architectural analysis of the New Orleans US Public Hospital (where the linear accelerator used to “mutate” SV-40 viruses was kept); and detailed consultations with a variety of scientific and medical experts.

Haslam’s New Orleans Background

Haslam, who grew up in New Orleans, first learned that scientists at Tulane were secretly researching cancer-causing monkey viruses while he was still in high school. His father, an orthopedic surgeon who taught at Tulane, was a friend of Dr. Mary Sherman and Haslam met her as a child. His high school class also discussed Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw and efforts by the FBI and CIA to derail it. A class member who was the son of the New Orleans coroner shared details of the case that never appeared in the papers.

From early on, Haslam, a highly successful advertising executive, believed there was a link between the white mice Garrison found in Ferrie’s apartment in 1967, Sherman’s research into cancer-causing monkey viruses and her brutal 1964 murder. However he didn’t begin his formal investigation into her death until 1992, when he became concerned that the irradiation of monkey viruses at Tulane might have accidentally created Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Structurally the AIDS virus is very similar to Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), another common monkey virus.

SV-40 and the Current Cancer Epidemic

SV-40, the monkey virus Dr. Mary Sherman, David Ferrie and a woman named Judyth Vary Baker (who describes her romantic involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald in her 2010 memoir Me & Lee) were experimenting with, was first discovered in 1957. Originally known as “polyoma virus” (referring to its ability to cause several types of tumors in small mice), it was first identified by Drs Bernice Eddy and Sarah Stuart at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1960 Eddy discovered that the monkey kidney cells used to prepare the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines were contaminated with SV-40 (see * below).

Instead of withdrawing the vaccine, the NIH (as they often do with whistle blowing scientists), chose to destroy her career. A year later two other virologists replicated Eddy’s findings, and two polio vaccine manufacturers voluntarily withdrew their vaccine. Although NIH allegedly took steps to ensure that batches that came to market after 1963 were free of SV040, they continued to inoculate millions of children with the contaminated vaccine. To avoid “public hysteria,” they chose not to alert parents of the cancer risk.

The New Orleans Medical “Manhattan Project”

Haslam believes the top secret experiments Sherman, Ferrie and Baker conducted in 1963 involved irradiation of SV-40 virus in the hope a creating a biological warfare agent – a mutated virus that could cause “galloping” cancer, which kills its victims within weeks rather than months. Following irradiation, Sherman injected the mutated viruses into thousands of mice. It was Ferrie’s and Baker’s job to sacrifice the mice, dissect the tumors and identify and extract viruses that seemed the most virulent.

Who Was Alton Ochsner?

The project chief was a surgeon, staunch anticommunist and former head of the American Cancer Society named Dr Alton Ochsner. Ochsner was also founder and president of the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), which produced and distributed anticommunist radio programming aimed at Latin America. The financing for INCA came from Oschner himself and other New Orleans doctors and business people, including the CIA contractor Clay Shaw, who ran the New Orleans International Trade Mart and who district attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted as a JFK assassination co-conspirator in 1967.

Freedom of Information Act files Haslam obtained on Ochsner reveal he had a longstanding relationship with the US military and the FBI and other government agencies. The records refer to a “Sensitive Position” Haslam held with the FBI between 1957-59 and indicate the FBI released him in 1959 (the year Castro’s revolutionaries overthrew the totalitarian dictator Batista) to take another “Sensitive Position” with an “undisclosed agency.” Haslam believes the latter was a kind of medical Manhattan Project (the name of the top secret project that created the atomic bomb). He also believes that the linear accelerator Sherman used to irradiate viruses was secretly installed at the New Orleans US Public Health Hospital with funding from one of the CIA-front organizations that financed the paramilitary activities of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles Ferrie and Oswald worked with.

He believes the original mission of Ochsner’s project was to find a vaccine against SV-40 (similar to the recent vaccine Gardisil), to prevent an epidemic of soft tissue cancers in children exposed to it via the polio vaccine. This is what Baker was told when she originally went to work for him. Somehow, though Haslam doesn’t make this clear, it was transformed into a project to create a biologic warfare agent to assassinate Castro.

The Role of Lee Harvey Oswald

Oswald (on both the CIA and FBI payroll in 1963) comes into the story as a chaperone for Baker, who was a girl genius and only 19 when Oschner recruited her. Oswald was also assigned to be the courier who would smuggle the fatal virus into Cuba. This meant Baker had to train him to look after the special culture medium that kept it alive.

Although Haslam’s original intention was to identify Dr Mary Sherman’s killer, in the end he concludes that she most likely died from accidental electrocution while operating the extremely operating the extremely high voltage linear accelerator. The top secret nature of her biological warfare research made it essential to conceal the circumstances of her death. Thus her body was secretly moved to her apartment and the death made to look like a murder.

* About SV-40: Haslam devotes an entire chapter to the likely role SV-40 exposure, via the polio vaccine, has likely played in the current epidemic of soft tissue cancers. He cites National Cancer Institute Data showing a 50% increase between 1973 and 1988 in skin, lymphoma, prostate and breast cancer. He also argues that the millions of dollars wasted finding a lethal virus to kill Castro would have been far better spent on developing a vaccine against SV-40, similar to Gardisil, the vaccine used to prevent cervical cancer by suppressing papillomavirus.

There is a website (www.sv40foundation.org) devoted to the collation of SV-40 research. Except for a rare cancer known mesothelioma and a type of brain cancer, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) still claim that “more research is needed” to establish a definitive link between SV-40 and human cancers. However for the most part, their studies have the same methodological flaws (they use the wrong control group for comparison) as their research into low level fluoride toxicity. None of them take account of strong presumptive evidence that SV-40 (which is extremely contagious and transmitted via poor hand washing, shared cooking/bathing/toilet facilities, sex and maternal-fetal transmission) has infected the entire population of countries that mass inoculated their children. Instead they merely compare individuals who received the polio vaccine between 1955 and 1963 with those who didn’t. To be scientifically valid, CDC epidemiological studies would need to compare current cancer rates with pre-vaccine rates or with cancer rates in countries (Austria, Turkey and Finland) that didn’t give the Salk and Sabine vaccine.

SV-40 appears to induce cancer by facilitating the action of other more aggressive carcinogens (for example cigarette tars, estrogen or ultraviolet light). Thus people infected with SV-40 won’t automatically develop cancer. This will depend on a number of variables, including their natural immunity and other exposures.

Libya elicits Lawlessness in Geopolitics

2011-12-21T11:56:00.000-08:00

Libya elicits lawlessness in geopolitics
Posted on December 21, 2011

Christof Lehmann

Libya elicits the current state of affairs in global geopolitical trends. It can´t be described as anarchy because it is to well organized. The NGO that should safeguard humanity against the purges of wars of aggression and conquest is instrumentalized by warmongers and aggressors. The ICC serves as show trial court for imperial ambitions while neither the less powerful states and their governments, nor the individual citizens who are at the receiving end of the plain good old murder and ma ham in the new disguise of humanitarian initiative, freedom and democracy are without legal remedy of any kind. That is, unless they have another big brother to sponsor them. Anarchy would be far more civilized.

Saif Islam al-Ghadafi

While it is reported that Saif Islam al-Ghadafi was released from court in Zintan, cleared for all charges, the fact remains that the world has very little confirmation. As long as he is not able to speak for himself his life must be considered in danger. Whom would one want to trust? The International Red Cross whom nsnbc busted by providing video evidence for the fact that Red Cross trucks were used to transport RPG´s and ammunitions to the front line in Sirte? A video that showed one of the white, wooden Red Cross crates fall and break open, displaying the instruments of murder? Or should one trust the Zintan brigades who not so long ago would rather have seen Saif dead than alive, and who now are claiming to “protect” him from Belhadj? Or should one trust the corporate media who sold the worlds dazed public a dream of freedom while covering for the greatest war crime of the 21st century? As long as we can not see Saif Islam al-Ghadafi speak on his own behalf while free and at a location of his choice, or as long we can not see a freely chosen legal counsel representing him and speaking on his behalf, he should be considered a prisoner of war, a hostage that has been paraded around as a trophy, and the worlds legal systems are utterly inept to deal with his case.

The International Criminal Court

The ICC very much would like to get a hold on Saif Islam al-Ghadafi, while the case for an investigation into the purported murder of Muammar Ghadafi is stalled. One should make one simple comparison, ask one simple question, to understand the problems with the ICC.

Is the ICC an institution of the United Nations? Was the United Nations by virtue of UNSC Resolution 1973 instrumental in facilitating NATO´s aggression against Libya? Then ask yourself the following question:

If you were to go to family court because you had been charged for paying alimony for a child whose DNA does not match yours, and the judge and prosecutor both repeatedly had raped the mother of the child in question, would you ask for having the judge and prosecutor impeached? Or would you submit to the court and pay alimony for the child of rapists?

The Rome Treaty

The establishment of the Rome Treaty, granting nation states international jurisdiction in cases of the most serious crimes known to mankind must be considered as progress. Insufficient progress. One should argue for many more nations to implement international jurisdiction, but. If there are no safeguards that guaranty that the state, the prosecutor and judge are impartial and have no involvement in the case what so ever, the Rome Treaty is prone to the same abuse as that of the ICC and the family court mentioned above.

Further more, as long as there are no binding bilateral and multilateral security assurances that safeguard small nations from political, economical as well as covert and overt military aggression, should a purported war criminal from a powerful nation like the USA be charged, arrested or tried and imprisoned, what small nation would dare to make use of the Rome Treaty and international jurisdiction. What is needed is a dramatic increase in the number of nations who implement international jurisdiction, and bilateral as well as multilateral solidarity assurances in case of repercussions that are to be expected from a nation that is used to be the undisputed bully on the block.

The people in the streets.

The most tragic factor of it all is that the ordinary citizen, the politically innocent who makes up over 90 % of the victims of modern warfare have no legal remedy, not any, unless a government of a member state of the United Nations will sponsor them.

The world needs legal remedy for the family that lost their home and income, the children who lost their mother and father, the newly wed man or woman who had a life full of hopes and dreams, together, and whose future was blown to atoms by one of those precision guided smart bombs, by fuel air explosions and cluster bombs in Bani Walid and where ever the Empire strikes out. The survivors of countless ethnic cleansings and genocides throughout the world, as that in Tawergha. They have no legal remedy unless some nation finds it opportune to abuse their suffering for their own political agenda by sponsoring a war crimes tribunal. Or until they find a small nation that dares to be next on the political, economic, and military hit list of the powerful. This must not stand.

Justice for all without state sponsorship

We are no longer hurling stones and sticks at one another, and neither are we bound by mechanized mass murder. Humanity has reached a point where a few madmen are able to incinerate humanity and all habitats of other creatures, the flora and the fauna in them. It can not stand and we can not let it stand, that our international legal systems do not follow suit in this awesome development so that we once and for all criminalize the state sanctioned, premeditated mass murder that we call war. It has become too dangerous to be continued. Many social scientists argue that aggression and warfare is part of human etiology, that we inherited it from the chimps. This may be so, but chimps don´t have access to the red button that triggers a nuclear war, all though, but let that be a explained by the cartoonists. Most importantly, chimps still live in the bush, we don´t. Chimps don´t develop medicines like antibiotics. Evolution is not determinism but change. We can either change our aggressive behavior because it has become to dangerous, or perish.

The world needs a legal system with as many nations as possible implementing international jurisdiction for the most serious crimes known to mankind. Trials can no longer take place in nations, with prosecutors and judges who are a party to the conflict. Most prominently and urgently, the demand that a state sponsors a trial for war crimes must be abandoned. If your loved one was murdered by the powerful, if your children were atomized by the powerful, if your existence, your hopes and dreams and your future were destroyed by the powerful, you must be able to demand justice, to attain justice, without begging another bully that he please may help you because it may be of political advantage to himself. This is pornography and not justice, and we can not let it stand.

Dr. Christof Lehmann

About nsnbc

nsnbc is a news-media, established on 28 August 2011 with the purpose to break corporate or state controlled medias embargo on truth. nsnbc publishes articles from journalists, authors and experts from all continents. nsnbc was established and is edited by Dr. Christof Lehmann with the intention to bring you daily no-spin reporting, in depth analysis and opinion from throughout the world. nsnbc is politically and economically independ

From America to Amerika: The End Game

2011-12-12T10:56:00.000-08:00

From America to Amerika: The End Game

Jim Fetzer (with Dennis Cimino)

FEMA Camps across the USA

The brutal suppression of the exercise of freedom of speech and of the right to petition our government for redress of grievances of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement by local and campus police departments, who are clad in riot gear and helmets with masks, appears to be a manifestation of the increasing militarization of police departments at the local, state, and federal level through the creation of “fusion centers” supervised by the Department of Homeland Security. These events, in turn, reflect the increasingly fascistic character of the national police state into which the US has evolved, not least of all as a consequence of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which was justified by the fabricated events of 9/11. Those who have any concerns about the ramifications of the PATRIOT Act in subverting the U.S. Constitution, at this point in time, should have no lingering doubts.

The most striking indication that all is not well turns out to be the activation of FEMA detention facilities across the county upon 72 hours notice, which has been taking place over the past few years, with bids now being taken for vendors to supply these centers. Staffing those facilities represents the final step preparing for their opening along with arranging for vendors contracted to start service with that same 72 hours notice. This has now been confirmed by published Army advertisements for “Internment Specialists”, which, it now appears, is being given legal cover by Senate Bill 1867, better known as the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which authorizes holding American citizens in indefinite detention with no legal rights of representation or due process provisions. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), has now explained on the floor of the Senate that language which would have precluded those conditions from applying to American citizens (in its Section 1031) was removed at the request of the administration, which thus reflects President Obama’s position.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Oo3gzj2oc

Empowering the military to implement these policies represents the death throes of The Posse Comitatus Act, which was meant to to delimit and constrain the powers of local and state governments and law enforcement agencies from the use of federal military personnel to enforce federal laws, which, as brasschecktv has reported, is being done by transforming local and state police agencies into an ersatz “standing army”. Much of this represents the culmination of corrupt practices since World War II, including especial “Operation Paperclip”, by which high-level Nazi intelligence operatives along with research scientists were brought to America and integrated into our intelligence agencies and research operations. While some of us expected Barack Obama to repeal the PATRIOT Act, rescind The Military Commissions Act and close Guantanamo, none of that has come to pass and the situation has only grown more grave. I therefore invited Denis Cimino to join me in addressing these issues from an historical point of view and reflecting on what, if anything, U.S. citizens can do about it.

America: The End Game

Dennis Cimino and Jim Fetzer

NDAA, The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, if you haven’t heard, gives the U.S. military the authority to indefinitely detain without charge and incarcerate any American citizen on U.S. soil, for reasons and on grounds that the military does not have to disclose. It is stunning that this act subverts habeas corpus, originally formalized by an Act of Parliament in England (1679), but which recognized the long standing practice that a citizen cannot be detained for prosecution by a court of law without due process, including the right to know the charges being brought against him and the right to legal representation. If you ask perhaps how this Senate bill and the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor are related, the answer is not difficult to discern for multiple reasons, including the treatment of Japanese-Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor, but especially because of the early warnings involved.

Warning the American people that the American military is coming for them may initially appear to be comparable to the Japanese warning the United States that it was about to attack Pearl Harbor. Were the Japanese aware that we had broken their code, sending President Franklin D. Roosevelt an advisory message warning him of Japan's intention to attack would have been a rather odd thing to have done. Looking at the McCain and Levin amendments to this appropriations bill may bear comparison to Hirohito telling an Adversary who has embargoed his country’s access to oil that he planned to retaliate. (See, for example, DAY OF DECEIT by Robert Stinnett.)

In real life, you would expect the duly informed party to take countermeasures to prevent taking it on the chin, would you not? It is a highly probable response when a viable and verified threat is issued from one party to another to take some form of rather extreme action. In the case of the McCain/Levin amendment, therefore, it may be interpreted as a warning to every U.S. citizen who takes issue with this corrupt, murderous, even illegitimate government in Washington, D.C., no matter where they are here in the United States, that the military now has a hunting license to come to get you and ferret you off to a secret stalag for torture and indefinite incarceration.

In the case of the McCain/Levin amendment, this is a warning to every American citizen who takes issue with this corrupt, murderous, even illegitimate government in Washington, D.C., no matter where they are here in the United States, that the military now has a hunting license to come get you and ferret you off to a secret gulag for torture and indefinite incarceration. As any reasonable person would do when so threatened, you might well begin to prepare for that contingency. You might buy ammunition and make sure your firearms are well serviced and ready. You might create hard-to-penetrate-by-small-arms-fire zones in your basement if you have one, or home. You might go somewhere and get re-familiar with how to safely defend your home from such an incredible, unConstitutional and even treasonous intrusion by the armed forces of our own country.

Internment Camp Services Bid Arrives After NDAA

On 6 December 2011, Kurt Nimmo and Alex Jones reported that infowars.com has received a document originating from KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, that offers details of plans to activate FEMA and U.S. Army camps around the United States. Entitled "Project Overview and Anticipated Project Requirements," the document describes services that KBR is looking to farm out to subcontractors. As they explain, “Services up for bid include catering, temporary fencing and barricades, laundry and medical services, power generation, refuse collection, and other services required for temporary ‘emergency environment’ camps located in five regions of the United States.” This means that the activation of those camps is not a distant event but has become imminent. As they report,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4aQJqzIe8o

KBR's call for FEMA camp service bids [has arrived] soon after the Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which permits the military to detain and interrogate supposed domestic terror suspects [including OWS protesters] in violation of the Fourth Amendment and Posse Comitatus. Section 1031 of the NDAA bill declares the whole of the United States as a "battlefield" and allows American citizens to be arrested on U.S. soil and incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

On Section 1031 of the Non-Detention Act of 1971

The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the nation's oldest and largest Asian American civil and human rights organization, which is not surprising given the treatment Japanese-Americans received in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Thus, “In a letter addressed to Congress, S. Floyd Mori, the national director of JACL, said the NDAA is the first time that Congress has scaled back on the protections provided by the Non-Detention Act of 1971, including Section 1031. Mori said the legislation, if enacted and put into use, would be reminiscent of the unconstitutional indefinite detention of Japanese Americans during World War II.”

KBR Instrumental in Establishing Camps in 2006

As they also explain, “In 2006, KBR was awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security, allegedly to support its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency, Market Watch reported. The contract was effective immediately and provided for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company explained.

Internment / Resettlement Specialist (31E)

The sentence alluding to “the rapid development of new programs”, of course, offers no indication of what those “new programs” might be. But, at this point in time, given the inclusion of language in NDAA 2012 authorizing the apprehension and indefinite detention of American citizens in violation of habeas corpus at the request of the Obama administration, there can be scant reason to doubt that these “new programs” are intended to suppress dissent by the most powerful possible means, no matter how much the Constitution and Bill of Rights are thereby obviated. There are precursors for these events in European history, of course, including the “Enabling Act” passed by the German Parliament at the insistence of then-Chancellor Adolph Hitler. Most U.S. citizens are ignorant of those developments, even though they paved the way for The Third Reich. And others remain infatuated with the notion of “American exceptionalism”, which is a form of mass delusion that “it can’t happen here”. Unfortunately, it not only can but actually is “happening here”!

Army Civilian Inmate Labor Program

Enemy Prisoner of War/Civilian Internee (EPW/CI) Camp

As Nimmo and Jones also report, “Soon after KBR's announcement, a little-known Army document surfaced. Entitled the ‘Civilian Inmate Labor Program’, the unclassified document describes in detail Army Regulation 210-35. The regulation, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid act revision" in January 2005 and now provides a policy for the creation of labor programs and prison camps on Army installations.” Moreover, “In 2009, the National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 was introduced in Congress. It mandates the establishment of ‘national emergency centers’ to be located on military installations for the purpose of providing ‘temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster’, according to the bill. In addition to emergencies, the legislation is designed to ‘meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security’, an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse, as Paul Joseph Watson noted in January of 2009.” Those fears, alas, are not coming to fruition.

Pearl Harbor and “the New Pearl Harbor”

As history records, the U.S. Navy took one massive pasting in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. B-17 bombers were arrayed in neat rows at the Naval Air Station, Ford Island, in the middle of the harbor, while battleships—which were no longer the core of the fleet and thus were moderately expendable, while the carriers, which would be necessary to a war in the Pacific, had been put to sea—were left at pier side. The military was not on any alert status of any kind, in spite of the fact that the intelligence community in the United States had plenty of reason to do so. The old “Pearl Harbor” has now been succeeded by “the new ‘Pearl Harbor’” as a fabricated attack intended to instill fear into the American people in order to manipulate us to promote a political agenda.

The first event was allowed to happen to induce the citizens of this nation to abandon isolationism and engage with our allies in World War II. The second event was made to happen to induce us to support wars of aggression against nations that had never attacked us, with regard to our foreign policy, and to surrender civil rights guaranteed under the Constitution, as a matter of domestic politics, both of which were strikingly contrary to our values and traditions. The consequences of the “new” Pearl Harbor are now coming to their culmination in the complete abdication of our Constitution and the emplacement of a national security/police state. The question thus becomes what we should do about it.

Telegraphing the actions that the government is about to take may have been an unavoidable consequence of securing Congressional approval by the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011. It was something that those who are about to enslave us simply could not avoid. But we have to ask ourselves:

If you were issued advance warning that your government was about to “go rogue” and abandon the last vestiges of the rule of law by shredding the Constitution in front of you, would you not be disposed to take certain actions to make it , if not “very difficult”, at least “very stupid” for them to send soldiers to seize you for exercising your right of dissent? Is our own government counting on our naivete to take for granted that our Senators and Representatives are looking out for our best interests, just as Bush and Cheney were looking our for us on 9/11? And when Sen. Carl Levin has explained Obama himself wanted these provisions, how dumb are we?

We would guess that the number of citizens who have valid and quite genuine disagreement with the outrageous and criminal policies of the government in Washington, D.C., might represent as much as 20-30% of the adult population and possibly more. Applied to 300,000,000 citizens, that might equal roughly 60,000,000. If it’s half that, around 30,000,000; and half that, only 15,000,000. Calculations done on the basis of the number of railroad cars that Halliburton has been commissioned to construct times the number of those they can carry using the shackles with which they are equipped approximates 15,000,000 detainees. So maybe that number is the closer approximation.

A FEMA Camp awaiting occupation by American civilians

Estimates have it that some 80,000,000 American citizens are armed, where the certainty is that more than a hundred and fifty million households in the U.S. have some form of firearm beyond a .22 caliber “Saturday night special”, and at least two or three members of that household may well be able to aim and fire it at an intruder, be they a thief or a person in a police or a military uniform. In any case, since 9/11, we have had the government put every one of us on the highest paranoia alert status in American history with a series of fear mongering, wholly unjustified reasons for us to either look for Muslims coming from every nook and cranny, as well as the recent advice by Janet Napolitano, who would have each of us conduct surveillance on our friends and neighbors

Where do we go from here?

We have experienced the FBI having set up dozens of fake terror suspects, and have had to endure insane scenarios such as “underpants” and “shoe” bombers who either can’t get the loads in their pants to go off or effectively light a cigarette with repeated attempts. We are told that a guy with no passport was waltzed past security to board an international flight without any problems, apparently because he was escorted by some official no one has been able to identify. We were conned about 19 Arab hijackers magically overcoming the totality of the entire North American Defense Command on 9/11 using box cutters as their weapons. But it turns out that the government has never been able to prove that they were actually aboard any of those planes. And the alleged phone calls from all four planes turn out to have been faked. How dumb are we supposed to be?

These plans date at least from REX 84

The government, it now appears, has given us a two year head start on arming and loading to protect ourselves, even if it would have preferred not to have done so. By putting an advertisement for INTERNMENT SPECIALISTS with an MOS of 31 ECHO in the advertising section of The Wall Street Journal and in other printed media, when, since the Patriot Act was morphed three times, they didn’t have to say a public word and could have hired these specialists in secret with a far more covert approach than by announcements in these publications. But the point may be to make it appear as though these moves were undertaken in the public interest. After all, if something terrifying and subversive were going on, it could be argued, why would it be done in such a public fashion? But to ask the question is to answer it. As Hitler observed, BIG LIES are simply beyond the comprehension of most citizens—of Germany or of any other country.

Tactically, it doesn’t make any sense. Militarily the U.S. does not have the troop strength to quell massive civil unrest without the use of non-conventional force application. Which is it? Is it another Pearl Harbor “let it happen on purpose” like 7 December 1941 and, for that matter, also similar to the 9/11 “made it happen on purpose” gambit used to psychologically traumatize and induce fear into the the American public by fabricating a non-existent enemy striking from the caves of Tora Bora? The threat of NDAA appears to be ‘real’ but, to those of us who understand what it represents, as ludicrous as Emperor Hirohito calling FDR on the phone and telling him that on Sunday, 7 December 1941, he was going to attack the U.S. fleet. Something is seriously wrong with this picture. Perhaps they want to provoke a civil war that would justify to complete deconstruction of America. Perhaps they are simply playing us for saps. It has worked before. It can work again.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Dennis Cimino, who has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.

Palestine Israel History and Theirstory

2011-11-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

Palestine Israel History and Theirstory.

by Christof Lehmann

November 13, 2011 by nsnbc

HisStory and TheirStory

I hope that the reader will bear over with me for inventing the word theirstory, but if history is written by those who are victorious and powerful enough to position them selves and their narratives about historical events into acceptance by mainstream historians and media, then, what else should one call the narratives of those who have suffered defeat. Palestinians have suffered from being in the position of the defeated for decades. Their history is theirstory, the one that does not make it into the textbooks of history. When dealing with human beings and their emotional as well as intellectual frailties however, the fact that those who write history are the one that are victorious, and those who write theirstory are those who have suffered defeat does neither validate history nor theirstory. Both usually are “a” story, a narrative about a discourse, as seen form a particular perspective.

The language of political discourse is generally speaking, and by virtue of the nature of politics, dominated by attempts to position one self and others. From perceived positions derive perceived rights and privileges as well as perceived duties and obligations. Scapegoating is but one of the many tactics that are applied in the political game of positioning one self and ones interests in the most favorable manner, while positioning ones adversary much less favorably. Spin Doctors or Propaganda Experts are playing a crucial role; so do lobbies, economy, geopolitical considerations and a cohort of other factors one can easily identify. Sadly, the abuse of the language of the political discourse has contributed considerably to prolonging the dispute between Palestine and Israel. Decades of conflict, and unimaginable human suffering of both Palestinian and Israeli individuals, families, communities would not have been possible without eliciting a world wide demand to bring an end to the suffering; That is, if only it would have been presented in a factual manner; That is, if media and entertainment industry would not have been playing a crucial role in dehumanizing one side of the conflict, while eliciting the suffering of the other. A very well researched and documented movie produced by The Media Education Foundation, REEL BAD ARABS, demonstrates how badly Hollywood has contributed to positioning the Arab people as uncivilized, brutal villains, terrorists, and right out inhumane, or sub human (1).

Dr. Jack Shaheen

In the movie, featuring Dr. Jack Shaheen, Dr. Shaheen documents that Arabs are being positioned as the most malign group in the history of Hollywood. Rightfully Dr. Shaheen is drawing the comparison between the way Hollywood has been and is positioning Arabs as sub-human, with that of the German National Socialists positioning of Jews as Untermenschen. (ibid) In both cases, in that of the positioning of Jews and the inhuman suffering that has been inflicted on European Jews during the National Socialist Era in Germany, and the ongoing positioning of Arabs as sub-human, and the suffering of Palestinians, the effect of the positioning is a significant increase in general populations accept of politically motivated violence as legitimate means to solve political conflicts. This includes politicians who grew up with the stereotyping media and entertainment.

Dr. Edward Said

In his book “REEL BAD ARABS, How Hollywood Vilifies a People” (2), Dr. Jack G. Shaheen looked at more than one thousand movies, from the oldest archives of Hollywood movies to the greatest “Blockbuster” movies up to 2001. Shaheen elicits the stereotypes that rob a whole people of their humanity. One could say that Dr. Shaheen is demonstrating on Hollywood productions, that what the renown Palestinian scholar Edward W. Said has described as “Orientalism” (3). While Said analyzed the stereotyping of all people of Asia Minor to East and South East Asia, Shaheen particularly analyzes the position Hollywood determines for Arabs. In the movie “REEL BAD ARABS“, Dr. Jack Shaheen elicits that the Disney Classic “Aladdin” that has been and is being seen by millions of people world wide, is recycling all the old stereotypes. The song at the beginning of the movie is setting the scene. “Where they cut off your ear if they don´t like your face, it´s barbaric, but hey…, it´s home.” People world wide, and particularly children, are coached into believing that Arabland is a place where innocent women have their hands amputated for forgetting to pay at the bazaar. In other movies Arab men are described as imbecilic super-rich, as sex addicted tyrants who mistreat their woman, and most importantly, American women. Women are kidnapped and sold of to sleazy Arabs in auctions. Dr. Shaheen elicits that over three hundred movies, nearly 25 % of all Hollywood movies in one way or the other demean Arabs. (ibid)

Dresden after the Firebombing

With respect to demeaning an entire people, the same could be said about the countless movies produced during and subsequent to World War II, who depict the German people as beasts, inhumane monsters, and genocidal maniacs. Countless Hollywood productions elicit the legitimate suffering of the Jewish people during world war two. As far as I am aware there has not ever been a Hollywood production that elicits the suffering of the at least 25.000 Germans that were burned to death during the bombing and total destruction of Dresden (4), or the at least 17.600 Germans that were burned to death after a 20 minutes bombing raid over Pforzheim (5). The author of this article has lost almost all of his family during the bombing of Dresden and grew up without ever having a grandfather or grandmother, a great grandfather or great grandmother, uncles, or aunts from his fathers side of the family. Is that suffering not legitimate? Is the suffering of those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and that of those left behind not legitimate human suffering. The fact is, that human beings are kind hearted by nature, and we do not wish to inflict pain and suffering on fellow human beings, as long as those fellow human beings are granted their dignity as human beings, and not being systematically dehumanized and stripped for all human value.

Dr. Jack G. Shaheen elicits in both the movie and the book “REEL BAD ARABS“, that Hollywood and politics go hand in hand in dehumanizing Arabs. Further, he documents that the dehumanization of Arabs began subsequent to World War Two. The Palestinian Israeli conflict, in which the USA unequivocally supported Israel, the Arab Oil Embargo in the seventies, and the revolution in Iran have been the main driving and motivating factors behind the dehumanization in Hollywood productions. (ibid) Ever since the founding of the state of Israel, every single US-Administration has unequivocally declared that it is committed to what is often called “The American Israeli Friendship”, or by other euphemisms for the unwavering support of Israel, no matter what, and no matter what violations of international law it commits. On the other hand, the USSR was known for it´s unequivocal support of the Palestinian course, more or less regardless what violations of international law there were committed by the militant member organizations of the PLO. In todays Russia, this support is more critical, but it is mainly driven by geopolitical rather than human rights considerations. The people of Israel and Palestine, Arabs, Christians and Jews alike have been, and are still the pawns in superpowers geopolitical stratagems.

Policies impact consensus reality by means of media and the entertainment industry. Consensus reality determines if a people is perceived as human beings, with all the legal, ethical, and moral consequences it implies, or if a people is perceived as sub-human, whose suffering can be tolerated or condoned; if a people can be murdered with impunity. In "REEL BAD ARABS", (ibid) Dr. Shaheen is drawing attention to the many Hollywood movies that are produced with the help of the US-Department of Defense, referring to numerous movies where the murder of Arabs is glorified. But it does not stop there. The Pentagon, as well as other defense departments world wide, invest in Media Corporations, infiltrate media with so called “experts and analysts” with ties to civilian and military intelligence services and armed forces. Even the book market is to a large degree controlled by government and military censorship, as demonstrated by the case of Lt. Col. Anthony Schaeffer, whose book “Operation Dark Heart“(6) the Pentagon tried to prevent from entering the market. (7)

IDF beating doctors

After growing up and being indoctrinated to the degree that Arabs utterly have lost their humanity, after growing up and daily being influenced by media reports that are designed to deprive Arabs of their value and dignity as human beings, and after growing up with a constant stream of so called entertainment that vilifies Arabs while it glorifies the murdering of them without the slightest concern about their humanity, is it surprising, that the populations of the West silently and complicity accept the daily violence that is committed against the people of Palestine, or the recent massacres of tens of thousands of Libyans. After all, Libya has supported the PLO and Palestinians for decades, so Libyans must be heartless terrorists, whom Western military forces and hired mercenaries can massacre with impunity in the tens of thousands. After all, what those people in the West have learned from early childhood via Disney cartoons such as Aladdin, and countless other dehumanizing productions is, that the Arabs, and for most Westerners Libyans are perceived as an Arab country, can be murdered and massacred with impunity. They are, after all barbaric and sub-human, we have learned it from the get go.

The Massacre in Sabra and Shatila

The reason why the suffering of the People of Palestine is not perceived as legitimate suffering, on an equal scale with the suffering of the Jewish people in Europe during World War Two, and the suffering of Israelis who are murdered by Palestinians is, that the governments of Western countries systematically have deprived the people of Palestine from their humanity.

It is a fact that human being has an innate resistance against taking another human beings life. As long as we are not speaking in terms of psycho-pathology, it takes months of rigorous military training, before a person can overcome this innate human trait. It does not matter if one analyzes this aversion against taking another human beings life from a purely moral or ethical perspective, or if one analyzes it from an evolutionary perspective. Our innate unwillingness against taking another human beings life is meaningful, and has the function to preserve ourselves as a species and human civilization.

We can establish as fact, that there is history and theirstory. Both are equally invalid. While history is a function of political control for those who are in positions of relative power, which can be instrumental for dehumanizing others, and for providing apparent legitimacy for the oppression of others, theirstory is often instrumental in recruiting resistance against the dominant powers while dehumanizing the oppressor. Neither the decades long conflict in Palestine or Israel nor any other conflict can be truly understood, let alone be solved, by a rhetoric approach to the language of the discourse. Language is a powerful instrument that contributes to a great degree in determining our thinking and our actions. Problems in conflicts are only truly comprehended and solved by a language that is free from positioning, scapegoating, and dehumanizing one, while providing legitimacy to the other. Without the foundation of a pure and factual language to the discourse, even if one is aiming for peace, it is almost impossible to discern which arguments in the Palestinian – Israeli discourse are legitimate and valid, and which are not.

The Necessity of a Teleological Approach to the Language of Discourse

The Palestinian Israeli conflict has lasted for decades, with unimaginable human suffering involved on both sides. This suffering was predominantly on the side of the Palestinians and Arab Israelis, but legitimate suffering has been and is present on both sides. It must, with all recognition of Israeli suffering, be understood that Israel is not only the one that illegally occupies Palestinian territory; it also has one of the worlds most well equipped military forces that are largely used to control the civilian population that is living under illegal occupation. The conflict has been dominated by decades of both low intensity and high intensity conflict. Both sides have used and are making use of what could be generally described as “terrorism”.

The problems with commonly used approaches to the language of the discourse with regards to the Palestine Israel conflict as well as politically motivated violence in general becomes obvious when one analyzes the different philosophical and scientific approaches that are used for understanding terrorism. Before establishing a teleological approach, let us briefly analyze some of the other approaches that are commonly used.

Yassir Arafat

The constructionist and social constructionist approach. With regards to so called terrorism, the constructionist approach is among other represented by Rom Harré. In his contribution to “Understanding Terrorism” (8), Harré not only emphasizes that the genesis of many psychological phenomena lie in the language and other symbolic systems. Harré is also correctly drawing attention to the fact that social constructionism does not sufficiently deal with problems such as positioning, scapegoating and labeling. Harré is giving the example of Peter Mandelstam, who said: “I think the distinction we have to make is not between good and bad terrorists. It is between those terrorists who have political objectives, and are prepared to negotiate these objectives at the end of the day and engage in some kind of political or peace process.“(9) Harré realizes the problems with social constructionism. The example of Peter Mandelstam´s definition (ibid) also clearly begs the question, if so called terrorists loose legitimacy because their opponent oppresses them to such a degree that they never get to the point where negotiations are possible. Are they less legitimate. Harré draws attention to the fact that the one mans terrorist can be the other ones freedom fighter. What Harré fails to deliver though, is a model that can help overcome the problems with social constructionism in politics and conflicts, and all that it includes.

Dr. Fathali Moghaddam

There are numerous other approaches to the discourse of so called terrorism. The influence of the social self, the dishonest criminal, and many other which to analyze is beyond the scope of this article. The one most widely taught in Western University Institutes is describing a staircase, beginning with perceived injustice, where the individual who perceives apparent injustice, and who is feeling deprived of legitimate and sufficient political influence, is slowly radicalized, and then driven into the hands of “terrorist” networks who slowly recruit and indoctrinate the person into becoming a terrorist. This theory was developed by the Iranian American Fathali M. Moghaddam (10).

Actually Moghaddam´s theory is a brilliant example for how problems can not be solved. It is also a brilliant example of how so called terrorism theory actively contributes to prolonging the Palestinian Israeli conflict rather than solving it. As long as the point of departure is “perceived injustice” (ibid) without first analyzing if there is any injustice to be perceived, the theory will not help solving the underlying causes of a conflict and thus not help stop the politically motivated violence. It can at best be useful for reinforcing the victors, the powerful´s narrative, that young people are indoctrinated by radicals, without ever analyzing why a group of people is making use of politically motivated violence including the strategy of terrorism. With respect to the Palestine Israel conflict, Moghaddam´s terrorism theory (ibid) is reinforcing the Hollywood narrative. The narrative of the violent Arab, the uncivilized barbarian, who seduces misguided, imbecile young Arab people into vicious and incompetent Arab monsters who have nothing better to do than randomly murdering innocent Israeli citizens for thereafter being murdered with impunity.

It is true that the genesis of many psychological phenomena is to be found in semantics, in language, in words. Semantics partially predetermine social syntax. And thus, before we ever arrive at a state where we can discuss legitimate suffering, perceived injustice versus injustice perceived, and how to solve one of the most complex conflicts of the Middle East and the world, we should begin by developing a teleological approach to the language of the discourse.

A teleology is any account that holds that final causes exist in nature. A thing, a process, or an action is teleological, when it is for the end of a final cause (11). In other words, teleology analyzes the “inherent intentionality in all objects, subjects and activities“. This includes politicians, military and paramilitary forces, populations, nationalities, organizations, et cetera as well as flowers and bumblebees. What the author of this article suggests is that the language of the Palestinian Israeli discourse, and that of conflicts in general, must be based on an understanding and application of teleology. The reason why this approach is so crucial for conflict resolution is, that a teleological approach to the language of the discourse makes it impossible to position, scapegoat, excuse, use euphemisms, and so forth. Let us look at some examples.

Hiroshima - The impossibility to grasp the scale of human suffering and dehumanization

Hiroshima. The second world war had already cost tens of millions of lives. The United States Air Force is a national military force. Terrorism can be described as the tactic of instilling the emotions of fear, terror, and perceived helplessness in a target population, with the aim to manipulate a political agenda. The city of Hiroshima was not of any direct military significance in the sense that it was not heavily defended, and the vast majority of it´s inhabitants were innocent civilians and non combatants. With a teleological approach to the language of the discourse of politically motivated violence, the bombing of Hiroshima was, ”The criminal, premeditated mass murder of civilian non combatants by means of a national military force, with the intention to terrorize an entire people and their government into submission, and with the purpose to intimidate and terrorize them so as to accept an unconditional surrender“. Euphemisms like “we nuked them to end the war” are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Phosphorous Bombs against Gaza Residents

The occupation of Palestine is the illegal occupation of a sovereign peoples country by means of military and paramilitary national, occupying forces. The countermeasures against so called terrorism in the occupied West Bank, such as road blocks, would be utterly unnecessary if Palestine was not illegally occupied, and are designed to intimidate and terrorize.

The bombing of Gaza in 2004 was the terror bombing of a civilian population with the intention to instill the emotion of terror and helplessness, with the intention to intimidate both the Palestinian people and their government into ceasing to continue their legitimate fight for liberation and self determination. It was terror bombing of non combatant civilians and premeditated mass murder.

The PFLP-GC is a Palestinian paramilitary organization that uses politically motivated violence with the intention to liberate their country from illegal occupation. The PFLP-GC has the declared intention to liberate their country from illegal occupation and it is thus a militant liberation movement. It also makes use of terror bombing of civilians, as well as it makes use of legitimate military action. The euphemism “targeted assassination“ used by Israel and the United States of America, is a euphemism for premeditated murder. The brutal violence used by Israeli military forces against civilians in the occupied West Bank amounts to inflicting bodily harm with the purpose to intimidate and instill terror, so as to control the population of an illegally occupied territory. It is politically motivated, illegal violence and terrorism with the purpose to continue and control an illegal occupation. The Palestinian man or women, who strap a bomb on them selves and explode them selves among non combatants inside Israel are terror bombing civilians with the intention to liberate their country from occupation. Never the less, it is terror bombing of civilian non combatants and premeditated murder too.

Legitimate and Illegitimate Discourse on Palestine and Israel

(1) The Unique Suffering of the Jewish People

Let there be no doubt. During World War II the Jewish people of Europe have suffered severe dehumanization. In movies such as “Der Ewige Jude” (12) an entire people was in propaganda movies denounced as rats, as a pest, that needed to be removed to safeguard a healthy German population and a strong Germany. European Jews were systematically deprived of their humanity. It does not matter if the number of six million murdered Jews has been significantly reduced after later years research; the fact remains that countless human beings suffered the most appalling abuse. An abuse that hardly would have been possible if the German population had not been manipulated into perceiving them as a pest.

Jewish lobbies often argue, that the suffering of the Jewish people was unique, and that they therefore must be granted special rights and privileges. It is an argument, that is often used within the context of finding justification for Israel`s aggression in the illegal occupation of Palestine. With all due respect for those who suffered, but the argument is invalid. Besides the danger of the indescribable suffering of the European Jews being abused to justify the infliction of suffering on others, Palestinians, there are many, like David E. Stannard (13) who argue, that declaring the so called holocaust as a unique event, and the positioning of the suffering of the Jewish people as unique suffering, belittles the many other genocides that have been taking place, and those which may come. Forced labor in the former Belgian colony Congo has, even though the exact numbers are somewhat disputed, contributed to the death of approximately 20 % of the colonies population (14). It is clearly problematic that the claims of the uniqueness of the Jewish suffering is not only false, but that it leads to the very relativism in the evaluation of human life that is one of the root causes of the holocaust itself, and of countless other massacres, acts of genocide, innocenticide, and ethnic cleansing. It is a root cause for the atrocities that those who survived the holocaust, and those who today claim to be the victims representatives, are claiming to deplore. With all possible empathy for the victims of the National Socialists persecution, the unique suffering is not a valid argument for the establishment of a Jewish state or the state of Israel on the territory of the Palestinian people.

Dr. Norman Finkelstein

Finally, the insistence of Jewish lobbies that the suffering of the Jewish people is unique, while shamelessly abusing the legitimate suffering of millions of Jews for an extortion racket, which the Jewish American scholar, Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein, (15) documented in his book “The Holocaust Industry” (16) is contributing to strong, world wide, anti Jewish sentiments. It is reinforcing many of the stereotypes that have contributed to the Jewish people being targeted by National Socialists in the first place.

(2) The Historical Argument

If the historical argument, which is based on the fact that Jewish people were living in historical Israel in biblical times is to be validated as justification for the establishment of the modern state of Israel there arise a number of problems that are inconsolable with modern international law. The author of this article is German, born in the region of Germany from where Teutonic people once emigrated northwards to the Danish territory known today as Thy. Danes call Germans Tysker. Those German tribal people had a distinct culture and religion. Based on the historical argument, a strong lobby should be able to lobby a superpower like the USA into accepting the argument, and German people could initiate a mass migration into Northern Denmark. They could then, alter the demographics of the area and it would be perfectly legal to provide a Thy-Passport to anyone who could document West German ancestry. Finally, if the Thy region was divided between Germans and Danes, it would be legitimate to occupy it entirely, to evict Danes from their houses, to force them to live in enclaves with walls around them to protect the occupier. The historical argument is so problematic that it would provoke countless conflicts throughout the world. It is an often used, but never the less absolutely invalid and a most dangerous argument.

(2a) Legitimacy via the Balfour Declaration

Arthur James Balfour

According to today's legal standards, the Balfour Declaration (17) would be considered illegal. The argument that it lends legitimacy to the state of Israel is equivalent to arguing, that any colonial power or nation that is victorious in a war and an occupying power, has the right to significantly change the demography of an occupied territory. It is absolutely problematic, and created a precedence that since has given rise to other conflicts and illegal practices, such as the ongoing establishment of a so called independent Kosovo. Imagine for a moment, that Denmark, which still maintains a semi colony on Greenland, granted the Jewish people a homeland on Greenland. Would the Inuit on Greenland have the right to resist, and if necessary by making use of politically motivated violence. The argument is invalid, and the inherent consequences of this type of argument are most dangerous for the peace.

(2b) Legitimacy by Virtue of the United Nations

Ben Gurion

On 14 May 1948 the provisional government of the self proclaimed state of Israel, led by Ben Gurion, informed the then US President Truman and the world that the state of Israel was established. Ben Gurion asked Truman to recognize Israel on behalf of the USA. (18) The US Administration recognized the government of Israel as de facto government within the course of minutes. After failed attempts, it was fully recognized as a member of the United Nations in 1949. (19) It is important to remember, that the establishment and recognition of Israel happened within the context of a rapidly developing cold war, involving the USSR and the Warsaw Treaty nations on one hand and the USA, the UK, France, and allied as well as occupied nations on the other. It was by no means clear weather Israel would become an ally to the one or the other side of the divide. One must admit that the Israeli politicians played their hand wisely, gaining maximum support from the USA. A support that has since been so extended that some historians perceive Israel as a part of the American Republic.

The problem with the argument that the recognition of Israel by the United Nations provides legitimacy for the state of Israel is that the United Nations, by recognizing Israel, contradicted main tenets of it´s own charter. The right of Palestinians, Arab, Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike, was grossly neglected by allowing the establishment of a new state within the territory of another, without at least a referendum. The argument that the State of Israel has achieved legitimacy by being recognized by the United Nations Security Counsel and the United Nations General Assembly is thus at least highly problematic, and most likely legally invalid.

(2c) The De Facto Argument

One could argue that the state of Israel has gained legitimacy due to its 60 plus years of de facto existence and functioning. The weakness of this argument is that it provides precedence for illegal practices being legitimized due to having been practiced for a sufficient amount of time. Sadly the de facto legitimization of illegal practices, due to the ability to back the illegal practices with military force, is still commonplace in 2011. The de facto existence argument needs the most careful consideration for a number of reasons.

The most prominent of those reasons are:

The fact that nations are established with the support of superpowers who apply economic, political and military force to support the establishment of nations that are friendly to them is highly problematic. One of those incidents is Kosovo, where the Serbian population has been, and still is subject to oppression by politically motivated violence via KFOR. Thus the United Nations has become an instrument for “nation building” projects, that are opposed to it´s own charter and principles of peoples right to self determination.

The fact that the state of Israel is the first nation in the world that owes its very existence and legitimacy to the United Nations should oblige Israel to strictly uphold any UNSC resolution which is not in contradiction to the charter of the UN. The de facto reality meanwhile is, that Israel is condescending, and refusing to accept the legitimacy of one UNSC resolution after the other that is critical of Israel, while at the same time using it´s influence within the USA and EU member states to oppress the natural and human rights of the Palestinian people at the United Nations. An Israel that continues this practice can not legally nor morally rely on being legitimized by the international body which it refuses to adhere to.

The virtually endless expansion of Israel (1948-2000)

It is a fact that Israel has for now 60 plus years committed and continues to commit crimes which are the antithesis of the principles that are enshrined in the charter of the United Nations, from which it claims legitimacy. Principally, those crimes include:

* The repeated invasions and aggressions against Lebanon with tens of thousands of murdered civilians.

* The illegal occupation and annexation of the Golan Highs and parts of Southern Lebanon.

* The occupation of Gaza, and after leaving Gaza, the illegal land and maritime siege against Palestinians in Gaza.

* The illegal and criminal deprivation of Palestinians in Gaza from basic food items, and medicines, from the ability to trade freely.

* The repeated destruction of infrastructure such as electric power plants and water supplies, government buildings, schools, and cultural facilities.

* The illegal occupation of the West Bank and the annexation of vast Palestinian territories, leaving Palestinians in the West Bank to live in de facto enclaves that are separated from each other by military installations, illegal settlements, illegal walls that isolate the populations in the enclaves.

* The illegal taking of prisoners, including children.

* The treatment of even uniformed Palestinian liberation fighters as criminals and “terrorists” instead of giving them the status of prisoners of war.

* The systematic torture of prisoners. Countless human rights abuses. The use of military ammunition in civilian areas.

* The regular use of disproportionate military force.

* Murder of Palestinian politicians as well as liberation fighters, policemen, and other under an illegal program of what is euphemistically called targeted assassinations.

* Daily cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment of Palestinians.

* The controlling every aspect of individual, family, community and political life. Deportations that amount to ethnic cleansing.

* Refusing refugees the right to return.

* A 60 year long politic of aggression, violence, massacres, deportations and ethnic cleansing that amount to genocide.

Justifications and Justice

The fact that Israel has the policy of justifying its 60 plus year long policy of aggression and genocide, or rather innocenticide, does not lend justification to its inhumane treatment of Palestinians. None of its arguments -- not the uniqueness of Jewish suffering; the historical argument; the argument of legitimacy by virtue of the Balfour Declaration; the argument of legitimacy by virtue of the United Nations -- nor the de facto argument provide any form of justification or legitimacy for the cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Palestinians and the systematic genocide that is being conducted on a daily basis.

(i) The Right to Resist

The people of Palestine have every right to resist. They have the right to peaceful resistance, and they have the right to use politically motivated violence. They have however, as understandable their desperation is, not the right to use the same illegal practices that are used against them and which they deplore. The murder of innocent, non-combatant Israeli citizens. The so called kidnappings of soldiers, such as Gilat Shalit (20) are perfectly legal, provided that prisoners are granted the full rights of prisoners of war to the extend that security allows. The defamation of armed Palestinian liberation forces as “terrorists”, while terror bombing civilians does not contribute to a solution that could bring security to Israelis or Palestinians. The absolute dis-proportionality of Israeli repression against armed liberation groups, and the indiscriminate murder of civilians does not provide security for Israel, nor for Palestine.

(ii) The Right to Return

Israels refusal to respect Palestinians right to return on one hand, the steady increase of illegal settlements, the import of Jewish people from throughout the world that significantly changes the demographics in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories on the other, can in spite of all euphemisms, only be described as systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide. Nothing short of genocide embraces the full monstrosity of what has been happening in Palestine for over 60 years, and the monstrosity of what is happening in Palestine every single day.

(iii) The Right to Exist

If the state of Israel ever had the right to exists, it has now spent over 60 years on demonstrating that the recognition of Israel was one of the most tragic mistakes that have been permitted and committed since the end of the second world war. In the eyes of many scholars world wide the consensus that Israel has lost all legitimacy, if it ever had any, is becoming increasingly prevalent.

A well meant word to the Jewish Community

You are a wonderful people. The author of this article has Jewish people among his good friends. If you wish to support the cause of the Jewish people, do read this article twice. The best thing you can do for yourself, for the Jewish people, for Israel, and for peace is this:

A slowly, but ever so slowly increasing number of Israeli soldiers deny to serve within the illegally occupied territories of Palestine. Support them. A slowly growing community of Jewish people speaks out against the Holocaust Industry. Support them. Both Arab and Jewish Israeli citizens protest and actively resist illegal demolitions of Palestinians homes. Join their cause and demonstrate for those who have suffered at the hands of Jewish people for over 60 years. Understand that it is a criminal minority that bears responsibility for both the Palestinians and Israelis suffering. Speak out against power. Show them that you have courage to resist against being represented by criminals. Show humanity. Lobby against those lobbies who create hatred rather than understanding. Show the greatness of your people by showing your ability to understand suffering. Your people have had a genuine and frightening, though not unique suffering brought upon you. Show that you understand that the suffering of the Jewish people was not unique, but that it helps you to be compassionate towards others who suffer. Show that you are human, and protest the dehumanization of Arabs and all human beings, everywhere. Your humanity is the best safeguard against ever being dehumanized again.

Is “Israel” viable?

The short answer is, "No!" No two state solution will ever bring a de facto independently existing Israel or a de facto independently existing Palestine into existence. After decades of “Peace Process” on the track of a two state solution it must have become evident for all parties involved, that the only viable possibility for the establishment of peace for Arabs, Christians and Jews alike is one state. One secular state with the liberty to practice one religion of choice. One state that embraces Palestinians inalienable right to return. One state that is seeking peace with its neighbors. One state that embraces a policy of immigration, that is fair and balanced, and does not give rise to internal conflicts. One state that adheres to international law and human rights while maintaining it´s uniquely rich and fertile cultural elements. Failure to let reason and humanity prevail may very well become one of the root causes for a conflict that ends civilization as we know it. A state for Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Atheists and others alike. It is the only viable solution. And please do not let the choice of a name come in the way of reason and peace. What about Peacerael.

Dr. Christof Lehmann

13.11.2011

1. Reel Bad Arabs; Movie, Media Education Foundation.

2. Jack G. Shaheen (2001), "REEL BAD ARABS, How Hollywood Vilifies A People” Olive Branch Press, New York, New Hampton.

3. Said Edward G. (1978), Orientalism, Random House, USA.

4. The Bombing of Dresden in WW II. Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II

5. The Bombing of Pforzheim in WW II. Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bombing_of_Pforzheim_in_World_War_II

6. Schaeffer Anthony Lt. Col. (2010), Operation Dark Heart, St. Martins Press, New York.

7. Chris McGreal (2010), "Pentagon Tries to stop book, publishing details of US Black-Ops in Pakistan". http://www.pakistankakhudahafiz.com/2010/09/16/pentagon-tries-to-buy-entire-print-run-of-us-spy-expose-operation-dark-heart/

8. Moghaddam F. and Marsella (2004), Understanding Terrorism, American Psychological Association, Washington, USA. pp. 91-102.

9. Mandelstam P. (2001, December 29), "IRA aims make them freedom fighters, says Mandelstam". The London Times, p.2

10. Moghaddam Fathali M., The Staircase to Terrorism. Georgetown University.

11. Teleology – Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Teleology

12. Der Ewige Jude; Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/derewigejude.html

13. Stannard David E. (1996); The Dangers of Calling the Holocaust Unique, The Chronicle of Higher Education. http://www.codoh.com/reference/dangofcall.html

14. Congo Free State – Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Congo_Free_State

15. Norman Finkelstein Biography. http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/biography/

16. Finkelstein Norman (2001), The Holocaust Industry, Verso, London, New York

17. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 – Wikipedia. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917

18. Press Release about recognition of Israel. http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/education/lessons/us-israel/images/recognition-press-release-l.jpg&c=/education/lessons/us-israel/images/recognition-press-release.caption.html

19. Recognition of the State of Israel. Palestine Facts. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_recognition_who.php

20. Littlewood Stuart (2011), "Shalit got off lightly", nsnbc no spin news. http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/shalit-got-off-lightly/

About nsnbc
nsnbc is a news-media, established on 28 August 2011 with the purpose to break corporate or state controlled medias embargo on truth. nsnbc publishes articles from journalists, authors and experts from all continents. nsnbc was established and is edited by Dr. Christof Lehmann with the intention to bring you daily no-spin reporting, in depth analysis and opinion from throughout the world. nsnbc is politically and economically independ

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of JFK

2011-11-09T14:02:00.000-08:00

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of JFK

Jim Fetzer and Douglas Horne

As an illustration of the depravity of the main stream media in this country today, I have been struck by the astute observations of Douglas Horne, who was the Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board, a five-member civilian board entrusted with the responsibility for declassifying documents and records held by the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Secret Service, among other agencies of the government, created by an act of Congress in the wake of the resurgence of interest in the death of JFK generated by Oliver Stone's film. They had been classified for 75 years by the Warren Commission on the ground of national security. If its conclusion--that JFK was assassinated by a lone, demented gunman named "Lee Harvey Oswald"--were true, however, there would have been NO "national security" aspect to this issue.

Moreover, by classifying them for 75 years (which just happens to correspond to the lifetime of an average American), they insured that no one who was living at the time would be available to contradict whatever those records might reveal. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which reinvestigated the case in 1976-79, likewise decided to sequester many sensitive documents, especially those in the medical arena that contradicted its own conclusions, for 50 years, which Oliver Stone emphasized in his film, "JFK". As those of us who have devoted ourselves to the evidence in this case are well aware, Oswald could not have committed the crime and was used as a "patsy" to distract attention from the conspirators, who included the CIA, the Joint Chiefs, anti-Castro Cubans and elements of local law enforcement. An overview of what we know about how it was done, who was responsible, and how it was covered-up may be found at "Dealey Plaza Revisited: What happened to JFK?" I have also interviewed Doug several times on "The Real Deal", where those interviews are accessible at the following links:

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2010
Douglas Horne
INSIDE THE ARRB (2009)

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2010
Douglas Horne
INSIDE THE ARRB (2009), Part II

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 2010
Douglas Horne
INSIDE THE ARRB (2009) Vol. V

The JFK Assassination: Still a Taboo Subject for the Mainstream Media in the United States

Douglas Horne

September 30th, 2011 8:37

Almost 48 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, the mainstream media (MSM) in this country still treats it as a Taboo Subject. This is a strange state of affairs, given the MSM's propensity to tout its own courage and independence, and its important role as the Fourth Estate in our democracy.Let me provide just two recent examples. Last year, as MSNBC "Hardball" host and moderator Chris Matthews interviewed the author of a book about the JFK assassination, he employed a sneering, dismissive tone toward all persons who are convinced there was a conspiracy to murder the 35th President--by implication, tarring all such people as misguided idiots, and irresponsible. As usual, he characterized such persons as nuts, cranks, crazy people, and conspiracy theorists (the ultimate insult employed by anyone still supporting the Warren Commission's seriously flawed and unsupportable findings), and in a rather brutal and intellectually overbearing and arrogant manner, proclaimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a crazy person, a lone nut, who killed JFK all on his own. In doing so, he was disagreeing with (and insulting) over 75% of the American people, but this didn't seem to bother him.

The real question is, WHY does he continue to proclaim this stance in such an insistent manner? Aside from this issue, Matthews appears to be a pretty bright and well-informed guy. How, I asked myself, could he so loudly and insistently proclaim that the Warren Commission got it right, when there is so much overwhelming evidence that its conclusion cannot possibly be true? On this one issue he has consistently shown a very ugly, and obnoxious side of his personality--a "dark side," if you will. I wondered last fall if he really believed the nonsense he was spouting, or whether he was reflexively adopting a stance he had been instructed to adopt in public. And if he had been so instructed, who provided him with his JFK assassination marching orders? Was it the management structure at MSNBC, or was it a cadre within the American intelligence community that remains fixated on this subject (and others that are crucial to the attitudes of Americans toward their own governmental institutions)?

Sadly, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, two MSNBC journalists whom I highly respect most of the time, have also spoken derisively about "conspiracy theorists" and have painted anyone who believes that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy with this overused tar brush.This past week, a new public opinion poll was released showing that the number of Americans who now trust the American government to "do the right thing all or most of the time" is at an all time low--it is now down to only 15% of those polled. CNN, in reporting this story and providing context, then proceeded to promote inaccurate history about the polling numbers in its background pieces on the story. CNN stated that under President Eisenhower, in the late 1950s, this trust figure was as high as 73% (which is true), and then falsely implied that this was as high as the trust figure had ever been.

THIS WAS UNTRUE. In his 1994 book "Arrogant Capital," conservative author Kevin Phillips wrote that in January of 1964 this figure was 78%, and that this was the all-time high watermark for trust in the American government. He published a graph showing that from 1960 through January of 1964, the figure was continuously rising, and therefore, it is clear that the figure rose from 73% to 78% during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, America's 35th President: a rationalist who touted openness in government, who opposed withholding information from the American people, and who even gave a speech against secrecy and secret societies. (I published the graph used by Phillips as Figure 71, in my own book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board," published in 2009 and still available at Amazon.com). Study of the graph reveals that this trust starting dropping precipitately after January of 1964.

The CNN talking heads and anchors proclaimed this past week that the primary reasons for the sharp decline of the high numbers seen in the late 1950s were the Vietnam War and Watergate. But this is only a half-truth, at best. They conveniently omitted mentioning when the figure was at its highest (at the end of JFK's Presidency), and also conveniently chose not to mention that the rapid decline in confidence in the U.S. government began very shortly after the JFK assassination. It is clear to me when studying this graph (you can access it in either Phillips' book or in mine), that the American people began to lose faith in the American government immediately after the JFK assassination; no doubt people smelled a rat when LIFE magazine, and later the Warren Report, began to blow smoke up our collective asses about how (and why) JFK was murdered.

The sharp decline on the graph accelerated in 1968. And what happened that year? Three things: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (when the American people finally realized the USG had been lying to them about the conduct of the war and the prospects for victory); the Martin Luther King assassination; and the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. These two assassinations, like JFK's, were all blamed on lone nut individuals acting on their own---and in each case, there is strong evidence that the official story is not true. The next sharp drop in confidence in the graph occurs between 1972 and 1976, and almost certainly reflects the Watergate scandal, and America's unceremonious ejection from Vietnam, after losing a war for the first time. The nosedive in confidence continues at a rapid rate through 1980, and it is likely that one contributor was the unsatisfactory way in which the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) handled the JFK and MLK assassinations. The HSCA stirred up the muck of bad memories and feelings about those two events, and the electrified public which had demanded the Congressional investigations into the JFK and MLK murders was more than a bit nonplussed about the HSCA whitewash of both events.

So what happened this past week with CNN? I explain it in this way: if the high watermark for faith in the U.S. government during JFK's presidency is event A, and the rapid decline in faith in government after January 1964 is event B, then the MSM could not mention A, without mentioning B and WHY it occurred. Event B (the loss in confidence in government) began immediately after the assassination, clearly caused by the government's attempt to calm public opinion with soothing lies after JFK was murdered. NBC, CBS, and ABC (most of the time, but not all of the time) have all been participating in the same collective "groupthink"---namely, that Oswald was the lone assassin who killed JFK and that he did it all on his own---since December of 1963. The MSM would have us believe that that JFK's assassination was the work of a lone malcontent, devoid of any political significance. CNN has now joined the club. FOX news is...well, FOX news; one week before air time, the network removed my interview clips (containing explosive new material which the producer had promised me would be used) from its 2003 documentary about the JFK assassination after network officials objected to the content.

The anchors and reporters employed by the mainstream networks have obviously been instructed by managing editors and company vice presidents that you do not mention the JFK assassination, unless it is to (1) blame Lee Harvey Oswald for the event; and (2) disparage any contrary views as the unstable thinking of "conspiracy theorists." (A corollary to this pack mindset is that you don't mention JFK in a historical context unless it is to disparage him or tear down his reputation--since doing so tends to make people not care as much about his assassination.) Event A could not be reported because it would have forced CNN to report event B. If CNN had reported event B, it would have highlighted the fact that the American media had missed the story of the century--had either been asleep at the switch, or muzzled by the government--from December of 1963 throughout 1964. (And indeed, for the most part, it has kept its head in the sand, like an ostrich, ever since the Warren Report came out as well.) The American media is not fond of reporting on its own failures. Doing so, in this case, would raise the ugly specter of why the mainstream media continues to aggressively promote an editorial position on this subject which is diametrically opposed to the opinions of over 75% of the American people.

So in my view, CNN could not mention the truth--that the trust in government was continuously going up (above Eisenhower's numbers) during JFK's presidency, and that it fell precipitately after his assassination, because to do so would attract attention to the positive aspects of JFK's presidency (certainly not in vogue within either conservative or mainstream circles), and would also show, in a way that ANYONE in the viewing audience could understand, that there was a linkage between the corrosion of trust in the USG and JFK's assassination. The continuous government and mainstream media assassination spin from December of 1963 through the summer of 1964, and the public conclusions of the Warren Report--issued in September of 1964--were clearly the proximate cause of the sharp decline in trust in government, which began in 1964. CNN (and no doubt other networks reporting the same story) could not tell the whole truth about the confidence polling because the whole truth would have contravened the wishes of their corporate and intelligence community masters.

In 1975 reporter Carl Bernstein (in a "Rolling Stone" article) and The New York Times (in a series of piggyback articles) both reported that the CIA had used over 400 media "assets" (both abroad and domestically) to promote its spin on world events to the publics of the world---in other words, for propaganda purposes. Author John LeCarre (British master of spy novels and a former MI 6 agent himself) recently stated in an interview that in the 1960s, when his book "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" was about to be made into a film, he was flown to America and questioned about his loyalty to the West by American intelligence. (They were not happy that the theme of his book, at the height of the Cold War, was "a plague on both your houses.") In his interview (on the Criterion bonus DVD about that same film), LeCarre stated that most people would be absolutely amazed if they knew how many people in the American intelligence community were sitting around doing nothing but thinking about ways to influence public opinion. (This is clearly against the CIA's charter, by the way---and unlawful---since it is not supposed to participate in any domestic activities.)

If you think this activity has stopped just because of the Church Committee Hearings in the mid-1970s, then I have a bridge to sell you in the Gobi desert.

There are things that we know and believe, and then there is the much smaller universe of things that can be proved in a court of law. There is no doubt in my mind that the MSM's blindness about the true facts of the Kennedy assassination and the ensuing government cover-up (and its continued denigration of his reputation) is self-willed, not inadvertent--and that the media's collective groupthink about the Kennedy assassination (namely, blaming it on a lone nut in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) is evidence that the CIA is still playing the "Great Wurlitzer" of the media like an impresario. The CIA has in the short term succeeded brilliantly, in that it has gotten the MSM to think and speak in unison, tarring all JFK researchers as "conspiracy theorists" in an effort make them a subject of ridicule, and thereby marginalize their work. When it can, it orchestrates media blackouts of serious new research and new books (such as mine, and Phil Nelson's), for fear that the general public would learn about them and read them, even if they were to be trashed by a hostile reviewer.

In the long term the CIA/MSM propaganda war against JFK researchers is counterproductive and has failed, because lying to the citizenry of a democracy "to protect its institutions," in an attempt to bolster trust in the government, only ends up destroying respect for those institutions, when the lies are eventually revealed. And they are all (or most, anyway) eventually revealed, since as Shakespeare noted, "The Truth Will Out."

Individual reporters dare not report about the overwhelming evidence of conspiracy in the JFK assassination, or the ensuing government cover-up, if their editors forbid them to file such stories, and if they know they will lose their jobs if they attempt to do so. This has been going on since December of 1963; everyone in the MSM knows it; and most of them will not even try anymore for fear of losing their jobs.

This is what we all face as the 50th anniversary approaches. When you are bombarded by even more bullshit and government spin about the assassination of the 35th President two years from now, do not be surprised. Learn to think critically and independently; read as many books as you can; and make up your own minds about what happened in America in November of 1963. If you do not, there is a vast disinformation and propaganda machine out there that will be happy to tell you what to believe on the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder.

The national security spinmasters, Obama's information CZAR Cass Sunstein, and the corporate media would prefer that you spend all your time obsessed with game shows, singing and dancing contests, so-called "reality shows" that are cheap to produce (and are, in reality, garbage), and modern age gladiatorial contests in large outdoor stadiums and indoor sports arenas. When you do focus on history from time to time they want you to accept the vanilla, mainstream, and simplistic interpretations of events ground out like sausage by mainstream historians and the MSM. They want you to engage in Goodthink, and think Goodthoughts. "But don't think too deeply, please." They don't want the American people to think too much about deep politics or historical trends; when we do focus on politics every two years or so, they want us to focus on "the horserace" each election cycle, and not on substantive issues. They definitely don't want us to focus on what has gone wrong in this country since the end of World War II---after all, if we all really get mad as hell, we might demand basic structural changes to our society and our system of government.

These controlling elements of our society prefer that we adopt a "father knows best" mentality, and simply trust the national security elite to manage this nation's international affairs and military policies. They depend upon their allies and assets in the corporate mainstream media (whores, actually) to keep us distracted with pablum, and to define for us, on a daily basis, the bounds of what is "acceptable" for us to publicly discuss, and what is "not acceptable." [This is the game Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and CNN and the other major networks on television, are engaged in.] The loss of independence by the MSM and its failure to ever seriously oppose the nation state with any really hard-hitting investigative reporting on substantive issues (such as war and peace, and why people get assassinated) should be of very serious concern to us all. Once an independent media is lost, tyranny is only one step away.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is the editor of Assassination Science (1998), Murder in Dealey Plaza (2000), and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2003).

Douglas Horne served as the Chief Analyst for Military Records with the Assassination Records Review Board and published Inside the ARRB (2009), a five-volume report of their findings.

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of Libya

2011-11-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of Libya

by Jim Fetzer

In collaboration with Christof Lehmann, "Libya, Green Flags, and The Heart of Darkness", I have explained why, based upon the information available to us both, even if Moammar Gadaffi qualified as a dictator, he was a remarkably benevolent one, who provided his citizens with a national health care program, financed their education (even at the college level), provided them with homes and even a share of royalties derived from the nation's oil resources. Under Gadaffi, Libya had attained a literacy rate among its young of 99.9% and the highest standard of living in Africa. Now that he has been removed, I have no doubt that these remarkable achievements are going to be lost. Indeed, the kinds of motives that drive the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, which include a national health care program, a living wage (regardless of occupation) and a free college education were ones that Gaddafi was providing to the Libyan people. If we are right, then Libya under Gadaffi has been leading the way, while the USA has been playing "catch up"--but here only under duress.

The Case for Gaddafi

My reasoning has been based upon the evidence available to me, including the kinds of data to which Enver Masud, Stephen Lendman and a host of others have drawn attention. In his recent, "Five Things you may not know about Muammar Gadaffi and Libya", for example—and assuming that his information is accurate and complete regarding the points he presents— Enver Masud exposes the shameless deception of the main stream media in its coverage of Libya and its recent history under Gadaffi:

* Gaddafi Seized Power in Bloodless Coup: Muammar Gaddafi, aka Col. Gaddafi, seized power in 1969 in a bloodless coup by overthrowing King Idris;

* Largest Oil Reserves in Africa: According to the US Energy Information Administration, "Libya has the largest proven oil reserves in Africa";

* Libya Ranks #1 on the Human Development Index: The UN's Development Program Libya ranked first in Africa (and 53 globally in 2010, but dropped to 64 in 2011) on the Human Development Index;

* Great Man-Made River Project: The Great Man-Made River Project, begun in 1984 by Col. Gaddafi, has been called "the 8th Wonder of the World"; and, perhaps most strikingly,

* Program to Privatize Oil: On February 21, 2011, five days after the Arab Spring broke out in Libya, Qaddafi launched a new program to privatize all Libyan oil to every citizen of Libya.

Among the most interesting points Enver makes concerns this privatization program, which initially "provided $21,000 to every Libyan from a total of $32,000,000,000 in the Year 2011”, so that the Libyan “health, education, transport, and some other ministries could be abolished and individual Libyans could use the profits of their own investments, including from oil ownership, to obtain the relevant services", which, Gaddafi said, would be "the best way to eliminate corruption, including the theft of Libyan oil by foreign oil companies, and to decentralize governmental power." From this perspective, Gaddafi looks good and comes across as a benevolent dictator.

The Case against Gaddafi

If these reports are well-founded, then Gaddafi's concerns parallel those of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement to abolish corporate welfare and crony capitalism for the benefit of the American people, where the latest transfer of $75 trillion in derivatives liabilities by Bank of America and of another $79 trillion by J.P. Morgan are stunning indications of the depths of corruption to which the banking and investing institutions of this nation have sunk. But what if those reports about Gaddafi's good works in Libya are inaccurate or at least misleading? In "Gaddafi Phoney Welfare State Unmasked" by Jim Dean, for example, featuring Uri Avnery, an expert on Israel and Palestine, a very different picture emerges, according to which Gaddafi instead qualifies as a murderous tyrant:

* His clownish appearance and foreign adventures diverted the attention of world opinion from the murderous aspects of his rule.

* From time to time, on a whim, he let loose waves of horror, torturing and killing anyone who had voiced the least hint of criticism.

* On one occasion, his thugs shot all the 1200 inmates of Abu Salim prison in Tripoli.

* He spent some money on building schools and hospitals, but that was a tiny part of the resources available to him.

* Huge amounts of oil revenue were squandered on his bizarre adventures or stolen by his family.

And, indeed, Jim and others have published multiple columns on VT that provide additional support for the depiction of Gaddafi as something other than a benevolent dictator. Some has appealed to their personal experience with Gaddafi and in Africa, which has powerfully affected his conclusions in this matter. But that he is in the position to based his opinions on his own personal experience does not mean that we are in the position to base our opinions on his personal experiences, where what he has to tell us has to qualify as “inside information” that requires its own evaluation before it can be taken at face value. If there is a conflict between UN reports and his opinions, for example, can we determine who is right and who is wrong? Are we in the position to sort all of this out?

Critical exchange–serious debate–is one of the most effective methods available to us for exposing falsehoods and revealing truths, where the acid test of our own objectivity and fair-play is not the issues upon which we all agree but on those on which we most strenuously disagree. The case of Libya is a case in point. While Jim and others have provided a strong case against Gaddafi as a murderous tyrant, Cristof Lehman, Stephen Lendman and others have provided an equally strong case for Gadaffi as a benevolent dictator. So are there any general consideration that might enable us to sort out these differences of opinion? I believe there are, but I must emphasize that, since we are dealing with inductive reasoning, new premises or new theories about what has been going on might require us to revised our positions by rejecting hypotheses that we previously accepted, accept hypotheses we previously rejected, and leave others in suspense. Let’s begin with the case for Gaddafi as a tyrant.

Evaluating Conflicting Positions

Perhaps the strongest case that Jim and others make hinges upon the reports from Uri Avnery, who is an acknowledged expert on Israel and Palestine. For Uri’s testimony to outweigh the UN’s reports on the quality of life in Libya and other countries, however, the probability that he is right must be greater than the probability that the UN is right. Otherwise, since their reports conflict, whichever is granted the greater weight by that token weighs against the truth of the other. Not only is the UN in the business of making assessments of this kind, but Uri is not an expert on Libya, which means that we appear to encounter a fallacious appeal to authority in this instance. Moreover, there are obvious indications of bias against those whom he identifies as “leftists”, such as that, “I was sharply attacked by some well-meaning European leftists for blessing the awful monster called NATO.

Now, in retrospect, it is quite obvious that the overwhelming–if not unanimous–opinion of the Libyans themselves welcomed the intervention.” He also claims, “There can be no doubt any more that the vast majority of the Libyan people detested Gaddafi and welcomed the NATO campaign that helped to remove him. It was an important contribution, but the actual heavy fighting was done by the ragtag people’s army.” But the division of opinion about issues like these means that, for those of us who are not Uri, his position begs the question by taking for granted the crucial issues that are at stake here, including whether or not the Libyans “welcomed NATO’s intervention” and whether or not the heavy fighting was done by “a ragtag people’s army”. As a former Marine Corps officer, I know that the largest proportion of casualties in combat come as an effect of bombing and of artillery strikes, not as the result of infantry operations by a ragtag army. If tens of thousands have died, it was almost certainly at the hands of NATO.

There are other reasons to doubt that this was an emancipation of Libya by the Libyan people. The first action taken by this allegedly indigent force was to found a central bank. That struck me at the time as most peculiar, but I have learned since that Gadaffi had established his own independent bank for the benefit of the Libyan people. And this is on the only indication that what was taking place was a reaffirmation of the global international banking structure, which places every economy under the ultimate control of the Bank of International Settlements, as Ellen Brown explained to me. With the passage of time, we are seeing more and more indications that the removal of Gaddafi was only one major step in the colonization of the continent of Africa, where he was perhaps the only leader with the loyal following of his people to take a principled stand against the West taking control of the natural resources of his and of the other countries of Africa.

The New York Times, for example, has now published, “West Sees Libya as Ripe at Last for Businesses”, where, it claims, “Companies from NATO countries hope that gratitude for assistance in the Libyan rebellion will be a factor in awarding contracts.” But if Christof Lehmann, Stephen Lendman and others are right, what we have here is a cynical attempt to make the theft of the nation’s resources appear to be a virtue in the eyes of the world. We all know, “To the victor belong the spoils!” But attempting to case this atrocity as an act of liberation in the name of democracy and freedom is a song we have been sung too many times to continue to find credible. The pattern of demonization of a nationalist leader, who wanted to use the resources of his own country for the people of his own country, is one we have had with Fidel Castro in Cuba, Salvador Allende in Chile, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and now Moammar Gaddafi in Libya. I would like to believe we have see this play out often enough to not be taken in.

Another indication that things are not as they should be is that the US is conducting operations in Somalia despite official denials, “America’s War in the Horn of Africa: Drone Alley – a Harbinger of Western Power across the African Continuent” by Finian Cunningham in Global Research (29 October 2011). And other reports suggest that even Egypt is not better off now than it was under Hosni Mubarak, which, like Libya, was supposed to be “the result of a popular uprising” where freedom and democracy reign “in the once oppressed nation”. But the truth, according to brasschecktv, is that it was a coup d'etat backed by Western intelligence agencies using the mass protests as cover, where “the evidence of this is that the demands of the protestors have not been addressed and that the protests, which once allowed the coup to take place, are now brutally suppressed.” Why does that not surprise me? Why does that not appear to be exactly what we can expect in Libya, too? How many times are we going to be played for saps?

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professorr Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of Ron Paul

2011-10-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Reason and Rationality in Public Debate: The Case of Ron Paul

by Jim Fetzer

During the organizing meeting of The Human Behavior and Evolution Society at the University of Michigan in 1988, I raised my hand after a presentation by Lida Cosmides, then the doyen of the movement, which had made a certain impression on me, and said, “I have only two concerns regarding your presentation”. She said, “Yes?”; and I continued, “One is your conclusion”. She took a few paces with her hand on her chin and again said, “Yes?”; and, I added on, “The other is your premises.” The audience burst out in laughter, since a scholar’s position, like that of anyone else, only has two parts: their premises and their conclusion!

Most of us know that much about arguments, which are conclusions, hypotheses or conjectures supported by premises, which provide grounds, reasons or evidence, where the stronger argument, in rational discourse, tends to prevail. But that assumes an appropriate correspondence between objective standards of rational belief and subjective degrees of conviction. The measure of the difference between them serves as an index of the degree of divergence of a person’s opinion from normative standards and therefore functions as an index of the extent of the irrationality of their degree of belief from what beliefs are rational.

While most Americans know that much about arguments, they do not also understand that there are two broad classes of arguments: deductive and inductive. Deductive arguments are non-ampliative, in the sense that they do not contain any information in their conclusions that was not already in their premises. It is for this reason that their conclusions cannot be false if their premises are true. If “Jack and Jill went up the hill” is true, then “Jack went up the hill” cannot be false. Likewise, when “All ducks are white” and “This is a duck” are both true, then “This is white” must be true, too.

That is not the case for inductive arguments, whose conclusions go beyond their premises. If “Jack went up the hill” and “Jill is usually with Jack” are both true, then probably “Jill went up the hill”. But that conclusion could still be false even when those premises are true. Inferences from the past to the future, from samples to populations, and from the observable to the unobservable are familiar cases. Even if every duck we have observed so far is white, there may be those we have not yet observed that are not. Our knowledge of laws of nature and of historical events is inductive, which is why we can never be sure our conclusions are true, but only whether they well-supported or not.

Truth versus Belief

Sentences (or assertions) are true whenever they correspond to reality (or to how things are or to everything that is the case). But absent some kind of privileged access, we have to depend upon our own personal experience and the evidence available to us in determining what we ought to believe by exercising reason or rationality. The coherence of our beliefs based upon the evidence available to us thus functions as a criterion for us to judge the difference between what we take to be true and what we take to be false, where we may be mistaken. This diagram compares levels of strength of personal conviction and objective degrees of evidential support:

Notice that personal degrees of subjective conviction are measured on the basis of psychological considerations from beliefs we cannot imagine are false (“indubitable”) to those we cannot imagine are true (“inconceivable”). With respect to objective measures of evidential support, they range from those that are logically contradictory (that “2 + 2 = 5” or that “This is both a circle and a square”) to those that are logically necessary (“2 + 2 = 4” and “A square has four sides and four equal angles”). But our beliefs about the world around us, including current events, are inductive and uncertain.

Thomas Jefferson was once asked if he would prefer a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, to which he replied that he would prefer the latter. But Jefferson was not contemplating a time in which newspapers would be controlled by governments or by corporations, which is the situation that we confront today. It has become increasingly difficult to sort out information we are given that is true from information we are given that is false. And that is especially true when editors and reporters can slant the news using a variety of techniques familiar to students of logic and critical thinking but not to the average American, including the straw man (by exaggerating a position to make it easier to attack), special pleading (by citing only the evidence that supports your point of view), and the appeal to authority (by citing sources that are authoritative on one subject as experts on another), which can be illustrated relative to news coverage of the candidacy of Ron Paul, the "Wall Street" protest and of the assassination of JFK, where the differences that are displayed here offer powerful proof that the American press is not "free".

The Coverage of Ron Paul

Perhaps the most egregious illustration of special pleading of my lifetime—apart from the bias the press has displayed in relation to 9/11 and JFK (on which I am planning to publish a complementary column)—has been the shameless suppression of information about the candidacy of Ron Paul for the GOP presidential nomination. He has won straw poll after straw poll, in California, in Ohio, at the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Louisiana and at the Value Voters Summit held in Virginia; he has raised millions of dollars in funding, second only to Mitt Romney and Rick Perry; and he has won run-away polling victories in relation to the GOP debates. On 11 October 2011, he won the Value Voters Summit poll 37% to 23% for Herman Cain, where Tony Perkins of the Family Research Counsel, which sponsored the event, repudiated his own poll and declared Cain as the one who had attained the real victory. On 24 October 2011, Ron Paul won the Ohio straw poll, 54% to 26% for Herman Cain and just 9% for Romney.

After a GOP presidential debate held on 22 September 2011, FOX NEWS published poll results showing that Ron Paul had won with 30% trailed by Romney with 27%, Perry with 15%, and Cain with 9%. Even Russia Today reported “Fox Freaks after Ron Paul Wins Debate” by taking down the poll results after Ron Paul took the lead. RT even quoted Ralph Nader, whom most of us have long admired, who said that, in his opinion, Paul was the most appealing of the GOP candidates and offered the following reasons:

“He wants to get out of these wars overseas, he wants to bring the soldiers back, he wants to cut the bloated military budget, he wants to change some of the anti-civil liberty provisions in the Patriot Act, he hates corporate welfare and all these bailouts of Wall Street crooks,” said Nader. “He ought to get more attention, instead of ten times more attention being given to Michele Bachmann.”

Ron Paul’s opposition to corporate welfare and crony capitalism has now been reinforced by Bank of America’s transfer of $75 trillion in risky derivatives liabilities from one side of the ledger to the other (and thereby shifting it to the back of American taxpayers) and another $79 trillion by JP Morgan are only the latest and most breath-taking demonstrations. That bankers and corporations--including those dominated by the promotion of Zionist interests--fear him should come as no surprise, as many Americans are beginning to perceive.

The Debate Poll

Perhaps the most astounding result of all followed the Republican debate held at the Reagan Library, where msnbc published the following results:

Since this poll occurred following the Republican debate on 7 September, I infer that, by 22 September, when Fox pulled its results, the corporations that control the media had determined that it was better to publish no poll results at all than to publish poll results that massively favored Ron Paul.

Some might contend that Ron Paul was even featured on “Meet the Press” on 23 October 2011 as part of a series that featured the GOP candidates. His exclusion would have been too blatant a form of bias for any American to miss, so they included him. As I watched the program on that Sunday, I was not the least surprised by the direct and pointed fashion in which Ron Paul answered the questions that were posed by David Gregory, even one that was loaded about student loans. I was equally unsurprised when his proposal to phase them out (but without explaining his Constitutional rationale) was the only answer that was featured in an article in the Wisconsin State Journal (24 October 2011, A13) which led to a letter (28 October 2011, A13) of complaint about that move, but which was also accompanied by another objecting to the near-compete media blackout.

Notice how this technique combines special pleading with the straw man, where his proposals to end these wars of aggression, bring our troops home, close our bases abroad, cut defense spending, abolish the FED, restore civil liberties, and end crony capitalism are just too much for the major corporations who control the media to tolerate. They do not even publish the Constitutional reasons he would end student loans, which may not be a plank we all want to support but deserves a fair explanation. So if there are any lingering doubts about whether we in the United States have a free press, they are decisively refuted by this example, where the media are combining the suppression of information about Ron Paul with special pleading by only publicizing positions of his that they believe will diminish his support, which betrays the principles upon which this country was founded. Thomas Jefferson would not have been pleased.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

From New York to Occupy the World: Will it Work?

2011-10-20T01:21:00.000-07:00

From New York to Occupy the World: Will it Work?

by Jim Fetzer

"Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable."-- John F. Kennedy (1962)

Protesters at "Occupy Wall Street"

The responses to "Occupy Wall Street" have ranged from hypercritical and dismissive to completely sympathetic and supportive. Some have suggested that this is really COINTELPRO in action, while others submit that it is instead a preemptive move by the far right to undermine the public's growing disenchantment with endless wars, bank bailouts, and the decimation of the middle class, where everyone in power appears to be going for everything they can get, no matter how catastrophic the effects upon the middle class and working families. If a single phrase were required to sum it up, we have a denunciation of insatiable greed that have led to gross abuses of the interests of the people by bankers and war-mongers, who are leaving the rest of us nearly bankrupt and almost completely powerless.

Matt Taibbi, "Why OWS is Bigger than Left vs. Right", however, may have put his finger on the importance of what has been taking place by virtue of bringing together elements of the left and of the right in American politics. "What nobody [at the top] is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle." And one that poses a major challenge to the status quo. Not only the bankers and traders on Wall Street are being confronted by this movement, but those who stage manage political events in this country, from the President on down.

Some commentators have been alarmed by what they perceive to be the role taken by an organization located in Vancouver called "Ad Busters", which has even been discussed at Above Top Secret. Those who visit their web site, http://www.adbusters.org/ will discover that they describe themselves as "a global network of culture jammers and creatives working to change the way information flows, the way corporations wield power, and the way meaning is produced in our society", which would appear to be worthy goals. Sean Dix, who has participated in the protest a dozen days or more, has told me that he has discovered that some of those who are there with him have the destruction of capitalism on their agenda. But capitalism in our society is largely a myth today, where none of the five principles that Adam Smith specified as necessary for the "invisible hand of the free market" to operate properly are present today, including transparency in pricing to reflect the full costs of the natural resources and the labor that was required to produce a product or the free and open competition between alternative sources that is supposed to maintain market stability at the lowest price for the benefit of the consumer.

So if Ad Busters is anti-consumerism and anti-exploitative-capitalism, that does not mean they are on the wrong side of the issues. They may not appreciate that persons like Sean Dix illustrate the problems that inventors confront in dealing with corporate giants like Johnson & Johnson. Sean's "Floss Rings" product has been estimated to be worth $250,000,000 in sales yearly and to potentially employ as many as 1,000 new workers. Yet he has been harassed by some of those who do not grasp the complexity of the situation, where instead of open and fair competition, we have crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and monopolistic practices that are well-encapsulated by the slogan, "Banks get bail outs, we get sold out!" Whether or not Ad Busters have been the force initiating the OWS movement and even if some of their supporters are incapable of recognizing the dimension of the problem represented by Sean Dix's experiences with Johnson & Johnson, they have featured an excellent video on its world-wide spread:

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/10/18/from-new-york-to-occupy-the-world-will-it-work/

And those who complain that the movement has never specified its objectives appear to be on equally flimsy grounds. As "Occupy Wall Street objectives are clear" explains in a critical response to articles in the Associated Press, "A little homework as simple as checking the Occupy Wall Street website would have found that their demands include a universal single-payer health care system; guaranteed living-wage income regardless of employment; free college education; $1 trillion in infrastructure spending; $1 trillion in ecological restoration; decommissioning all of America's nuclear power plants; open borders migration and immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all." These are not objectives that promote the interests of the rich and powerful, which suggests that those who claim this movement is un-American, anti-democratic, or even COINTELPRO are seriously mistaken or completely off-base. This movement appears to be profoundly populist and egalitarian and opposed to the exploitation of the middle class and of working families for the benefit of the rich and powerful.

Is OWS actually COINTELPRO?

The most extreme response has come from Henry Mankow, "Occupy Wall Street is COINTELPRO (Phony Opposition)", who resurrects some not-s0-ancient history regarding government abuses in the past: "COINTELPRO was the FBI acronym for 'Counter Intelligence Program'. COINTELPRO not only infiltrated domestic antiwar and civil rights protest groups, it also created them. By 1968, the largest leading 'counterculture' groups were entirely FBI/CIA controlled. In fact the leading 'Anti-Establishment' figures of the late 60's early 70's were outed years later as having been double agents for the CIA." But while there are multiple reasons across a wide range of contexts to reflect upon Lenin's observation, "The best way to control the opposition is to lead it", that appears to be extremely unlikely with a movement that appears to have deep roots in the American experience of the past several decades, which originated with the "supply side" economic policies of Ronald Reagan, which even David Stockman, who was his chief economic adviser, has acknowledged were intended to drive up the federal deficit to astronomical levels where the social welfare programs initiated by FDR would no longer be sustainable.

Discussing the movement on Russia Today

It was a disastrous plan that has made the rich richer and the poor poorer while concurrently undermining the strength and vitality of our nation's economy. No one who has been following this movement, however, should take Mankow's idea seriously. Consider the following sampler of developments related to the movement, which include the arrest of Princeton Professor Cornell West and of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, where even the Los Angeles City Counsel has voted unanimously to support the "Occupy LA" movement in its own community:

Arrests made after Phoenix 'Occupy' protests 16 Oct 2011 About 50 Occupy Phoenix protesters descended on the Fourth Avenue Jail in Phoenix to support the 45 demonstrators arrested early Sunday. "Bankers get a bailout and we get jail," they chanted before marching back to Cesar Chavez Plaza on Sunday afternoon. Later that evening, about 150 demonstrators crowded the sidewalks at the plaza under the watch of police officers. Three demonstrators were arrested when they refused to get off the street after the plaza's closing hour.

Cornel West one of 19 arrested at Supreme Court 16 Oct 2011 Liberal professor Cornel West was one of 19 people arrested on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Sunday, according to the Associated Press, as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement. West, a former Harvard University professor now teaching at Princeton University, took part Sunday in the dedication of the monument to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He then, according to media reports, moved on to a protest at the home of the high court. A well-known commentator on civil rights issues, West recently got into a TV spat with presidential candidate Herman Cain, telling Cain to "get off the symbolic crack pipe."

Cindy Sheehan arrested at Wall Street protest in Sacramento 16 Oct 2011 Anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan was arrested along with 18 other demonstrators at Cesar Chavez Park in Sacramento early Sunday, police said. Sheehan, 53, was booked into Sacramento County Jail at 3:15 a.m. for unlawful assembly in the park and failing to follow police orders to disburse, police said. Occupy Sacramento reported there have been 58 arrests at the park at Ninth and I streets across from City Hall since the nationwide protests began Oct. 6.

L.A. City Council Votes to Support Occupy LA 12 Oct 2011 Occupy LA has gained the official support of the Los Angeles City Council after it unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday afternoon. It now heads to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for his approval or veto... A handful of local banking leaders spoke up, reminding the council that they invest in the community, but the crowd was overwhelmingly in support of the nascent national movement that seeks to bring attention to and solve a number of issues surrounding jobs, banks and corporations.

More Balanced Assessments

Among the most responsible discussions of this movement has come from Ted Morgan, 'US Congress in jitters over OWS' (17 October 2011), who believes that the movement has reached a critical stage, where both parties in Congress are becoming worried that the political situation may be spinning out of their control. The movement has now spread to ten or more major cities in the United States, including Seattle, LA, Dallas, and Boston, where the spate of arrests suggests that police and local officials may also be willing to take strong-arm measures to suppress these protests. Consider:

Hundreds arrested at 'Occupy' events in Chicago, Denver, Arizona, as movement spreads across U.S. 16 Oct 1011 Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested in Chicago and other cities on Saturday night and Sunday morning, as the anti-corporate fury from the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York continue to spread across the country. Shortly after 1 a.m. in Chicago, police arrested some 175 protesters who had set up a makeshift tent city and formed a human chain in Congress Plaza by Grant Park, according to a report in the Chicago Tribune.

175 Chicago protesters arrested after being told to leave Grant Park 16 Oct 2011 Chicago police arrested about 175 Occupy Chicago protestors in Congress Plaza just after 1 a.m. Sunday, about 90 minutes after police issued their first warning that the group was violating municipal code. Police completed the last arrests and cleared the plaza of protesters at 3:30 am, more than two hours after arrests began. The protesters will likely be cited with municipal violations and face fines, police said.

Peaceful protesters in New York

NY police arrest dozens of protesters 16 Oct 2011 At least 74 people have been arrested in New York City as police on horseback clashed with protesters in Times Square during a global day of demonstrations against corporate greed. Police loaded at least 45 "Occupy Wall Street" protesters who'd been detained at the square onto waiting vans. Thousands of demonstrators who'd mixed with tourists had poured into the major commercial intersection, amid a heavy security presence.

Thousands of protesters fill NYC's Times Square 15 Oct 2011 Thousands of demonstrators protesting corporate greed filled Times Square on Saturday night, mixing with gawkers, Broadway showgoers, tourists and police to create a chaotic scene in the midst of Manhattan. "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!" protesters chanted from within police barricades. Police, some in riot gear and mounted on horses, tried to push them out of the square and onto the sidewalks in an attempt to funnel the crowds away.

Current Developments

Jerry Mazza, who lives and works in New York, has been following the movement from its inception. Saturday night was only October 15th, but "New Year's Eve-size crowds of Occupy Wall Street protestors filled Times Square with their incredible chants and signs, surrounded by a sea of cops, many of whom we find out were paid mercenaries, some not even cops but ex-military, some rent-a-cops, purposely inciting an incident that causes 70 arrests," he writes, "the most amazing thing I've seen since the end of WW II as a boy."

"On the other side of Seventh Avenue, there were an equal number of protesters waving their wonderful slogans in the chill breeze. I think someone should publish a book of their chants, secular poetry for the New Police State. A soldier held a sign “2nd TIME I’VE FOUGHT FOR MY COUNTRY, FIRST TIME I’VE KNOWN THE ENEMY.” The rhythm of the crowd and chants was like an ocean. It just took you in its current. You talked to strangers and they talked to you, as if you were old friends against the system and knew all about it." The enthusiasm and sense of shared commitment he sensed in the crowd suggested that they are serious and here for the long run, nothing less.

Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the only independent in the United States Senate, has called for a boycott on the nation's largest banks. As "The Hill" reported it, "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) doubled down on his anti-Wall Street rhetoric over the weekend, encouraging protesters to withdraw money from the major banks and calling the financial industry “the most powerful, dangerous and secretive” institution in the United States. “People might want to think about going to your local community bank and withdrawing funds from these large institutions,” Sanders said in tweet on Sunday, which was replaced with a toned-down version of the same proposal: “People might choose to move their money out of the large banks and into local community banks or credit unions.”

‎"The Vermont senator has been a vocal supporter of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, but these latest comments were his sharpest to date. In a string of tweets leading up to his call for a run on the banks, Sanders offered ideas he says would "change the system to work for all Americans, not just the top one-percent," including a Wall Street speculation fee and a cap on credit card interest rates. Sanders continued criticizing the financial industry on Monday, both in an editorial at Roll Call and to a newspaper in his home state." It would be admirable if others were to follow his lead, including Ron Paul (R-TX) and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). But it would be too much to expect from Barack Obama, who has long since sold out his followers for wars that he claimed to oppose and policies, like the PATRIOT Act and The Military Commissions Act, which he as President should have repealed, not to mention closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Does he have any concept of the irony that he is bombing Libya while we are protesting for benefits they already had?

Future Expectations

Somewhat surprisingly, the most astute assessment of the movement was presented on PressTV (Iran), "Israel and US, assassination experts" (October 17, 2011), during an interview with Rodney Shakespeare, a qualified UK barrister and Professor of Binary Economics at Triskti University, the largest private institution of higher learning in Indonesia, who has offered a sobering evaluation of the current situation and why the governments of these nations, especially the United States, are likely to respond with force, which, I fear, may lead to the eventual fulfillment of JFK's observation that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable. Consider:

Press TV: Rodney Shakespeare, tell us what you think, these are not as the headlines say against the banking industry, but it's really not just about that is it? It's about... if you want to call it inequality, of course which spreads to many different facets of people's lives in particular in the UK. Tell us how and why people have these gripes and are discontent and unsatisfied?

Shakespeare: Inequality is not quite the description. You're looking at what I assume is soon going to be thousands of very uneasy and/or distressed people. They are uneasy because even if they have a job, the chances are that that job is part-time and they're going to lose it. They're uneasy because if they're students they're going to end up with huge levels of debt and they'll never be able to get a housing level.

They're distressed when they are actually out of work and have no prospects of work in the years to come. They're distressed because they're not going to retire at a normal age; they're going to work for the rest of their lives. They're distressed in particular as they see that the whole system is in fact collapsing and the governments / authorities have no effective remedy whatsoever. In their thinking there is no... They think they have a solution but in practice they do not know what to do.

The calm before the storm

We're looking at the first stages of what is a global insurrection in which people realize how precarious and fragile their economic position is. You made a point, you and [Press TV correspondent] Narges, about the peaceful protests. Well, yes; very largely, certainly in London, the protest is peaceful. But such a process is now so fundamental that it amounts to a direct challenge to a collapsing system. And at some point, those in charge of the system are bound to turn nasty.

And that is why, yes, you are seeing the police putting on their riot gear; yes, you are seeing people arrested, because the repression at some stage, perhaps not today, but certainly in the weeks to come, is going to turn nasty and very, very violent because the government has no other alternative in its mind. And [the government] basically thinks that those who are protesting are in the wrong. And it thinks that because its assumption is that it represents the system, which is always basically in balance.

And when it gets a little bit out of balance, after a period of weeks or maybe a period of months, the system will come into balance, in which it assumes there is justice and fair outcomes. But there is none of that. People realize that there is none of that and the system is collapsing; so you're looking at the early stages of massive protests and what, I'm sorry to say, is going to be a very nasty, sluggish suppression.

In my view, the deregulation of the banking system to restore the right of banks to be both investment and savings institutions represented a crucial blunder in recent US history, where the Glass-Steagall Act (1933) was intended to preclude the very kinds of speculations that have brought the American economy to its knees: "The year before the repeal, sub-prime loans were just five percent of all mortgage lending. By the time the credit crisis peaked in 2008, they were approaching 30 percent." Even though John McCain (R-AZ) and others have proposed its reinstatement, most Republicans have opposed it and the Bank of America came out squarely against it. When Obama took a swing at it, he was initially supported by Paul Vokler, but during an interview in May 2010, he denied that he was supporting a return to Glass-Steagall.

The kinds of reforms that the movement represents, such as a universal single-payer health care system; guaranteed living-wage income regardless of employment; free college education; $1 trillion in infrastructure spending; $1 trillion in ecological restoration; decommissioning all of America's nuclear power plants; open borders migration and immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all, are worthy of support by every civilized American. It will take much more to reform our political system, including public financing for federal elections, jettisoning the use of voting machines that can easily be rigged, and keeping lobbyists from writing legislation that regulates the interests they represent. None of this is likely to happen without a long and protracted struggle, which will demonstrate the wisdom of JFK's observation.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Flossing can be Murder: Inventor becomes Victim

2011-10-11T17:58:00.000-07:00

Flossing can be Murder (Update): Inventor becomes Victim

Jim Fetzer and Sean Dix

Sean Dix at "Occupy Wall Street"

Sean Dix has invented an ingenious device known as "the floss ring". He brought it to Johnson & Johnson (hereafter "J&J") in 1994, unaware that J&J had been attempting to develop a similar product of its own, but without success. That began a series of horrendous experiences that culminated on 21 December 2009, with an apparent attempt on his life by means of a massive injection of flouride administered by his long-time dentist. He has made heroic attempts to expose the malfeasance by J&J by contacting local and state authorities. As you will read here, they now include efforts to file charges for attempted murder that have reached as high as the offices of Manhattan District Attorney then Robert Morganthau/now Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the Office of the Attorney General then Andrew Cuomo of the State of New York, and even the Office of then Governor David Paterson/now Andrew Cuomo of New York.

On Sunday, 5 December 2010, Sean Dix, the inventor of the Floss Ring, sent the following letter to the prominent law firm of Dear, Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Lason, Anello & Bohrer, P.C., which lays out the basic elements of his story. To facilitate easy of reading, I have done some stylistic editing and added a few graphics. I have found his history so compelling that I interviewed him as my featured guest on "The Real Deal" on Friday, 1 April 2011, where the interview is archived at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com. But there is nothing the least bit "April Foolish" about what he has had to endure. This is such a stunning example of corporate corruption that I am going to devote several blogs to exposing it. Lest anyone doubt that Sean had invented something of great interest and potential value, here, as a preface, is an excerpt from an article that appeared in The New York Times:

The New York Times
Business Day… Monday, November 16, 1998

Patents – Sabra Chartrand
“An entrepreneur hopes that sterilized dental floss will encourage people to keep their teeth cleaner.”

Many people dislike flossing their teeth and do so irregularly. Flossing has such a bad image that people tend to floss erratically even when they understand that it is the only way to really clean below the gum line. But Sean Dix is hoping that those people who do use dental floss will prefer a sterile product. Mr. Dix is a former diamond cutter turned inventor who won a patent a few years ago for inexpensive plastic rings that aid flossing. He had trouble flossing himself because of a skin condition: wrapping thin floss around his fingers irritated them. So he designed the rings, won a patent, quit his diamond-cutting job and became a full-time floss entrepreneur. Now Mr. Dix, who lives in New York, is expanding his business to include his newly patented sterile dental floss. His latest invention started when he learned how floss is traditionally manufactured...."

Elderly woman with Sean's J&J flyer on Wall Street

Ironically, "Occupy Wall Street" has created an opportunity for Sean to interact with a concerned and supportive audience. He has handed out thousands of his flyers. His story of the exploitation of an individual by a powerful corporation resonates with those who are there is protest the abuse of the people by bankers and traders who are only interested in enrichening themselves, no matter what the cost to the American public. He has been interviewed by reporters from many nations, but not by ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN, which flee as soon as they notice the name of "Johnson & Johnson". As I have explained to Sean, this may be because their airing of his charges against J&J might trigger a lawsuit by that company against them. That they have not put him on the air, therefore, does not mean that they would not be equally disturbed by what his experiences have to tell us about life in Amerika, the new fascist state blending big business with big government and dominating the media with propaganda and misinformation.

Here is my first but not my last interview with Sean on 8 April 2011, "Corporate Corruption Extraodinaire",

http://nwopodcast.com/fetz/media/jim%20fetzer%20real%20deal-dental%20floss%20conspiracy.mp3

and my subsequent interview with Mary Sparrowdancer on 27 April 2011, who has championed his cause:

http://nwopodcast.com/fetz/media/jim%20fetzer%20real%20deal-mary%20sparrowdancer.mp3

For more about this case, search "Sean Dix poison", including especially the virtually complete records of his astonishing case.

Sean's Story (told in the first-person)

In 1993 I invented "Floss Rings" and the first truly Sterilized Floss.

In 1994 I offered them to J&J not knowing that J&J had lied by falsely advertising its own floss as "Sterilized and Surgically Clean" 120 years ago as one of the longest false-ad campaigns in corporate history.

Few know that J&J helped underwrite the first Food and Drug Act of 1906 to ensure that this lie, among others, would not be exposed. On 30 September 2010, the Congressional Oversight Committee had J&J and the FDA answering questions about J&J's largest recall in corporate history. It's no mystery as to why J&J was reprimanded along with the FDA together, since J&J had been instrumental in the creation the FDA.

I own 55 years worth of these false floss ads--more than the ADA and Google combined. Here are some samples of its false advertising from 1906, 1912, and 1921:

Johnson & Johnson's "ABSOLUTELY ASEPTIC" floss (1906)

Johnson & Johnson's "guaranteed surgically clean" (1912)

Johnson & Johnson's "Surgically Clean Floss" (1921)

The floss discovery led me to uncover the biggest of J&J's misrepresentations, namely: that J&J had founded its company with the first "Sterilized Sutures" beginning in 1887. (You can visit J&J's website for its own "History".)

I have every J&J ad from January to October 1887, where J&J did not advertise in November or December of that year. All ten months in 1887 are full page advertisements for "Zonweiss Dental Cream". J&J claims as of this date to have pioneered Sterilized Sutures beginning in 1887. The truth is that J&J's first ad, which appeared in January 1887, had a "Gulliver's Travels" theme ending in October 1887 with a witch, who was selling "Zonweiss Dental Cream".

Sterilized sutures would not come for several more years and only after J&J had exhausted its advertisements for the failed Zonweiss Dental Cream. J&J had to finally get serious and come up with something that was useful. They did, but it took over a decade to perfect sutures and, as you can see, even today they are still recalling them because of contamination issues, so they never really did even get that right.

Of course this has nothing to do with J&J's Cat-A-Logs from the 1950s, where J&J mockingly joked about selling "Contaminated Sutures" in their Ethicons Suture Catalogs. (See Ethicon Catalog 1 and Ethicon Catalog 2). That was in poor taste even in 1950, but with people dropping like flies from J&J's products in hindsight, that is probably something J&J would prefer I hadn't found with several original volumes, with each picture and caption worse than the next.

Needless to say, J&J had and still has a vested interest in keeping me silent and off the market, which they have done for the most part for the past 14 years to everyones detriment, beginning with influencing CNN to air a hatchet job on my company on 12 June 1996, which was one week before my "FlossRings" were placed in the National Museum of Dentistry, where they are additionally listed under "George Washington's Ivory Teeth" as one of its 32 permanent public exhibits.

The Pursuit of Justice

My pursuit of justice eventually appears to have led J&J to have an operative contact me to threaten my life by describing the numerous ways that I could be killed and make it look like an accident or suicide. Poisoning was mentioned more than any other method--and several times. This was unsettling as I had originally offered my patents to J&J, where its unethical negotiating practices had prompted me to end discussions with them. Concerned about these death threats thinly disguised as "worldly advice", I contacted as many of the proper authorities as possible, only to be ignored at the mention of CNN or J&J. I have included three clips of over ten mentions of how I could be killed. [Co-author's note: several of them were played during the interview on "The Real Deal" on Friday, 1 April 2011, which can be accessed above and at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com.]

Supporting expert documentation

Frustrated with having my business ruined on CNN and being threatened for pursuing justice and being ignored on both complaints, I felt I had no choice but to document it for the public record by forcing their hand. Seven months after becoming tired of looking over my shoulder, I generated a federal trial by issuing a letter containing threatening language designed to generate a trial to expose the true threats that were made against me insofar as the government was doing nothing on my behalf. My intentions to get into court by violating positive law were not only described in my letter but were explained to Joel Klein--the head of the Federal Anti-Trust Division at the time--in a letter prior to the letter that generated my trial. The arresting detective by the name of "Everett" even testified that this was my stated purpose and that he was had been hired by CNN to try and prevent my letter from going out before I faxed it. They all knew.

I was arrested and finally had a day in court because the government had refused to listen any other way. The federal judge and prosecutor did everything possible to tilt my trial in their favor beginning with introducing me to the jury pool with my hands behind my back being escorted by two correctional officers. I was offered "time served" but declined in favor of documenting the truth for history. Needless to say, I was railroaded and spent a year in jail and was put on probation where my court ordered psychologist, Dr. Caffery, agreed on tape that he believed that what J&J did was criminal and that he was willing to "bet money on it" along with the fact that he knew I generated my trial to expose what happened to me and that the government had further harmed me, knowing full well why I had generated my trial. He stated that he could do something about it, but he, like everyone else. chose not to; so I stopped going to him, which prompted my re-arrest one calender year to the day later.

Another Miscarriage of Justice

This time Federal Judge Clarence Cooper acknowledged on transcript that he knew that I had generated my trial to expose what happened to me and that Turner (CNN) had perpetuated a wrong upon me, but still sent me to prison--this time for another year--stating that at some point I had to give up my campaign for truth and justice. I found it especially ironic to be lectured on giving up by a black judge (Clarence Cooper) in Atlanta, no less, the home of the civil rights movement whose struggles had eventually afforded him his lofty position only by not giving up. In prison I suffered a severe MRSA infection, which I believe was intentionally given to me and lasted for a solid year after my release. This may have actually been the first attempt on my life, since some of the boils were so severe I almost passed out; but I refused to go to the doctor on the prison compound, fearing that they were waiting for me to show up. Pulling out boils the size of marbles with no anesthetic in a prison with inadequate medical supplies was an experience I would not wish even upon those who gave me the experience.

When Governor Paterson replaced Elliott Spitzer, I sent him a package with the death threats and supporting documentation in the hopes that he would open an investigation. He sent back a letter stating for the first time that my difficulties were a "criminal matter". This was the first time any government official had ever classified what has happened to me as a criminal matter and instructed me to contact District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, which I did three times over the next year-and-a-half via certified mail. DA Morgenthau never responded and, when I called to follow up, I was told that the DA's office didn't care what the Governor thought.

On 25 February 2009, I contacted Lucinda Franks, Morgenthau's wife, in an attempt to reach Morgenthau. (I have Lucinda Franks' E-mail.) I had no other agenda other than to reach him but, two days later, I read in Crains, NY, that Morgenthau would be ending his re-election bid. I later explained this to a State Supreme Court Justice, who personally knows Morgenthau, who told me he would look into it. When I subsequently saw the Justice, who refers to me as his friend, he told me, "You did it!", in reference to our conversation about Morgenthau days earlier; and I believed him, even though I had no intention of ending his re-election bid. I simply wanted him to address my concerns.

A notice about Floss Rings from PREVENTION Magazine (November 1997)

The Attempted Murder

Six months after my last letter to Morgenthau in April 2009, I was poisoned at my dentist's office. The date was 21 December 2009. I was given a syringe full of fluoride sublingually that left me unable to hold a conversation that night with a friend who had called me. I was in a fluoride induced stupor for the next 17 days. I recorded all of my calls with my dentists office beginning the next morning; I was lied to over 40 times by being told that no fluoride was used until she slipped and admitted using fluoride twice two weeks later. I have in total 17 conversations with no less that 60 confirmed lies including the "smoking gun" that fluoride had been used on me. I even saved my urine the morning after as it was the darkest urine I had ever seen in my life. It was blood I was urinating.

My urine later forensically tested positive for fluoride with levels of 160-132mg/L (the EPA standard being 1mg/L or lower), while my creatinine levels were 5636mg/L, which is indicative of acute kidney failure. The normal range is 300-3000 where 1000 mg/L being the normal range. My kidneys, eye sight, bones, and other body parts have been affected, even though, fortunately, I continue to recover due to my diet of primarily raw fruits and vegetables. I have been told that my alkaline diet is what saved me and that I should be dead, with no doubt, where others have died with less fluoride in their urine.

On 27 January 2010, I tried to file criminal charges, but was basically discouraged by the NYPD and the FBI; and, after contacting the DA's office, I left a voicemail message that was never returned. I was told by the NYPD to get a lawyer to bring this case to the DA; but the lawyers I spoke with would not touch my case unless I could have a toxicologist summarize the raw forensics. I found a toxicologist who agreed to provide a narrative and began asking for more data without ever giving me a cost or completion estimate. Six months into this ordeal, I was told that the toxicologist wanted to publish my case in a peer review journal and in her book, at which point I felt awkward saying "No" after she supposedly had been working on her narrative for six months.

A False Criminal Complaint

Eventually the dentist who knew she was being privately investigated filed a false criminal complaint stating that I threatened to kill her no doubt citing my previous case. On 31 August 2010, I was threatened with arrest by a detective named "Morales" from her precinct, who sounded more like a friend of hers who was attempting to intimidate me and who told me that my charges would not be entertained at their precinct, the 19th.

I then asked the toxicologist to please contact the DA's office to let him know that she was working on a narrative and would soon conclude it, since she had finally set a deadline of 1 September 2010, which came and went without the narrative as promised. The toxicologist told the Special Prosecutor, Thomas Wornom, that she would be ruling that I was poisoned but that she was also going to publish it in an article and subsequently promised him a copy of the narrative before I was to receive it, which I objected to since the DA's office had all but ignored everything that led up to my being poisoned.

This led to a rift that was not to be resolved when the toxicologist changed our agreement yet again by stating that she wanted to provide the narrative as a "private letter" to the DA, which, in my opinion, was to protect the publishing rights which had now apparently superceded my request for a one page statement from our first meeting in February 2010, which I needed to have in order to file charges as instructed, so I could discover exactly what kind of fluoride compound I was poisoned with, how much and why. I believe J&J is behind it but that needs to be proven in court through a real investigation.

The Toxicological Report

Eventually I had to hire another toxicologist to review the same forensic data and found Dr. Michael J. Norvell, a Board Certified Toxicologist with 25 years experience, who was able to provide a simple one page statement of fact that I had suffered a classic case of fluoride poisoning and that finding out exactly what the fluoride compound was and how much was critical to my current and future health. I submitted his report (see Flossrings.rtf & CV1.rtf) on 26 November 2010 via fax and followed up monday morning asking whether Thomas Wornom had questioned the dentist Diana Deidan to find out what exactly she poisoned me with, how much and why. I was unable to reach him until Thursday, 2 December 2010, when Thomas Wornom told me that he had not questioned Diana Deidan and had no intention of questioning her and that I should seek a civil attorney.

Stunned at this blatant disregard for my life even after a Board Certified Toxicologist had ruled that I was poisoned, I called the next morning 3 December 2010 and spoke with Jeanette Molina in Cyrus Vance's office to explain that a Board Certified Toxicologist had issued a statement that I had suffered a classic case of fluoride poisoning, while the dentist is clearly on record denying it over 40 times before admitting it twice and then denying it again, after I have been threatened with being poisoned and spent two years in prison for attempting to expose it!

Of special note : Several days after I was poisoned I ran into the Supreme Court Justice with whom I had conversed about Morganthau. Upon seeing me, he looked as if he had seen a ghost. His body language immediately registered as someone who did not expect me to be walking around and he has since avoided speaking with me at all costs. And this is a man knows Morgenthau personally. What am I to make of that?!

Reflections on My Death

A poster fitting the occasion

If I am to be openly murdered in the not too distant future, I would like a few facts to be known.

I have tried to be a productive citizen but this has been denied in every way possible or the past 14 years.

After living with the threat of premature death for simply trying to fulfill my potential and enjoy the fruits of my labor, I have been unconstitutionally incarcerated and finally poisoned in similar manner to that which I was threatened with. I have suffered the near total loss of all but my physical life and that is still not guaranteed. This is not a life, and I believe that the functions of these various methods of social isolation, financial ruin, intentional poisoning and then denial of any justice is designed to push me over the edge so that I may be murdered "legitimately" by this government .

Unfortunately for this government, I am no murderer and I will not give them an opportunity to destroy what I have tried to build and offer humanity, which has been clinically proven to be as effective as the toothbrush if not more so. Valued at over $250 million a year by Florida State University (using figures supplied by J&J), one would think the government would want to see me thriving instead--but apparently not. There is no shame dying or being murdered for trying to live in peace and contributing to humanity with whatever talents one has the potential to offer. There is shame in never living for any other purpose than to deprive others of their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the fruits of their labor.

For the Firm

I believe I have a solid case against the City, & State of New York, Robert Mogenthau, the current DA's office, J&J, and many others, where my purpose for contacting you is two-fold:

I hope you [Co-author's note: the firm to whom this letter, in its original version, was directed] can take my case on contingency, given the overwhelming proof that I have backed up in multiples at the minimum to prevent being wiped out as I have almost been and you can do the right thing by not only me but humanity or you can recuse yourselves, as you might have to defend the current DA, in which case this will serve as a sample discovery for you to digest. I believe in transparency and so I have no problem sharing all of my files with anyone J&J included. That is what a fair trial would consist--a comparison of facts available to both sides.

On a final note. I have been told that I was responsible for Morgenthau stepping down, even though that wasn't remotely on my mind. I am curious to know what a serious effort might yield along with irrefutable facts in an article that is soon to be posted. The last one can be found googling "CNN J&J" where you should find, "Sean Dix: The American Dream and Justice, Part One", by Mary Sparrowdancer. "Part Two" was nearing its completion when I was poisoned. Now my story has become even more convoluted. Truth is stranger than fiction.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Sean Dix
The FlossRing Company
145 East 15th Street 12-A
New York, NY 10003
www.FlossRings.com

P.S. I forgot to mention that the 86 year old holocaust survivor whose shop I learned the jewelry business in some 25 years ago right around the corner from your office on 47th street stated right off the bat that J&J must have been behind my being poisoned without any prompting on my part.

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Sean Dix is the inventor of "The Floss Ring" and a dedicated American who stands up for the principles on which this nation was founded.

Libya, Green Flags, and The Heart of Darkness

2011-10-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

by Jim Fetzer (and Christof Lehmann)

NATO bombing in Tripoli, Libya

One of the great virtues of Veterans Today appears to be that diverse opinions about the most important issues that confront us are welcomed with respect as long as they are well-reasoned and responsible. I have been dismayed by the support for NATO's intervention in Libya from some of our most significant contributors, which has led me to conduct interviews and additional research about what is going on there. That the first act of this "rebel uprising" was to found a new central bank told me that something very strange was taking place. That NATO, which was founded as a collective defensive alliance to respond to an invasion of Europe by the USSR, has been involved in the bombing of civilians in a nation that has not attacked any other, has stunned me.

Ghadafi has brought Libya a national health care system, public education and funding for attending college, sharing oil revenues with the Libyan people and the highest standard of living in Africa. Every Libyian has an inalienable right to have a home. If appropriate training and eduction was not offered in Libya, stipends are granted for studying abroad. Every newly wedded couple receives up to $50,000US to start their own family. Ghadafi promised that his own parents would not have their own home until the rest of the people had theirs--and he kept that promise. The adult literacy rate in Lybia was on the order of 89% in 2009, 94% for males and 83% for females. 99.9% of its youth are literate, according to the U.N. To the extent to which he qualifies as a "dictator", he appears to be an unusually benevolent one.

But he has also abandoned the petro-dollar and plans to place Libyan currency on a new gold standard, which the world's banking cartel has opposed, which appears to be the real reason NATO has been bombing his nation and massacring tens of thousands of its citizens. From interviews I have done with Ellen Brown and others, I am convinced that the attack on Libya has nothing to do with freedom and democracy and everything to do with the independence of Libya from the international banking system, which is capped by the Bank of International Settlements as "to top of the pyramid" of the New World Order. That is my take on this, where the parallels with Iraq are disturbing.

Like Ghadafi, Saddam Hussein was also demonized. Iraq was the most modern and sophisticated Arab state, with national health care and public education systems, a reliable infrastructure producing water and electricity, as well as antiquities and artifacts dating back thousands of years. But it was a political rival that offset the influence of Israel and had to be taken out. I am therefore featuring the latest study by Dr. Christof Lehmann, a practicing clinical psychologist, a life time peace activist, political advisor, and advisor in behavior, finance, economics, conflict resolution and peace building, which I have edited for publication here. He has been and is active as political advisor, in work on human rights, international relations and peace, Palestinian issues, and other activities. You can learn more about him and nsnbc in the closing note.

Libya, Green Flags, and The Heart of Darkness.

Posted on October 9, 2011 by nsnbc

Reflections by Dr. Christof Lehmann (with Jim Fetzer)

Dr. Christof Lehmann

After Muammar Ghadafi recently encouraged the Libyan people to peacefully protest NATO aggression and occupation, there are demonstrations throughout Libya. Both Russia and China have voiced gravest concerns about NATO´s abuse of resolution 1973 on Libya and The African Union is following suit. Will any of the players that could be decisive put their money where their mouth is. The truth embargo of Western Media on Libya is slowly undermined by independent media, and the defeat of NATO and the TNC becomes increasingly difficult to mask. The result so far has been an humanitarian disaster and overt NATO aggression on unprecedented scale.

Since Muammar Ghadafi addressed the Libyan Population and world political leaders on 6 October 2011, there are careful, but widespread demonstrations throughout Libya, calling for an immediate end of NATO´s bombing and ground campaign. With over 2,000 civilians killed in Sirte alone and one military defeat after the other, even Western Corporate media find it increasingly difficult to mask the bitter truth. All that NATO and its bitterly divided TNC proxy with their CIA imported “rebels” have achieved so far is the murder and massacre of tens of thousands of Libyans, an unprecedented ongoing humanitarian disaster and an unprecedented infamy in NATO´s aggression that is bound to have global consequences.

China and Russia's recent veto on a U.N. Resolution on Syria was a long expected response to NATO's aggression. Both China and Russia voiced that they would not allow any new U.N. Resolutions that could possibly be abused like NATO`s abuse of U.N.-Resolution 1973 on Libya. A nsnbc source in Moscow reported from a meeting at the Russian State Duma on Friday that all political parties of Russia agree that Russia should vote against a prolongation of a U.N.-Mandate in Afghanistan; further more Russia would “demand” a significant reduction of U.S. and NATO military presence in the former Soviet republics bordering Afghanistan, Pakistan and China. The question is, will this new found courage of the Russian Bear manifest in action that stops NATO's aggression in Libya before further tens of thousands have lost their lives?

Muammar Ghadafi

After Russia and China took a stronger position on NATO's aggression in Libya, the African Union has followed suit, emphasizing that NATO had abused the African Union's support of Resolution 1973. The “protection of civilian lives” by NATO is daily killing unarmed civilians. To answer the question of, Will the members of the African Union will put their money where their mouth is?, the answer is, “without Libya, many have no money, so they would be best served by backing their recent political grand standing before corporate media up with diplomatic as well as military action“.

According to a Libyan diplomat, Libya is one of five African Countries, besides Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, who have together stood for 75% of the African Union's budget. Mali, Congo, Liberia, Niger, Chad, the central African Republic, Mauritania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Gambia have all received substantial support that has secured these nations development and their political stability, security and peace. The best advise any independent political advisor could give those nations, and the African Union, therefore, is that great challenges require great leadership and courageous decisions. Anything less than unequivocal solidarity in demands for an immediate end to NATO's aggression in Northern Africa and a shift in foreign policy towards China and Russia will inevitably project Africa into a second era of colonization. How would Joseph Conrad write about Africa today? where is the heart of Darkness today?

Edward Said (1935-2003)

While Western Corporate Media, including Al Jazeera, have increasing difficulties in maintaining the positive narrative of "singing tomorrows" and "Arabian Spring Rebels" depicted as the worst case scenario of an Applied Orientalism that would be put to shame in an instant had the world not lost Edward Said, their narrative is increasingly rejected by even the most misinformed. As a life long journalist and Middle East Expert Einar Schlerth said in a correspondence with nsnbc this morning, “The Alternative Media are slowly sticking holes into Mainstream Medias Narratives“.

The TNC ("Trust No Colleague”) has today been plagued by one more shootout among its top level representatives. A planned meeting between representatives of the TNC and the Italian Oil Firm ENI at the Riksos Hotel in Tripoli ended in a shootout between the TNC representatives and their respective bodyguards, after the delegation from ENI failed to manifest. Only a few days ago the oil field installations at Babu Avel that produce oil for Italian ENI were destroyed by Libyan Forces. Yesterday the oil field should have come on line again, but installations were immediately destroyed by Libyan Forces. A nsnbc source close to the TNC could yesterday evening inform nsnbc that representatives of the TNC had been approached by “a US-Intelligence Service", suggesting a division of Libya into a Northern and a Southern State.

The military situation for NATO and the TNC has not changed significantly. The majority of NATO and the TNC's casualties are those unlucky enough to be in the way for indiscriminate artillery fire and precision bombing. But with today's “smart bombs”, what excuse could there possibly be for yesterday's bombing of the major hospital in Sirte? The Libyan Forces in Sirte are holding on. The fact that the city is still allowed to endure the thick of a full-scale modern colonial war by NATO; the fact that neither China nor Russia, nor the African Union, nor any of its member states have put their money where their mouth is with respect to the daily massacres and the rape of Libya; the fact that the U.N. is utterly discredited and impotent and nothing but the instrument designed to provide apparent legitimacy for the rape of sovereign nations; and the fact that leaders like Robert Mugabe are trembling from suppressed outrage when speaking “in the chambers of this most august organization” are all significant for one reason and one reason only.

Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe

Unless African Nations rapidly change their foreign and security alliances towards China and Russia and unless African Nations and other nations that are at the receiving end of “Humanitarianism a la the U.N.” will most urgently initiate diplomatic initiatives to build a true international community; and unless the African Leaders will show a long-awaited and long overdue display of personal and political integrity and courage in leadership and defiance against the continuous colonization of their continent, there will be many a Joseph Conrad needed to point out where the Heart of Darkness is today. Sunday in Libya.

About nsnbc

nsnbc is a news-media, edited by Dr. Christof Lehmann. Born in Germany in 1958, Masters and Doctoral Degree in Psychology, 1982 and 1986, Dr. Christof Lehmann is a practicing clinical psychologist, a life time peace activist, political advisor, and advisor in behavior, finance, economics, conflict resolution and peace building. He has been and is active as political advisor, in work on human rights, international relations and peace, Palestinian issues, and other activities. Dr. Christof Lehmann founded nsnbc in August 2011 in indignation about the prevalent embargo on truth. nsnbc is bringing you No Spin News by Christof Lehmann, as well as a number of other independent experts, writers, journalists and activists from throughout the world. View all posts by nsnbc →

Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a collaborator with Dr. Christof Lehmann.

9/11 Interview with IRNA (The Islamic Republic News Agency)

2011-09-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

9/11 Interview with IRNA (The Islamic Republic News Agency)

Jim Fetzer

Perhaps the most interesting of my 9/11 interviews was one with IRNA (The Islamic Republic News Agency) of Iran, which came in the form of a series of written interrogatories. I have discussed it and the problems entailed by its translation into Farsi and then back into English in a column on Veterans Today. Here I want to present the bare bones of the questions asked and answers given, for those who may be searching for an overview about 9/11.

As the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth and retired professional scholar, I have expended considerable time and effort interacting with those in professions complementary to my own in the history and philosophy of science, including pilots, physicists, engineers (aeronautical, structural, mechanical) and many other disciplines. A summary of our scientific findings about 9/11 may be found at this link and of our analysis of the politics of 9/11 here.

This interview has been published in Farsi here. I would be most grateful to anyone fluent in that language if they could compare my submission with the translation provided there. The limitations of machine translation (from Farsi into English) are, at this point in time, rather severe, which means that the gross inadequacy of such a translation does not mean that this was not translated properly by IRNA. Here are the questions I was asked and the answers I gave.

Hello Mr James Fetzer
Again I thank you for this interview.

Questions:

1- Has this incident been faked or terrorist? What are your reasons?

The events of 9/11 were elaborately staged to instill fear into the American people to make them easier to manipulate for political purposes, especially by supporting a "War on Terror" involving invasions of countries that never attacked us, including Afghanistan and Iraq, especially. See "Peeling the 9/11 Onion: Layers of Plots within Plots", Veterans Today.

2- Despite the strong security system in the USA, is it possible for such an incident to occur?

Because elements at the highest levels of the Department of Defense and the Pentagon--no doubt including the CIA were involved in planning and executing these events, including the 17 "anti-terrorism" drills that were taking place that morning. They completely defeated any possibility of a military response to these "hijackings". And because the American press has been bought--lock, stock, and barrel--by powerful corporations who no longer have the dedication to investigation and integrity to expose the truth about 9/11.

3- What are the goals behind the incident?

They were to seize the opportunity created by the demise of the USSR that left the USA as the sole remaining superpower. Those who were involved in the Project for the New American Century believed they could create a world in which the United States would dominate the world for the next 100 years--if only the American people could be convinced there existed a threat justifying the restriction of civil liberties and massive expenditures to support wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan--and potentially Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and even Iran. It was a diabolical plan.

4. What do you think about existence of Al Qaeda? Is it a fictional group or a real?

Al Qaeda was a creation of the CIA for the purpose of funding resistance to the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan. The US provided missiles to the resistance that enabled them to shoot down Russian helicopters, which made the incursion too costly to continue. The role of Osama bin Laden as an American operative in that operation has been conveniently omitted from the history books and films like "Charlie Wilson's War".

5. What about it's leader, Ben Laden? In 2002 Mr Alex Jones, Film Producer Radio host, announced, he was dead. Do you think that is true?

Yes, Osama bin Laden died on or about 15 December 2001. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Afghanistan. David Ray Griffin has a book about it, OSAMA BIN LADEN: DEAD OR ALIVE? (2009), which lays out evidence of his death at that time. In "Seven Questions about 9/11", Veterans Today, I quote experts who were not only told that Osama by the nation's highest ranking general at the time that Osama died in 2001 but that the events of 9/11 were a "false flag" attack, as I have described it above.

6. Please explain your theory about 9/11?

My most extensive discussion may be found in "Peeling the 9/11 Onion: Layers of Plots within Plots", Veterans Today. There were many forms of deception. The first was to suggest that the Palestinians were involved. The second that it was done by 19 Islamic fundamentalists. The third that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were involved. The fourth that it happened by accident because the US intelligence agencies were not communicating, all to cover up that it was arranged by the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Israeli Mossad. No one gained more from 9/11 than did Israel, which I also address in that article and in "The BBC's instrument of 9/11 misinformation", which is also archived at Veterans Today.

7. What is the connection between 9/11 and financial crisis?

These wars of aggression have undermined the national security of the United States, which depends upon economic vitality, military strength and moral standing. We are not only depleting our military strength by conducting too many wars at the same time with repeated rotations of the same troops, over and over, but they are depleting the national treasury of trillions of dollars, while the world stands in dismay at the corruption of the standing of America, which used to be a beacon of truth and justice for the people of the world. Sad to say, that is no longer the case today.

8. Some say that before 9/11 certain shareholders traded their shares because they were aware of this incident. What is your opinion?

Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the co-chairs of The 9/11 Commission, have indicated that they know who placed those short-options, but that they could not have had anything to do with 9/11. Apparently, they traced it back to the CIA. If these guys had no more understand that this, they had no business being co-chairs of that commission, since they had no grasp of the depth of duplicity of the CIA, the FBI, and other federal agencies.

9. Who are the winners and the losers of 9/11?

The greatest beneficiary, no doubt, has been Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu, when first asked about 9/11, said it was good--then realized his blunder and added, "Well, it's not good. But at least the Americans will know what it's like to have to deal with terrorism". There are many indications that the Mossad was involved, from 200 "art students" in this country, many of whom were following those who would be cast as the "patsies", to "the Dancing Israelis", to the dual US-Israeli citizens who dominated the Department of Defense, to Dov Zakheim, who was the comptroller of the Pentagon when $2.3 trillion when missing, to Michael Chertoff, who directed the release of "the Dancing Israelis" (who returned to Israel, where three of them went on television to report that they were there to "document" the destruction of the World Trade Center), to Urban Moving Systems, a Mossad asset, and much, much more.

US military force is being used to destroy the integrity of Arab states for the benefit of Israel by turning them into smaller "statelets" based upon religious and ethic affiliations, where Iraq will dissolve into Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish mini-states, and similar consequences will occur throughout the region, which will leave Israel as the most dominant state in the Middle East--except for Iran, which is why they are trying to promote a war with Iran. The US has been the big loser, where the depletion of its national treasury, the sapping of its military strength, and the damage to its standing as a beacon of truth, justice, and morality has taken a massive hit--which has become even more costly with the corrupt and immoral use of NATO as an instrument of aggression in attacking Libya, another state that has never attacked the US.

10. Could this be related to Zionism?

Yes, without doubt. Virtually all the principals involved in 9/11 were fervent Zionists, who believe in Jewish superiority and the entitlement of Israel to the lands of Palestine, which rests upon dubious historical precedents. I regard Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Donald Feith, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Gen. Richard Myers, Rudi Giuliani, and Larry Silverstein as among the principals behind 9/11. Dick Cheney even appears to have been the one coordinating events at least at the Pentagon, if not in New York as well. Bush deserves honorable mention, but he was too dumb to be informed of what was really going in, where Michael Ruppert, CROSSING THE RUBICON (2004), has drawn the same conclusion.

11. How do you assess the future repercussions of this incident?

Enormous and enduring. The loss of civil liberties in the US because of the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and other insults to the integrity of the American people, including the absurd screening processes being employed at airports across the country, are intended to induce more fear into the public. Indeed, the use of violence and threats of violence to induce fear in a population to make it more amenable to political manipulation is a defining characteristic of terrorism. So it turns out that the US government (under Bush and Cheney) was practicing terrorism on the American people, which has not been undone by Obama and Biden. So we appear to have crossed the Rubicon, indeed, by shifting this country toward a neo-fascist police state where the rich and powerful rule in their own interests and not those of the American people.

Best Regard
Morteza

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a former Marine Corps officer and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Mike Palacek's "New American Dream" — Post 9/11

2011-09-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

Presented on the occasion of Minnesota 9/11 Truth's 10th year observance of 9/11 in the Rotunda of the Capitol in St. Paul, MN, 11 September 2011.

We have a dream ...

Mike Palacek

... of bringing the United States politicians, journalists and generals who have brought about this long ten-year war and debacle to trial — and put on TV just like O.J. — every goddamned afternoon — so every American can watch ... just like the McCarthy Hearings and the JFK funeral procession ...

------

What we need is a New American Dream.

Not of new homes and toasters and microwaves, but of becoming the type of country we always thought we were.

And part of that is becoming the quality of people who are capable of telling the truth.

Right now we live on lies. We subsist on lies, but it's not really living.

We lie to ourselves about how we deserve this country and we deserve to shut others out after we took the land from others.

We lie to ourselves and our children about all aspects of our history.

The New American Dream means never having to say some question or idea is not valid. We are allowed to ask any questions that we have ... there are no wrong questions. There is no hidden black military budget, there are no UFO files Americans cannot see, no JFK documents that will not be opened during our lifetimes, no destroyed RFK murder photos by the L.A. police, no evidence from Ground Zero taken away before we can even look at it — we are not the Soviet Union of the 1960s — this is supposed to be America. That is our dream, to become America, The New America, the real hope of the world.

I believe that 911 was an inside job.

bush, cheney, rice, powell, rumsfeld, ashcroft

obama

bill clinton

hillary clinton

Joe Biden

They all know that and yet they refuse to acknowledge what they know. They kill and continue to kill. They allow others to die and continue to send others to their deaths for a lie.

What we need in America is a Truth Commission like they had in South Africa to heal their broken country.

Our country is surely broken as well.

We need a Truth Commission. We need to put certain people on the stand and we need to be allowed to ask questions.

We are not even allowed to ask questions.

Those who are supposed to ask questions for us refuse to do so. Can you honestly say that Brian Williams or Matt Lauer or Katie Couric or Amy Goodman or Jon Stewart or The New York Times or the Minneapolis Star-Tribune asks the questions that need to be asked?
....

The United States of America is also supposed to be based on the constitution. It is not based on the constitution. The president does not ask anyone before he goes to war, bombing, killing people.

It is rather based on those in power being focused like a laser beam not on truth and social justice and doing the right thing - which is why we voted for them - but rather on doing whatever it takes for them to remain in power.

It is based rather on the shooting of Jack Kennedy from perhaps as many as six vantages in Dealey Plaza. That is the Big Boom – the Big Boom theory of the creation of this country.

Before that instant we had a chance to fight poverty and racism and war, get the truth, the truth about whatever, because before that moment everything seemed bright and possible, even probable.

But after that Big Boom, the dustbowl clouds of power and greed and violence came out and blotted the sun.

The United States of America is not based in the Constitution or the teachings of Jesus as we proclaim that it is.

It is based on the collaboration of the U.S. Army, FBI, CIA and Memphis police to murder Martin Luther King. It is also based on the shooting of Robert Kennedy from behind his ear, rather than from the front where Sirhan Sirhan was standing.

We do not make cars anymore in America but we do psy-ops like the Greeks and Romans did philosophy, astronomy and speeches and literature.

These Great Misdeeds are where we honed our master craft, where those who rule founded this country, where our gears, our tool and die were cast.

Forget about the Liberty Bell. Forget about Mount Rushmore. Forget about the Grand Canyon. They are as much window dressing as CNN or NBC News or National Public Radio.

The Lorraine Motel in Memphis is our true Plymouth Rock.

Dallas’ Dealey Plaza is our real Mount Rushmore.

The Ambassador Hotel pantry is our actual Grand Canyon.

Waco is our Arlington Cemetery.

Oklahoma City is our Yellowstone Park.

The woods near Eveleth, Minnesota where Paul Wellstone’s plane went down is our National Mall.

And with the confidence and experience gained in the 1960s our actual Founding Fathers, whoever they are, were able to tack on a Bill of Rights to their version of the Constitution on Sept. 11, 2001. ...

... We have fake history.

Our junior high and high school history books should be in italics --- handed out by the teacher on the first day with a wink – Remember the Maine – Pearl Harbor – Gulf of Tonkin – Waco – Oklahoma City bombing – Waco – moon landings – stolen elections.

Because we accepted the Warren Commission we got the “911 What Controlled Demolition Commission” and our children will get the “XYZ Non-Investigation by Rich People Covering Up For Other Rich People.”

I believe 9-11 was an inside job ----- they got the new Pearl Harbor they wanted to invade Iraq and take the oil.

The troops are not protecting us. That is someone’s spin on the day’s news – somebody’s advertising slogan --- someone else’s sermon.

The troops serve the empire. They are not heroes. They kill and plunder for the empire. The heroes in our country are the protesters, the ones who go face to face with the empire, those who will begin to gather in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 6.
.......

... the Obama election, believing in Hope – I had hope. I had hope that we might enter a brand-new period of openness, no wrong questions, Truth – becoming the type of people, nation that we always thought we were.

It didn’t happen. And we have to ask ourselves why?

It’s one of those questions that we are allowed to ask—that we should ask.

You have to know that Barack Obama knows the whole truth about the 9/11 attacks. He is complicit. He has lied. He has continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan based on a lie. And he knows he is lying.

He lied right to our faces on national television when he said that Osama bin Laden had been killed ... and buried at sea. ... Osama bin Laden was buried at sea ... and Jessica Lynch was rescued heroically, the U.S.A. does not torture, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, George Bush won the 2000 election, see, there is a plane there in that hole in Shanksville, it went all the way into that hole and no, there is no blood and no bodies and no luggage scattered ... or plane parts ... and Osama bin Laden ... was buried at sea. ...

... Can you believe the Warren Commission? I mean believe that it really happened, and we did not have riots because of it, but rather we just say, oh, well … and so … Bush fought the 9/11 commission. He did not want to testify alone … was the commission meeting in the dark, with spiders? ... after 9/11 all the propaganda to promote the war – terror alerts – where did those go? Osama Bin Laden tapes in the middle of the afternoon on Fox and CNN and NBC … 9/11 Commission – finally, and then what a supreme joke that was and we settled for it. Building 7 – controlled demolition – where’s the plane in the Pentagon – Shanksville – dancing Israelis? … and still the Bushes ride in a golf cart down the third baseline waving to the crowd and are greeted by cheers rather than tomatoes, fists and handcuffs … Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney walk free … Condoleeza Rice teaches at Stanford --- rather than being locked up forever in one of these high-tech concentration camps we have, like in Florence, Colorado, and shuffling off to the shower each morning wearing ankle shackles and a waist chain and fluorescent orange pajamas … for the rest of their lives. If we’re going to have these insane places, we might as well put the worst of the worst there, and that would be George and George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and whatever other dozens have conspired, continue to conspire, to overthrow this country – who know the truth and don’t tell the rest of us: FBI director Moeller, General Tommy Franks and all the other generals who acted as commentators on NPR and Fox, ensuring us that the coming war was so cool, so good, so right …, and now we have how many hundreds of thousands of dead human beings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just people who were living their lives and found themselves in the way of the American quest for gold, for dominance. And the thousands of young Americans who have died or had their lives ruined because of a lie, a huge, amazing lie, perpetrated by men and women we asked in good faith to lead us on our way.

Bush, Obama … Card, Clinton, Fleischer …

Wolfowitz, Aschcroft, Pearl, O’Reilly, Hannity, Couric, Lauer, Williams, Rather, Jennings, Brokaw, Limbaugh, Blitzer, Sawyer, Rivera --- all those names, who, if history ever rights itself, will be synonymous with Goebbels, Goering, Himmler. …

Back when I was a kid growing up in Nebraska, we thought Lyndon Johnson was just a big, boring dude. — Well, we all need to read LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK’s Assassination by Phillip F. Nelson. — It turns out that the vice-president of the United States planned and carried through the murder of John F. Kennedy. Never in one hundred years would my hometown newspaper, radio station, teachers, coaches, or parents have let us even consider such a thing.

The term “grassy knoll” was said with the same sneer that “liberal” gets today — and even today, almost fifty years later – that seems like a bold statement. …All the while we pointed fingers at the Soviet Union, declaring them a closed society and pointing back at ourselves, boasting forever of a free and open society … we are anything but, have been anything but. The ones who ruled the Soviet Union, well, they had nothing on the ones who rule us.

Yes, these successful lies are …

More profound than anything else in World History ... ever.

It’s just all so very well done. It’s who we are.

And so the most profound, big thing about this big thing called America is that it is a highly successful lie.

… and you can say that’s conspiracy tinfoil, to think like that, about the Bushes and the assassinations and such, but I say it’s just paying attention.

Remember the Anthrax letters, which said “Are You Afraid?” Those were not written with a rock and chisel like Fred Flintstone from the recesses of some cave in Afghanistan. Those letters came from persons within our own government.

Like a horror movie and the killer is in the same house with us.

These killers are right here, with us and “they” want us to be afraid.

“We cannot be afraid."

“... the great city sprawls with people, some smartly dressed, many of them shabby, a few beautiful but most not, all reduced by the towering structures around them to the size of insects, but scuttling, hurrying, intent in the milky morning sun upon some plan or scheme or hope they are hugging to themselves, their reason for living another day, each one of them impaled live upon the pin of consciousness, fixed upon self-advancement and self-preservation. That, and only that. — John Updike, “The Terrorist”

That's perhaps the human condition.

[... forced with having to find a reason for living another day, impaled live upon the pin of consciousness ... to become fixed upon self-advancement and self-preservation]

But the human condition also means knowing when there is something wrong, something not quite right and having the spirit to refuse to live like that, to live within a lie.

That's why so many people have worked for so long, for ten years, against all sorts of obstacles, to find the truth, to make this the country and we the people who can truly make this country great.

People like Kevin Barrett and Jim Fetzer, who have been working almost non-stop for years and years to give us that New American Dream.

They are not afraid.

We take courage from their example.

We also cannot be afraid.

Mike Palecek — author, radio host, former federal prisoner for peace, former Iowa Congressional candidate, seminarian, newspaper reporter, editor, publisher — lives near Duluth.

Website: http://thebooks.newamericandream.info

The BBC's Instrument of 9/11 Misinformation

2011-09-03T22:28:00.000-07:00

The BBC's Instrument of 9/11 Misinformation

Jim Fetzer (with Joshua Blakeney)

The BBC's "Instrument"

For a second time, the BBC television network has produced a documentary about 9/11 featuring Dylan Avery, the producer of “Loose Change”’; Alex Jones, the talk show host; and me, the Founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth—this time accompanied by Neils Harrit, a chemistry professor from Denmark. The program is part of the BBC’s “Conspiracy Files” series. The first installment is available here. This one, now entitled, “The Conspiracy Files: '9/11: Ten Years On'”, was initially accessible at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV_R70Qo8Zc&feature=share Interestingly, not long after it had been posted, the “user” had it removed from YouTube, which is not an effective method for disseminating your message. Presumably, it will soon be up and running again, which we will archive and then link to this column.

The inclusion of Neils Harrit is especially striking, since he was the lead author on the nanothermite study published in the Bentham Science Open Chemical Physics Journal, which T. Mark Hightower and I have discussed in several articles here at VT, including "Is '9/11 Truth' based upon a false theory?" and “Nanothermite: If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit”. Since I believe there are real problems with (what Mark Hightower and I have called) “the myth of explosive nanothermite”, the BBC may have missed an opportunity to pit us against one another. Neil's statements about the use of nanothermite, however, have actually been more responsible than those that have come from and been supported by the "hard science" group. So the focus of this discussion will be on some of the more blatant problems with “9/11: Ten Years On”.

Here I (and Joshua Blakeney) will offer several striking illustrations of the BBC’s "sleight-of-hand" in misrepresenting key points that I explained to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin, which they cannot possibly have misunderstood, where cases like these leave no doubt of that the BBC in its “Conspiracy Files” series functions as an instrument of disinformation. We will also cite examples that exemplify other especially notable demonstrations that the BBC’s duplicity is not limited to its presentation of ersatz documentaries like these but extends into its reporting of news as it happens, which we illustrate with Jane Standley’s premature reporting of the collapse of WTC-7 on 9/11 and the introduction of Richard Clarke’s efforts to revive the indefensible theory that “9/11 was due to incompetence”.

With the BBC for a 2nd round

[NOTE: I use the first-person pronoun to accent that “I was there” and know these things based upon my “up close and personal” experience, but I am grateful to Joshua Blakeney for his contributions here, especially relative to the so-called “Global War on Terror”. Joshua recently drew to my attention a seminal text edited by Benjamin Netanyahu entitled Terrorism: How the West Can Win (1986), which we discussed during our two-hour interview on my 31 August 2011 radio show (and will be archived at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com/). I agree with Joshua that this book appears to be offering a blueprint for the “Global War on Terror” already in 1986, which should quality as a central piece of evidence about the true origins of that war and a hint of whom it most benefits. (A version of this article with active links can be found here.)]

BBC’s “Conspiracy Files”

This was my second encounter with the BBC, whose director, Guy Smith, came to Madison and interviewed me for eight hours for its previous segment on 9/11, which also featured Dylan, Alex, and me. This segment has also been archived at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMyKhVwj6GI&feature=related, where there can be little doubt that the BBC is attempting to trade in stereotypes and that Dylan is supposed to be the obnoxious kid, Alex a messianic preacher, and me the kooky professor. While some may even agree, especially about me, this is an obvious attempt to suggest the only possible reasons that anyone would dissent from the “official account” of 9/11 are emotional needs or cognitive impairments. The 9/11 movement is actually highly eclectic with members of varied backgrounds and qualifications. That we might actually be right and the official account wrong was tacitly denied.

During both interviews, I presented literally dozens and dozens of arguments about why the “official account” of 9/11 is not only indefensible but actually violates laws of physics, engineering and aerodynamics. The fires burned neither hot enough nor long enough to have caused the steel to weaken, much less melt. WTC-7 displays all the features of a classic “controlled demolition”. There is no evidence that a Boeing 757 crashed in Pennsylvania and clear and convincing proof that the Pentagon “hit” was a fabrication, which appears to include the flyover by a plane simulating Flight 77 at the same time as the detonation of explosions. Later in the day, the Hollywood-style production of billowing black smoke from fires deliberately set in a series of dumpsters was deployed in order to intimidate the members of Congress. (See “Seven Questions about 9/11”, Veterans Today.)

Michael Shermer at Lethbridge

For the first show, the BBC extracted about 7.5 minutes they wanted to use from my interview, which it combined with about 4 minutes of Alex and 3.5 minutes of Dylan. The rest of the program was used to misrepresent and undermine what we had told them, where logic and evidence were not their concern. By offering psychoanalyses of 9/11 skeptics, rather than engaging the evidence that refutes the official story of 9/11, the makers of the BBC’s 9/11 documentary harnessed the same tactics employed by journalist Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers (2011), and by Michael Shermer, an ersatz-professor, who was exposed for having mischaracterized his credentials by Anthony Hall and Joshua Blakeney. Their focus was upon the psychology of beliefs that are, according to their point of view, not merely weird but even bizarre—which is certainly true, unless you take a serious look at the evidence. (See “Why doubt 9/11?” for 20 counter-examples.)

The Ground Floor “Hit”

The Pentagon is an especially nice example, where I explained in both interviews that the alleged “hit” point is on the ground floor and not the second as has often been alleged. Both programs, nevertheless, misrepresented its location by using photos of the second floor, which has to have been intentional, given that I had explained this point to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin during their separate visits. They even use animations of this inaccurate location in their animations of its occurrence, which is inconsistent with the photos that are presented correctly in both “What didn’t happen at the Pentagon” and in “Seven Questions about 9/11”.

The second floor "hit point"

It makes an enormous difference to understanding what happened there, since, at the ground-floor location, we find a chain-link fence, two huge spools of cable, two somewhat damaged cars and unbroken windows beside and above the entry hole, which is only about 10’ high and 16-17’ wide—far too small for a 100-ton airliner that is 155’ long with a 125’ wingspan, and a tail that stands 44’ above the ground. There is no debris: no wings, no tail, no fuselage, no bodies, seats or luggage. Neither of the virtually indestructible engines was recovered. But the fact that this mass of debris is missing is obfuscated by the simple but effective technique of presenting the wrong photos. You have to admire the elegance of the plan.

The ground floor "hit point"

It has been said that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, which is true—except in those cases where it is false. If you were to inspect the living room of your home, for example, the absence of evidence of the presence of an elephant would properly qualify as evidence of the absence of an elephant from your living room. Similarly, the absence of evidence that a plane—in particular, a Boeing 757—crashed at the Pentagon is evidence that no Boeing 757 crashed there. So one of the most important indications of BBC duplicity is that, although I had explained to Guy Smith and to Mike Rudin that the actual “hit point” was on the ground floor, they continued to use images of the second floor in their work.

The clear, green lawn

The unblemished lawn

Think of the simplicity of the deception involved here. Have your target speak about the hit point (where he is talking about the ground floor “hit”) but present images of another location (as if that were what he was actually discussing). And it is a technique that can be used again and again. During both interviews, I also emphasized a photo that was taken even as the civilian lime-green fire trucks were extinguishing the very modest fires, which shows a completely clear, green, unblemished lawn, entirely free from debris of any kind. You can see that the upper portion of the building has not yet collapsed, which means it was not the effect of the alleged impact. This collapse appears to have been contrived to enhance the apparent damage to resemble more like what a hit might have caused.

Debris begins to appear

In this case, the BBC contracted the time line and claimed that the upper floors had collapsed “within minutes” of the hit, showing images of building AFTER the collapse. Since 25-30 minutes is “within minutes”, there was a flimsy pretext to justify using that phrase. But there is now considerable debris in the foreground and the lawn is no longer pristine. The effect, once again, was to use my voice explaining what is visible in the photo that I was discussing but juxtaposed with film from the subsequent collapse of the upper floors that I was not discussing, which was clearly intended to convey the impression that I did not know what I was talking about—a simple but effective technique, which they employed repeatedly.

Inadvertent confirmation

Ironically, some of the BBC's own footage substantiated my observations about the completely clear, green, unblemished lawn, entirely free from debris of any kind. But it would have taken a discerning viewer to overcome the emphasis imparted by the soothing, confident voice of the BBC's commentator, who conveyed the impression of objectivity and impartiality while nevertheless debunking what I had said in nuanced and subtle ways. That this footage actually appeared in this documentary came as a surprise to me, once I had sorted out their technique of implicitly contradicting what I had to say by the presentation of images other than those that I was addressing, since this one actually confirmed what I had explained.

Lt. Col. O'Brien and the C-130

More debris shows up later

The difference between the originally clear, green and unblemished lawn, which was free from debris, and the subsequent appearance of debris across a broad swath of the Pentagon lawn led me to speculate as to its origins. It would have been awkward and obvious to have enlisted men and officers carry debris out onto the lawn. It had to have been done in a more subtle fashion. A C-130 had been circling the building, which led me to consider the possibility that perhaps the debris had been dropped from the plane, where its settling down from above would be something that many observers might regard as an effect from the hit, where it would not be unexpected for at least some debris to have been airborne.

So the BBC featured Lt. Col. O’Brien, USAF, who was presented as the captain of the C-130, who feigned to be disgusted with the implication that he could have been involved in the cover-up by having debris dropped from his plane. Since it was circling as the allegedly hijacked plane approached the building, it appears to be a good question why the Pentagon was surprised by the hit. Surely the Lt. Colonel could have warned them, insofar as he reported that he had watched its approach. Apparently, the evidential value of his claiming to have seen the plane outweighed the implied admission that he had failed to warn his superiors, since all sides alleged that the Pentagon had no idea it was going to be hit—when the plane would most certainly have been shot down, had such a warning occurred.

The pilot of the C-130

If there is a better explanation of the source of the debris, what could it possibly be? Those who harbor lingering doubts about the role of the BBC as a purveyor of disinformation should study these photographs and compare them to “What didn’t happen at the Pentagon?” and “Seven Questions about 9/11”. Then watch the show, when it is accessible again—perhaps in a new version in response to the public’s reaction to the original, which I am discussing here. We all have to appreciate the role of the mass media in distorting 9/11, where the phrase “info wars” has been used by Alex Jones to convey exactly the right impression. And this is not the first time that the BBC has been "caught with its pants down”, since an earlier and possibly even more spectacular illustration occurred on 9/11 itself.

Jane Standley on WTC-7

Jane Standley with WTC-7

One of the most remarkable events of the day of 9/11 was the premature report by Jane Standley of the BBC that “the Solomon Brothers Building”—another name for WTC-7—had collapsed, which of course did happen that day, but she claimed it had happened at 4:57 PM/ET, when in fact that did not occur until 5:20 PM/ET, 23 minutes later! This has to be one of the most stunning illustrations of the dual role of the mass media in presenting news as it happens but with a spin dictated by the intelligence assets and the government agencies who control access to what the public is going to see and hear. Since WTC-7 can actually be seen over her left shoulder (to the right as a viewer watches her presentation), there can be no doubt that the BBC got “ahead of the script”, which may even be the single most glaring example of complicity between MI-5 and the BBC in the nation’s history.

A most unusual "collapse"

Another example of the spin that the BBC was offering in its “Conspiracy Files: '9/11: Ten Years On'” program, is that, toward its conclusion, Richard Clarke, the Bush/Cheney administration’s “anti-terrorism” expert, attempts to revive the long-discounted theory that these attacks occurred only because of incompetence by the agencies who were responsible for protecting the country from terrorist attacks like these, including communication and cooperation failures by the CIA and the FBI. But this theory cannot account for the physical impossibility of the Twin Towers to have been destroyed by the purported plane crashes, the resulting (very modest) fires, and the weakening of the steel, none of which—even had they happened as the official account proclaims—could have brought about the complete, total, and abrupt demolition sequence that would occur, which can be viewed relative to the North Tower in “New 9/11 Photos Released”, for example, on my blog.

Three "Dancers" on TV

9/11 was clearly cleverly planned, including a variety of false leads, some of which were discernible in the original broadcasts from the networks that day. As Preston James and I explain in “Peeling the 9/11 Onion: Layers of Plots within Plots”, the first suggestions presented by the media were intended to lay blame on Palestinians, of which we have three major indications: the image of cheering Palestinians broadcast as these events were unfolding; anchors reporting that “The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine” was claiming credit; and the statements to the officers arresting the “Dancing Israelis” in their white van from Urban Moving Systems, a Mossad asset, whose driver said, “We are Israelis. We are not your problem. Your problems are our problems. The Palestinians are your problem.” That was hokum then and remains hokum now, where three of the five would return to Israel and explain on TV that they were there “to document” the destruction of the Twin Towers, which obviously implies prior knowledge that it was going to occur.

The “Global War on Terrorism”

The BBC’s propaganda for the 9/11 wars largely rests on the empirically flawed-assumption that there is a disproportionate threat posed to citizens of the U.S., Britain, Canada and elsewhere by Islamist terrorists. Yet, data posted on the FBI’s official website demonstrates that actual cases of Islamic terrorism are rare, making it a virtually negligible phenomenon. According to FBI statistics, between 1980 and 2005, for example, only 6% of reported terrorist acts in the U.S. were committed by Muslims, compared to 7% by Jewish extremists, 42% by Latino extremists, and 24% by extreme right-wing groups (sometimes misidentified as “left wing”, but including local and state-wide militias). The BBC has been highly instrumental in reinforcing the falsehood that Islamists were responsible for the events of 9/11, which in turn justifies their scrutinizing of Muslims at home and abroad. Bear in mind that, if there were no planes to hijack, there would have been no hijackers, and if there were no Islamic hijackers, then 9/11 could not have been used to justify the “War on Terror” and a “clash of civilizations” pitting the Judeo-Christian West against radical Islam.

Elias Davidsson has demonstrated that the American government has not been able to prove that any of the alleged hijackers were aboard any of these planes, where Flight 11 and Flight 77 were not even scheduled to fly that day. The BBC has done its part by persistently covering-up evidence demonstrating that those alleged hijackers engaged in egregiously un-Islamic activities in the months prior to 9/11, including snorting cocaine, attending strip clubs, eating pork and drinking Vodka. These activities imply that either they were not Muslim at all or, at least, if they were, they were not devote Muslims and therefore most unlikely to engage in fanatical acts on behalf of their religion. Suicidal hijackings are not the kind of actions we would expect from Muslims who take pleasure in strip shows, eating pork and snorting coke! As the phrase has it, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

Blueprint for the "War on Terror"

Wayne Madsen has released British intelligence documents purporting to prove that “the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon”, which is very plausible, given what we know about the motives that appear to have contributed to its planning and execution, which involve oil, Israel, and ideology, which were interrelated. Reconfiguring the Middle East through the implementation of the Sharon Doctrine could then result in the construction of a pipeline through Israel to the Mediterranean Sea —which it could tap to solve its energy needs—and facilitate the despoliation of Iraqi oil. Taking out Saddam Hussein and converting Iraq into smaller states (or "statelets") based on ethnic and religious sectarianism, moreover, appears to be part and parcel of a master plan for the destabilization of the Middle East to create a new reign of Israeli supremacy and domination.

What does it mean?

Reluctance to report well-documented Israeli involvement in 9/11 may explain the metamorphosis of the once highly respected BBC into a propaganda organ of the Likudnik right and its allies. The network, officially an agency of the British state, lost many of its best reporters as a consequence of the BBC’s role in dealing with reports about and the subsequent death of Dr. David Kelley. Its erstwhile Director General (DG), Greg Dyke, appears to have been ousted and replaced in 2004 by the highly pro-Israel Mark Thompson, who, upon assuming office, made a trip to Israel with his Jewish wife to work out with Ariel Sharon the “softening” of the BBC’s editorial line about the State of Israel. A nice indication of the BBC’s pro-Israel bias, by the way, was its refusal to allow a “Gaza Appeal” phone-line number to be broadcast during the 2008-2009 massacre in Gaza. With 9/11 being used primarily to facilitate the epochal process identified by sociologist James Petras as “The Globalization of Zionist Power”, the BBC’s infiltration by likely Mossad affiliates makes perfect sense. Thompson is now the highest paid public servant in Britain—and he influences the BBC to support the “Global War on Terror”.

Explosions and dead bodies in WTC-7

In doing research about the BBC and its “Conspiracy Files” series, I discovered a web page devoted to “Conspiracy Theories”, in which five familiar arguments are presented and then “debunked”. To offer one instructive example, it dismisses concerns about WTC-7 arising from Larry Silverstein’s use of the phrase, “pull it”, and the alleged ground that he was actually requesting that firemen be “pulled” from the building. Not only were there no firemen in the building at the time, but “pull it” is a term of art in the construction business. Barry Jennings was actually in the building that morning and witnessed explosions taking place to prime it for demolition. It appears to me that any source that promotes falsehoods as blatant as these about 9/11 is unworthy of belief—which we now know includes the BBC!

The BBC’s own attempt to debunk “conspiracy theories” has had an unexpected and mildly encouraging effect. More than 700 comments were posted before the comments were closed, where I found many reflecting genuine understanding of the role of the BBC in promoting false information about 9/11. As we have found, in its biased documentaries about 9/11, its live reporting at the time, and even on a web page it has published to debunk those who are speaking the truth, the BBC has abandoned its commitment to objective and independent journalism and has become a shill for false theories and government ops. More is the pity, because it once stood as a beacon of truth that was widely admired around the world, which, as we have seen, can no longer be said on behalf of this once-great UK institution.

Jim Fetzer, McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, is a former Marine Corps officer and the founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.

Joshua Blakeney is a Staff Writer at VT, a 9/11 activist, and a graduate student at the University of Lethbridge working on a thesis entitled, “The Origins of the Global War on Terror.”

ARABIAN SUMMER OR NATO'S FALL?

2011-08-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

ARABIAN SUMMER OR NATO'S FALL?

Editor's note: NATO's intervention in Libya has caused me profound concern on multiple levels, since it entails attacking a sovereign nation that has not attacked us and demonizing a leader who, so far as I can tell, has done well by his people. I recommend this blog, by Christof Lehmann, a psychologist from Denmark, and another by Michel Chossudovsky, the editor of Global Research, who also discusses the role of the Western media as "an instrument of war", where NATO's crimes are obfuscated, "killing the truth" is an integral part of the military agenda, reality is turned upside down and the lie becomes the truth--which, alas, becomes more and more difficult to discern. And now, without any doubt, we have another war, this time thanks to Barack Obama.

Christof Lehmann

The sudden onset of what the corporate media and NATO want to brand as “The Arab Spring” has turned into a bloody Arab Summer, rapidly approaching Fall and global conflict. What is the reality behind the massive psychological and kinetic warfare operation that is turning the Middle East upside down? Approaching fall, even mainstream corporate media begin to report what reliable sources have reported since the onset of the Arab Spring. NATO special forces have been on the ground in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, even before the uprisings began and gained momentum. Reports from our source in Damascus confirm that NATO Special Forces are also on the ground in Turkey and Syria, preparing for yet another invasion of a sovereign country.

Turkey's Erdogan government has made a 180 degree turn, and is now training Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda fighters for combat in Syria, while its military is preparing air and ground campaigns under NATO Command. NATO backed terror units and death squads are on a wild rampage in Syria. The first victim of war is the truth, yet the truth has absolute primacy in attempting to achieve peace and justice. NATO is preparing the invasion of Syria and campaigns against Iran. The point where NATO´s aggressions will elicit serious political, economic, and eventually military responses from Iran, Russia and China is about to be reached. The world is heading towards global war, while corporate media in NATO countries sale the confused public narratives of Arab Summers and Singing Tomorrows.

Muammar Gadaffi

Reliable sources have reported about strong CIA and MI6 activities related to the so called Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, where neither the Tunisian nor the Egyptian change could have been brought about by disgruntled, disenfranchised youth, intellectuals and workers alone, without the presence of massive pressure from within the USA and EU. The uprisings are best analyzed by their results. With regard to Tunisia, the product is a new government that is an even more reliable proxy for US and EU interests. With regards to Egypt it is a military government, sharia law, and the dismantling of women's rights. This is hardly the singing tomorrows of democracy loving idealists.

Reliable, independent sources have reported about the presence of NATO Special Operations Units as well as mercenaries with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qa´eda since the onset of the Libyan conflict. Latest since the Libyan pendant to “Black Hawk Down”, it was obvious for the observer who didn´t get his news from NATO PR-machines like Al Jazeera, CNN, and National Radio / TV in the “Free West”. Reports from independent journalists on the ground, like historian Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley, Thierry Meyssan, and well-connected journalists, such as the life-long peace activist, journalist, and former CIA asset, Susan Lindauer, offer proof beyond reasonable doubt that the armed gangs that were sold as "democracy hungry" youth were in fact NATO-lead Al Qa´eda and Muslim Brotherhood Mercenaries.

This truth was vividly omitted by the free western press, which has sold the narrative of singing tomorrows, and neglected to report how peaceful citizens, who protested for democracy and freedom, were mercilessly butchered by “Gadaffi Forces”, so that a UN Resolution for the implementation of a “No Fly Zone” could be passed and implemented by “NATO” forces. Reliable sources within the US Army at Ft. Bragg and Pope Air Base in North Carolina have reported that preparations for Libya and Syria had been on the way months--long before the onset of the so called Arab Summer. So what is the truth about the situation in Libya and what exactly is being prepared with respect to Syria?

The Military Situation in Libya. NATO Psy Ops, Hollywood in Qatar, NATO War Crimes, and Changes in Strategy. Western Corporate Media reported that the “rebels” had approached and then conquered Tripoli, fighting down the resistance of Loyalist Troops, where viewers and readers are meant to believe that the "Transitional National Counsel" has taken control over Tripoli and most of the country. TV images show celebrating masses on Tripoli's Green Square, now re-branded as "Martryrs Square".

Green Square, now "Martyrs Square"

Reports that Islam al Ghadaffi had been captured have been propagated in the media together with equally false reports that the garrisons in Tripoli had surrendered or its troops fled. What happened in the real world, however, has been an entirely different story all along.

The night prior to the invasion of Tripoli, NATO air forces carpet bombed military installations, TV and radio Stations, and a considerable amount of other infrastructure. Then NATO-lead mercenary forces disembarked from NATO War Ships, making an amphibian assault on Tripoli, while Apache Helicopters were straeffing civilians to open a way into the old city and central Tripoli. British fighter bombers assisted with Brimstone Rockets. Sleeper cells within Tripoli used the loudspeakers on minarets to give a signal for the death squads, which had infiltrated Tripoli, to conduct massacres on hundreds of key figures as well as random victims.

Hospitals in Tripoli reported 1,800 death and over 5,000 severely wounded. Most of them were civilians. What according to Al Jazeera has seemed to be a disintegration of government forces was a carefully planned change in strategy. Given NATO's overwhelming air superiority, it would have been suicidal for government forces to stay in their barracks or to engage in open front-line combat. This change in strategy, which was a necessary adaption to asymmetric warfare, does not mean that an end to the conflict is anywhere near in time. On the contrary, this move guaranties that so-called "rebel" and probably also NATO forces will be engaged in a protracted conflict that could last years, where it is by no means certain that the military outcome will be what would be desired by NATO generals.

The true looser of the conflict is the Libyan population. The only front where NATO can declare a victory is in the field of Psychological Warfare, but this front and victory is also being deconstructed. A closer look at the celebrating masses in the renamed "Martryrs Square" shows that these videos were shot in Doha, Qatar, and not in Tripoli. It was a staged celebration in the best Hollywood style. During the initial chock of the aerial and amphibious assault, such images could pass and have had their desired effect on the population of Tripoli. The outrage over being conned by NATO Psychological Operations Teams, however, will probably backfire with regards to pacifying the citizens of Tripoli.

The NATO/Al Qa´eda Commander of Tripoli is no other than Abdel Hakim Belhadj, also known as Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi, former PoW of the USA.

Abdel Hakim al-Hasidi

Regardless how many aliases he uses, this man is known for being a personal friend of Osama Bin Laden. Abdel Hakim Belhadj has made himself a name for murdering US and NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan, a fact which he reportedly brags about. Knowing history and that Al Qa´eda is in reality a creature of US Intelligence, al-Hasidi is an ideal ally. Very much living up to his reputation, we are receiving reports about wide-spread massacres of civilians in Tripoli, summary executions of all black people who are unlucky enough not to hide from the "freedom fighters", widespread abuse of women who don´t cover their heads, and other assaults and crimes against humanity, which provide ample evidence suggesting that Libya, until recently a modern nation, is about to regress back into its former state--during the dark ages before the revolution led by Ghadaffi and ousting of the Libyan Monarchy and King Idris.

How much these rag-tag mercenaries would be worth in combat with loyalist troops without having massive NATO air support remains to be seen. What is certain is that a Tripoli under the yoke of known terrorists, mass murderers, and Islamic extremists is anything but the singing tomorrows of pluralistic, democracy and freedom loving youths. Tripoli and Libya will regress into bloody, protracted conflict that could last many years. It is this protracted conflict that probably will be used as the context for establishing a permanent US/NATO military bases in Libya within the framework of the U.S. African Command. A protracted conflict will also increase scarcity on the global energy market and thereby promote the interests of "Big Oil".

Libya and the International Terror Threat. These developments in Libya and in the wider Middle East, open cooperation between known terrorist organizations and NATO, with the global financial crisis, increase the likelihood that disenfranchised European and American populations will respond with violence: when you have nothing left to loose, you loose your self-control. It will be tempting for rogue, deep-state elements to plan and perform new false flag terror attacks. U.S. American and European populations, therefore, should be on the outlook for police or military exercises, "anti-terror drills", and similar activities that usually precede false flag operations. Any attacks may well be blamed on Gadaffi, Syria, Iran, or any of the organizations that are supported by them. The scripting in the corporate western media, including the discussion of chemical weapons in Libya, indicates that this is a threat that must be taken serious.

Syria, Turkey, NATO and the E.U. While NATO Special Operations Forces already were training and arming Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qa´eda mercenaries in Syria as well as on Turkish territory, the Erdogan government was until recently strongly opposed to open war with Syria. Meanwhile, however, there have been meetings between Turkey, Germany and France, and the official stance of Turkey has changed, now agreeing with an open war with Syria. Like the Greek economy few months ago, the economy of Turkey is not invulnerable either. This sudden change in politics suggests that Turkey´s decades-long ambitions to join the European Union may have been utilized for high-jacking the population of Turkey as pawns in a new imperial project that could have disastrous national, and potentially global, consequences.

Our US Army source within Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, confirms that preparations for an invasion of Syria and for air raids against Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as attacks on Iran have been in preparation for months. Taking the Mediterranean climate into account, any ground attack on Syria would have to begin and probably be concluded--or at least stabilized--no later than October. This implies that the Libyan campaign must be stabilized by October, too. Our source in Damascus is reporting honest attempts of the Syrian government to bring about reforms. In fact, it has proposed reforms that are far more far reaching than the original demands of the “honest” Syrian protesters, whose own political process has been high-jacked by imperial forces and mercenaries, where we will bring a special report from Syria soon.

According to our own analysis and that of other independent analysts, an imperial NATO adventure that involves Syria will have enormous ramifications. Russia has her only navy base with direct access to the Mediterranean situated in Syria. Iran can not stand idly by while its main Arab ally is attacked by NATO is almost certainly preparing itself militarily. This preparation will most likely involve Hezbollah. Besides making military preparations, Iran is also preparing itself economically by privatizing at least seven of its eleven oil refineries. This will lead to massive Russian and Chinese investments in Iran and thus to greater interest in protecting Iran economically and, if necessary, indirectly or directly by means of military interventions.

Indirect conflict could manifest in the opening of a Hezbollah front and others incursions. Direct conflict would result in open global war, which is the final goal of "Zbig" Brzezniski and his school of politics, which is currently dominating thinking at the White House. On a wider perspective, it must be noticed that Iran has strategic and economic alliances with Pakistan, China and Russia. Pakistan has now asked the entire staff employed at the US Embassy to leave the country and, in the case of open NATO aggression against Syria or Iran, a Pakistani government would experience extreme internal pressure to respond in hostile ways against the USA.

Is NATO about to commit the classic mistake of “Empire Overreach”? If so, history provides us with countless examples that the collapse of an empire invariably produces widespread conflicts. The Arab Summer could develop into NATO´s Fall.

Christof Lehmann, a Danish psychologist and political advisor to the nation's leaders, posted the original version of this blog at nsnbc.

Nanothermite: If It Doesn't Fit, You Must Acquit!

2011-08-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Nanothermite: If It Doesn’t Fit, You Must Acquit!

T. Mark Hightower (with Jim Fetzer)

Those who remember the 1995 O.J. Simpson trial will recall the gloves that turned out to be "too small" for O.J.’s hands when the long-awaited day of trying them on in the courtroom finally arrived. The blood-soaked gloves (one found at the crime scene and the other outside O.J.’s house in Brentwood the morning after his former wife was murdered) were gloated over as “hard evidence” by the prosecution and the media, very comparable to how the discovery of unignited nanothermite chips in the WTC dust is considered to be "hard evidence" of the explosive demolition of the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001.

Although some have expressed skepticism about what is often called the “smoking gun” of 9/11, the great majority of 9/11 Truthers have accepted – and many have celebrated – this discovery, confident that it will lead to “a new, independent investigation” of the event and bring the perpetrators to justice. But precisely how did the resulting "nanothermite theory" of destruction of the Twin Towers come about – and how well does it stand up to critical scrutiny?

Why Nanothermite?

Observations by first responders of apparent molten metal – thought to be molten iron – could be explained by thermite reactions, which, in turn, could possibly explain the severing of steel columns through a process of melting. However, the explosive effects observed in the destruction call for some further explanation. Nanothermite has been identified as a candidate, being faster-reacting and alleged to be "an explosive form" of thermite.

In a paper titled “Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?” (2006), physicist Dr. Steven E. Jones cited thermite to explain the molten metal and first started raising the possibility that nanothermite could explain the additional explosive effects observed. Then four dust samples collected in the aftermath of the towers’ collapse by different individuals were sent to Dr. Jones, and upon testing, they were found to contain unreacted red chips of a nanothermitic material.

Those results were reported in a later paper titled “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in the Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” by Niels Harrit, et al. (April, 2009), and because of this many assumed that nanothermite had been definitively identified as the prime candidate destructive agent. The paper, said to have been peer-reviewed, came out in the Open Chemical Physics Journal (Bentham Science Publishers), causing 9/11 Truthers to run with the news that explosive nanothermite blew up the Twin Towers, proclaiming what soon became a form of gospel in the 9/11 community. The Gospel of Nanothermite has given the incendiary properties of thermite a set of new miraculous powers: in its nano-state it becomes “Super Thermite” – a high-explosive that pulverized hundreds of thousands of tons of building materials in no more than 10 seconds.

A Literature Search

A scientific person, or one who prefers to use logic, might wonder about such claims and proceed by examining the scientific literature on nanothermite as well as the principle of how explosives achieve destructive force through generating shock waves that produce fragmentation. This might be a good time to note that the Rock Creek Free Press made a very important point in its May 2009 article on nanothermite: “To be a high explosive, the reaction speed must exceed the speed of sound in the material, which is unlikely in the case of thermitic materials, but nano-thermitic material may act as a low explosive in a manner similar to gunpowder.”

Few who have carefully watched video footage of the Twin Towers coming down could fail to notice what might appropriately be called “explosive effects” in the nature of the destruction. The question then would be: Were conventional explosives or some other kind of destructive energy source employed? If nanothermite is indeed a high explosive, then was it also necessary to use conventional explosives to achieve the demolition of the towers? The more sophisticated believer might agree that conventional explosives also could have been employed, but for the scientifically less sophisticated 9/11 Truther, the "Thermite/Nanothermite Gospel" says it all – and has been "conclusively proven" by the nine authors of the 2009 published and peer-reviewed paper.

But what does other peer-reviewed scientific literature actually have to say about nanothermite? “Nanoscale Aluminum-Metal Oxide (Thermite) Reactions for Application in Energetic Materials,” Central European Journal of Energetic Materials (2010), authored by Davin G. Piercey and Thomas M. Klapötke,

identifies the fastest known combustion velocity for a mixture of metal oxide and aluminum: 2,400 meters per second (m/s), in a type of nanothermite made of copper oxide and aluminum. Remember that what Steven Jones found in the dust was iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite. The authors of this paper make it clear that copper-oxide/aluminum nanothermite is significantly more reactive than the iron-oxide version, and cite a combustion velocity of 895 m/s for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite aerogel. So 895 m/s is the highest velocity yet to be found for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite in the scientific literature, where this velocity is far too low to have played a significant role in the destruction of the Twin Towers by means of its shock waves.

Not Powerful Enough

Let’s examine the reason for that important last statement. The “destructive fragmentation effect” of an explosive is its detonation velocity, or the speed of the shock wave through the substance it is traveling in. To significantly fragment a substance, the detonation velocity of the explosive must equal or exceed the sonic velocity (the speed of sound) in the material. For example, the speed of sound in concrete is 3,200 m/s. In steel, the speed of sound is 6,100 m/s. Conventional high explosives such as TNT and RDX have detonation velocities of 6,900 and 8,750 m/s respectively, and are therefore capable of fragmenting concrete and steel, because both 6,900 and 8,750 exceed the sonic velocities of 3,200 m/s required to shatter concrete and 6,100 m/s required to shatter steel. As Dwain Deets has diagrammed, at only 895 m/s, iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite does not come close to TNT and RDX.

However, prominent 9/11 researchers have

nonetheless termed nanothermite to be a powerful explosive. The very highly respected David Ray Griffin, Ph.D. calls nanothermite a "high explosive" in his July 6, 2010 article entitled “Left-Leaning Despisers of the 9/11 Truth Movement: Do You Really Believe in Miracles?”, which was published in the online journal, Global Research. “High explosives, such as RDX or nanothermite,” wrote Griffin, “could explain these horizontal ejections.”

Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the most revered of 9/11 research groups, published a piece called “Exotic High Tech Explosives Positively Identified in World Trade Center Dust” on April 5, 2009. In this they stated, “Ordinary thermite burns quickly and can melt through steel, but it is not explosive. Nanothermite, however, can be formulated as a high explosive.”

A "Secret" Technology?

While searching the open scientific literature on nanothermite and establishing the low detonation velocity of its iron-oxide/aluminum variety, chemical engineer T. Mark Hightower has been in contact and shared his findings with Dr. Steven Jones and the authors of the highly regarded April 2009 nanothermite paper, as well as with several other well-known 9/11 Truth leaders. The most recent responses to his challenges fall into two general categories. One response is that the combustion velocity of 895 m/s is enough to explain the Twin Towers' destruction. The other is the rather persistent claim that nanothermite can indeed be a high explosive, where this formulation is a military secret that is not discussed in the open literature.

Alright. It is true that military explosives' research employs nanotechnology and that applications involving nanothermite are a subset of this research. (The military even connects nanotechnology with mini-nukes, stating that a mini-nuke device the size of a suitcase could destroy an entire building.) But to suggest that the American military has a "secret recipe" that converts iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite into a high explosive when this claim is contradicted by the open literature doesn’t make any sense.

Easily found in the open literature is that copper-oxide/aluminum nanothermite can have a combustion velocity of 2,400 m/s, compared to 895 m/s for an iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite. If the 2,400 m/s number is not a military secret, why would a velocity greater than 895 m/s (for the iron-oxide variety of nanothermite) have to be kept secret? It is far more likely that the highest reported value of 895 m/s is due to physical property limitations of iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite rather than a need to keep higher values secret.

"Combined" with Explosives?

Additionally – just to be safe, perhaps – 9/11 nanothermite advocates also maintain the fall-back position that, even if nanothermite by itself is not a high explosive, when combined with an organic substance (also asserted to not be itself a high explosive), a high-explosive is created. To that T. Mark Hightower responds: “There is only one sure way to make nanothermite a high explosive. If you combine enough high explosives with nanothermite, you can get a mixture that is a high explosive. But the same can be said for my breakfast cereal.”

Hightower has further calculated that if conventional explosives (such as TNT or RDX) acting alone were used to bring down the Twin Towers, the quantity necessary would have been hundreds of tons of explosives per tower. On July 27, 2011, Niels Harrit

(chief author of the 2009 nanothermite paper)presented a calculation for how much thermitic material would have been necessary to explain the presence of the many tiny iron-rich spheres in the dust (assuming that a thermite reaction was the source of the spheres).

He gave a range of numbers, based on lower and higher concentrations of the thermite formulation. His lowest figure amounted to 29,000 metric tons of thermitic explosive per tower – a value hundreds of times greater than the calculation for conventional explosives. His “conservative” estimate (based on 10% iron-oxide in the thermitic material) was 143,000 metric tons of thermitic material that would have been placed in each tower. But let’s be realistic: How could the perpetrators drag in and plant over 100,000 tons of explosive without being seen? Even 29,000 tons is hard to imagine and would have been rather difficult to put in place unnoticed.

The Missing Element

A side note from the many technical papers on nanothermite studied by Hightower: nanothermite produces a blinding flash of light when it goes off. If such immense quantities of nanothermite were used to blow up the Twin Towers, then why didn’t we see tremendous bursts of blinding light all over two those buildings as they were destroyed and largely converted into millions of cubic yards of very fine dust?

The Dangers of a False Theory

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which is led by Richard Gage, has been ceaselessly promoting the nanothermite discovery as the “smoking gun” of 9/11, and calling the substance a "high explosive". If there is ever a

proper investigation and a lawsuit is filed in a court of law on the “strength” of nanothermite as “hard evidence” of controlled demolition by explosives at the World Trade Center and it is revealed to the court by the opposing side that nanothermite is at best a very weak "explosive" and could not possibly have destroyed the Twin Towers in seconds, the entire case would almost certainly be dismissed and a legal precedent set against future efforts by others.

The danger of promoting a false theory or of overselling a weak hypothesis to millions of people is that it may someday be a convenient way to close the book on the entire issue. That 9/11 nanothermite advocates insist on their position in the face of significant refutations is disturbing. They are clearly unwilling to change their minds or even to discuss facts that expose weaknesses in their statements. What do these refusals really mean? Are some leaders deliberately pushing a flimsy theory with the intent that it will ultimately be shot down? Or is nanothermite a red herring or limited hangout to keep us from looking into what was really used?

The 9/11 Truth community can be confident in its refutations of the official account of 9/11 without having to present a "bullet-proof" alternate theory. It may well be that thermite/thermate/nanothermite was used in its familiar role as an incendiary (or "cutter charge") in destroying the Twin Towers. But that is very different than to claim that it is a "high explosive" that could have destroyed those buildings. The 9/11 Truth movement must not commit itself to a feeble alternative, especially when an honest assessment of the empirical data for that theory does not support its applicability and actually refutes it.

T. Mark Hightower is a chemical engineer with more than two decades of experience in the industry, who currently works for NASA. His views are an exercise of his freedom of speech and in no way represent the positions of his employer.

Confessions of a 9/11 Truth Activist

2011-08-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

CONFESSIONS OF A 9/11 TRUTH ACTIVIST

Steve Fahrney, an activist from 9/11 Truth San Diego, who had worked with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (A&E) for about a year, contacted me because of his awareness of my research with T. Mark Hightower on the properties of nanothermite, "Is '9/11 Truth' based upon a false theory?" He had a number of issues that he wanted to discuss related to A&E, including that he had discovered during his work with it that research on conventional explosives at the World Trade Center had never been conducted and that communications within the organization did not allow discussion of what happened at the Pentagon or of alternative explanations about how the Twin Towers had been destroyed. I invited him to be my featured guest on “The Real Deal” on Monday, 15 August 2011, an interview that will be archived at http://radiofetzer.blogspot.com, and invited him to author the following blog.

To Test or Not To Test, the Pentagon and "Off Topic" Topics

Steve Fahrney

As much as I respect the work of Richard Gage, AIA, and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, I decided to publicly address some of my concerns about some of the policies I experienced as a volunteer on the team for a year. Jim Fetzer was kind enough to provide me a public forum to get some of these alarming concerns off of my chest. Most of the Truth movement is aware that NIST shamefully admits to not having tested dust and debris for explosives, despite the overwhelming presence of “high order damage,” but what most 9/11 Truthers are largely unaware of is that WE, in the 9/11 Truth movement, have also failed to test for explosives.

Richard Gage and TV Anchor

I had always assumed that the tests had been done but had yielded no results, which I further assumed was the reason the painstaking nano-thermite research, testing, and publication were carried out. I did not find out until I had been on Richard Gage’s staff for nine months, via an e-mail thread, that we had never tested for explosives ourselves. I was alarmed by this revelation and quickly backed the notion of testing as soon as possible. I was even more surprised when a respected team member, Gregg Roberts, a technical writer who co-authored the nano-thermite paper, was arguing adamantly AGAINST testing for conventional explosives and det cord. He argued that we have limited resources, and we already have a "smoking gun" and saw no benefit of testing. He cautioned that since so much time had passed the residues might have broken down, where testing could yield a negative result even if they had been used. He further emphasized that “debunkers” would use a negative result to their advantage.

In regard to the resources, several members of the team had already stepped forth and pledged $200 per person, which would have covered several tests, meaning that A&E's organization funds would be unaffected. In addition to T. Mark Hightower’s startling revelation that thermite lacks the explosiveness to be considered as a sole "smoking gun", I had argued at the time that it would greatly benefit the 9/11 Truth movement to empower our outreach specialists with a more easily understood explanation involving conventional explosive, if the results were positive. As an outreach specialist myself for San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, I was using all of the tools at my disposal, including the nano-thermite paper.

Gregg responded to my e-mail, stating it was actually “perverse” to desire different evidence simply because I was having a hard time explaining the evidence I had. I corrected him stating that I could explain it to others, but that I did not feel qualified to do that. How much time might have been saved by the 9/11 Truth movement collectively, if we had simply tested for conventional explosives, gotten a positive result, and been able to state definitively that explosives had been found at the World Trade Center--without having to explain the intricate details of how thermatic material was allegedly engineered to explode?

Gregg Roberts (left) and Dwain Deets

From what I have learned about controlled demolition, I understand that the charges have to be synchronistically timed to go off within a fraction of a second of each other, where any miscalculation could cause the building to fall over instead of straight down. Given the non-explosive character of nanothermite, I find it rather difficult to believe that melting steel by means of an incendiary could achieve the same result. Additionally, I don’t see how an incendiary could shatter steel and pulverize concrete to produce those enormous pyroclastic clouds of dust that were so ubiquitous in New York on 9/11.

I additionally pointed out to the team that we were hypocritical to attack NIST for not conducting testing when we at A&E hadn’t either. But recently I have realized there is another hypocrisy. We ridicule NIST for advancing the unprecedented theory that fire had brought down these massive steel and concrete structures, even while we were advancing our own unprecedented theory that those buildings had instead been destroyed by a controlled demolition using nanothermite. Given Mark Hightower’s research and unrefuted "Nanothermite Challenge”, I find it rather far-fetched to suppose that nano-thermite could possibly have achieved the symmetrical destruction of the towers.

Gregg’s argument that we should not test due to the hypothetical concern of getting a negative result and that the "debunkers" would attack us, in my opinion, is both ethically irresponsible and scientifically irrelevant. Are we supposed to halt the scientific process and continue allow potentially crucial evidence to spoil due to an unsubstantiated irrational fear? And this brings me to my next concern about the society as a whole. Due to an internal divide on certain issues, A&E had deemed that any discussion of Dr. Judy Wood’s theories related to Directed Energy Weapons, lasers, masers, mini-nukes, or anything to do with the Pentagon was “off-topic” and could not be discussed as official business at A&E. I was puzzled to find out that there were people on the team who felt very strongly that Flight 77 had indeed hit the Pentagon, when my experience in the 9/11 Truth movement at large was that most truth advocates agree that the evidence was against it.

Gregg Roberts was one of the advocates of the "Official Conspiracy Theory" (OCT) regarding the Pentagon, as are Justin Keogh and David Chandler, which is one of the reasons that I labeled them as "infiltrators" in my resignation letter to the team when I left. In my interview with Jim Fetzer, I retracted those accusation toward any and all parties. I believe that name-calling and accusations are divisive, but I hope you can understand my skepticism. I challenged all of the members of A&E to go to their local 9/11 Truth groups, and see for themselves that (1) the Pentagon issue is not divisive, as some within A&E have claimed, and that (2) it is largely agreed that the available evidence strongly supports that Flight 77 did not crash there.

Steve Fahrney, President of the San Diego City College 9/11 Truth Club,
created this for an event hosted by Aaron Brown of Toreros for Truth.

After leaving the organization, I discovered that the government not only treats the Pentagon as an "on-topic" issue, but even treats it as an architecture and engineering issue as well. In January of 2003, the Pentagon Building Performance Report was generated by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) due to the structural failure it suffered on 9/11. I asked Richard Gage why his organization had not critiqued that report, and he said that since its inception, AE911Truth has only focused on WTC-1, 2, and 7. He argued that it is best to promote your strongest most compelling evidence. I realized later, upon reflection, that he had not actually answered my question.

I support the strategy of promoting your best evidence, but we were not discussing strategy. We were discussing policy. Why does A&E have a policy that discourages new discoveries at the Pentagon? Why doesn’t A&E critique their peers who generated the Pentagon Building Performance Report about the structural failure at the Pentagon with the same scrutiny they focus on NIST’s explanation of the structural failures in the three largest buildings of the World Trade Center?

I would like to point out that the report appears on the website, fire.nist.gov. I do not know how much involvement NIST had in the generation of this report, but A&E, which has a “NIST pursuit team” and has collected funds for that cause, should, in my opinion, find out. Why does NIST get a “bye” on the Pentagon? I offered Jim and his listeners a speculative theory. If indeed we have infiltrators in our midst, by discouraging discoveries at the Pentagon and even promoting the OCT internally in the 9/11 Truth movement, military and government officials could be let off the hook, again.

Steve Fahrney with friend celebrating A&E reaching 1,000 signatures.
The accomplishment would later make the front page of the Campus News.

As Barbara Honneger and CIT have theorized, based on their independent examinations of the evidence, it appears that explosives inside the Pentagon are what caused the destruction. If this theory is correct, it means that there had to be an insider(s). A new investigation could conclude that, even if thermite/explosives were planted in the World Trade Center, the media could still spin it with al CIA-duh involvement -- but not at the Pentagon. You cannot simply sneak explosives into the Headquarters of our Department of Defense without intimate involvement internally.

I previously mentioned that Judy Wood's work is off-topic at A&E, as well as any exotic theories other than nano-thermite. AE911Truth has had many problems with petition signers and volunteers who support Dr. Wood. It is a disqualifier for new members of the team to join if they endorse her work. Anyone who supports "no-plane" theory, laser theory, directed energy theory, or any theory about mini-nukes is disqualified as well. As a Ph.D. and former professor of mechanical engineering, Judy Wood has not been afforded the same dignity and respect of her peers as her counterparts in the nano-thermite realm, particularly by co-authors of the thermite paper.

Created by Steve Fahrney of the San Diego City College 9/11 Truth Club to
raise awareness on campus. Note the nano-thermite chips in the display.

Gregg Roberts has told me that, in his opinion, Dr. Judy Wood is unscientific when it comes to 9/11. I personally have yet to delve into Dr. Wood’s research or into any of the inappropriately ostracized members of our movement; but, after I shared my story with San Diegans for 9/11 Truth, they began looking where A&E and 911blogger have told us not to. As our local NASA engineer, Dwain Deets explained at our last event, after making a presentation about some exotic theories, San Diegans for 9/11 Truth are committed to looking at all the evidence and all the theories, not just those that are approved by "certain groups". Independent of myself, the group decided to buy Judy Wood’s book, which compelled them to contact Dr. Wood, has now been invited to give a presentation at our community center.

I would like to make it clear that I still support A&E, but not its policy about “off-topic” subjects and theories. While I retract my accusations of infiltration, though I still find it highly suspicious that the same people who are advocating against testing for explosives are also against looking at the Pentagon, against discussing Dr. Judy Wood’s research, in favor of the OCT at the Pentagon, and in favor of nano-thermite as the sole culprit of destruction in the WTC. No subjects or theories about 9/11 should be "off topic". None is "too controversial" to deserve discussion. Science should not be subordinated to politics in the 9/11 movement, which should be dedicated to truth no matter what form it may take.

Steve Fahrney, an activist with San Diegan's for 9/11 Truth, worked as a volunteer for Richard Gage and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.